WIP Wednesday - First Mataras: Irene

 

                                                        Photo credit: Jernej Graj

Aftermath of a night playing music with the clan 

 She should have been dropping with exhaustion, but she’dnever felt less like sleeping. She couldn’t get the strange but compellingmusic she and Clan Sherv had composed out of her head. Most of it had beenSherv’s doing, showing he truly did have a talent for music beyond the limitedhowling he’d chosen for a career. He’d written a few lyrics for her to singtoo, showing an astonishing grasp of what she was capable of. Some of the noteshe’d encouraged her to sing were challenging, but she’d been delighted to workon his ideas until she’d executed them flawlessly.

She was in a thrall to the potential directions theirdiscoveries could lead them. If only she had the option of pursuing such an exciting direction! What they’d done delighted her as much as the first timeshe’d stepped onstage to sing before an audience.

There was another component to the night’s thrills. Sherv,Rusp, and Jemi excited her too.

It didn’t matter they’d gone no further than the “cashoolin-wen-do,” as Jemi and Rusp’s stumbling attempts at pronouncing “casualinnuendo” had labeled the trivial flirtations Rusp had begun. His Imdikoclanmate had added to the teasing. In the end, Sherv had given up on trying tostop them and made a few intimations himself. Nothing crude, always in a jokingmanner, but there had been an underlying tension to quicken Irene’s pulse. Itwas in a glance, in a lowered tone, and sometimes in a seemingly unintentionalbrush of fingertips against her hands.

Irene had committed her own subtle sins of attention overthe hours they’d been together. Holding a gaze…wetting her lips and noting howher companions’ catlike pupils widened as they watched…moving so the cloakexposed a flash of knee.

She had only her opera castmates to refer to when it came to theart of seduction, and under the watchful gazes of the government’s and Church’schaperones, those opportunities to witness such had been few. No doubt herrepertoire was laughably miniscule, but she’d found herself ready to dare, evenif a naked knee was so much less than what her companions had displayed earlierthat night.

Such small demonstrations. Yet they would have been morethan enough to put her in an Earth prison if her minders had seen.

Irene sat in her huge bed and ordered the lights off. Shestared into the darkness, her mind cataloguing every precious second she’dspent with Sherv, Rusp, and Jemi.

Was it the call of the forbidden? Would she find them soattractive if she were at liberty to indulge in intimacy? Maybe not, but it washard to imagine feeling less fascinated. They were each beautiful men in theirown particular fashion.

Releasing this summer.