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“No,” she said, snuggling against him and kissing his neck. “But I still wish
I could dance for you the way she did.”
“I would enjoy seeing you dance.”
Ryana made a face and shook her head. “My body would not move like hers. I am too muscular and lack the flexibility. Besides, I do not have her skill. If I tried, I would look foolish and clumsy. You would only laugh at me.”
“Never.”
She sighed. “In a way, it was easier before, when your female aspects prevented you from lying with a woman. I knew you could never lie with me, but neither would you lie with others. Now, I cannot help but wonder if I will be enough for you.”
“You are more than enough woman for me,” said Sorak.
“But I’m the only woman you have ever been with.”
“And I’m the only man that you have ever been with,” he replied. “Unless there’s something you have kept from me.”
She poked him again. “You know better. But it’s different with a man. A woman loves. A man has appetites.”
Sorak frowned. “Who told you that?”
“It’s what the sisters always said.”
“Ah, and they, of course, are vastly experienced in such matters,” he said in a gently mocking tone.
“They are not all virgins. You know that.”
“Yes, I know,” he agreed, “but those who are not have experienced only the physical side of love, and that merely as a curiosity. When it came their turn to make a pilgrimage, they took the opportunity to find a man and satisfy their curiosity, and they did so in a manner that only validated their preconceptions.”
Ryana frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“What prevented me from experiencing physical love before is what helps me understand it better now,” he said. “I used to resent the interference of my female aspects, but in a way, I’m grateful for it now. I wanted you, but my female aspects would not allow it, because if I made love to you, they would have experienced it with me. They would have been repelled by it, as I would have been had one of them made love with a man. Well, perhaps not all of them would have been repelled. Kivara always found the possibility intriguing.”
“Yes, I remember,” said Ryana with a smile. “She was always a creature of sensation, entranced with excitement, attracted to the unpredictable.”
“And so, through her, I knew that side of female behavior,” Sorak said. “With the Guardian, I knew the stable, maternal, nurturing side. The Watcher taught me yet another side of women, that which observes and protects and evaluates. I may be male, but because of them, I also know what it’s like to be female. To say that women love while men have only appetites is to deny that women also have appetites and men can also love. And the sisters stand as living proof of that.”
“They do?” Ryana asked, with surprise.
“Of course,” said Sorak. “If a sister goes out on a pilgrimage and takes a man to bed to satisfy her curiosity, then is that love? Or is it not an appetite she is indulging?”
“But… doing it merely to find out what it’s like, that is not really lust,” Ryana said.
“Perhaps not, but if curiosity must be indulged and satisfied, then it’s an appetite, just as lust is. And if you were to take a man to bed without loving him, merely to satisfy your curiosity, then how would that be any different from my taking Cricket to bed simply because she aroused me with her beauty and her dancing? Those sisters who spoke to you of men so knowledgeably, did any of them ever say they were in love?”
“No, they didn’t,” Ryana admitted.
“So, if women love and men only indulge their appetites, then what were they doing?”
“I never really thought of it that way,” Ryana said. “I never questioned it.”
“If I were a young girl, listening to my older sisters, I probably would not have questioned it, either,” Sorak said with a shrug. “But I was a young boy, and though the sisters never spoke to me of such things, I heard them talk among themselves, and saw them give me sidelong glances, and it did not sit well with me. So I consulted with my female aspects, especially the Guardian, for she was the oldest and the wisest. And she helped me see that what the sisters said was not entirely true.”
“How did she do that?” Ryana asked.
“Well, she rather irritably pointed out that I could have seen it for myself if I had only thought more clearly,” he replied. “I loved you long before I ever felt desire for you, not because I wanted you, but because of who you are. I felt frustration and regret because I believed my love for you could not be consummated, but I still loved you nonetheless. The Guardian said an appetite diminishes with satisfaction, but love never does. If it is truly love, then it grows stronger. And now I know that she was right. And, in a way, so were you. You will never be enough for me. I shall always want more… of you.”
“I love you,” said Ryana, hugging him.
