As she lay there, she listened to the steady staccato ba-beat of his heart and wondered what made his arms so different from every other pair she’d ever laid in.
He was a mammal. That wasn’t particularly new. But there was something about his gentle warmth that settled in somewhere deeper, somewhere she couldn’t quite name. Her gastra? Coron…? She could only recognize it now by its absence or its presence, the warmth she felt as she laid here and the chill that seeped in after he was gone.
She slid her hand up his chest, feeling the smoothness of it, and the warmth. Tracing the planes of his body. What was different?
He had white, delicate eyelashes. She found them fascinating in the light. She’d laid beside species of all different colors with all different sorts of eyes, but there was something uniquely fascinating in the shape of his own. Was it the way that they cast tiny, lace like shadows across his eyes and his cheekbones when he lowered his gaze to hers? Was it the way that they almost seemed to glow when the light hit it just right…?
She tilted her head to look at him, eyelids fluttering with his dreaming. She observed the silken silver spill of his hair. What was different?
A hundred dates, a hundred dances, and a hundred beds. All of them different, but all of them the same. But not this one. This one… What was different? What had changed?
She wanted him around, perhaps. She was often lonely, but no one ever stayed. Not that no one had never wanted to. She never chased them. She never tried.
Him…
She missed him, when he was gone.
She thought of him often. Wondered what he was doing. What he was thinking.
Was he thinking of her? Would he like it, to know that she was thinking of him too?
Strange thoughts, and unusual ones. Why did it matter? Why did she care?
What was different…?
He shifted in his sleep, and pulled her closer with a sigh. For once, she did not push away. For once, she pressed in closer.
Here, she knew, was the right pair of arms. The right warmth. The right embrace.
It was different.
She didn’t know why, but… she knew where she wanted to be.