Forbidden (Discontinued)

II

The massages she gave him had become a regular occurrence of the nights they shared, as was her trying to engage him in conversation, though she did not try to ask him again of his name. It was on their fourth night together that he answered.

"Arion."

"What was that?"

"My name is Arion."

She looked up at him from the chair she had taken to sitting in during his visits. A strong, handsome name for a strong, handsome man, she couldn't help but think.

"Nice to meet you, Arion," she joked. The stubborn mule inside him suppressed a smile at her antics. He chose to grunt in reply instead. He didn't want to be her best friend... But, at the same time, he did. "Cranky cloth," she muttered.

The second day had been tense at first. She tried to ask him questions, which he studiously ignored, and around the time she was inclined to resort to new tactics (which included tickling) she remembered he seemed to respond to her massages.

"Is your back feeling better?", she asked, feeling as if the conversation may be on its last leg. After about five seconds- though it felt like longer- he replied with a barely-there nod of his head. "They have not whipped you again?" He shook his head. She bit her lip, thoughtfully. "May I see your back again?" Again he paused before nodding and she rose to her feet, moving behind the head of the bed to assess the damage.

She had never been in such close contact to both men, and wounds. She didn't know how she could heal him, but she did know she could do her best to provide him comfort. She took in the healing (although still severe from the previous week) red stripes on his back and tried to muffle a sob. A tear slowly escaped the corner of her eye and she quickly wiped it away before it reached her chin.

She lept to her feet, wetting a cloth with warm water and gently rubbed the dried blood and dirt off his back. He flinched away whenever she wiped too near a fresh mark, and she would gently apologize or tell him he was okay. When she was done she placed her pillows behind his back and sat back in the chair beside the bed.

"I don't need your help," he said. A warning knock announced they had one minute and she stood.

"Yes you do, you just don't want it."

Checking Arion's back had as much become a practice as massaging it, and as the two grew more comfortable over the passing days, the closer they would sit. Corina had always been hands on in terms of taking care of his injuries but now as he began to grow more comfortable around her, she could begin to be hands on with showing affection. On the night that marked six weeks since their meeting they sat together exchanging nothing but body heat.

The obvious purpose of the once weekly meetings was to have sex so Corina would fall pregnant but she used it to get to know Arion. Of course, one day, she did desire to make love to him, but not here. Not like this.

Arion did not understand the woman who had been assigned him. She challenged every association he'd been making for women since his conception, and it puzzled him that a woman could be unlike what he'd learned in his twenty years of serving... Of surviving. She was the sort of woman young men would dream to be matched with. One who respected them and allowed them their masculinity when their only right outside of the fields and their cells was to ejaculate. Even in chains, he wasn't helpless. He had a choice. She gave that to him.

He'd never tell her but from the very first night he couldn't help but like her- as much as any man raised to hate women could, anyway. From the moment she first came to see him she had never taken anything from him. Everything she did was for his comfort; the massages especially. He'd never had anyone handle his back with that amount of care, or any other part of him for that matter. And though he'd learned to relinquish his control long ago, his pride yanked ferociously against the chains of hate that had long settled in his heart like milestones, holding a dead man's body to the bed of a river.