Chapter 12 Biological Urges #2
She had spoken of Amagris. She didn’t like doing that.
She wished she hadn’t. To talk of her was to talk of grief.
To think of love was to think of loss. Aurienne sifted through the ashes of memory, of nights in Amagris’ arms, on beaches with low waves unfurling, of wet silken kisses, of youth.
And then abandonment. Warming her bed with an occasional body.
Her heart was an urn.
But why couldn’t Mordaunt be one of the occasional bodies?
No one would ever know. It had nothing to do with love.
The moon hung low on the horizon, almost too bright, just at the height of the balcony, as though she was keeping an eye on the goings-on within. A breeze blew the long gauzy curtains inward. They swept the floor in soft hisses, drew white whorls across the boards.
A shadow crossed the moon.
A figure appeared, broad about the shoulders, a half-tucked shirt billowing around him, moonlight haloing his hair.
How was he so fine in form and yet so unwholesome in nature?
Mordaunt came to stand at the side of the bed. Aurienne’s heart beat faster.
She looked up at him. Seeing that she was awake, he sat beside her. The mattress dipped.
He spoke in a whisper addressed to the night. “I don’t often want things I can’t have.” He pushed a hand through his hair and made it a silvery, disarrayed mess. “And when I want something badly, I don’t mind what I have to break, or steal, or kill to get it.”
He ran the back of a finger up Aurienne’s forearm. Fine paper wings fluttered in her veins.
“But now I’m faced with something that can’t be had, not by violence or artifice, nor by blood or blade or tainted money. And I hate it.”
And what was the thing that Mordaunt wanted but couldn’t have? Aurienne had felt it in the squeeze of his arms at the lake and saw it now in the pained silver gaze that wouldn’t meet hers. It was her.
He wanted her, and he hated her for it.
He withdrew his hand. “I don’t know why I’m telling you. I don’t know what I’m asking.”
Aurienne threaded her fingers into his.
She—as she always did—analysed, planned, developed scenarios for what would happen next, and the options were narrowing, narrowing. Hurtling towards something inevitable, driven by circumstance and her own want.
She tugged him close. They fell into a hug. He embraced her tightly, savagely, allowing all of his weight to fall on her. She buried her face in his shoulder. Her ribs felt like they might crack.
“I want you,” he said into her neck. “Even if there’s no point—even if it can’t mean anything—even if it’s courting sorrow—”
Was this what it felt like, to break a heart in advance?
Aurienne slipped her hands into his shirt and ran them down his scarred back. His mouth found her throat and pressed kisses there, kisses so fierce they were almost bites.
She removed the hagstone from around her neck. It was too heavy tonight—too burdened with the weight of past sadness. Anyway, it was meant to protect one from nightmares. Aurienne didn’t intend to sleep.
The hagstone fell with a clatter upon the bedside table.
And, for once, the present rose above past and future. It was a relief—to stop thinking, to not plan. To exist untrammelled by consequence and outcome.
“A hundred years from now, none of this will matter,” said Aurienne.
The moon tugged at their blood like it tugged at the tides. She wasn’t sure he was breathing. She wasn’t.
“It can’t mean anything,” said Aurienne.
Self-control and want warred in Mordaunt. He drew a finger along the neckline of her nightdress. “It’s a sullying.”
“It’s a biological urge.”
“It’s a defiling.”
“It’s scratching an itch.”
“It’s a sin.”
“If it’s a sin, let our goddesses dole out the punishment.”
In the wine-dark night, Mordaunt smiled a slow smile.
“You’re choosing punishment,” said Aurienne.
“Willingly.”
Aurienne raised her arms. He lifted the nightdress off her. It became a silvery puddle on the floor. She reclined naked amid the white sheets. Mordaunt looked at her like a worshipper before an idol made flesh, disbelieving, adoring, wanting. He ran his fingers through the anarchy of curls.
She drew him to her and pressed kisses, heartbeat-slow, along his jawline before finding his mouth. He slipped a hand around the back of her neck. It wasn’t a defiling. It wasn’t a sullying. He kissed her like she was sacred; every press of mouth on mouth was a prayer.
How could it be a sin to drown in devotion?
They could make consecrated ground of that bed.
The divine glory was tempered by humanity as he fell onto her and their kisses turned hungry.
She wrapped her legs around him. As though crushing her wasn’t enough, Mordaunt passed a hand into the small of her back and lifted her against his hardness.
Aurienne ground herself upwards with her head thrown back.
She was deliciously breathless under him, deliciously subject to his hot mouth on her throat, collarbones, jaw; kisses indiscriminate, feverish, edged with teeth.
There would be marks. She realised how wet she was at the same time he did; he inhaled and breathed out shakily and said, “Gods, you smell good.”
Was there still divinity there, in the tortured thirst of lust, in the starved kisses?
Lust was an inadequate word, too raw, too small.
It didn’t capture this wanting to consume or be consumed.
Aurienne’s pulse was a throb and a churn in throat and heart and between legs.
She wanted him to touch her, she wanted to touch herself, but most of all she wanted to touch him.
Now they would sin.
“Trousers—off,” said Aurienne.
A command that Mordaunt complied with immediately.
He rolled onto an elbow and worked them off.
She ran fingers up and down his cock in touches light and inquisitive.
He groaned into her neck, closed his hand over hers, and dragged it over his length firmly.
She felt the heat, the hardness, the swell of vein, the slight sponginess of the head.
When she had satisfied her tactile curiosity, she settled into a rhythm, long pushes and pulls up and down, gliding skin over hardness.
A hand slipped between her legs and ran upwards. He sighed out a curse or a prayer when he found the wetness already there, smeared between thighs.