Dreamsnake

“You really still want me, even knowing—?”

In answer, Snake stood up and began unbuttoning her shirt. The newness made the buttonholes stiff, so she stripped the shirt off over her head and dropped it on the floor. Gabriel stood up slowly, looking at her shyly. Snake unbuttoned his shirt and his pants as he reached out to hold her. When his pants slid off his narrow hips he began to blush.

“What’s wrong?”

“I haven’t been naked in front of anyone since I was fifteen.”

“Well,” Snake said, grinning, “high time.” Gabriel’s body was as beautiful as his face. Snake unfastened her pants and left them in a heap on the floor.

Taking Gabriel to her bed, Snake slipped under the sheet beside him. The soft glow of the lamp highlighted his blond hair and his fair skin. He was trembling.

“Relax,” Snake whispered. “There’s no hurry, and this is all for fun.” As she massaged his shoulders the tightness slowly left them. She realized she too was tense, tense with desire and excitement and need. She wondered what Arevin was doing.

Gabriel turned on his side and reached for her. They caressed each other and Snake smiled to herself, thinking that though no single experience could compensate Gabriel for the last three years, she would do her best to make a start.

Soon, though, she realized he was not prolonging the foreplay by intent. He was working to please her, still thinking and worrying much too much, as if she were Leah, a twelve year old whose first sexual pleasure was his responsibility. Snake got no joy out of being worked on, out of being someone’s duty. And, as well, he was trying hard to respond to her, failing, and growing more embarrassed by the second. Snake touched him gently, brushing his face with her lips.

Gabriel flung himself away from her with a curse and hunched over on his side with his back to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was so rough Snake knew he was crying. She sat up beside him and stroked his shoulder.

“I told you I’d make no demands.”

“I keep thinking…”

She kissed the point of his shoulder, letting her breath tickle him. “Thinking isn’t the idea.”

“I can’t help it. All I can offer anyone is trouble and pain. And now without even giving them any pleasure first. Maybe it’s just as well.”

“Gabriel, an impotent man can satisfy another person. You must know that. What we’re talking about now is your pleasure.”

He did not answer, did not look at her: he had flinched when she said “impotent,” for that was one difficulty Gabriel had not talked himself into until now.

“You don’t believe you’re safe with me, do you?”

He rolled over and looked up. “Leah wasn’t safe with me.”

Snake drew her knees up against her breasts and rested her chin on her fists. She gazed at Gabriel for a long time, sighed, and held out her hand so he could see the scars and slashes of snakebites.

“Any of those bites would have killed anyone but a healer. Quickly and unpleasantly or slowly and unpleasantly.”

She paused to let what she had said sink in.

“I spent a lot of time developing immunities to those venoms,” she said. “And a good deal of discomfort. I never get sick. I never have infections. I can’t get cancer. My teeth don’t decay. Healers’ immunities are so active they respond to anything unusual. Most of us are sterile because we even form antibodies to our own sex cells. Let alone anyone else’s.“

Gabriel pushed himself up on one elbow. “Then… if you can’t have children, why did you say healers can’t afford to have them? I thought you meant you didn’t have time. So if I—”

“We raise children!” Snake said. “We adopt them. But the first healers tried to bear them. Most of them couldn’t. A few could, but the infants were deformed, and they had no minds.”

Gabriel turned on his back and gazed at the ceiling. He sighed deeply. “Gods.”

“We learn fertility control very well,” Snake said.

Gabriel did not answer.

“You’re still worried.” Snake leaned on her elbow beside him, but she did not reach out to touch him yet.

He glanced at her with an ironic and humorless smile, his face strained with self-doubt. “I’m scared, I guess.”

“I know.”

“Have you ever been afraid? Really frightened?”

“Oh, yes,” Snake said.

She rested her hand on his belly, brushing her fingers across his smooth skin and the delicate dark-gold hairs. He was not visibly shaking but Snake could feel his deep, steady, frightened trembling.

“Lie still,” she said. “Don’t move until I tell you.” She began stroking his belly and thighs, his hips and the sides of his buttocks, ending each stroke closer to his genitals but not actually touching them.

“What are you doing?”

“Sh-h. Lie still.” She kept stroking him; and she talked to him, letting her voice slip into a hypnotic, soothing monotone. She could feel him fighting not to move as she teased him: he fought himself, and the trembling stopped without his noticing.

“Snake!”

“What?” she asked innocently. “Is something wrong?”

“I can’t—”

“Sh-h.”