"Sydney, I swear, if you don't stop bending your wrist like that, I will break it for you so you can't!"
Her right wrist was crooked. Again. It was like she had no muscles. She was sweaty, could feel the river of sweat running down her back, under her bra. How long had they been at this?
"Better."
She licked her upper lip and tasted sweat, and dirt. Sometimes when she rode, the dirt collected on her upper lip, right below her nose. A dirt moustache, really lady-like.
She'd begged him to teach her to ride—Sark had tried to persuade her otherwise, saying he had no patience and had never taught anyone—but she wouldn't let it go, and finally he'd given in. They'd found a stable where his horses could come to live, near their places, and now he was her slave driver. He'd been wrong, of course, about not having any patience. He had infinite patience when it came to pointing out her flaws. Which were numerous.
"Higher with your hands, and keep them even—he won't go even if you don't keep steady contact on both reins."
She could see him, on the ground in the middle of the circle she was making, one that was more egg-shaped than round, walking a tiny circle with his head cocked to the direction they were headed, watching her every move.
"Oh, God--can we please walk?" she sighed, the horse easing into a swinging walk as if he'd read her mind. Eskimo was fairly sweated as well, though he seemed to have limitless energy whenever Sark sat on him. It was only when she rode him that he seemed to tire, to sweat.
"Yes, let him catch his breath." Sark's tone didn't imply any judgment at her decision. "He was in a good frame before you let him go." Like a moth to a flame, Eskimo ambled towards Sark to nudge him for a peppermint. She hated the way his breath smelled after he'd had one: like hay, rot and bit like Christmas.
"He's going to get cavities."
"He does need to see the dentist," Sark agreed, "Because his teeth are getting fairly long."
She didn't like watching the horse dentist. It was called 'floating', what they did to file the horse's teeth down. Maybe she'd had endured too much torture involving her teeth to be amused by the procedure.
"Alright, canter him each way before we stop—I don't want him thinking he gets off that easily," Sark ordered.
She sighed deeply and felt her stomach muscles threaten to cramp. She was in good shape—great shape, even—but this riding worked muscles she didn't even know she had. Her shoulders would be knotted for days. She was a masochist, truly.
"More walk- he can give you ten times that walk," Sark chided, "You want him to feel like he could jump over an 8-foot fence from a standstill, he's so ready to work for you."
She fluttered her calves in the general direction of the horse's ribcage and he perked up a little, chewing at the bit. A large glob of foamy, peppermint-scented saliva blobbed onto his front leg as he walked a little more energetically.
"Better, now canter."
Sydney forced herself to sit deep but tall at the same time, stretch her inside leg down and hold her hands steady as she slid her outside leg back. Eskimo swished his tail and stepped off into a bounding, springing canter. It was both her most and her least favorite gait. He was smooth, but he cantered so… what was the term they used? So 'big' that she felt like there was air between her butt and the saddle during the airtime of his stride.
"Nice transition, don't let him go too long before you go down to trot—he likes to stop listening to you when he gets going."
They cantered most of a full circle before she braced herself and leaned her weight back, not really pulling back like you always saw cowboys do in the movies, but rather stopping her momentum so that she wasn't moving forward with the horse's strides any longer.
Eskimo huffed indignantly but broke into a jaunting trot. They changed directions by making an S-shape through the circle, and she repeated the exercise to the left. Sark watched them wordlessly from the center of the circle, a rounder one now, his head still cocked. His arms were crossed and his expression was impenetrable to her, from what she could see in her peripheral vision.
"Alright, let him walk—you both need a bath," Sark smiled at last.
Her form was far more elegant than he let on; he didn't want her getting a big head and getting content. He was trying to train her at riding as ruthlessly as they'd been trained as operatives.
Sitting in traffic on the Edens into the city, he asked, "Your place or mine?"
The arrangement was fairly simple. They both lived in Chicago, though they each had their own places. They were both freelancers, but she was thinking of maybe going back to school, maybe getting her law degree. They had an unspoken understanding about each others' needs. They weren't dating, they weren't anything; they refused to give it any label, what they had together. They had grown milder with each other over the last couple of years, the stress of needing to brutalize each other somehow lessening. Not that they were 'normal' by any means; 'gentle' was generally understood to mean that no blood would be shed.
"Yours, I guess," she yawned. "You have the big bathtub."
He glanced at her as a junky black Civic cut them off. He honked and the driver of the Civic returned the honk. It was so weird that Chicagoans did that. Like back talking with the horn.
"Don't forget," she reminded him absently, "I need to go by the post office, too." A brown paper-wrapped package lay between them on the front seat. Sark didn't know what it was, it wasn't addressed yet.
"Right, I remember," he replied agreeably. He kind of liked doing mundane things with her. He'd never had anything like that with anyone.
"Are you sore?" He already knew the answer. She didn't have the muscles of a rider, not yet. She'd only been at this for a few months. She had her boots and socks off, one heel hitched up on the edge of the car seat. He decided not to point out what her sweaty feet were doing to the leather.
"I have sore muscles I didn't even know I had," she laughed. "Like this one that feels like it's underneath my shoulder blades?"
"You always have a knot there anyway," he agreed. "I'm sure riding didn't help."
She glanced at him before looking away, out the passenger window. "Yeah…" her voice trailed off.
They lay in the tub, him behind her, soaking in silence. After awhile, he started pressing his thumb into the knot she had complained about, along the edge of her right shoulder blade. She could feel the little lump of muscle move around under the pressure. It actually hurt so bad she had to grit her teeth a little. Sometimes he didn't realize the strength in his hands.
"Ow!" she yelped at last when she couldn't stand it anymore, "Save it for later, ok?"
He removed the offending thumb and moved his hand up to her shoulder, to the muscle that spanned between her shoulder and her neck. But then, he kept going so that his hand, wet with the now-tepid bath water, was turning her face towards him.
"Hi," she said softly, acutely aware of his other hand near her left breast.
"Hi yourself," he said, his eyes half open. He leaned his head forward and kissed the corner of her mouth, before she turned completely and met his eager lips full on. She let him shove his tongue against hers, so hard she could feel the pebbly texture of his taste buds, before she took his lip in her teeth and bit it, gently.
Without a word, he pushed her away—get out of the tub—and she didn't hesitate. They toweled off separately and ambled into his bedroom, unhurried. The window above the bed was open—he hated the air conditioning—and the warm, humid night city air was flowing in, moving the curtains a little.
The ends of her hair were still wet, dripping from the tub. She hadn't washed her hair, and she could still taste dried sweat and dirt on her lower lip. She knew he could, too.
She felt like the moment was the photo negative of their first time. Everything that was black, was white, and vice versa. No color. Just shades of grey. The only similarity was the heat, but even that was different: it was the dark, moist heat of a late summer night on the verge of fall instead of the roiling, stifling heat of a late afternoon.
She could feel the breath of autumn in the night air, the whisper of cold that had crept in off the lake. Soon the trees would be changing, dropping their leaves onto the still-green grass of the parks. It was her favorite season in this city.
As he eased on top of her, she closed her eyes and listened to the song on the stereo.
The green autumnal parks conducting
All the city streets, a wondrous chorus
Singing all these poses, oh how can you blame me,
Life is a game, and true love is a trophy…1
To be gentle with her required so much concentration, it threatened his sanity. She lay still under him, and he could nearly feel her exhaustion from riding. He teased her, making her wait, but making sure she was ready, so as not to hurt her more. He could be considerate that way. He knew she wasn't terribly aroused by his foreplay. He kissed behind her ear, tasting the light salt of her dried sweat and the dirt from the barn, down the side of her neck, to the top of her shoulder, where he gently nuzzled her skin. She grimaced even at the light pressure—she was so sore that even touching the muscles made them hurt.
He drew back and shivered in the warm night breeze, though not from it. He reached down and pulled the sheet up, over them, like a tent.
"Sydney," he murmured her name against her neck, "Stay, would you?"
She nodded without opening her eyes. They didn't presume the other would actually stay to sleep, when they spent time together. Sometimes, though, it was nice to wake up next to someone.
Songs:
1 "Poses." Poses, Rufus Wainwright.