The nature of Victor's embrace changed subtly, going from reassuring to caressing.
"Changing the subject, are we?" I asked, as he kissed my neck—warm lips and cold metal nibbling gently along the curve to my shoulder.
"You did say that I should make you feel better afterwards." he pointed out. "I know my duty."
I could feel his burgeoning erection pressing against my leg through the robe. I reached back and squeezed him gently. "And he agrees with you, too?"
"Of course." he replied. "Think of the years he's been left out in the cold… Where did your mask get to?" he asked.
"Victor—if you've no objection, this time I'd like it if you kept your mask on and I left mine off. I'd—I'd like to see your eyes."
His hands stopped moving. "This is the first time you have ever mentioned my mask." he said, with an intellectual detachment in his voice.
"Well, it's not as if it could have gotten there by accident, like a piece of spinach caught between your teeth. It seemed rude of me to comment on it." His erection was softening—obviously this was not a good idea. "But if you wouldn't enjoy it, of course I won't insist."
"My concern in this is entirely for you." Victor said. "I know you have seen photographs of me as I was. I was handsome, before… In the dark, you can imagine the face I once had, the face I ought to have. Far better that should be what you picture as you come, rather than this shell of metal or the ruin it hides."
"Any short answer I could make to that could be misconstrued, so it will have to be a long one" I said, shifting off his lap and turning around to face him. His computer was still on the bed—I bought some time to think in while I shut it and put it on the bedside table.
"I think it is my turn to reassure you." I said, as I turned back to him. "You didn't have to order me not to peek at your face, because I would never violate your privacy, your dignity that way. I love you and respect you." I spoke from my heart; I spoke the truth.
"I do not doubt that." he answered. "It could be that you would be unable to feel desire for me as you do now, if you were to know what horror it is that kisses you."
"Somehow I feel as though we've drifted into some version of The Phantom of the Opera." I observed. "And I don't sing soprano." I looked deep into the eyes behind that iron mask, put my hands on his shoulders. "If you do not want me to see your face, now or ever, that is all right with me. I don't know if I agree with you about the effect it would have on me, but I don't need to see it to love you.
"Victor, I care for you as you are, not as you were, not as you should have been, had you never been scarred—and since I love you as you are, I love the man you have become as a result of those scars. Do you not think that you have grown into a different man than you would otherwise have been—a stronger man, a better one, for all that you have undergone? I didn't know you before. I might not even have liked the young man in those photographs. He looks a little too aware of how handsome he is."
He swiftly crushed me against him. "How?" he mumbled into my hair. "How can you make me almost glad that should have happened? All words are magic words, you say. Your words are, to be sure…"
"What surprises me is that you don't question my honesty." I confessed. "I would have thought you would need convincing."
"You convinced me already." he said, letting me go, but only far enough to kiss me. "For all the mysteries that you are, yet I am certain of you." He kissed me again, that deep, absorbing kiss that seemed to affect every nerve ending in my body.
What ever I had said to him in hell must really have been something…
"However, with the mask in place, my…repertoire is going to be somewhat limited. For example, I doubt I could reciprocate in full what you did for me earlier." He was helping me out of my robe as he said it.
"That will give me something to look forward to another time," I said, as he took off his own robe. His body was as beautiful to see as my hands had told me, his skin the color of faintly tarnished silver. His erection was at about half mast as he stretched out next beside me, its head bobbling heavily. A bed with the two of us in it wasn't just a bed: it was a banquet table. It was the entire world.
I wound my arms around his neck and kissed him, trying to put all the thoroughness into it that he did. He returned it as he sent a hand wandering over my body, to tickle and pull at a nipple with teasing, maddening slowness. That was how we made love this time, slowly, languidly, sweetly—that is, until it was his turn. He dexterously brought me to orgasm with his hand before he entered me, and then made sure I reached it again…
"I have to be sure you don't feel shortchanged." he explained. "After all, you gave me such pleasure earlier that I must return it. Here--." He drew my hand down to feel his hardness. "Feel this bold fellow?"
"Yes. He's very friendly." The head was again a deep purple, so swollen the skin was taut and shiny. A plum warmed by the sun…
"Yes, as a large dog is friendly. He's best kept in check, lest he be too boisterous when demonstrating his affections, especially since you are still getting used to him."
"Then you must give me another lesson." I laughed.
"And so I shall." With that, he hoisted my ankles up over his shoulders, and drove the 'fellow' home. Now I understood why he had made sure of my pleasure beforehand. This time, he did not play with my clitoris—he was too busy. All I could do was hang on and ride out the storm. His chest was heaving when he was done, and he dropped my legs and drooped down on to me very slowly. I wrapped my arms around him as he recovered.
"I was not too rough, was I?"
"No. I'm not sure you could have gotten any rougher without going over, though. I'm fine." I told him.
"Good."
"I am puzzled, though. Every modern romance novel I ever read promoted simultaneous orgasm through missionary position intercourse as being not only possible, but spontaneous, and the only really fulfilling way of doing it. This does not match reality."
"D. H. Lawrence has a great deal to answer for. He began that myth in "Lady Chatterley's Lover". On the other hand, he has to be credited with pointing out that women can and should take pleasure in sex. Perhaps the two balance one another out."
"Maybe…" It was definitely time to go to sleep.
This time it was I who woke in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep right away. I had been having a dream, one which was partially a memory. It was of a night in Latveria when I had walked in on Tony Stark while he was working his way through a bottle of plum brandy.
Tony Stark, the owner of Stark Industries, (which was going to go bankrupt in a few years once all movies and all older television shows became pay-per-view via the Internet 24/7) was the costumed adventurer Iron Man. He and Victor had a rivalry going which was only eclipsed by the competition between Victor and Reed Richards. Every few months, the two would wind up going head to head over who had the best new toys.
This was after a trip the two made back in time via Victor's time machine. I was unclear on what had happened, but whatever it was, it had sparked off a drinking binge in Stark, and that was not good. He was an alcoholic.
On that occasion, when I walked through the Great Hall at the wrong moment, and saw him by the light of the fire blazing in the enormous hearth, staring at the table where his helmet sat next to the brandy bottle, he had said, more to himself than to me, "I don't know why I do this."
"The drinking or the heroics?" I asked him, but he did not hear, or he acted as if he didn't.
In my dream, he had said, "It'll be your turn soon." in reply.
I knew what that meant, because I knew why he was never able to stay sober for very long. The Laws of Heroics included the Law of Angst. 'All heroes must have a source of angst. Angst is interesting, therefore all heroes must have recurring bouts of whatever provokes it.'
That was why Tony Stark always fell off the wagon eventually. That was why Ben Grimm stayed the Thing—despite the best efforts of Reed Richards and the many others who had done their best to cure him. Oh, sometimes he gained the ability to transform back and forth between rock and flesh, or even was made entirely human again, but he always went back to being the Thing. Angst.
My chances of developing schizophrenia weren't thirteen percent. They were one hundred percent, because it would be a cause for angst not only in me, but in Victor. Any cure would only be temporary, only a palliative—until, perhaps, our children were old enough to show signs of it, because that would only mean more juicy angst.
Now I had to kick my plans into high gear, and get our universe working randomly. It was my best chance for remaining sane. I could work the Laws of Heroics to predict events and influence their outcome, but I was also bound by them.
I needed Victor's active help. To get that, I needed proof positive, and all my best, most concrete proofs were hidden in the attic of my grandmother's house, where my mother presumably still lived. "Oh, shit." I whispered to myself, so as not to wake Victor, who snored gently beside me. "Oh, shit."