#stablehand

“I beg your pardon?”

His eyes sparkled, deep and earnest, piercing her, making her unable to move.

“You heard me, Polita. I need you. I have always needed you.”

He had crossed the small stables of Throttlewell estate in but a moment, his hands, rough and callused, winding their way around her waist and pulling her in tight towards him. She could feel her heartbeat skittering through her skin, and wondered if he could feel it pattering away there, too.

“Oh!” The realisation crashed in on her all at once. “Oh! This is a dream.”

His mouth twitched up into a smile she rarely saw lingering there, his eyes still not moving from hers.

“Of course it is,” Dream Firmen agreed far more suavely that he usually did--as if she should never have had any reason to doubt it. “But that’s no reason not to enjoy it, is it?”

Polita considered the logic of this for a moment, but as he bent his mouth to hers, all doubts fled from her sleeping mind.

The straw was damp against her back even in her slumbering state as they collided and tumbled towards it together. She became aware with the abruptness that is so normal in dreams, that rain was hurtling down outside the warm, stuffy stables.

Her horse, Swiftheart, huffed indignantly in the next stall. Father had laughed when she had told him the name. He had said that she had named the horse for herself, for her own heart was all too swift to love.

Firmen pushed her back against the loose straw, his face even more rugged and handsome than usual. She ran her fingers over it wonderingly, revelling in the sensations her mind created for her. 

“Isn’t it a little cliched, Polita?” he rumbled, lowering his lips to her throat, making her arch up against him in pleasure. “The lady of the manor falling for the stable hand?”

“No, you don’t understand,” she wanted to say as his lips worked their way gloriously around her throat. “A stable-hand is what you are, not who you are. You’re kind to men and animals alike. Thoughtful and measured of word and deed. Hard working and driven, but never at the expense of other people. Dedicated, considerate, handsome. How could I not fall in love with that, even if you are just a stable-hand?”

But even in her dreams she wasn’t brave enough to voice these thoughts aloud--wasn’t brave enough to confess to her own, fluttering heart that this is more than just childish folly--that there was something deep and earnest here, something that would mark her, wound her, scar her if she let it.