Page 62 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

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?Lustwas 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.