Page 98 of The Truth About Myths
“You want me here, pliable. You woo me like you do with all your women—"
He touched her cheek. “Woo? I’ve been trying to keep my hands off you, you stubborn princess, since the first second I laid my eyes on you. Half the time, I want to snap your pretty neck. The other half, I want to caress every inch of your skin. But what I can’t do is let go.”
“No, listen to me—"
“Do you think I welcome this feeling? If I could open my chest and extract it from inside, I would—"
“You are a scientist. You find a cure for this sickness.”
“Eros’ arrows have no cure.”
“This is lust. You promised. One night, no guilt, no consequences.”
He grabbed her shoulders and shook. “I love you, silly creature. I love you with love, with all the loves inside love, the divine, the human, the beastly, like Adam loved Eve, like Romeo loved Juliet, like Zeus loved Alcmene, like a stallion loves a mare.”
He slanted his mouth over her and kissed her. Isabel didn’t resist. How could she? When her heart sang, when her body rejoiced, when her mind burst under the onslaught of his touch?
Henrique’s love loosened a thread in her chest, unleashing her restraint. She could be happy with him, she realized abruptly. Not the comfortable, proper happiness of duty she had envisioned for herself, but a giddy, exciting, joining of souls kind of happiness.
“Take me to the tower. I need you inside me.”
The way blurred as they raced to the castle. The windy staircase robbed her breath, her composure, and she staggered through the threshold, hand clasped in Henrique’s.
Clothes fell away to decorate the gaudy pillows, and then they were skin to skin. Her hunger for him surpassed anything she had ever experienced, and naked, they tumbled over the mattress. A manic force gripped her, and she bit his chest, shoving her hips against him. He shared her frenzy and entered her forcefully. She gasped at the friction. Shaking, trembling, she grabbed fistfuls of his hair and pulled him to her. He surged above her, pounding his hips against her. There wasn’t laughter. Only the guttural cries of pleasure and pain, of flesh meeting flesh in search of oblivion, of harsh, never enough breaths. Promises died in her mouth, but her throat was sore from pleading, crying, begging for him to go faster, harder, deeper.
She would gamble anything to keep him, to be here with him—let morality die and the country explode, and she would not care.
The man she loved. She would leave the man she loved tomorrow. Whimpering, she ground her hips against him, wanting him to meld them like Vulcan fused two pieces of metal. If that failed, she wanted to enter him, sheltered by his sinewy strength, buried so deep she could never leave. If that was lost to her, she wanted him to pulverize her with the force of his mating.
She exploded, gasping for breath, her heart racing out of control. Henrique hummed to her, the tempo of his thrusts slowing until his invasion became a pressure deep inside her. He brushed the hair from her forehead and neck and caressed her bottom lip. His gaze held tenderness and the love he professed, and Isabel closed her eyes.
He rolled them until they faced each other by their sides. He caressed her back with long, soothing brushes of his palms and embraced her. With her head buried in the crook of his neck, she accepted his gentle lovemaking, just as he accepted her frenzied coupling. It was sweet, the friction barely there, his thrusts shallow and deep. Their chests glued together, too close.
Pleasure bloomed, leaving them both panting.
The sun was setting when he withdrew from her and pulled her to his chest, lazily touching her calves with her toes. Then he fell asleep, his leg thrown atop hers.
The ocean brushed against the shore, like rain trapped forever in an hourglass. Tears and perspiration had long cooled on her skin when the cicadas started their song.Sing, my friends. This is your last night.
It was fair of nature that after a cicada experienced life from the heights of flight, she didn't have to return to her burrow inside the earth.
While he purred in sleep, she twirled a curl of his hair in her fingers and said in a voice choked by emotion, "I love you too."
Forgive me.
Chapter 37
"Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again."Homer,The Iliad
Themutedtonesofdawn pierced through the arrow slits. A scratch at the door cut through Isabel sharper than a scimitar. Though she had been waiting for it, the long night hours the only company for her conscience, it still startled her. Eyes gritty, throat sore, Isabel pulled her legs from beneath his and stood on the cold floor. She moved as if underground, dirt pressing down on her, invading her lungs. Like a fugitive, she dressed quickly, and placed her crown atop her head. The weight had increased tenfold since the last time she wore it. Hands shaking, she adjusted the letter to the left so Henrique would not miss it, resisting the urge to rip it. The medal had been a mistake. Why on earth did she place the gold piece inside the envelope? He had rejected it once. But the white paper filled with righteous justifications seemed too naked, too wrong.
The scratch again. The housekeeper, the carriage—Salamanca.
A hurried knock.
The noise would wake him.
Yes. Awake, please. Keep me here against my will.
