Honor and Sweet Regret

[DoS Archive]

From: lorduziel@aol.com (Lord Uziel)
Date: 30 Jan 1999 04:11:54 EST



The dim light of the predawn morning woke him abruptly from a deep sleep that only comes to the totally exhausted or the professionally narcoleptic. The events of the last evening had drained him to his very marrow, and even now still were settling in his mind as he laid in the down bed of the suite at the Silver Circlet Inn, with his arm protectively around the waist of a woman that had consumed his thoughts for quite some time now.
Their evening had been innocent, not so much a chaste control of themselves....but a complete inability to do little else but seek the soft down bed in the bedchamber of the suite and collapse upon it in exhaustion from the mental strain of the complete sensory overload that had been the evening.
There was little light but the soft beams of the waning moon creeping through the drapes, but he could see her. She lay close to him with her back snuggled up against him. A comfortable, close feeling that he liked overmuch he realized as his mind began to shrug off the slumber of the eve.
His arm lay protectively around her waist, holding her near to him as he watched her in the near dark of the predawn morning, listening to the slow rhythm of her breathing, and watching her beautiful face through the mass of sleep mussed red curls with a kind of happiness he hadn't felt in a long time, but that belying a deep pain that was in his eyes.
Slowly he turned the edges of his mouth up in a regretful smile to himself. He gazed at her for another few moments and then quietly, without jostling her overmuch, got out of the bed and pulled on his oversized tunic and yanked on his boots.
Without a word, with the early morning air coursing across the bedroom, and the waning moon cast its light over a woman he had come to fall in love with to late, and to strangely for him to even know how, he edged closer to her side of the bed and looked at her with a kind of sadness in his eyes for a moment, her chest rising and falling under the blankets in a slow rhythm as she slept.
Adonai leaned down, taking in a gentle breath of her scent, the heady breath of jasmine and woman nearly breaking his resolve, and tenderly brushed a few stray red curls back into place with his fingertips. Leaning in close, he placed a single chaste kiss on her cheek and then turned to seek breakfast elsewhere....somewhere where he would not be able to make the mistake that he was almost dying to make in his heart.
He stopped for one moment at the doorway, turning again to watch her again as she dreamed, murmuring softly under his breath.
"Sleep well my princess."
Turning quickly, before he allowed himself to break and change his mind, he exited the suite bedroom quietly, leaving her to wake when the sun decided to tickle her nose with its beams.