The sound of his voice catches Beatrice off guard; she shoots a quick look at him just to ascertain that his eyes are open, and she hasn’t just imagined him saying that.
“I thought you fell asleep,” she hums, making no further moves to free herself from Alexander’s embrace. It’s peaceful in the sense that eludes her, his head rested in the crook of her neck and his cheek warm agaist her chest; it could go on and on, and she wouldn’t say a word of protest. She could just close her eyes and drift away as the silver stain of moonlight on the floorboards gives over to the sun…
It wouldn’t take that long, she thinks to herself, and that makes her remember why she was trying to get up. “You can close the blinds. It’s almost dawn.”
His waking isn’t weighed by the post-inertia haze; the hoarse throat is unfounded in his reply, warm and baritone, and his eyes don’t shy from the bodily act of opening, the tender skin of the lids eclipsed as he looks straight up upon her inquisitive face. The edge of her left cheek and temple shimmer pale blue in the moon’s last reaching light, an aqualine ‘S’, the bridge of her nose a curving crescent.
The sheets wrinkle around his hand, red cotton pinched underneath his palm as it presses into the blanket to support his rise. Bare back hunched over her, the hair that falls around his chin gravitates from shoulder blades shifting, shifting an etched black design so the skin moves like a translucent veil sewn to muscle and sinew.
Her neck which leaned to allow his head to rest, now lays way to the touch of his fingers, moved from the mattress, careful in their intimate purchase, careful with all things held sacred. His eyes fall upon her own, prying in his woken gaze. And to her instruction he smiles, lips falling to graze her temple, and says, “Th’sun can wait. More important, nocturnal matters for people on earth to attend to.”
