Author's Note: Power is not always exerted in the most obvious way...

Awake

He lies awake; on his back, hands clasping the bars of the headboard in futile parody, his wrists feeling the ghosts of bonds which could have bound them there.

Could, but do not.

Will not.

He feels a tightness, the ache of a pointless morning half-hard cock; a body saying yes! perhaps? His mind knowing no.

She moves, and in that small gesture he knows with years of familiarity that he is permitted near, and snuggles his head on her shoulder, feels her warmth, her softness.

He places his hand carefully, so carefully on her thigh - not the stomach with it's morning-full bladder, not higher - there are breasts, soft and needed, but not to be kneaded. Their fruit not to be harvested with lips or fingers.

Nor too low his hand, not near that coarse-forested no-man's-land before the real No-Man's-Land. So it rests on the thigh, fingers stroking helplessly, tolerated for the sake of the thing.

He feels a sense of acute awareness in his balls and in the soft skin across his bottom, awareness of its sensitivity, of the longed-for enlivening sting of hand on skin, but with the mocking knowledge of could-be pleasure denied.

There will be no spanking; no submitting of himself for her ministrations, her pleasure does not run there.

There will be no spanking; her pleasure does not run there.

He smells the perspiration from her armpit, warm and slightly acrid, absurdly sensuous.

It is from her, fully of her; he loves the comfort of its promise, the sure knowledge that it comes from her, from her dark secret places, the cousins of that darker, more secret place where he has been before, almost as if a tourist, not as a proprietor.

He will not visit today. A week's time? Two? He knows not. He could ask, could plead, but this would be futile, for even if permission were to be granted it would lack the intimacy of her unsought consent, her unprompted desire, and therein lies no satisfaction.

He turns his head and kisses her shoulder, cloth-covered. It is all he can reach, all he may reach. He buries his nose for another lungful of her, as if he may possess her by inhalation.

She permits, but doesn't like.

Doesn't understand.

Doesn't... feel.

She raises her knees to ease the morning ache in her back, and his hand moves. He cannot help himself. He finds the soft fullness of her partially exposed bottom and rests his hand there.

She permits, but it gives no pleasure.

He strokes the tender, not-proffered skin with the outside of one finger, wanting to both bury his face in it and to upend her, fully exposing her behind to the morning air, to paint her cheeks with his hand, to enjoy the beautiful sight and sound of her scarletting bottom with its sensuous symmetry and its cleft leading down, down to her secret treasure.

But he knows he will not. May not. And so he lies; awake.