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A pause. Then… ‘Yes. You’re right, it does.’
My arms came up, and, without asking for my permission, reached out towards her.
*~*~**~*~*
During the course of my life-long struggle for economic world-domination, I had visited a number of considerably dark places. The fur-hunting grounds of Alaska during the polar night, the catacombs of Rome, even the coal mines in my own native country—they all ranked quite high on the darkness scale. However, not one of them, it was my studied opinion, could compete with the utter and oppressive darkness that was now pressing in on us from all sides, battering us with sharp whiplashes of sand. If I were able to bottle this darkness, I could make a fortune selling it to countries suffering under prolonged heatwaves.
The something in my arms shifted, and I wondered if similar thoughts were going through its mind.
It. Yes, definitely it. I didn’t dare think of it as ‘her’. Not now that my arms were around her, and she was pressed up against me in a way that was… very distracting. Intolerably so.
‘What’s that?’ a soft voice asked from somewhere below my chin. A voice that most definitely belonged to a ‘her’, not an ‘it’. Damn!
A cautious hand touched my neck.
‘That’s me. My neck.’
Was it only the sand that made my voice sound so rough? I tried to believe it, but…
The cautious hand stopped being cautious. With soft fingers it took hold of my neck and pulled me down, demandingly. I didn’t resist
‘No, I mean that smell,’ the it that was a she whispered. ‘Has the camel had something bad for breakfast?’
I felt a nose tickle my armpit, and had to fight the instinct to… what? Flinch away? Grab hold of her and pull her closer? This was infuriatingly illogical! How could one thing motivate you to wish to take two different kinds of actions?
‘I don’t think so,’ I stated, shoving those enervatingly illogical thoughts aside. ‘That smell might come from the fact that you have your nose buried in my armpit.’
‘Oh.’
Oh? Oh! What’s that supposed to mean?
A pause. The storm roared on. She didn’t remove her nose from my armpit.
You just thought ‘she’. ‘She’, not ‘it’. You’re done for!
‘Um…’ Her voice was softer than ever before. I could hardly believe this was the same creature that had harried me like a little devil since the moment she had first stepped into my office. Like a little ifrit. My little Ifrit.
‘It’s a nice armpit.’
My breath caught—and not because of the sandstorm. Her words stirred something inside of me. For a long moment, I couldn’t figure out why. They were not particularly impressive words, after all, whether seen from a contentual, poetical or linguistic point of view. But then I realized that those words, spoken by that soft voice, were the first compliment I had received in years.
Oh, people had complimented my wealth, my achievements and even, if they felt like risking their lives, my noble parentage. But no one, as far as I could remember, had ever complimented anything that was essentially me. Granted, my armpit was perhaps not my most stunning feature, but still…
Instinctively, I felt my arms tighten around the creature in my arms that I could not think of as a ‘she’, and that still was so soft, so feminine…
‘Thanks.’
‘Feels good.’ The soft voice from the dark hesitated for a moment. Then, lower, so low I almost couldn’t hear it anymore, it added in a whisper: ‘All of you does.’
I felt like all the breath had left my body. But that didn’t matter, because plenty of blood was still there, pumping hot and hard, shattering the ice in my veins.
What is the matter with you? What is happening?
I tried to remove my arms from around it, but they wouldn’t let go, instead closing tighter around her, for yes, she was a her, all softness and curves in my arms that pressed into me all over my body, setting me on fire. I had to let go! Had to! Had to! Had t-’
‘So do you.’ The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
