Virginity Washes Away

I’d found Aiden's room empty when I'd gone to see him, not a shred of evidence that he had ever been there. The Karian's room too, was empty of body or vice, the room now waiting for its next occupant. I was too late to tell him, not everything, but as much as I could. There was a part of me that hoped he was gone and a part of me that was empty, an emptiness I'd not felt since leaving the island all those vars ago.. as a slave. Odd how things haven’t really changed for me. Life it was coming full circle.

And then came the knock, with Aiden on the opposite side of the door.

I pulled him inward and closed the door behind him, though my hand quickly dropped from the intimate contact of touch. He was a man that had a new woman now. A woman not me. I told him I wished to answer all his questions that I could, but he somehow seemed.. Disinterested.

I had turned away from him, an error he was quick to correct, grabbing my arm and turning me to face him again. "I felt bad about our.. parting. I felt I owed you explanations that I did not give you. And in not giving them to you, I'd lost you as a friend. I never wanted to lose your friendship Aiden. But neither did I wish to hurt you with my secrets. I thought I was.. protecting you."

"Friendship.... Friendship? Did you not love me? Did you lie to me Red? You touched me.. you kissed me. You let me speak to you of companionship to you. I wanted you.. I would have laid down my life for you.. Why ...for what?"

I did love him. I do love him, but not the way he needed to be loved. I would never be able give myself completely over to him, as a woman should. I tried to explain this all to him, but I didn’t seem to be doing a very good job. "You're angry, you have every right to be. I .. I did lie to you. I betrayed you. I took what you offered and gave you back nothing but deceit. For that I am truly sorry. I would understand if you never forgave me."

"I do not understand Astraea, what is it you could not give over to me? What is it? Why am I not good enough? Was it because I am not as aggressive as your lover? Am I not a man... that should be loved?"

He is so innocent, in so many ways and his words broke my heart. "Aiden, of course you are good enough. In fact, you are too good for me. I don't deserve a man like you. Don't you see, there is a darkness in me, one I try hard to control, but surfaces when I least expect, or want it. You have a woman who loves you, and though I always wish to be your friend, I do not think that we would have lasted together. I love you, but not the way I love another. I didn't mean to fall in love with him, it just.. happened. Like it did with your Heavyn Lee. Did you know you talked about her in your sleep? You cried out her name more than once. "

"I will not listen to this. A darkness too you? Do you not think I know this? Do you not think I can feel it? You wanted to hurt me.. you succeeded and Heavyn Lee was dear to me.. if I called out her name it was only out of dreams of telling of you. I loved you.. and you spit on me. You brought yourself into bed with me still dirty from his touch... And I knew.. all the time. I could feel him on you. I could smell him.. You were different after him." He turned away from me and move to door. You know she isn't taken with my ways I am slow she is fast.. I am quiet ..she is loud. She is demanding and I am not.. and she was my very best friend even before I loved her. I wanted to share you with her. She is not taken with my ways.. and I do not see this lasting long. Perhaps I am just one of those men who is meant to be alone. My mother said this of my father once. I wonder if it's in my blood."

"I did not want to hurt you Aiden. I never wanted to hurt you." My voice had lowered, no longer able to look at him, the guilt of my actions heavily bearing on my expression. "You will make it work with her. She loves you, I don't need to be able to see into the future to know that. And you love her. It's obvious the way you look at her, the way you say her name." I had risen from where we had been sitting on the edge of the couch, wanting to step closer to him, but not wishing to further damage an already damaged relationship. "I had hoped you would forgive me for my errors. You are right, I came to you.. dirtied with another man's scent upon me. That was cruel. It was wrong, but it's something I can not now change. I can only apologize and beg your forgiveness."

"Come here." He was dark and brooding and I could see his father in him. "Do not speak of Heavyn Lee again." It was a command. As were his next words. "Disrobe."

There was only a moment's hesitation, this conceived by the fact I didn't want to lead him on. But neither did I want to have to atone for her non compliance to Castor. I undressed, then stood before naked.

He immediately grabbed my wrist and turned it to face him, I only now realizing what he was looking at. The band Castor had given me in lieu of a collar. "Where did you get this."

Even though I’d tried to turn away, it was too late, he’d seen it. So I told him the truth. "It was a gift, from a friend, why?"

He hit me. Sweet Aiden had raised his hand to me, something I would have never thought him able to do. "Stop lying to me."

"I'm not lying, it was a gift. Why, do you care?" My hand lifted to my face, shocked. "Its from the .. man I love."

"You submitted! You knelt to a man! Were you laying in bed with me, a slave to another?" He was angry, more so than I had ever seen him before. "This is a slave band of Amarna.. I have never seen one outside it's border. WHO GAVE IT TO YOU!"

I paled, flesh a stark contrast to the vibrant shade of red hair. Slave band? He'd knowingly marked me as a slave! He known Aiden would see it! "I.. didn't know." I was totally defeated, my head bowed, even as my knees seemed to buckle. I neither confirmed nor denied his claim, only offering what I could. "I will not tell you who he is. What does it matter now anyway? I love him Aiden. And he is a man of harsh judgments. He would kill either of us if he even thought I had betrayed him."

"Did you kneel to him of your own free will? Did you submit to him Astraea?" His anger was quickly turning to sorrow. Sorrow I had caused. “Is this why you could not love me...because I was not the master you needed?"

I had fallen to my knees in front of him, they now too weak to hold me. Tears pricked the back of my eyelids, then fell unfettered, small little rivers streaming down my face. I did not answer him, could not, only able to bow my head in shame. Not for the shame of submitting, but for the shame of hurting him, over and over again. "You hate me."

He too, fell to his knees with me. "Tell me? If you do not want this I will help you. But you say you love him.. if this is what you want." He kissed my knuckles and drew me into his arms. "No.. I do not hate you."

I clung to him when he offered comfort, half sobbing with my words. "I love him Aiden. I would die for him. I can't explain it, what happens to me when he is near. He has a hold on me like no one ever has. I was in his chains the day we met, though then it was not what I wanted, I have come to expect nothing less from him. He is cruel, hurtful and often times maddening. But I do not wish to escape. I .. need him."

"Then why do you cry? I do understand."

"Because I have saddened you with my .. wantonness. I have craved two men, but one I feel the need to surrender too, while the other I feel the need to protect from all the evils of the world."

"You think I am weak."

"No, I do not. I think you one of the strongest men I have ever met. But I fear for you, for there are forces that you do not know of, that endanger you. Webs that tangle and weave about us, until there is no hope of movement." I still clung to him, the side of my face pressed up against his chest. "If I could do things differently, I would. I would not have hurt you as I did. I would have been honest from the time I realized I loved this man, but I can not undo what is done. The end would have been the same. I would still want him, despite his .. short comings."

"Why do you think I am unaware of these things.. You have a very strange opinion of me Astraea." His fingers ran down my back, one still bare of clothing. “You needn't worry. What of your want of me? Is it gone?"

"No. I want you still. Despite the fact I know we can never be. Despite the fact that I love another man, and you love another woman. There is a thread that links us, one not easily severed. I desire you as much now as I did in the beginning. Do you still desire me?"

“Of course I do.." He began to kiss my neck, nipping and biting.

"There is a way for you to have me, if you so wish it. A way to take me, and leave my virginity in tack. Do you want me Aiden?" I was returning the nips and kisses, from neck to ear, our pining passion for each other hard to quell. But even with the offer, I made no aggressive move to unlace his pants or remove his shirt.

He undressed, then whispered too softly for me to hear. I think it was more a question to himself them me. “Is that how he left you a virgin?"

"Yes." I hadn't heard it, but I'd known he asked it all the same. "I will need to oil you, otherwise you would hurt me. Do you wish me to do that now so that you will be ready to take me at your whim?"

"Not just yet, I want to taste you first." He kissed me so tenderly, my face cradled in his hands. His grasp tightened into a hug and he pressed into me. He wanted not what I offered him, but everything I had.

I froze, my eyes wide first with confusion, then fear. I’d tried to scream, to yell his name, but my voice was as paralyzed as me. What had he done! What had I allowed him to do! For the moment, I was even numb to the pain, not knowing how to react, or if I should react at all. Tears were renewed, sliding down from the corners of my eyes and into my hair. Where were the voices? Those that always filled my head with such mindless chatter. Gone. They were all.. gone. And then it happened, the mournful wave of insipid hysteria that was sure to come afterwards, I trying to push him off of me, even though it was too late. "What have you done!" Though quietly asked, it was full of emotion, my heart broken and my soul bared.

"Does it matter? It is done."

He had as surely raped the gift from my soul as he was now raping my body. But could one really rape a slave? I groaned in quiet torment, only now feeling the pain of broken innocence. Again I squirmed beneath him, trying to push him off, but he would not allow it, and as quickly as it had started, it had stopped. I didn’t matter now, it was too late. Lost, it was all lost to me now. I tried to concentrate on the pain of impalement, and not the pain of loss. My head turned to the side, not daring to look at him for fear of what he might see. Perhaps the true darkness was only beginning.

"Tell me you love me, Astraea? Tell me you still love me."

I moaned and whimpered beneath him, more so when he began to move inside of me. Even though his lips were sweet on my neck, there was still pain. I said nothing.. not wishing to give him false hope. But he asked me again.

My head slowly turned to face him, my expression flickering from blank to pained.

“Tell me that you love me Astraea. Tell me these are our last moments together surely you can tell me this? Tell me..I want to hear it."

"He'll kill you, you have to go. Leave Ar and never return." My hand lifted to brush across his cheek. So much I had wanted to tell him, would have told him. But if it allowed him to leave quicker, I would offer him simple truths. "I love you Aiden, but you have to go. Take her and disappear." And I kissed him, giving myself over to him. I did love him. Even now, even though he’d taken what wasn’t his to take. I loved him.

"It's worth it to me. And I will leave when I am good and ready and not before. I will come here to see you. Will you see me?"

"No, never again. This is the last time you will ever see me, Aiden. And you will not seek me out. You will go on with your life as if this never happened. You must." Even through the now waning pain, my body opened to him, inviting him to partake of that which he'd never taste again. "We have only now, this single ehn in time. I can afford you no more."

But neither could I afford him less.

"As you wish."

He held his fingers over the slave band I wore and made love to me. "I love you Astraea.. never forget that. I will always love you.. my friend."

Kisses were whispered across his mouth, his cheek and any other place I had access. Never again would love be so tender. Never again would love be with him. Astraea the free clung to him, as the slave Fate sought to please him.

"Aiden!" I was lost in the heady sexuality I thought I would never know. A thin layer of sheen separated us, I holding on to him tightly, clinging as the first set of fireworks began to spark behind my eyelids My body began to tremble, and I felt as if I were contracting and bursting.. all at the same time. Perhaps this was how stars were born in chaotic galaxies so far away. Perhaps it would not be an end, but a beginning. A beginning of something that even now, I would not fully be able to comprehend.

"Astraea."

I cried out, a lover's escape from the mind numbing interlude I didn’t understand. One voice, so faint, so still, so quiet. With the last biting breath of passion, my upper body rocked upwards, my fingers coiling around his wrist, locked tight and lacking in warmth. Coolness of hand combined with a hundred small static pulses, pinpricking joining of flesh, transferred through touch. Eyes were murky pools of incomprehension, pupils dilated and swamped with darkness, but clearly seeing… something. "You seek, but you can not find. There is a man, sinister and smiling. You think of him often. Dreams are your vice, the disembodied voices your penance, your pain retribution.." Pause was made, the last words no more then a whisper into the curling shell of his ear. "The dead do not forgive us ours sins." Fingers released his wrist, I falling back to lie beneath him. I knew all too well about the affliction of guilt. "He will destroy you."

The crescent of nails dug into the back of his shoulder and though there was no breaking of the flesh, he would bear the marks of another woman. I was lost in the shadowy folds of madness and sanity, neither of which were doing me any good at present.

He pulled my hand away from his head, he flipped me over and splayed my legs, still deep inside me. "You can't tell me can you? Or is it that you won't that you lied. You never cared for me. Go back to your master then." He pulled away from me, cleaned himself and dressed. "I would have always loved you Astraea."

"I will always love you." As soon as he had risen I had turned to me side and curled into a ball. Shock renewed. "Go. Just go." I didn't dare look at him, the palm of my hand covering my face.

He to laugh. "You disgust me."

I was wrong.

He had destroyed me.