Page 62 of The Ruin of Eros

“Yes,” I whisper, and the loosened silk slides free. I feel his hungry smile against my skin.

His hands lever me back against the bed. Silk rustles beneath us. Darkness like water. His hands at my throat, my shoulders, my collarbone, his fingertips grazing the length of my arm.

I want everything from him.

And he wants all of me.

Before, in my life in Sikyon, with Yiannis, I thought perhaps I knew desire…but I knew nothing at all. I thought desire a pleasant thing. Like the smell of fresh flowers, or sunlight on skin. Now I know better. Desire is not comfort. Desire is not peace. The only peace in desire is in knowing it will be gratified, and the hunger sated.

I give myself over to sensation. The caress of his hands, the crisp whisper of the sheets. I’m in a daze, my words gone, reduced to mere sounds. There is only pleasure and then more pleasure, and just when I think no more could be possible, I am proven wrong.

The darkness wraps around me. The world trembles.

Until finally, we see stars.

*

I wake from a dreamless sleep, deeper than I’ve ever known. It seems as though I have traveled a very great distance over many aeons, only to find myself conscious once more, waking into this mortal shell we call the body. I breathe softly, touch the fabric that still wraps my eyes. And I shiver, remembering the hours that passed before I slept. It seems like a dream, and yet I know it was no dream: my body still bears witness.

My mind is groggy as I tweak the corner of the blindfold. The windows seem blacker than before, and the candle long is extinguished. It’s ocean-dark in this room.

But he’s here.

I remember falling asleep with his arms encircling me, but even now, he has not retired to his own chamber, as I assumed he would. His body isn’t touching mine, but I can feel the warmth of him, the spell of him. I roll onto my side and take a breath. Through the thinnest of light, the barest shades of grey, I can make out the back of his head.

I see the curls, thick, lush, silky: even in this blackness I can see the sheen of them, and I have to force myself not to reach out and bury my hand in them.

And his back…I inch closer, peering in the darkness, to make out every curve of it. The broad shoulders, like a diver’s. The gleam of his skin. The sharp line of his spine, the firm shape of muscle.

I feel the heat rush back into my body at the sight of him. To see him, to see just this much of him! A warm joy spreads through me, deep and heady. I drink him in, all that I can see. My eyes seem to hurt with it; I have never looked this fiercely before.

The urge to reach out and touch him is almost overpowering, but I don’t dare. It might wake him.

Instead, slowly, I slide myself up onto one elbow. I can see more of him now: his ear, a perfect whorl, the darkness at the center of it strangely bewitching; the curve of his strong neck. The side of his jaw; the very edge of his cheekbone. Those glorious curls, the way they spring from the soft skin beneath his temple, thickening over the broad dome of his head. I open my mouth, as if I could drink in the smoky scent of him and hold it in my throat.

Dare I?

My heart thunders. I should not. I know I should not.

But it’s dark. It’s not even really looking.

The voices in my head argue, but the argument is only for show. The part of me that sits below the mind, the darker place where instinct rules, has already made the decision. I sit up, all the way up now, and hold my breath. On hands and knees I lever myself forwards, careful not to brush his sleeping form with my hair.

And I see him, at last.

For a moment, it feels like blindness. I don’t know how else to explain it.

He’s the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen—his lips, his face, the broad, soft brow relaxed in sleep—and every artist who’s ever tried to capture beauty has failed, failed miserably, because nothing I’ve ever seen, nothing I’ve dreamed of, comes close to this. But it’s more than beauty—much more than that. I don’t know how to describe it, except to say that it’s holy.

It’s like looking at the first and last sunset.

It’s like seeing the world be born.

Not a demon, my mind whispers.

Not a demon.

A god.

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