Page 83 of This Vicious Hunger
“No,” I grunt. “I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Ah, we only talk when you want to.” I can’t tell if Olea is seriously angry or if she’s trying to tease. Then I realise: it doesn’t matter. When I hoped the cure would tell me if she was really for me, really mine, I missed the vital point. Regardless of the reason, Olea and I are joined in this. She is mine—even if only for right now.
“Fine,” I say huskily. “Perhaps we shouldn’t talk at all.”
Olea keeps her grip on my chin tight as her other hand surges under my nightgown. She rips it up, her eyes glittering with anger and frustration and tenderness all in one. Her fingers are strong, bordering on cruel.
There is no shred of our gentleness in her touch. No hesitation. We have explored each other’s bodies now in a hundred different ways. She moves her hand from my chin down to my neck. The pressure is pain and pleasure at once. I moan, encouraging. Shesqueezes harder. Her other hand pinches, scoring my skin in bright hot lines with her sharp nails.
And then come the teeth.The teeth.
We fuck until dawn, barely pausing for breath. Unlike our early lovemaking, this is not punctuated with wine and cheese, with laughter and acting. This is purely animal. Teeth and claws, grunting and moaning, using whatever we can find to draw blood, to punish, to maim. The healing of the wounds is as much a part of the ritual as the sex—and when we are spent, the tower walls, and Olea’s tapestries, are flecked with dark blood.
The taste of iron still in our mouths, we lie together on the chaise, bodies braided together like twine. I want to cry, but I don’t. The hunger within me consumes it all.
The sunlight hurts our heads. Olea’s eyes are puffy. We block the edges of the shutters with the rags of our destroyed nightgowns and set up camp back in the cellar, blankets and cushions amidst the sacks of food. Our garden days, fucking in broad daylight, revelling in the beauty of the garden, seem years behind us.
“The antidote is fading,” I say. “You can feel it too, right?”
Olea doesn’t speak, but I know she’s been thinking it. It’s hung between us, this toxic miasma, for days. Our world has shrunk again, this time to the size of a pinhead.
“It could just be temporary…” she hedges.
I prop myself on my elbow. “Come on, Olie. There’s naivety and then just plain stupidity, and Iknowyou’re not stupid.”
Olea refuses to open her eyes. She lies on her back, a vision in her white gown, black hair braided and freshly combed. If not forthe slow, slow rise and fall of her chest she could be a corpse ready for the cradle.
“We heal fine, though,” she says.
“Sure. We do now. But… that could change without warning. You saw me out there with Leo. I was absolutely beside myself.”
“You want to talk about it now?”
And, surprisingly, I do. Fresh from the ache of her inside me I am no longer so afraid to voice the horrors.
“I’m a monster,” I say.
“You told me I wasn’t.” Olea opens her eyes and rolls onto her side. “You emphatically told me so.”
“Iwantedto kill him.”
Olea kisses my bare shoulder, working her way down my arm with gentle precision and then kissing my palm and each of my fingers.
“No,” she says. “You didn’t. That wasn’t you.”
“How do you know? It certainly felt like me.”
“I know,” she assures me. “Because I know you.”
“I killed that hare.”
“Also not intentional.”
“Isn’t there a point, though,” I say sharply, pulling my hand back and struggling upright, “where intentionality doesn’t matter? Do you think the monster was always a monster? That he set out to hurt people? I doubt it. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t want it to happen. It doesn’t matter that there were other factors. All that matters in the end is that it did happen. It may not be my fault, as you say, but it sure is my fucking responsibility. Maybe it’s best that the antidote fails; maybethisis what we both deserve.”
Olea is silent at that. I regret it almost instantly—but I’m right, aren’t I?
That night, Petaccia returns to the garden. Olea and I are waiting for her. This time we haven’t bothered to tidy our mess, blood and tattered rags of clothing scattered through the sitting room. The candles burn low, the shutters closed against the draughty night.
