Virgin Heart Ch.1-Pt.6

            Rory's eyes widened as his gaze snapped back to his guest. His voice had been pleading, gentle, yet fluttering with laughter in a way; a genuine show of emotion. And such a tender word as 'darling' seemed so strange. It hadn't sounded forced, or fake. No, it hadn't even sounded sarcastic. It was . . .

            He was smiling. Rory felt his face flush under this new expression of affection. True, the dignitary had it partially concealed behind his graceful fingers, but the youth could see him smiling all the same. It made creases along his cheek and added the faintest color to his skin. It changed his beauty from something god-like and untouchable to something warm and charming. He was quite handsome, Rory realized, and this mysterious figure was smiling at him.

             "Eh . . . I - I wasn't angry at you . . ." The youth's eyes dropped to the tabletop. He ran his hands through his hair. There was sweat beading under his bangs.

             "Even so," The stranger's voice had taken on something melodious and soothing. Rory laid his hand on the table, and before he could return it to his lap, the long graceful fingers of his guest had curved around his knuckles. "I know I can be a little disparaging and . . . pert. But I'm hardly as mean as I sound." He lifted Rory's hand from the table. "Take it as a sign of affection." The young whore watched what seemed like a dream. The stranger lifted a hand – his hand, he had to remind himself – from the table to examine it with gentle consideration. Rory swallowed when he felt the man gently turn his hand this way and that.

             "Such delicate fingers," he murmured, "I would love to see the rest of you, when the time comes; I imagine you are quite the specimen." Rory quivered, he wasn't ready to disrobe for him, though he realized that he was already laid bare before him. This man could probably read him like an open book.

            What happened next put at test to Rory's strength of self-control. The stranger lifted the boy's hand and turned it so the palm faced him. The figure looked at the fingertips with such a soft reverence, so gentle a sadness, that the strange untouchable beauty had returned. Rory realized he had seen such a look before in a painting, a Renaissance painting of the Madonna*. The figure tilted his chin and leaned forward over the table. Rory fought the urge to jerk his hand back as the unworldly features neared. His whole arm was trembling, but the stranger's grip with steady and firm.

            With delicate grace, his faced leaned close. His lips parted and drew near. Rory could guess what would come next, but the conceptual realization could not prepare him for what came of it. The boy could feel the warmth of his breath against his skin. His eyes were wide as he watched the figure hesitate, considering the boy's fingers with that same soft and lonely look. Then the mellow eyes closed, the lashes falling, the lips drew near, and touched.

            Rory couldn't breathe. Part of him wanted to release the small cry of surprise, but his intellect was able to hold the impulse in check. It couldn't, however, hold back the sharp sensation that darted from the tip of his middle finger to the center of his chest. His ribs swelled with a strange gap, fluttering and empty, pressing underneath his lungs and against his pounding heart.

            The kiss was for less than a second, but it could have lasted hours for how it felt in Rory's fluttering head. He watched the lips draw away, but the feeling did not leave. The stranger opened his eyes, and the soft and enduring look was at the boy. Rory felt the sea-gray eyes press against the gap in his chest and fill it with a liquid warmth the trickled through the flesh from the base of his neck to the base of his spine. The figure smiled gently, his eyes unblinking. "Such beautiful hands."

            Rory felt a single bead of sweat slide down the small of his back.