B007IIXYQY EBOK (141 page)

“You say that now.”

“Oh, I cannot believe this.” He could think of no more reassurances to offer her. She watched him expectantly, eyes alert and shining in the torchlight, and he sensed she wanted him to keep trying. It was then that he knew he must stop, for it was useless; it was not a thing that could be proven with words, even were they numerous enough to fill a thousand bookrolls. He could only state the truth and let her sense the rest. The words he had already spoken must be given a chance to do their work, like some medicine that needs time to establish itself in the body.

But perhaps the time required will be too long for us, he thought, as he realized with dismay that one thing he told her was no longer true—now he wanted with great urgency to lie with her on this night. He was slowly becoming maddened by the closeness of her, by that neatly formed mouth, those grave, lucid eyes, that frown as she considered his words, her way of drawing in her shoulders when she feared she said something foolish.
Venus be merciful. For how long will I be expected to bear this?

She filled the silence with questions about his life, which she used to disguise the fact that, imperceptibly as a shadow on a sundial, she was edging closer. He sat very still, seized once with the absurd sense he sought to win the confidence of a squirrel as she furtively closed the distance between them. After what seemed a day he felt her warm breath on his cheek; then unexpectedly she put her head against his shoulder and became still. He held her there, struggling to do it casually. This time she did not pull away. A small victory, he thought. But trust so recently won could be swiftly withdrawn.

Carefully he stroked her hair, knowing she wanted comfort, not physical love, waiting as he knew he must wait. Perversely he thought then of Domitian whose partners were hostages and victims, and of the countless young noblemen loitering about the theaters and baths who imagined when they consummated their love that they conquered some rebellious province. No, he thought with loathing, if I am to have her, it must be as unlike that as possible.

“What is that fruit?” The tone of her voice was silkier now and came from a deeper place; he sensed her temper was changing.

“Pomegranates,” he replied, taking one from the terra-cotta bowl, cutting a moon-shaped slice and holding it to her mouth, “or rock-apple—thought by men of old to bring immortal life. It is the seeds that are eaten, not the meat.”

She regarded it suspiciously, then began licking and nibbling at the plump seeds.

“That was my finger,” he said. “Nothing wrong with those teeth.” The fruit’s thin red juice ran in rivulets down his hand. To his surprise she began slowly, deliberately licking the juice, running her tongue down his hand with a cautious shyness, a fragile touch that made him fear at any moment it might be withdrawn. All too soon the juices were gone. He cut another slice and held it to her lips.

This time he deliberately let the juices run.

She went after them with more boldness this time, following juice and stray seeds down into the soft hairs of his wrist and arm, tasting him as well as the juice, carefully watching him all the while. The moist feel of that questing tongue, brash and tentative as it explored his arm, drove him to a quiet frenzy. It put him in mind not so much of a woman possessed of Eros as a deer at a salt lick—but because it was not done seductively, it was, oddly, the more so. Somehow this curious licking, not quite animal, not quite human, but of a nature entirely her own, aroused him more than the attentions of any woman he had ever known.

She seems utterly oblivious to the fact that she is torturing me. Or is she?

He drew her to him then, relishing the form of her back, her hips, his hands asking, encouraging, reassuring, but not demanding. He wanted more evidence her unease was banished.

Then she took one of his hands in hers, guided it within the opening of her tunica and placed it on one breast. He enclosed the delicate weight of it in his hand, supporting it; when he found his hand could not quite contain its fullness he moved it slowly, cradling the silken softness of that breast with such infinite care it caused a bolt of pleasure to course through her. That touch was too much to bear, and she gave a low cry, feeling her insides had turned to hot liquid. Bones, flesh, and heart melted toward him.

The dwindling conscious part of her made a last weak protest—
you fall into oblivion in an unknown land
. But her senses responded—
not now—worry over that one tomorrow
. Then she let go and fell wholly into the warm sea; she could no more have thwarted this pull toward him than could a lily decide not to open.

Had he been able to reason he would have realized—I need no more assurances of her readiness. But thought dissolved into rampant impulse. It was the triumph of the moon.

Together they rose up and sought his apartments; as they passed between the guttering lamps that flanked the arched entranceway he thought of the torches of whitethorn borne by the revelers in a wedding procession as the bridegroom carries the yellow-veiled bride over the threshold of her new home. With a flash of grief he thought: Perhaps wedding night and all of wedded life will be contained in one night.

Auriane found herself in a low-ceilinged room well padded with overlapping tapestries flushed with every shade of red. Vertical strips of polished moonstone set into the wall caused their reflection to flicker in and out of sight as they moved past the flame-cluster of a hanging lamp; where the small flames were caught in the gold of the furnishings, the moldings, they rippled as though reflected in running water. He then eased her onto what she guessed was a bed, though it was raised up higher than any sleeping couch she had ever seen, and was set into an arched niche so that it occupied a smaller room of its own. She sank into a wool-stuffed mattress, holding closely to him as he came up beside her. From somewhere came the cheerful, primeval sound of trickling water, and the scent of some incense that smelled of damp autumn meadows.

They were mysterious to one another in the dim light as she kissed his face, his neck, with a fevered restraint. Then, overcome by the long-awaited unobstructed closeness of him, she started determinedly tearing at his tunic. Unable to find the fastenings in the darkness, she ripped the cloth when it stubbornly resisted her pawing. The sudden sight of his bare shoulders and chest with their unconscious beauty, their intriguing interplay of smooth skin and solid muscle beneath, was again too much to bear. She launched herself at him while one hand scrambled with some unidentified underclothing about his loins, struggling to loosen it.

She brought herself up short when she realized he was laughing. He caught up her hands, held them still, then softly pressed them to his lips. Auriane wondered in a contented haze—for less and less was she able to worry over such things—now what have I done that is wrong?

“There
is
one negligible difference,” he said, “between a bed and a battlefield.”

She listened, amused, half-shut eyes fogged with carnal passion.

“What happens on a battlefield hopefully ends quickly,” he said. “This, pray, not so quickly.”

She nipped at the hand that stroked her cheek. Then, delicately as if he eased the skin from a peach, he pulled her tunica down, gradually exposing her breasts, her belly. She rose up and pressed hard against him, flattening the milky roundness of her breasts against his chest; sharply she drew in a breath at the feel of the fine friction of his hair against the keenly sensitive silk of her breasts. He held her there for long moments, bare skin to bare skin, as if to establish the reality of the moment; both felt a shock of delight at this latest frontier crossed and were pleasantly stunned that at last there was no barrier to the physical expression of love.

He broke away and they began delicately negotiating each other as they sat close, still half clad, caught up in a dueling of moist, exhaustive kisses, with much drawing close and pulling away, as though to renew the sensation of coming together for the first time. She found herself feveredly seeking in him what was most male, biting at a stubbled cheek, a muscled shoulder. Then with a controlled, purposeful urgency he began kissing her throat, moving down her body with elaborate patience; she snaked against him and sank back onto the cushions, shuddering at each kiss as though it were an excruciating touch directly on the heart. When she felt his mouth on her breast, she recoiled as if touched by ice; then slowly it was suffused with a creamy warmth. After timeless moments he moved away from her breasts, kissing her stomach, pushing aside the tunica as it impeded his progress; somewhere nearby was her wound, red and staring, but those wise, insistent kisses worked as a witch’s balm upon it, blurring the memory of its pain, making its ugliness a negligible thing. It is entirely a spirit-wound, she realized then. And she saw, suddenly, her humbled country and her body as one—alike defenseless, ravaged, yet still the only possible home—she had not known how weary she was from being an expatriate from both. His hands were sorcerers, enticing her home to her body.

And then he was poised above the place of a woman’s pleasure and shame, meaning to kiss her there; a dark panic came to her and gates dropped closed. She saw a vision from childhood—the young village woman who had been caught sharing her bed with a foreign traveler—the priests had stripped her naked, cut off her long hair, then drove her with whips through the Boar Gate, later drowning her beneath hurdles in the lake. This was followed by the lightning realization that her lifelong shyness about her body, never before questioned, was born of terror.

If I object, he will think me ignorant.

But the tight weave of all that her people had taught her of life, love and death was already seriously rent, and here, in this place of no kin, no continuity of life, she had been for a long time weaving one of her own. This new order knew nothing but necessity’s commands and the rampant love of Fria, who was the genius of love in all its forms. In this world she learned to condense all life into one simpler law: There was only movement away from love or toward love.

He sensed her alarm and paused, holding her still, caressing her hips while murmuring words of reassurance. When he sensed her acceptance, he returned to kissing her. And when he reached that most secret and female of places she felt all worldly bonds broke—of childhood to womanhood, of woman to tribe, of fear to life, and she was a blissful blind creature rocked on primal waters, massaged by the currents, feeling the warmth of sunlight through sea, a simple organism nourished by love. She writhed among the cushions, feeling gloriously out of control, whipped about by the ravenous emptiness she began to feel within; she began to fight with him, desperate to pull him up beside her. He purposely resisted her, holding her hips securely so she could scarcely move, tormenting her with more pleasure. As that fierce emptiness consumed her, she clawed at him, scarcely conscious of what she was doing, until at last he relented, came forward and lay along her length.

She hugged her flushed face tightly to his, all her nakedness pressed hard against his, goaded by a fresh spasm of desire as she felt the gentle probing insistence of his sex, and a muscular thigh pressed firmly against her own. She felt she reached for him with her whole body, desperate to draw him in, shifting between aching anticipation as she sensed the force of his desire for her, and the luxuriant mellowness of her own vulnerability. But he teased her, finding her womanhood, pausing at the gate, then drawing away. In frustration she bit him hard on the shoulder, though not hard enough to draw blood.

He paused, laughing softly, then took her face in his hands and quietly looked at her; it was as if he feared passion had separated them too much, and he wanted to know he reached into all of her, not just her body. In a moment too delicate and still for what had gone before, he solemnly said her name and kissed her eyes, her mouth, as if she were some fragile treasure. Then with one firm yet cautious motion, as if he feared hurting her, he entered her body, and she closed about him; that first immersion was a caress, the ultimate one, reaching into her most guarded core.

She lay still as the dead while feeling she burst with life; hot honey gushed through her limbs. His movement within became her own, erasing the boundary between bodies. Once he paused to turn her face to the dim light, enjoying the sight of her hazed eyes, her love-soaked delirium. Had a night passed, or a month? she wondered once. Driven now by one heart, spirits’ love and body’s need fused into one as he moved more ardently within her, relentlessly driving her to final pleasure—she felt laid bare, deliciously helpless before an invasion, overrun by love. Then both fell free, at the mercy of a rapturous rhythm that was a wonder to her; it must have been the yearning of all life-bearing things. They formed one universe, solemn, whole, as their struggle to become one body for a few moments succeeded. He shuddered once in her arms, helpless as she was; she kissed his closed eyes as they clung to each other with the blind love of newborns at a mother’s breast.

She felt a final throb of his life in her as he drove in deeply one last time, and she moved to hold him there as long as possible. Peace and contentment rolled over her like some golden smoke as she drifted over the black and bottomless pool at the place where the floodwaters became slack and still. Here was world’s end, and world’s beginning; she floated through a mythical dusk, caressed by the gentle light-play of dawn. All in life was braided together, joyously interbound, and always had been. Where her wound had been, she felt only comfort. The memory of the flood of pleasure lay about her still as a warm golden haze that was thickest about her loins and thighs, and she lay still, not wanting to disturb him because that precious weight pressing her into the cushions helped her hold to the memory.