I knelt. Wrapped my arms around her. Pulled her against my chest. Her body — small, trembling, the body of a woman who had been masturbating on a cold stone floor for four hours — pressed against mine. I rubbed her back, the motion slow, soothing, the motion of a man comforting a child.
'It is fine,' I thought, hearing her internal voice — the tangle of shame and arousal and the desperate, confused need that was eating her alive. 'She is mine. She just does not know it yet.'
"It is fine," I said aloud. "We can wait."
She trembled against me. "Why are you doing this to me?"
I kissed her cheek. The skin was wet with tears, the salt on my lips. "I will fuck you one day. When we are married. I told you."
"But — you — with her — you did not marry her — you just—"
"She is not you," I said, and the words were a scalpel, cutting through her confusion with surgical precision. "You are different. You are special. You are — my wife. And I will not rush that."
