The Binding

Chapter Nine

We spent the next nine days secluded from time. We turned off our phones. We ate when we wanted, we slept when we wanted and made love when we wanted. We languished in bed... lazily... happily, never looking at a clock. What was time, if you had all of it in the world?

   A soft orange glow streamed through the bedroom windows. The bedsheets were woven around our legs. I laughed as Ezra's hand ran down my arm.

   "Come on, one more." Ezra chuckled. "Come on," I repeated. His chin was resting on my stomach. I ran my hands down his back between his shoulder blades.

   "Alright," he answered and paused for a moment, thinking. "Every morning, King Yathi'-amar ..."

   "Yathi'-amar?"

   "He was a king in Arabia. Every morning he insisted on eating a small bowl of mellified man."

   "What is mellified man?" I blanched, unsure if I really even wanted to know the answer.

   "Of course we had a different name for it then, but it's a man soaked in honey." I rolled my eyes at him. He shrugged and continued, "Usually when someone was old and ready to die they could sacrifice themselves by eating only honey."

   "Usually?"

   "Well, that was the best scenario. Sometimes when they weren't quite as ready for self-sacrifice, they were... encouraged."

   He looked up at my baffled expression. "He would eat nothing but honey for weeks until eventually, it killed him. Then, his body was cleaned and submerged in honey for many decades. Then, people would eat it."

   "Are you serious? Why?"

   "It was supposed to be a magical cure for just about anything. Yathi'-amar believed it could heal any ailment and keep him from growing old." He shrugged. "He was wrong."  

   "You're making this up."

   "Maybe."

   He bent down and nipped playfully with his teeth at the inside of my thigh. "Oww." I jerked back, laughing. He reared up and grabbed both of my wrists, pinning them above my head.

   "And here I thought you weren't supposed to get involved." He growled deep and bent down to kiss me, his mouth firm but leisurely.       

   Electric current prickled along the length of my body in soft waves. Ezra pulled back and looked down at me as the echo of footsteps thudded faintly through the other side of the door. "Ezra, where's the coffee?" Leif's voice called from the next room.

   "Oh!" I clutched a sheet around me while I reached for the bathrobe I had left draped on a chair. Ezra had already sprung up and was pulling on a pair of jeans. I thrust my arms into the robe and wrapped the tie around my waist.

   The door sprang open. Leif stepped through and froze, his hand still clutching the doorknob. His eyes bounced from Ezra to me, his expression inscrutable.

   Ezra pulled a t-shirt roughly over his head. "Can't you knock?"

   "No. When have I ever knocked?" 

   He gawked at us for another moment and then stepped back through the doorway and closed the door behind him. "I'll make coffee."

   Ezra looked over his shoulder at me and shrugged slightly. I threw on jeans and a t-shirt and followed Ezra into the dining room.

   Leif regarded us both silently at first, then sighed. "I should have known. If it had been anyone but Ezra, I would have."

   His expression turned an almost indescribable mixture of anger, resignation, and pride as he looked at Ezra. "You can't possibly know what this is going to mean... for either of you."