Page 56 of Yearning

She reached down, seeking, and found him. He was wilting. She squeezed and stroked and he stiffened again.

He let out a huff of air. “You don’t have to,” he gasped.

“I owe you,” she said. “You were ever so generous with me.”

“Yes, but you…” Then he grunted as she squeezed him again. He let out a laugh and lay back and let her stroke him. He finished quickly, and he was embarrassed and found his shirt to mop up his release, from her hand and his belly.

“Well, now what are you going to wear?” she said quietly.

He groaned, balled up the shirt and tossed it off the bed. “You did not have to do that. You do not have to worry about my shirt.”

She was sitting up, over him, staring down at him, feeling a rush of affection. This was what was between them, and it might have been enough, really, it truly might have been. She loved him, in a way, a way that was friendly—no, deeper than friendship, really. And they were proficient at pleasuring each other, and if they did it often enough, the affection would deepen into something else, and…

Yes, it might have been enough.

“You are thinking about him right now,” said the colonel in a terse voice.

“I am not,” she protested. “I swear it.”

“Yes, but you know who I mean when I say ‘him,’” said the colonel.

She sighed. She lay down on the back, next to him. “Well, that does not mean anything. We have been discussing him all night.”

It was quiet.

Finally, the colonel said, “I had to try.”

“Yes,” she said. “We did. We both had to try. We had to know.”

“You want him, and you will never want anyone besides him—”

“You don’t want me either,” she said, turning to him.

“What? Of course I do.”

“You do not,” she said. “I have been wanted by men, and this… whatever this is… it’s something else between us, and I think we have both been confusing it with that sort of love, but it’s a different sort of love—”

“Tell yourself whatever you like, Elizabeth,” he interrupted. “You are trying to make yourself feel better—”

“Feel better for what?”

“For using me and casting me off, over and over again—”

“Oh, that is hardly fair!” she cried. “You are no worse for wear, and you have no need of me, Richard.”

“Need?” he said. “Is that the basis of a strong relationship, two people who cannot bear to live without the other? Is that what you want from a man, someone who is so weak he cannot survive without you?”

“You are putting words in my mouth.”

“He’s surviving without you, anyway!”

“I never said I wanted someone who could not live without me.”

“Yes, but perhaps that’s why you’re so angry with him, in the end. It was easier when he was pining over you,” muttered the colonel, getting out of bed.

“This was a mistake,” she said softly.

He stood up, utterly bare, over her. “Perhaps it was.”