Lion Head Mesa [m] forever in debt to your priceless advice

She is quiet in the aftermath.

Akhtar is as well, but it is not the stony, shameful silence of the wild woman. It is the silence of the priest preening himself, sweeping the remnants of their coupling away with broad strokes of his tongue.

The clever priest did not know if his voice would be welcome, so he dared not open his jaws. Instead, he watched her out of the corner of his eye. Not as a lover might watch their partner with love in their eye, but as a wildcat might eye its competition, as a hawk watches the ground beneath its wings.

He twists his head, tucking it around the back of his neck to nibble at a stubborn knot in his silken hairs. Just a little more primping, and he would return to his life and leave the woman to her pain, mean as it might sound.

He wasn’t exactly the best person to come to for grief, for pain, priest or no priest. Akhtar had not been to confession in years by now.