hypatia_66

The torture was exquisite; he had never experienced torment like it; his back was a mass of cool flame. He held his breath; a film of sweat beaded his upper lip; from his tightly squeezed eyelids a salt tear emerged and slipped down his nose; he whimpered slightly and squirmed.

The torment ceased.

“Oh God, don’t stop!”

And the feather-light fingers recommenced the faint, so faint, brushing of his skin, raising goose-flesh where they touched, and sending a charge along the nerve from each vertebra, to electrify his whole body. They moved to the baby-soft skin of his flanks, to the delicate skin under the whole length of his arm down to his wrist: a maddening susurration from fingers that knew the precise level of pressure required to render him helpless; in thrall to a sensation never dreamt of in his most ardent imaginings.

“Turn over.”

Obedient to the least command, he turned. The fingers began a butterfly-delicate outlining of his forehead, his eyebrows, his eyes, his cheekbones, the straight line of his nose, his lips... They followed the sculpted line of his jaw to the shell of his ear and the fine skin behind it, ran slowly, methodically, through the silk of his hair and past the pulse in his neck to his collar bone; to the curve of his shoulder; lightly, so lightly down his arm, just lifting the hairs, and across into the line of hair on his belly and beyond, the brush of a bird’s wing, not enough to rouse him from the blissful lassitude of surrender; and now under the thin gold chain, through the soft hair of his chest to circle the sensitive areolae. He was breathing heavily now; he caught her, and drew her against him.

“You’re a witch,” he whispered, “where did you learn to do that?”

“It came naturally; I longed to know what you were like; now I know how beautiful you are.”

“Then I must learn. I know already how beautiful you are, but I want to feel it in my fingers.”

“Close your eyes, then. You have to be blind, too; let your fingers tell you what you want to know.”

He closed his eyes and started a journey he had practised only in the light.