** An Excerpt from SOUP Wars ***
Kerin lay awake in his room, staring at the ceiling and listening to Maia breathing beside him. She turned in her sleep, reaching out as if seeking something, and when her hands found him, she snuggled close, laying her head on his chest and becoming quiet again. Their experience at the river had been repeated many times during the evening, Maia always being the one who began. Kerin had never felt so drained and so very alive at the same time. Her appetite for this new pleasure seemed unending, and Kerin was amazed no less by this than by his own appetite. After the first time, his body responded to her presence, even the mere sight or thought of her with shocking speed, and without consulting his brain on the matter first. A fact that amused and delighted his waifish wife to no end.
Is this what it is like to be married, he thought. To have a capacity for pleasure as endless as the sky, to desire nothing so much as the touch of your wife's skin, the sight of her face?
Is this what it is like to be in love?
Kerin thought briefly of consulting Kyern on the matter, and immediately dismissed it as an extremely stupid idea.
Kerin had never imagined he would be married at his point in his life, certainly not to a changeling woman whom he had only known for a few days. But then, so much of his life had changed, and so drastically that nothing so mundane as marriage should suprise him now. He had fought against hellbeasts and seasoned warriors, evaded demons and angels, broken out of dungeons and met powerful wizards from the future. He was now a wizard to be reckoned with, and changeling himself besides, and had learned the truth of his family, his lineage and history. He had made powerful enemies and powerful friends, and lived through adventures that most men could not believe more than fantasy. When you looked at that, falling in love and getting married was the most normal thing that had happened to him in days.
