8

'One night', he told himself. 'Just one night'. For one night only he would allow himself the agonizing luxury of thinking of her, freely and fully, as if she were his.

When she wished him good night and retreated to her 'room', which, while she walked, he hastily willed into coziness, supplying it with a bed and soft pillows and what-not, he went to his chamber on trembling legs. He literally shook, his whole body overtaken with exited exhaustion such as he never knew. Once there, he sat on the edge of the bed, his palms on the satin coverlet, his nails gently digging into the soft fabric, his head lowered and swimming with joy and wonder and amazement and thrill. His breath was somehow shallow, and he tried to steady it, but found that quite impossible. He was on the verge of hysterics. He was in ecstasy.

He kept seeing her smiling face, up close to his. He kept feeling her touch, and his skin seemed to burn, pleasantly, where her fingers pressed it some moments ago. It was then that he decided to stop blocking his thoughts of her, as he did before. He would think of her, think everything he wants, everything he ever wanted. Just once. Just tonight.

It was a wise decision to make, for he couldn't stop thinking of her, anyway. Not after what passed between them today in the forest. Not after what happened later, when they returned to the castle and, on a sudden whim, he has taken her to the library. He knew she loved books, he had seen how, whenever she had a moment to spare, she would pick some volume from his desk, hoping he wouldn't notice. And he found it incredibly touching that, when he returned home to 'discover' the escape of his prisoner, she was waiting for him with a book. No doubt she dreaded his anger, and she needed comfort, and she found it in some obscure leather-bound volume, which she held gingerly in trembling fingers.

Oh, all that was history now, gone and forgotten – his anger, her fear. If her fingers would tremble with him nearby, it would not be with fear – they would tremble with gentle anticipation of mutual touch.

He knew she loved books, so he expected her to be pleased with his present. Yet nothing could prepare him for her pure joy at it, and for the way she would express her gratitude. She was smiling; she was practically dancing around the room, oblivious to his half-hearted attempts to be stern, she was looking at book-lined walls with eager curiosity, and then she turned to thank him, and grabbed his hand and held it.

He thought his heart would drop out of him. It was such a direct, such an intimate touch. In the woods, where she astounded him with her hug, he felt too shaken to fully grasp its' significance. He still hadn't absorbed it yet, perhaps, at least not fully. In the carriage on the way back she was very quiet, not looking at him much. In fact, she looked so timid that he might have started to think he imagined the whole thing, only, when he looked at her, she sort of glowed. Her skin was luminescent in the dusky interior of the carriage, her cheeks were flushed, and her eyelashes fluttered. Once, she bit her lower lip.

The intensity with which he wanted to touch her, to take her lovely face into his hands and regard it closely, and then to press his lips to her brow, and to kiss her cheeks, and the tip of her nose, and to move, finally, to her lips, was shuttering. Yet how could he do anything like that? How could he be sure that inner glow illuminating her face had anything to do with him? Well, her embrace might have given him a hint, but he was still so, so unsure. She must have touched him out of simple gratitude for his act of mercy. She must have regretted that impulse instantly – she drew away from him so quickly. He repulsed her, oh, surely he did; it couldn't be otherwise.

But then, in the library, she touched him again, deliberately, and held his hand for one brief, yet infinite, moment. The embrace in the woods was, of course, momentous. But then they were fully clothed. That embrace turned his heart and touched his soul. Her brief gesture in the library shook his body, for she touched his bare skin, and she smiled.

Oh the beauty, the wonder of it.

He found himself clasping one of his hands with the other, trying to imitate her gesture. Of course it felt nothing like her, for the main thing about her touch was her skin, the skin that felt so right touching his. Yet he pursued the impulse. He abandoned his hand, and moved his fingers to his cheek. Imagine she had touched him like that, too. Imagine she'd pressed her palm to his face; her small, warm, soft palm, so white and so gentle, what was he thinking of, making her do all these dirty household tasks? There will be no question of that caretaker nonsense, from now on. His princess wouldn't go on cleaning for him. She would care for him… differently.

Imagine she would place a hand on his chest, right over his heart. Imagine he'd catch her fingers, and press them to his lips. Imagine they'd look into each other's eyes, deeply, longingly, and the rest of the world would be lost to them. Imagine him lowering his head, and finding her mouth, her lips parted, slightly wet, for she has licked them nervously, imagine him kissing her; imagine her sighing into his lips. Imagine it, and try to survive the joy.

Imagine her kissing his neck, right inside the shirt-collar. Imagine her hand opening the collar wider, and stroking his skin. Imagine his fingers gripping her shoulders; imagine pulling her closer, pressing her body to his. Imagine her touching his thigh. Imagine her touching his groin. Imagine him hardening in her fingers. Imagine desire, blinding and blazing, filling his body with dull ache, incurable until he held her in his arms, leaving him breathless.

There was no need to imagine that – he was hard, almost painfully so, and he could hardly breathe.

Imagine the weight of her body, pressed to his, pulling him down to the bed, embracing. Imagine his face, lifted up to hers, all taut with his yearning. Imagine her face, flushed, mellow, her eyes gentle and serious, her lips swollen from kissing. Imagine tracing his lips down her neck.

He fell backwards on his bed, his feet on the floor, his hand on his chest, his fingers pressed against solar plexus, trying to still the heart pounding against his ribcage. He stared at the ceiling, unseeing. His mind was full of her; his eyes saw her, only her, in his mind.

Imagine her hair, falling on his face. Imagine her breasts, very white, with small dark nipples, exposed, hardening under his gaze. Imagine pressing his face to her breasts, and licking a drop of sweat. Imagine touching her back and her backside. Imagine her hands on his back and his backside. Imagine him moaning.

No need to imagine that – he was moaning. He was delirious with desire, inflamed with it, he was quite outside his body, yet extremely conscious of it. His left hand was pressed to his chest. His right hand was on his erection.

Imagine her body, naked, melting in his embrace. Imagine her damp skin. Imagine his fingers tangled in the short hair between her legs. Imagine her gasping, biting her lower lip. Imagine her body spread under him. Imagine the smell, sweet-sour smell of her arousal. Imagine her wet, for him. Imagine her eyes closing as she listens to the trembling inside her. Imagine being inside her, feeling this trembling with his skin.

Imagine exploding in her, dying and coming back to life, blinded by joy, ecstatic.

There was no need to imagine that – he has come, lying on the bed fully clothed, only his shirt opened, and his fly. He was still wearing his boots.

He stayed like that for some time, his eyes slowly focusing on the room around him, his breathing returning to normal. His heart was full of light. He thought, vaguely, that he should probably have been ashamed of himself, of what he'd done. But he felt no shame. He felt exhilarated, and happy, he felt reborn and strangely… fresh, even in his soiled clothing.

He loved her, and he thought of her with passion. Where there's love, there is no shame.

He loved her. Oh how strange and how sweet these words sounded, when he said them to himself. What complete certainty they transported. What new meaning they gave to the world. How they changed his place in the world: he was no longer separate from it, he was included, embraced, for She was the world, and she was inside him and all around him. It was so in his thoughts only for now, that's true. But it was going to be so in reality, too. It was meant to be. It was his destiny, and hers.

He thought, suddenly, of the only woman in his life that made him feel strong passion before, and for the first time in many years he thought of her kindly. She must have suffered. She must have felt that something was wrong between them. She was denied the bliss he felt today.

He remembered his confusion back then, when he knew Cora. His attraction to her was so strong, their minds so alike that he was practically sure it was love, and puzzled why it didn't transform him into something bigger and better, as it was supposed to. Now, when he was experiencing the real thing, it was unbelievable that he could have mistaken the surge of lust and the war of wills that bound him to Cora with that dazzling abandonment in a person that Belle's very being promised him. Cora was too much alike him to be his true love. You cannot love a person that is too much like you. You know yourself too well to fear yourself or to wonder at yourself, and there has to be great fear of the unknown to inspire love, and great awe at the possibility of a miracle. There have to be, in one's soul, opposition, contrast and danger of destruction of self to create real tension and real passion, and there has to be wonderment at the unattainable ideal to install humility without which no love is complete. People are selfish; they are only concerned with themselves. When we love, it is the only time in our life when we find something outside us that matters more that we do to ourselves. The object of love is so powerful, so great and so dazzling that one needs to become one with it – to devour it, or to be dissolved in it. Yet destruction is not a way of true love. One must disappear in the loved one, humbly – then both can change and become a united whole. Cora would have devoured him, out of sheer fear that he might devour her. She would have never opened up to him enough to embrace him.

Belle would embrace him, because she is so unlike him. Everything in them is different, from their ages to their souls – hers so radiant, his so troubled. Like the sun rising over the mountains, she would flood his life with light – generous, kind, all-forgiving, hopeful girl, so young, so beautiful, so his.

He did tell himself, briefly, that he must be demented – he has built such a mountain of dreams out of a single touch. Wasn't he like a hero of an old fable he once heard, the old man who has read too many heroic novels and imagined himself a knight, and started riding around fighting windmills, taking them for giants, and met some peasant girl whom he believed to be the noble lady he vowed to serve and love eternally? He even called her by a special name, and everybody laughed at him. Wasn't he doing the same thing now – could it be that the girl he has found was just an ordinary girl, and it was he who invested her with all the wonders of universe? After all, he was mistaken before. Perhaps he was mistaken again?

No, he was not. He knew how magic works, and between him and Belle, there was magic. She might have been an ordinary girl till he came into her life, but now she was transformed. It was as if, like the mad knight from the fable, he has given her a new name, only in their case the spell worked and she changed and he changed and they were bound together.

He smiled into the ceiling, fingering his open shirt absentmindedly, dreaming of the next morning and of all the mornings of the world yet to come. He would see her, soon. He would smile at her, and she would smile at him. He'd be kind and light with her. He would give her things. He would shower her with presents. He would be oh, so gentle with her. She would never, never again cry because of him.

He would take it slowly, of course – she would think him mad if, after all his attempts to keep her at bay, he'd suddenly start wooing her ardently. He'd be much the same, at first, only he wouldn't mean all his… meanness. He'd joke with her and tease her and show her interesting things, and she'd smile at him, and touch his hand, occasionally, and they would talk – they never talked yet, not really, and there are so many things he wants to know about her. And if she ever asked him, again, if there is anything else that he loves in the world except his power, he would look into her magical eyes and say: 'Yes, there is something else that I love. You'.

He would take his time wooing her, he is in no hurry, he has all the time in the world, but he will woo her, eventually. And then the reverie in which he let himself drown tonight will come true. She will be enclosed in his embrace, as she is, even now, enclosed in his heart.

He had quite forgotten his resolution to dream of her just once, tonight. He was busy making plans. He was also extremely exhausted – he couldn't make himself get up and undress properly and wash. So he kicked off his boots, and wiggled out of his clothes, half-rising from the bed, and then fell on top of the coverlet, face down, giggling into his pillow.

He was idiotically happy.

He fell asleep smiling.