Accustomed she was to the longing gaze of men. They'd been undressing her with greedy eyes since she was fifteen. Her breasts not fully grown, her pubis a shy mismatch patch, but none of them knew that. When the men in Madam Lenoir's front room looked on Anna, they pictured a woman full grown, possessed only by the naivety of a child.
The first man she let undress her for real was named Kostas. He was forty on the nose, but looked much older, with his beard braided by nimble, loving hands, and eyes that spoke of warriors long-gone. The only warriors, bare-chest, blood-moon-crest that Anna had known were the play-pretend boys Madam Lenoir hired to entertain at special occasions.
When she met Kostas, in his drab green-gray tunic, he'd been play-pretending to, but unlike Madam Lenoir's boys, there'd been something lifelike about his performance. Like he was more warrior than man of his time. It was a passion of his, pretending to be people from the long-before, Kostas explained, and it was during that explanation that Anna decided he would be the one. Maybe because like her, he wasn't meant to be here. An alien in his own life. Or maybe because losing her virginity to him would transport the deed through time. And if it happened more than a thousand years ago, then surely it couldn't count.
Even loss of innocence must, by some by-law, eventually be prescribed.
When he was done undressing her, Kostas laughed, tenderly brushing her bruised knees with his dry lips. Read her future by the prickles of his beard. Silly child, he called, and it didn't stop him from loving her.
Kostas's lovemaking was rough, but Anna knew most men weren't much better. Under coverlets and through thin walls of her bare-bone, flat-chested childhood, she'd heard the moans of Madam Lenoir's older girls. The occasional cry that the girl masked and dismissed come morning. They all strutted bravado before Anna, except Anna saw angels, and heard the song of what was done in the night. Anna, little treasure-tome of sinner's houses, knew everything. Saw birds twist and fall in mid-air where men went to hunt, in the meadows and forests exiled at peripheries. She knew the tuck-in of over-swollen bellies during Madam's inspection. She knew what it meant to sit in the Epidrome above the city, and inspect the cries of the down-below.
And through it all, from assembled, and careful construction of mismatch idea shards, she knew every twist and heave of Kostas's sweat-dusted body above her.
They told her it hurt, the girls Anna saw at Monsieur Faldo's bakery on Thursday mornings, when Madam sent her in for provisions and a little amuse-bouche for the night's revels. Madam's girls assured her it didn't hurt at all, but Anna knew otherwise by their stricken, zone-out, soul-loss expressions.
With Kostas, it merely felt strange. An invasion of self as she'd never known before, but not strictly unpleasant. Kostas was, for his sharp beard, and the roughness of his tunic, underneath it, a gentle, attentive man. Was careful to prop himself on both elbows, as not to crush Anna's puppet-mirror body underneath. He'd said that, when Anna had unpeeled her other stocking. Complimented her puppet-legs, long to the skyline, and slender like reeds. Anna couldn't tell, by the color of his thoughts, if they made him want her more or less. In a way he'd never speak, she reminded Kostas of his son, whom he never saw now, because his eyes had been all-clouded when the boy was first born.
Thoughts layered in a topple-over stack, Anna peered up into Kostas's warm, adoring face, and flipped him over in her mind. In reality, she gave a start, that caused Kostas to slow down, and peer back. Had he hurt her somehow? No, but she wanted to be on top.
You said you wouldn't know what to do, Kostas laughed. Anna just said, I changed my mind.
Rocking herself steady in his lay-down lap, Anna wished she hadn't. Now she had an even better view of Kostas's adoring stare. With that one little act of defiance, she'd gone from one-time merriment to potential mid-term mistress. Oh, she had just the body to fulfil desires and fantasies Kostas wouldn't even admit to himself, let alone out loud. And she was of that bittersweet age where serious never meant very.
She should've, Anna saw, remained a pliable child. She should've laid under him, and moaned as she'd heard the older girls do on slow nights. Madam had strict rules against moaning too loudly on busy nights, lest it obscure the sounds from the other rooms. An instantaneous turn-on for most guests. Anna saw, belatedly, she should've gotten her end of the bargain.
It was too late now for moans, or for finding cover. Kostas would love her, in the way men like him were fated to. With his good, kind smile, and his rough, honest hands. He would remember her just as she was, bottom-bare, with her bell-whistle breasts rocking against his skin. Tender nipples grazing against the rough hair on his chest. He would envelop her in his world, and Anna, for all her breath-held wisdom, wouldn't know how to tell him.
Tear-fall, and tear-wipe, as Kostas glimpses the conclusion of sex. Not to cry, little one. There's much to cry about already, without you saddening yourself.
And embroidered in Anna's tear, both plea and apology. Forgive me, sir, for noticing you. For being aroused by your harsh, strong embrace, by your smell, by the lines on your face. Forgive, except you won't. You'll want to, then remember temptation. Remember promise. Remember youth riding in the lap of middle age, laughing in the face of death, as youth is prone to.
You should not have tempted me, and against the words, Anna swallows her tongue. Forgets to tell him, her Kostas, warrior from a time gone before, that she's spoken for already. Not free to ride and roam with his kind.
***
Been a minute since I wrote any fiction here, huh?
