"That Kiss"

 

 

 

 

That kiss. That kiss, that I’d been waiting for, for so. Damned long, that KISS, aunera.

God!

I was cut once, seriously, while learning to fight with knives. I felt the touch of the blade and then a heartbeat of nothing. And then heat, blood pouring from my arm, and my entire world went hazy—

—no, the kiss was even more than that.

I had been waiting ten. Long. Years for that kiss, the one that told me that my master was at last willing to open his heart to me completely, and I had it at the edge of a bed in an unremarkable tea-house room on a distant world far from anything I could ever casually visit again for the memory of it, and god of aggression hear me, but my first love-making with the man who would remain my lover for the rest of my life was in that god-forsaken place.

All blessings on that bed, that horrible colony world and all the crazy aunera who made it necessary, and made Farren necessary, who made all this possible.

So. You want to know how it happened. And I have no problems telling you, though the scribe, it seems, is a bit of a prude, rather like Farren, dear, old, prim Farren, god bless his blushing heart. I’ll be delicate. More or less. How delicate can you be while discussing these things? But I have discovered that the aunerai vocabulary for matters of eroticism is… bizarre. And frankly, rather lacking. So I shall remedy this lack! Pay attention. There will be no test, unless, of course, you decide to go off and try it out on your own, which I highly recommend. Love-making for all!

But really. That first kiss. Just the very softest brush of his mouth on mine. Just a touch of chafing, for his lips were dry. It was as much breath as skin, that vital breath, ruj, the living air shared between two people. So warm, so brief. Such a promise.

I admit, in the narrow moments between that kiss and my hustling the Calligrapher out of the room, I built a fantasy of my master as a gentle lover, in need of my expertise—for I am rather expert, not having shared his penchant for celibacy—of his gasps of surprise as I initiated him into the gentler arts of love-making—

—the door closed and he pinned me against the wall, and THAT kiss, aunera… now, that kiss….

Mmm.

That was not at ALL gentle or tender. Urgency and power and want, yes.

…ah yes.

So, no fantasy of the gentle initiation. Which frankly was fine with me. And I’d like to say I was entirely sanguine with it, that I answered him with confidence and desire and what I really felt was shock, ah, god, a piercing shock.

Have you ever finally gotten something that you wanted for so long you’d forgotten it wasn’t yours?

Did it hurt you too?

“Ajan,” he whispered against my ear once he’d taken his mouth off mine, and his body still held mine in place, and thank god for the wall behind me to give some stiffness to my spine. “Ajan, are you well with this?”

“Yes,” I said, daring to slide my hands up his back and into his warm hair. I fisted them there, behind his neck on either side of the nape. And I shuddered. “Yes. Just… ah… forgive me. If it takes a while for me to believe it’s actually happening.”

I loved his laughter. He never laughed enough for my taste. And that low chuckle, part-growl, part-husk… all my skin grew taut at the sound of it. I rubbed my nose behind his cheek and said, “Rrrrr, do that again.”

“Which part?” he asked… mischievously!

“The laughing,” I said. “But you should feel free to do the kissing again. Several times. At least.”

“Very good,” he said, and kissed me again, and this time I kissed him back. Properly. Hard. With my hands clenched in his hair and the smell of incense in my nose, and faintly, rising beneath it, the scent of his desire. If you had any idea how hard it is to make Shame admit to desire…

When he tried to draw his mouth away, I set my teeth lightly to his lip and dragged at it. “More.”

“I’ll bruise you,” he answered, but he was already leaning in. And I grinned, just before he touched his mouth to mine. He thought me delicate. I’d had much more practice than he had. I was looking forward to using it on him—well. All thoughts I wasn’t really thinking very clearly once he resumed, until he stopped. I pressed my head back against the wall so I could get enough distance to see his face. You know he has those coronal eyes, and most of the time, they’re striking and pale and completely appropriate for Shame.

Seeing them almost entirely pupil, for want of me—

I grinned and chafed my hips against his. “You stopped.”

“Because you are entirely too dressed,” he said, spreading his hands over my chest.

“By all means,” I said. “Let’s remedy that.”

He laughed again and nipped the edge of my neck. And thank god, didn’t tease me by drawing it out though looking back on it now I can’t remember much about it, and you’d think I would given how many times I imagined him doing it… but the only thing I could feel was the contrast of it; the sudden cold on my skin as he exposed it, and the heat of his palms, gliding over my sides….

”I’ve been waiting a long time for you to make free with my body,” I said when his hands were on my hips.

He smiled against my navel. “And how long is long?”

“Eleven years,” I said, without even thinking about it, without censoring myself, just… the number was right there and it came out of my mouth.

He looked up at me sharply.

“Eleven years,” I said, defending it now. “Ten years and two seasons since you became Shame, and two seasons previously, when I met you sparring in Eredaeth’s halls, beneath Vekken’s tutelage.”

“You’re saying,” he said, “…that you’ve wanted me since you saw me for the first time.”

“Yes,” I said. And I had. I’d been a felt-furred boy then, nine years his junior, and it didn’t matter, not a whit.

“Ajan,” he said, his thumbs slowly chafing my hipbones.

“Don’t,” I said. When he looked up at me, I said, “Don’t tell me I was too young. Don’t tell me it gives you second thoughts. And god of aggression hear me, don’t stop.”

He laughed then and obliged me, which is when I really realized he was on his knees in front of me. And that was my last thought before I felt his breath on me.

I don’t have to be told what you look like, aunera. I stood vigil on ij Qenain and his lovers, and yes, some of you have wondered if they were actually lovers and I can say for a fact that they were, both of them were, and yes, even the male who was so reticent with the lord’s caresses… it’s a strange thing, but I almost want to say that both of those aunera were far less comfortable with the kind of familial touches Ai-Naidar give one another in public than they were with the far more erotic wrestling behind closed doors. But anyway. Yes, I’ve seen you. We are similar enough in build that we could make use of one another. There are differences, they seem cosmetic… frankly, I think we’re prettier, but then, I would. The aunera in bed with the lord seemed to share my point of view, anyway.

My master’s mouth. So good, so unexpectedly assured and so shattering. I’d expected more hesitance and there was none. He’d made his choice.

God, his breath at my groin, when his nose was pressed against it. And his hands on my thighs, and the weight of his body as he steadied himself by them.

And his teeth pricking my skin… there’s one in the back on the right, it’s chipped—leftover from the trial, one of the metal bits came out wrong—to this day, that back tooth still drags on my intimate flesh, and it hurts and it’s perfect because it’s his.

So… he brought me first, and it was a blinding radiance, and when it was done I sank to my knees to face him and I sought his mouth with a crazed urgency. You don’t have a word for it, I hear: to kiss when one’s mouth tastes of another person’s body, their seed, their honey. We do: eshev. How can you not have a word for this, aunera? I had the taste of him from my mouth, and licked it clean all the way to his lips. He rested his hands on my chest and closed his eyes. I recognized the look; that was him allowing himself to experience it. The sight of it… can your heart break without you really knowing why? I was fiercely glad, and yet I wanted to come apart.

He met my eyes and then cupped my face with both hands. Because, of course, he saw it, damn it. He couldn’t not see it, he’s god-blessed Shame.

“Yes,” I said, before he could blame himself. “I know. And yes, you made me wait a long time. But it’s over, right? And I’m young, and you’re young, and we’ve got all our lives in front of us. So don’t—”

“—stop,” he said, guessing. And kissed my brow with a huff of a laugh. “You see clearly, menuredi.”

“If I see clearly, it’s because I’ve spent all my waking hours in clear-sighted company,” I said. And lifted my brows. “And do you know what else I see clearly?”

“What’s that?” he said.

“That you have needs that we can see to very effectively on that bed,” I said.

“We could use the floor,” he said.

I twisted my fingers in his hair and pulled him closer to me by it, brushing my cheek against his. “No,” I said. “Unless you want to tell me you’ve had other lovers since the trial? Other male lovers?”

“No,” he said, voice low, and the husk in it put the fur up all the way from nape to spine.

“Then we’re going to do this properly,” I said—and I don’t think that’s the best word for it, the word ‘proper,’ for us, ravalin is… ‘romantic proper,’ as in the way you do things for a lover you want to honor and pamper, but ‘proper’ will do—”on the bed.”

“As my menuredi wishes,” he said against my ear, smiling.

“Up,” I murmured. “I want to look at you, the way I’ve been wanting to look at you for years.” (See, I keep running into these translation issues. That’s look as in “appraise with sexual intent,” more or less. It’s its own word, yeles. He knew exactly what I wanted by the word, but for you aunera, I suspect, it would be innuendo but you wouldn’t know. How do you avoid embarrassing each other with such imprecise language?)

He obliged me, sat on the bed… very much as he has done a thousand thousand times on the floor in meditation, cross-legged with his hands on his knees, spine straight. God, such a beautiful man. I had seen him nude as many thousand thousand times, starting on that first day when Vekken had brought us in as students and we’d showered after the lesson… even then, he’d been… fascinating. None of us seem to get as thick as you do, aunera, but he was a broadsword to our foils. And finally he was mine to touch. And bite. And kiss. I was going to do it all the way from the underside of his chin, where the skin is tender…what the hell do you call that, aunera? It’s hhelfen to us… all the way down to his…

“I didn’t do that,” I said, eyes narrowing.

“No,” he agreed, and held out a hand for me. I slid mine into it and let him pull me to him. And knelt in front of him to touch the tackiness at his groin. (And maybe I was being a little cruel, not touching the rest of him, which very much wanted touching.)

“Not an erotic dream,” I guessed.

“No,” he said. “It will seem beyond believing, maybe, but it was—”

“—FARREN made you come?” I said, shocked.

He inclined his head and then watched me as I worked through it. “Your ajzelin. It was an accident?”

“Not entirely,” he said.

I studied him and then put the puzzle pieces together because, you know, I have my smart moments, or so I’m told. “This was what led to you being able to say yes to me. Don’t tell me he Corrected you.”

He started laughing and cupped my cheeks. “Have I told you lately how delightful you are, menuredi?”

“I’m right?” I said, astonished. “God, what did he do to you? And yes, I am asking, and I know it’s rude.”

I was expecting a succinct response, or a flippant one, so I was surprised when he looked up, searching for words, maybe. Considering them. Then he said, slowly, “You recall the trials.”

God of aggression, aunera. Yes, I recalled the trials. Yes, I recalled staring at his naked body, bound to the Vines, with a gag in his mouth and ropes around his wrist, torn between revulsion and pity and pride and desire. “Yes.”

“I never moved past them,” he said.

I sat back on my knees. “You seemed whole to us. At least, until near the end.”

He nodded. “It wasn’t that I was incapable of caring for others. Love I could do.” His eyes rested on mine. “I had always loved you. But passion…”

“It was too intense,” I guessed.

“Too much symbolism,” he murmured. “I am susceptible to the power of rituals.”

“We all are,” I pointed out. “It’s just that you underwent one of the empire’s most significant ones. It’s like the esar rite, except six weeks long.”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh.

Far too much melancholy. I couldn’t stand to see it… he’d had enough of melancholy for a dozen Ai-Naidar. I caught his hand and kissed it lightly, drawing him from his memories and prompting a little smile.

Then, because I am wicked, I licked him between the knuckles. Slowly. One by one, dipping into the hollows between them, working my way over the top of his hand until it fisted. When I had dampened the surface of his skin I blew my breath over it, warm, and grinned to see him shudder.

“So,” I said, while he was struggling with his reaction. “Farren found a way to point this out to you.”

“Yes,” he said, after a moment.

I nibbled the edge of his forefinger. “And brought you.”

“Yes,” he said after a much longer moment.

I licked the underside of his finger and said with its point resting on my lip, “And that made you think, maybe it would be nice to do that with someone who wants you in his bed for sex instead of cuddles.”

“Yesss,” he said.

“Not that I don’t like cuddles…,” I said, my lips brushing at his fingertip.

He laughed. “Stop teasing me!”

“No,” I said, impudent, and pulled his finger into my mouth.

I made him climax that way. And since I know very well he can stop himself from reacting sexually to anything, I was pretty pleased with myself about it. I brushed my cheek lightly against his palm as he panted, watching him smugly and proudly. The ‘it hurts’ part was wearing off, and the gleeful ‘he’s mine!’ part was ascendant.

“Bet you didn’t know anyone could do that,” I said, grinning.

“Not… in specific,” he said with a ragged breath.

I drew myself up and over him, until he was lying flat and I was on him so I could brush cheeks with him, kiss the edge of his jaw. “Mmm-hmm. Admit it, there’s an arena where I know more than you do.”

He slid his hands up my sides, up to my shoulders, and laughed, low. “Readily. I am willing to be educated.”

I laughed and nipped his nose. “We’re going to have a very, very good time together.”

And then he grinned… with his eyes, if not his mouth, which still wore one of those little smiles that have driven me crazy from the moment I saw one. “Prove it.”

So, there was sex.

…and it was good.

No, I’m not sharing. Not all of it, anyway. And not because I don’t want to, but because, god, I don’t remember it all. I remember moments, maybe. I remember the press of one of his teeth against my lower lip, sticking because of how dry it had become from gasping. It tore the skin, just enough for me to taste blood. I remember him trying to lick my ear and it twitching away from him so much that—no lie, aunera—he grabbed it and held it fast and then licked it, over and over, and… uh, that’s how I found out that ears can be crazily erotic for me.

I remember his hands… how gentle he was when drawing his palms down my body from collarbone to groin, so gentle I felt it more as heat than pressure…

…and how hard he was when he had my leg up, one hand beneath the knee, digging his fingers into my flesh, forcing it back when he—

Yeah.

Good memory.

So, there was a lot of sex. And it was better than I’d imagined because it was real, just as it was messier and less perfect than I’d imagined, for the same reason. But it’s the imperfections you want, aunera. You can tell a fantasy by how fakely perfect it is. Give me the real, messy thing anytime, over the polished prettiness of Just How You Think You Want It. And we laughed at all the parts that were ridiculous, and worked through the moments it was uncomfortable, and dealt with the logistical issues with either amusement or muttered curses depending on just how aroused we were when we ran into a problem, and it was all real and good.

But there was one moment….

It’s funny. I don’t really understand your attitudes toward sex. Which is fine, because even if you tried to explain them to me I get the feeling I’d get as many different answers as I had aunera to offer them. But from what little I have learned—and observed—you seem to place some great importance on orgasm. As if this is the point of sex? I mean, it’s the moment of physical release, certainly, but you seem to hang the emotional significance of the relationship on it. Our erotic focus seems… different. For us, conceiving a child with someone? That’s emotionally significant. And touching someone? Trusting them with your body? That’s emotionally significant. The… ah… style? Of that trust isn’t as important.

You have to understand: for us, Farren’s relationship with my master—to be ajzelin, to be touchers rather than lovers—is considered just as real and deep a thing as what I was doing with him. Being lovers isn’t more than being ajzelin. It’s just a different expression of the same feeling. Some people cuddle. Other people have sex.

Making family with people… now that’s more than either of those things. A layer on top of an already significant choice.

So, we were lovers now, and that was good, I would have been happy with that if that’s all he’d been willing to give me. I guess in that way I was as fixated as his poor fathrikedi. But then there was that moment. I was on his back, covering him, and that was good, and we were both sore already and it had been hours, wonderful hours but real exertion by then, sweat and breath. I had my hands over his on the bed, I was moving…

…and I didn’t really think about it, because I’m a biter, but I put my teeth on his shoulder—

—and he made the most. Amazing. Sound.

Oh god, aunera. That sound. I was still recovering from it when he compounded it with my name, thick with supplication.

“Ajan…”

“Master,” I answered around his flesh, lips drawn back from my teeth.

“Kor,” he whispered, and my heart skipped.

“Kor,” I whispered back, and bit him, hard, and brought him wrenchingly against the bed.

For so long he’d accepted my allegiance, aunera. He had loved me enough for that, for me to call him masuredi, to call me menuredi. But that was all he’d allowed himself or me.

He gave me his name.

I admit, after the blinding orgasm passed, I found myself crying against his neck and trying my damnedest not to let him know. And for a long time, we just rested like that, with me on his back and him under me, panting into his forearm. Until finally, he said, more gently, and more normally, “Ajan.”

I tried it again, without the distraction of the sex. “Kor.” And hell if it didn’t make my eyes start watering again. So I said it again, to work past the emotion. “Kor.”

“Yes,” he said, soft.

“Why?” I asked, trying to get an anchor to hold on to. “Why not when we first kissed?”

There was a hint of humor and bemusement both in his voice when he said, “Apparently, being bitten there has a habit of clarifying matters in my mind.”

I sat up just enough to look over his shoulder at him. “And how did this habit develop?”

“That’s where the Decoration bit me when he raped me,” he said, giving me the straight answer I hadn’t been expecting. “And where Farren bit me to show me that I had made it too important.”

I craned my neck back enough to look at his shoulder. Then touched it a little, parting the fur until I could see the hint of insult in the skin. Which I’d multiplied, of course, by digging my teeth into it. I licked it by way of apology and won myself another of those whole-body shudders.

“Can I keep it?” I asked, only half-joking.

He looked at me over his shoulder without lifting his head.

“This part of your shoulder,” I said. “Can it be mine? I promise to bite it whenever you need to clarify things in your mind.”

His laugh was soft. “It’s yours, Ajan. Along with the rest of me.” A little smile as he closed his eyes. “I trust you.”

I brushed my nose against the rent and then cuddled onto him, resting with him. Usually when one decides to become family, there is a formal discussion… and we had it, eventually, we two. But I had been his Guardian for ten years, had worked intimately with him for all that time. I knew how he thought well enough to understand what he’d done. He would never have asked me to call him by name had he not made the decision to make me his family, as well as his lover.

There was more after that. But slower. More of an exploration than exercise, urgency, want. He has this thing with his hands, aunera. He can sit forever, it seems, and let me kiss and touch and rub them, and I can make him relax by massaging his fingers and palms and bring him by biting and sucking them, and over the years I admit it’s made me hyper-sensitive to the sight of people’s hands; I see erotic possibilities wherever I go, which is hell for a Guardian… Vekken tells me (dryly) that it’s an opportunity to practice self-discipline. Do you know how many hands I see a day? Vekken has a twisted sense of humor.

Me, I like biting. Nibbling, teeth-scratching (do you have a word for that? We say gafen, and that’s scraping only with the teeth, not with nails or objects). Biting, yes. Hard enough to draw blood? That’s fine too. When he learned about that, he started this… habit… of just putting his teeth around my throat. Never biting or crushing, just… holding me in place, and that was… well, that for me was like me sucking fingers was for him. And now and then, he does it to the back of my neck, framing but never touching that sacred place on the nape that is only for our lords and masters and that… that wrecks me for weeks, aunera, and it is the most wonderful ruination I can describe.

But all we did after the name-trading was gentle versions of all the things we’d learn to do in the future. And… there was poetry.

Right? You do that too, don’t you? Maybe with music? I sang a little, also, under my breath, into his ear. Ereseya’s not the only erotic poet in the Ai-Naidari library, but she’s a favorite of ours, so I chose several of hers. She also wrote a book of erotic exercises for lovers (there’s a matching volume for ajzelin, I bought a copy of it later for Farren to share with him, and let me tell you it’s crazy how hard it is to commission a book without a calligrapher finding out!). I hadn’t memorized the erotic exercise one, but he remembered some of it, so we did those too… the breathing together entwined. Sharing breath. That’s sacred for us, aunera. Farren said something about it maybe: about the space between two people. We honor that space, and we honor the breath we can share because of the separation.

To this day, he likes me to sing to him in bed. Breathy-soft, in his ear, for him alone.

 

The fire of your sun

is the fire in my body

 

you burn me away

you burn me away

you burn me away

you burn me away

 

you are the star

too close to my skin

you are the light

too close to my eyes

 

you burn me away

until all that’s left of me

      is you

 

At some point, though, it grew late enough that I sighed. “I should get back to my duty.”

“Probably,” he agreed, brushing his thumb over my cheek. We were lying on our sides, facing one another, mostly dry by that point. Messy, but dry. The sheets were mostly dry too, but not at all clean. “Will you want to sleep in our bed? Shall I ask?”

“Maybe sometimes,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t like sharing a bed. I don’t sleep well.” I chuckled. “Neither do any of my partners, from what little I’ve heard. I kick.”

“Gods save us from kicking,” Kor said with a quiet laugh. “Farren has a hatred for it.”

The idea of accidentally kicking Farren, whom I was not only fond of but a little concerned for—even for one of us he’s rather thin-boned—was enough to make me flinch. “No,” I said. “I’d rather sleep in a different bed. As long as it’s not far from yours.”

“No,” he promised, meeting my eyes. “Never again.” And then, smiling. “I hope you’ll visit our bed often, though.”

“I’d like that,” I said. And then, hesitant. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind… if you don’t…”

He lifted a brow.

“Well, I’ve never had a lover who also had an ajzelin before,” I said, which was close enough to the truth; most of the people I’d shared my body with had been casual lovers, and I’d never known them well enough to have some sense of their other relationships. “It would be… new to me. If Farren was there. I think… that would be an honor. I have never… ah… never had the chance. To make the sacrament. I would like to try.”

He met my eyes for much longer, and this time I let him without blinking or flushing. Because it was true. I couldn’t imagine anything more… whole… than to be with the two of them as a family, because that’s what we were now, family. I let him see it in my eyes and he drew in a sharp breath.

“I’ll tell him so,” Kor said, when he could speak.

“I hope he likes the idea,” I said.

“Me too,” he said, and kissed me lightly on the brow, then more lingering on the lips. “Go on, then.”

So we went our separate ways, me to guard the lord of Qenain in his confinement, him to gather up his ajzelin, who’d fallen asleep on the couch in the common room, and take him back to bed.

You all know what happened afterwards, aunera… you’ve read the book. There is, though, something you don’t know.

You’ve heard about the Winter Tryst, of course. And its anonymity. And you know that some of us take contraceptives because we don’t want to make or bear children. But some women do want Winter’s children for various reasons, everything from their loved ones being incapable of giving them children to just wanting their offspring to have a little variety in their siblings. Most of those women don’t share their intentions with the men who do the begetting… that’s understood. Sometimes a woman wants something of her own, and the point for us, as men, is to give the gift, not to receive it, or to know it was appreciated.

But there are women who go to the Tryst to reciprocate that anonymous gift. They wear little red flames on their costumes somewhere, and that’s their way of telling us they’re willing to bear one of Winter’s children for us. You lie with one of these women and give them a name—a false one of course—and then, if you have hopes, you go to the temple of Ganaeda the following day and tell them that same false name, and where you can be found. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, the Mothers come to you and give you a child born of the Tryst. Your child.

This is the only way men can have Winter’s children of their own bodies. So there’s balance there. We give women their anonymous children, and they return the favor, as they can.

And I… I decided I wanted a Winter’s child, and you are probably wondering why.

See, Kor… Kor was one of Winter’s sons. But unlike almost all the children of the Tryst, he was given up at the Mother’s temple. Really given up, not offered by a woman making a gift to a man who’d told her his name. Maybe his mother changed her mind, or maybe her circumstances changed… or maybe she died, or it was an accident… we’ll never know. But it’s rare, very rare, for a Winter’s child to end up orphaned, and he was. So that was on my mind (and the story of how he told it to me… I won’t share that. He can, if he wants).

But also… he was my lover, and I was his family. And I didn’t want anyone else. And he never seemed to want anyone else either, and I thought that unless someone did something, there would be no children for him to raise. So I went to the Tryst and found someone willing to make the gift, and the third year in I got lucky. The Mothers brought me a child, a bronze-haired, silver-pale-pelted child with eyes… gray and rose with flecks of red…

My Winter’s son. I underestimated how much I would love him. How much Kor would love him.

How much he would love Kor.

So many of you thought Kor was training me to be his successor, and it wasn’t really that; he just couldn’t stop himself from teaching someone smart enough to learn. I never wanted to be Shame. Love him, sure. Be him? Never.

But my son had different ideas.

In the end I wound up wrong about Kor and children, not because he married but because… well, it was another strange situation, that one, and not mine to tell. But he had two children, one of his body, and one of mine. His grew up to be a Historian, a rare osulkedi Historian serving Thirukedi and the Exception, entrusted with the histories of legal precedents and changes in Kherishdar that had evolved over the span of generations, and she was beautiful and incisive and we all adored her.

Mine grew up to be Kherishdar’s Shame.

I think that’s a good enough legacy for any father.

So, then, aunera. Let’s review.

Ruj is the air between mouths when you breathe into one another.

Eshev is the taste of yourself in someone else’s mouth.

Yeles is how you look at someone you want, and ravalin is how you treat them right.

Hhelfen is where you bite them, if you want tender and close to the throat—and who doesn’t?—and gafen is what you do when you scrape it with your teeth and yes, even you have teeth that will serve.

Shava… shava is the space between lovers, between people, that makes choice possible. That makes all things possible.

And san ekain is the word for erotic stories. Literally “stories for the hands.” Oh yes! Exactly for the reason you’re thinking.

Enjoy… and you’re welcome…!