stormy clamor

His hand seeks yours and guides it to his face. You are greeted with the bristle of beard, prickling beneath your skin. You slide your thumb along the line of it: short, neatly tended, thickening at the edge of a firm jaw and a tight-clenched chin. The lines bracketing the mouth are deep, well-carved — he is older, then. Not so old as to soften the skin, but old enough for time to have chiseled its mark. Your fingers map the crooked bridge of the nose, the knitted brow, the long high forehead and close-cropped hair. His eyelashes flutter against your palms as your fingers skate briefly to trace his mouth. His lips are pressed tightly shut beneath your questing fingertips. He does not take your hand to kiss it — he does not make any motion at all. He stands before you, motionless, still, like a statue in a folk tale awaiting a magicked kiss. Only the faint flexing of the jaw as your hand settles back to his cheek gives you any indication of the roil of feeling that batters against that firm facade. "It is a fine face," you say, and feel him smile beneath. You follow the broad sweep of his shoulders and on down his arms. You skim past muscles tensing beneath velvety garb — there will be time enough, later, for that. But if the most important aspect of a man is his face, then his hands are a close second, and it is these you inspect next. You're not surprised to feel the telltale thickness of a swordsman's callouses, hardening the base of his fingers and between thumb and forefinger. You turn his palm upward to trace it, callouses giving way to smoothness where the hilt of a sword does not chafe. A noble, indeed, then, or perhaps a knight — a merchant's hands would be soft, a laborer's hard in more and different places. His thumb skims the thin skin of your wrist fleetingly. From above you hear a stifled exhale. He is wearing rings, one on each hand, hammered smooth metal with a wide oval signet. You feel briefly a sinuous curve along the bezel, like a hawk or a serpent, before he withdraws, leaving only a heavy warmth where his hands had rested in yours a moment before. "I ought to do away with these for the night, I suppose," he says with a certain ruefulness, and you hear shifting fabric as he pockets the rings. "The hands are yours, however, if you have further need of them…?" Your laugh is genuine, and it startles you. It has grown unfamiliar. The draped silks of the room snatch it from the air nearly as soon as it sounds. "I may," you allow, your voice dropping coyly, "but not quite yet." The man's voice is wry, though you notice it's taken on the faint edge of a rasp: "I await the moment eagerly." You are a professional. You do not flush easily. It must be the pavilion of silks all about you, the fox-feather mask.