“I like corny,” Jon reminded, and as proof positive leaned in to share in the gentlest of kisses. “And I really like your latter idea.”
It was subtle, Probably gone and read too bloody far into it yet again, but of all the choice fingertips with which to pen a secret message against the flesh, Robb had chosen the ring finger.
“Vena amoris,” shyly followed their kiss, just a whispered brush against boyfriend’s lips no louder than the summer crickets beginning their nightly concerto. Pretty soon Jon’s voice would disappear altogether; lost to the crescendo, it’d become just another low, vibrating humm rounding out the atmosphere. But the dialogue wasn’t important.
“In the Latin. It means ‘Vein of Love,’ though the term is intrinsically inaccurate. Every finger has a similar vein structure, so to name one unique is false, which is probably why across generations and cultures betrothal rings were worn on many different fingers.”
He turned Robb’s hand once more in his own, circling stubby fore- and middle digits in the bowl of a pink, shallow palm. Half a dozen snail-speedy circles just to feel the skin heat up with friction beneath his touch, sense lover’s energy shift then refocus, settling allthewhile an electricity grew between them. Gone by the name of intimacy, arousal, seduction, it was all semantics for which Jon had no interest in picking apart that very moment. Far more in tune with Robb’s brand of hippy-dippy, Rolling with the high, man! approach and lost in a technicolour fantasy swirl of happily ever after.
Of all the fingers, babe, this has to be a puzzle and not just a coincidence. And if I’m wrong, I never want to know it.
Leaving dip and rise of inner hand, Jon traced Robb’s thumb, still smiling like a loon.
“Did you know, in the 17th century the English commonly wore their wedding bands on the thumb?” Along the top knuckle his fingers glided, hard-won calluses snagging on slight ginger hairs which lead to a manicured nail, over its curve and down between thumb and first finger. “The Gauls and Britons wore them on the middle finger-” and Jon proceeded to manipulate Robb’s thumb and middle finger to touch, binding them together into what resembled a Buddhist’s meditation pose. “We could touch those two together, as well-” as the lips that kissed yet again, this time longer, deeper. “-if you fancy?”