I've compared making love to him to an evening spent before the hearth, lazing upon a soft rug or amidst down pillows, with a good book and a bottle of the finest red wine. He is relaxing, easy, eminently comfortable - in a way, a throwback to a life I abandoned years ago.
His love is thick and luxurious, though at times as rough as the scratch of his beard against my cheek and my chin as his mouth finds my throat, as hard as the calluses on his hands as they tangle in my hair and rest against my scalp. No one has sought to touch me in such ways as he does, for there are few in this world who do not now see me as something to be feared or revered. Oh, he does fear me - but his reverence is on a more personal level, a desire to please rather than to lie back and adore as the object of that adoration goes about his personal business, taking as he sees fit. He is brave enough to overcome his fear, when given reason, and this is reason enough.
My lips are pressed deliciously against the curve of his shoulder, and we know each other so very well by now; he has a taste that I could only describe as earnest - an open, earthy flavor reminiscent of fresh mushrooms and autumn leaves and leather and the smell before the rain begins to fall in the lowlands where I was born. His heart too is open, and as he gently lays me back upon the sheets, to explore with his hands and his tongue, I explore him in ways he cannot fathom.
It would be too easy, with him so responsive, to let the Dark dream of what may come just as he does. But I know the Dark every bit as well as I know him - I know which dreams it would raise, by its fatalistic nature, and now is not the time for such visions. Instead, I push backwards, into what has already been - what he has already been.
His soul is as comforting as his body, all browns and deep greens and burgandy, smoldering like the sunset with a warmth that comes from somewhere much farther within than the heat of his flesh against mine. This too holds a taste of the earth, but aged in the darkness as liquor, mellowed and yet still possessed of a sharp edge. The ghosts of a fallen family and the dreams of youth haunt in the corners, at the edge of my Sight, and his soul aches with voices and deeds nearly forgotten but burned into his mind nonetheless. I need not go deep to find the bittersweet misery of solitude, and I touch that memory, stroking it with ethereal fingers much gentler than my own could be.
He does not know how I have touched him aside from the flesh, and in flesh is his response as he draws me closer, instinctively seeking something to fill the emptiness that left him so incomplete. His surface thoughts are abstract and lusty, an incoherent rumbling like the thunder preceding the storm as he allows me to part his knees, but above that roar I can hear him faintly wondering whether his actions are meant to provide me with pleasure, or if he instead seeks comfort himself. Or does his comfort perhaps come from my pleasure?
He does not know, and therefore neither do I, although he knows far less of what is passing between us than I do. For him, it is a physical thing, perhaps spiritual in the way that it awakens emotions so deeply felt, but summed up in the senses of sight and sound and smell and taste and touch. He knows nothing of the senses of the soul, and oh - dear gods, the soul. Could one even withstand such a power in a mortal body?
For I am engulfed in him, in everything that makes him him, and I could so very easily lose sight of my own soul, for I've no desire to ground myself. It feels like driftwood tossed lightly upon the waves of the high seas, like some reckless bird absently riding the violent winds amidst a storm instead of taking shelter. Like when you were a child, kept in your chamber for long weeks due to illness, and then you are finally let outdoors once more, and you spin and spin until you are overcome by dizziness and fall upon the grass, and the nurse rushes to your side, afraid you're having a fit of some kind, but you lie back and laugh and laugh and laugh even though you can't be sure yourself, and the sun shines hot upon your face, its attention fully on you just as his, and you hear nothing but the wind whistling in your ears, or your own breathless gasps, and the hum of the bustling servants and merchants in the courtyard, just like his voice desperately murmuring your name over and over again...
And you hear it above the wind, and the waves come crashing down upon the shore, and the storm blows itself out.
The Dark has lost interest and so it recedes for the time being, and he and I are alone once more. His breathing is every bit as heavy as mine, though I catch my breath from something far beyond physical exertion. I am still here, and he is still here, and somehow this is surprising, for looking upon him now is like looking upon a portrait painted many years before, showing only a fraction of a memory.
But he is still here, and he rolls to his side, his hand trembling slightly as it rests warm and damp upon my belly, and he lets out a quiet sigh that is part satisfaction and part relief. After a moment, he chuckles softly, his deep voice slurred with exhaustion as if he had been drinking. "...Beautiful."
He would think it absurd if I were to say the same, and so I merely rest my own hand atop his. The steel is cold upon his heated skin, but he does not pull away, for he is heated from within, and he knows that in time the warmth of his body will lessen the chill of the metal - just as the memory of his soul's warmth lessens my own chill, like an evening spent before the hearth, lazing upon a soft rug or amidst down pillows...