Shame
For a moment he imagined the pressure against his skin was unexpected.
There were no mirrors in his quarters, but he closed his eyes nonetheless, as if afraid to see himself. But it was impossible to imagine away his shame, no matter how much pleasure he felt.
It was shallow, as shallow as the touch of his hands in the feeble attempts to remember her. To remember how it had been the first time, how he had waited for years to have her just as he had imagined, yet how it had still been unexpected as it happened. Darkness, silence, absence…the elements of this land had drawn them together without words. They had never had to speak to understand each other.
She spoke with her eyes, her hands, and then her lips only when they pressed against his skin to give him what she could not say aloud out of fear of being heard. He could not see her eyes now; he could only feel her hands (but they were his) on him, taking him into her warm embrace, her mouth closing over him…
(shame)
Though he closed his eyes, he could still see his shame, his anchor to coherent thought even as the touch of her imagined hands sent him over the edge. He raised his hands slowly, reluctantly, knowing the simple action of wiping them off would bring reality back to him with the relentless crush of shame. He felt wrong, wrong because it was all too real, and she was not part of that reality. Not anymore.