Chapter 12 Biological Urges
Biological Urges
Aurienne
Aurienne and Mordaunt lingered at the table until the delicious evening ripened into night, and the bottle of sweet wine stood empty, and their glasses held only moonlight. The moment was soft, carefree, terribly romantic.
Mordaunt rang the bell, whose effect was to summon the white-gloved flurry again to take away the dinner things. The table and chairs were swept off the balcony and replaced by the chaise longue, which Aurienne and Mordaunt immediately, and inebriatedly, bickered over possession of.
“What happened to ladies first?” asked Aurienne.
“I’m the invalid,” said Mordaunt.
They both dived for the chaise and landed on it together.
They squirmed and wrestled. It was dangerously exhilarating to be pressed up against Mordaunt, to feel his firm chest under her palms, to have her knee caught between his as he rolled her over.
He lay on top of her, laughing, asking if she really thought she could outmuscle him, and she asked if he really thought she couldn’t, and there was great pleasure in it.
Play fighting. Pushes that were excuses to touch.
She wriggled out from under him. He permitted himself to be flipped over so she was on top.
His eyes were a soft, dark grey. His cheek was rough with the day’s stubble.
Champagne and wine and hormones churned, and lit Aurienne from within.
Result: inhibitions—minimal; judgement—questionable; impulse control—gone.
Aurienne’s body thrilled with the same happiness as at the lake.
Their mouths were drawn near each other’s again.
Dangerous, thought Aurienne as she looked into his laughing eyes, as her hands trailed up his arms to his shoulders.
Her chest pressed against his. He lifted her with his breathing, up and down and up and down in rhythm as his heart thundered against her breast. Her hair fell in a curtain around them and shielded them from the world.
Their eyes locked. Mordaunt stopped laughing. They both went still.
His mouth, warm and smiling and red with wine, was right there.
Delicious. Forbidden. Wrong. Her thrill had become a sick surge of wanting. Wanting in the way a candle wants a flame—self-destructively, knowing that it will be an end to both.
Aurienne had not suffered temptation until she resisted pressing her lips to that mouth.
She knew exactly what she was doing, bringing her knees on either side of him, and he knew exactly what he was doing, running a hand hungrily up her leg, and she knew what she wanted, and he knew what he wanted, and yet, they did not go beyond. They withheld.
This wasn’t just any man. This was Osric Mordaunt.
And yet. She wanted to.
And yet. She shouldn’t.
She was repulsed, wanting, pushing away, drawn in.
They did not cross the threshold. They touched it. They teetered along the edge. They brought their faces together, and their lips brushed in fairy kisses so light they might have been wishes.
Not enough.
He was hard. She wanted to grind against him.
What was she doing? There was a cost to this. Self-respect, dignity, the honour of her tācn.
Mordaunt pulled his hands away and pressed his fingers into the chaise instead of her skin. He waited. He left the decision in Aurienne’s hands.
And she, normally so decisive, did not know what to do.
She hung in a space of irresolution, strange and unfamiliar.
As always, the little waves of reason stirred, and asked, What would be the benefits, the risks?
What would be the consequences? Was she who so valued order and category, who panicked at the least blurring of lines, going to cross this one?
This wasn’t a false kiss in front of an audience at a party.
There was no pretext. There was no excuse.
She could draw a new line. Separate physical want from emotional entanglement. There would be no danger that way. It had nothing to do with love. It would be compartmentalisation of a different sort.
Why was she like this? Why couldn’t she be supple and careless, why did it have to be this harrowing, panting effort to hold the compartments shut even as they cracked and struggled open?
Because she feared the fall. Because he was a Fyren. Because lessons learned. Because Amagris.
Because all of these things—forever? How long could one keep denying oneself a moment of pleasure?
Aurienne was agonised by remorse and guilt. She rationalised to the point of paralysis. She compressed the squirming feelings into their compartments. There they must remain, until they were dried and desiccated and no longer a threat.
She slipped out of Mordaunt’s arms and off the chaise. His fingers trailed down the back of her skirts as she walked away.
Mordaunt remained where he was. He put his hands behind his head. He recovered his composure. His untucked shirt, open halfway down, completed the portrait of the raffish drunk.
“Running away again?” came the inevitable taunt—because this was just a game, because she was a safe flirt.
“I thought it prudent,” said Aurienne.
“Must we be prudent?” asked Mordaunt.
Aurienne made no answer. She had none. Prudent for what? Prudent for whom? Neither of them would remember this tomorrow.
“Come back,” said Mordaunt. “Sit on me. I’m very comfortable.”
Aurienne retreated to the balcony rail in a welter of confusion. She took steadying breaths.
Mordaunt abandoned the chaise longue and wove his unsteady way towards Aurienne. He did not stand quite next to her at the balcony, rather more behind, though one hand came around her to grasp the rail.
“What are you doing?” asked Aurienne.
“Looking at the moon,” he said, but she felt his breath along the side of her neck.
It shouldn’t have mattered that he stood so close to her, but it did. Aurienne’s wine-warm face felt even warmer. Then it went hotter still, because he leaned into her and, with a deep inhale, pressed his face into her hair. She shivered.
“Thief,” said Mordaunt.
“Pardon?”
His hot breath was at her ear. “You used my shampoo. Did you think I wouldn’t notice? It does smell good on you—almost enough for me to forgive you.”
Her back brushed his chest, and her arse touched the front of his trousers, and there was the friction of satin on twill. He was still hard.
She fought the urge to lean into him. “I shall pay you back.”
“No,” said Mordaunt.
“No? You always want money.”
Mordaunt made no answer. Aurienne turned to him. She found him unsmiling.
He said, “Don’t presume to know what I want.”
Silence lay heavy between them.
Aurienne, unsure of what answer to make, turned to the prospect that unfolded before them. The moon’s reflection in the water, liquid-brilliant, gilded the lake in divinity. Bats swooped by in flitters of witch whispers.
A breeze made her shiver. Mordaunt’s gaze flicked downwards, to where her nipples were no doubt visible. He turned away with a sort of clench-jawed politeness.
“Are the stars spinning, or have I had too much to drink?” he asked.
“A little,” said Aurienne. “The moon’s got the common courtesy of remaining fixed.”
“Look at her,” said Mordaunt. “Bright. Remote. Untouchable.” Every word came with a breath that tickled at Aurienne’s ear. He paused before adding, “Reminds me of someone.”
Aurienne, looking up at the serene moon, couldn’t let this inaccuracy go uncorrected.
“I’m not,” she said.
“What?”
Aurienne regarded his hand on the rail with tipsy focus: the veins, the signet ring on the index finger, the knuckles crossed with fine white scars.
She put her hand next to his and looked up. Her mouth was an inch from his. Within kissing distance—not that that was a useful unit of measurement.
“I’m not untouchable,” she said. “You’ve lifted me up a cliff. You’ve held me in the shadow-walk. We’ve slept in the same bed.”
“That was circumstance, not your volition,” said Mordaunt.
A taut silence fell. Tension carved out a triangle of shadow at Mordaunt’s jaw.
He drew his hand away from hers.
“A minute ago you asked me to sit on you,” said Aurienne.
“That was because I knew you wouldn’t.”
“The safety of the impossible?”
Mordaunt’s thumb found his signet ring and pushed it in a circle. “I’m a coward, too.”
Aurienne, attempting to lighten the mood, edged her hand nearer to his.
He pulled his away before skin could touch skin. “You were right. We should be prudent. What would be the point of anything else?”
“Must there be a point?”
“Anything else would be dragging down the moon.”
He pulled away his hand entirely then and shoved it into his pocket. Even for a stupid little game, his rejection of her touch hurt Aurienne more than she thought it would. She was seldom rejected.
Stung, she turned away, and made for the bedroom.
Mordaunt snatched her wrist.
Aurienne looked down. His fingers met around her wrist. His tācn touched her skin. He didn’t let her pull away.
She met his eye, combative, annoyed. “And what of the moon? Are we manhandling it now?”
Mordaunt’s eyes were as glassy as the surface of the lake. “I’ve no desire to run into an inevitable goodbye.”
He released her. With a shiver of seith, he shadow-walked away.
Aurienne felt that she had caused a deep hurt.
She stood in the silent night, alone on the balcony, uncertain whether this had been a strange quarrel or a stranger confession.
Aurienne brushed her teeth, slipped into bed—a luxurious affair of silken sheets and pillows climbing into cumulus formations—and closed her eyes. Mordaunt wouldn’t, she supposed, be back tonight. He was probably off lurking, or stealing, or murdering.
Aurienne nevertheless left the balcony doors open.
She tossed and turned and wished that she was back in her own quarters at Swanstone, and not here, drunk and alone, in this romance-saturated suite where no romance could happen.