Curtain of Stone

"Speech"

Her attention was piqued as he mentioned a gift, her ears and her gaze focusing on him again in expectant interest. Damn! She scowled, and turned back to the pot. How he could unwind her so!

He came closer. How a massive male as him could move so silently when her own claws clicked over the stones was a wonder. The steady rhythm of her heart fluttered just so as he laid a paw lightly over hers. Encompassing it, swallowing it with his pads, and yet so soft and gentle.

She looked up at him, his gaze soft and earnest. Hers were worried, and maybe a bit rebellious. Did their coupling awaken something new in her or reawoke something she had long since put to sleep?

She then stared back into the fire, the tea boiling. Her mind roiling. She didn't know what she was thinking. She was always thinking. Thinking thinking and thinking. Her mind never stopped.

With one paw she poured the hot tea into a cup. And set the kettle off the fire. The leaves swirled about the cup as it cooled. She kept her paw under his but she remained reticent for a bit longer.

She instead leaned into him, hoping it would help loosen her tongue and open up for him.

She would fetch the moon for him.
She would take the tea for him.
She would let him consume her body and soul.
She would let him fill her belly with seed if he desired it.
But to bare the thoughts she held secret, the last bastion of her being?
She might as well.

"Why..." Her throat closed as if her body was the gate, holding the last shred of rebellion for her.
She sighed. Pushing through it, her heart thrumming as she pushed through the sieve that was physically placed between her mind and mouth.

She shifted gears then, maybe adjust toward what she could say. She buried her face into his dark ink fur. The warmth soothing, his smell of the caverns, woodland, smoke from the fire that's lit the Col, and the thrilling pull of the musk that was only his filled her nose.

"I cannot..." She pulled away finally, her words coming and she would not muffle them into his fur as they already came with great effort.

"That is a promise I cannot make. You know that. It's not my place to complain when you hurt me, whether in correction or to fill me." She glared into the fire, finding strength in the flames, "I would be agreeable to carry what is ours, but only if you promised to raise them as young royalty and not chattel to be traded and used. I would want them raised better than us." Her words were tempered, as if honed in a forge. Her tone was not one she had used with him before, it carried a heavy weight to it. If he traded her children would she terminate her pregnancies? Her own tone she had not used for herself either. It was a new fire within her, one she did not even know she had until just now.