Page 42 of A Taste for the Peculiar

Pye sidles closer to read the title and makes an appreciative noise. “A fantastic choice. Do go on.”

She clears her throat, fingering the pages like she might slam it shut. “Perhaps I don’t understand it as well as I thought.”

Pye tilts their head toward the book with gentle encouragement. “Tell me.”

Something inside Avirin wants to obey. “It’s about desire.” She digs her fingernails into her palms and keeps her eyes on the page. “Yearning so desperately for something — for someone — that you’ll take anything you can have of them.”

Her mouth is dry. What had once felt like a conceptual, distant understanding of the poem is now achingly poignant. She recognizes these feelings. She tries to keep her voice level.

“If you can’t touch each other, then something else must be enough. You have to be satisfied by a drop of your blood mingling with theirs in a tiny insect. You have to be content occupying a room where only their scent lingers.”

Even holding her breath, the smell of Pye comes to her, a vexing combination of flowers and fruit and musk. She shuts her eyes to try and think past it.

“When you can have nothing else, those little moments become as meaningful as a marriage bed.”

After a moment, her eyes flutter open. Pye stands so close that they breathe the same air. His fingers press against the book, an inch away from tangling with hers atop the pages. But there is something halting in his eyes, an old wound disturbed by her words.

“Avirin…” He looks at her mouth for a long moment before he takes a reluctant step back. “I have not had a chance to say this to you, but I must. I do not wish to force you to relive it, but not to acknowledge it would be wrong.” Their bare chest moves when they inhale. “I am sorry for the position you were forced into. The marriage your mother arranged for you. These changes to your body. This union we formed. Even if you’ve made the best of what you’ve been given, I am sorry that this is the hand you’ve been dealt. You’ve had little choice in any of it.”

She shakes her head to deflect the painful truth. “You had no real choice in this, either.” Not when she kissed him in the garden. When she couldn’t stop herself. When she pressed too far, and he was forced to save her from the consequences.

Pye lowers their face to meet her gaze. “Do not spare any worry for me, Avirin. Nothing about this arrangement torments me, save my concern for you.”

Her jaw clicks. Since that night in the garden, there has been a constant ache in her head. Everything is tight and hardened: the grit of her teeth, the knit of her brow, the skin stretched to make space for her horns.

“Marriage should be joyous,” Pye says. “It is not something you should be forced into. It should not involve you backed into a corner. That is why it’s very important to me, before we — progress in any other fashion, that you are happy.”

She blinks. Until this moment, she’d forgotten the word existed. Happy. She can’t remember the last time she felt that without anxiety nipping at her heels. Even during their lessons, there was a veil of sadness overhead, a ticking clock counting toward its end.

“Tell me truthfully,” Pye asks, “are you happy?”

She searches inside herself. Any happiness is a flicker inside the gloom, the same way this brief moment with Pye is only a reprieve from her worries. She has not stopped thinking of the ton, of what they are saying, of how she looks. She continues to hole up in her room and hide under the covers, as if this is a nightmare that she can wake up from. Maybe if she refuses this long enough, she can will her horns and eyes away. Maybe she can bury this reality and go on pretending that she is not what she is.

But that isn’t true, is it?

She takes a shuddering breath. “I…am not.”

Guilt sinks into her, but Pye doesn’t look disappointed; he looks like he understands.

“I want to be,” she croaks. “You’ve done so much for me. I don’t mean to be ungrateful —”

“You’re not,” he murmurs. “You’re being honest, and there is nothing I want more in the world.” Pye lifts their hand and strokes their thumb over her cheek. “Our marriage is our own. It need not be like any marriage you have seen or been taught to expect.” He looks deep in her eyes, and for once, it quiets the constant chatter in her mind. “If you have no desire for children, then there will be none. If you wish to take other lovers, then the world is open to you. If you desire no intimacy with me, then there will be space between us.”

Their words sound impossible, unlike any marriage she has known. All she has heard of matrimony is its difficulty, its practical purpose, its necessity in securing a woman’s future. How can anything else be true?

She speaks into the space between them. “And if I do desire intimacy with you?”

Candlelight flickers in Pye’s eyes. “Then you will have it. But first, we must turn our focus elsewhere. Let us find your happiness before anything else transpires.”

Her lips turn down in a frown. “Must we?” Though she has resisted getting close to Pye since her horns appeared, intimacy could prove a compelling distraction – if she could get past her own discouragement. Digging her way out of this hole sounds exhausting, requiring her to face things she doesn’t want to look at, pressing her to admit things that she’d much rather avoid.

Pye cups her jaw. “You accepted my proposal under duress.” Their touch is reassuring, but their gaze swims with something dark and luscious. “Let that be the last thing you take from me without ardent ecstasy.”

Heat sears through her. Damn everything he said. Damn her happiness. Damn his concern. Let her taste his mouth again with no one to stop them. Let her reclaim the final lesson he swore he could not give to her.

But as much as she hates to admit it, he is right. She does not want to chase her desire in a moment of despair. She does not want her mind to be pulled away by lingering doubts. She wants to be here for it. She wants to take her time. She wants to be immersed, holding every second on her tongue until she memorizes their taste.

Her mouth waters. “Fine. If you insist.”