With glassy eyes and deep breaths, Xen studies Aeryn and listens.  Laughing softly, she strokes Aeryn's face with one long-fingered hand, then kisses her cheek more playfully than before.  "I wanted<i>you</i>," she says, presenting her bare form with no shyness for Aeryn's touch.  "A free woman..?  Were you married...?"  her voice trails off as she thinks it through.  "You were a slave."  With a soft catch of her breath, fury lights up her eyes, and her bare body goes stiff and ready.  Aeryn can feel the elf's pulse quicken, but she says nothing.<br/><br/>She listens more, the fresh recollections of the vision of Aeryn's face and body in her throes softening the rage... "I'm sorry, I... don't like slavers."  She shakes her head, laughing softly, and strokes her fingertips along the woman's alabaster skin to trace the muscles beneath the skin, drawing a line down her shoulder and arm to trace the fragile bones of her wrist.  Xen's lips curl at one corner into a coy smile then.  "Were does it leave us...?"<br/><br/>She kisses the young woman's mouth again, then again.  She doesn't know how to articulate what she's felt... her body's want was one thing, but she could have quelled that thirst any number of ways... she wanted Aeryn to want<i>her</i>, and she wanted Aeryn.  Her, not someone like her.<br/><br/>Sighing softly, she rests her cheek against the healer's breast and kisses the flesh she can reach.  She meets the girl's eyes again.  "It leaves us<em>free</em>, Aeryn."  She stares on, not breaking the held gaze.  Her wordless gaze holds tales of wants and needs and longing, loneliness and youthful desire.  "I will stay close by you."  She, then, is the one who seems distant, and her fingertips leave Aeryn's wrist and touch the wall, its confining presence.  "But this is your world... their numbers will keep you safe, will they not..."