He awoke with blonde hair draped across his face. It was soft and smelled of a mix of Wella Balsam and Cheers, which was comforting to him. He blinked and found his eyelashes caught on those golden tresses that filtered the daylight that shone through the half-circle top of her tall dormer window. It took him a second to remember where he was, but almost instantly every detail of the night before came flooding back to him in a wave of sensory memories. The warmth of her skin… its honeyed taste… the sound of her sighs… her eyelids, heavy over clear blue irises dotted by pupils dilated with desire. His pulse quickened just remembering, and he inhaled deeply to consume even more of her as she slept. He would have attempted to take it further, but she was sound asleep, and her breathing was maybe the most lovely, peaceful thing he'd ever heard. He pulled back to take a look at her, unguarded and at rest, and his heart ached at the beauty of the moment.
Naked but for a delicately pink-flowered white sheet tangled around her right leg, she lay there on her back like a living, breathing alabaster sculpture of a sylph, lithe and long, perfection. Her right hand rested on a pillow over her head, while the back of the other fell lightly on his chest. A swath of sunlight crossed her flat stomach on a diagonal upward toward the underside of her breast. Her face was the picture of serenity, and though he loved watching her like this, he longed for her eyes to open so he could see them twinkle at him again.
He was suddenly reminded of a visit to an art museum as a child. His mother held his hand, pulling him from painting to painting, when all he wanted to do was go home and play ball with the boys up the street. Everything that hung on the walls looked the same to him. Oil on canvas, taking the form of odd looking people from a far away time and place doing things he couldn't relate to in any way. From another world they were, and after a while, the portraits became a muted technicolor blur viewed through bored, restless eyes, but then, there it was: A painting of a sylvan glen in which a gathering of fairies congregated around a single reclining fairy queen, or so he imagined her to be. She was completely naked, and though that alone would have been enough to command the attention of his nine year old gaze, there was something more in the painting that captivated him. The beautiful golden nymph was the most enchanting creature he'd ever laid eyes on, dainty and pale, yet somehow powerful. She looked nothing like the tawdry ladies in his buddies' nudie magazines, but he couldn't have been more transfixed. He couldn't explain it if he tried. She too was from another world, but one he now yearned to join. He was incensed when his mother dragged him to the next exhibit, but he never forgot that vision, and now he understood why. It was a premonition leading him to this very moment with his own fairy queen. At long last, he'd captured her. Or she'd captured him. The miracle of that left him awestruck.
He lay next to her, watching her chest rise and fall with every breath. Her mouth was slightly open, her parted full lips revealing just a glimpse of her front teeth. Her hair, carelessly tousled over her pillow, seemed to be an extension of the sunbeams that warmed the room, and he felt his own temperature rise just looking at her. His hand reached out into the ray of light that resided on her abdomen and slid over her skin, basking in warmth from both sides. Her eyes fluttered open, and she drowsily turned her head to look over at Sam, a slow smile spreading across her face. He felt his eyes mist over with happiness at the sight of her waking. She'd never been so vulnerable to him, much less glad about it, and it filled him with pride and an awesome sense of responsibility. This was real. She was flesh and blood and light and magic and she was with him. She trusted him.
He pulled her close, relishing the feeling of her skin on his once more as she snuggled into the crook of his arm. He felt very protective of her, though at the same time, he never felt safer himself. He wasn't sure who was taking care of whom and he didn't care- so long as they were wrapped in each other's embrace, all was very much right in his world, and he didn't feel the need to explain or understand it.
She reached up and touched his cheek, now rough with five o'clock shadow, and placed a kiss on his bare shoulder. Slowly, she slipped her leg out from under the sheet and ran her hand over his chest as she sat up, stretching her arms and back before standing beside the bed. Giving him a long look over her shoulder and a sly grin, she moved toward the door of her bathroom, passing through beam after beam of sunlight. She was illuminated beauty in motion, lit as much from within as without. She knew he was watching her, and relished his gaze because she no longer had anything to hide. Confident and completely self-possessed, she was devoid of inhibitions, just like that long lost fairy of his idyll.
"I'm going to have a shower now. You're welcome to join me if you like…"
Willingly and utterly in her thrall, he would follow her anywhere. And he did.