“Where’s Sparks?” he asked, and she felt her heartbeat quicken suddenly. “Isn’t he here?”
“He wanted to spend time with his father.”
“Tonight?”
“His father won’t be here after tomorrow.”
“Ah,” he said. “But still, it’s Mask Night—”
“I know.” She looked down at their hands again, still locked tightly together, holding them prisoner. She tried to pry her fingers loose.
BZ’s other hand came up, to capture her free one. “Dance with me, then. There’s still music, still time. …”
She stiffened, feeling suddenly awkward and provincial as he drew her close with gentle insistence. “I don’t know your dances—”
“I taught your memory how to dance, once,” he murmured. His arms went around her, guiding her body into a formless motion against his own. “It doesn’t matter what we do, only that we do something, so that I can put my arms around you again and hold you against me. …”
Her arms had nowhere left to go, except to go around him. A shockwave of heat rose through her as her hands felt the muscles of his back beneath the fine, almost silken cloth of his shirt. “This isn’t like you,” she murmured, and she would have laughed if her stunned, incandescent body had been able to breathe.
He made an odd sound that was not really laughter, either. “What am I like, then? That miserable wretch who spent the last few days staring at you across crowded rooms, afraid to say more than, ‘Good day, Lady’? Chief Justice Gundhalinu—not Kharemoughi anymore, and not Tiamatan, neither fish nor fowl? … Or a man who spent twelve years of his life dreaming about you; who went to the end of the world for you, and wrestled spacetime to a draw in order to hold you in his arms again—?” His voice was as wondering as if he were possessed, and she remembered another night, the Festival night so long ago when he had spoken words like these to her.
“Yes…” she said, telling him everything in that one word; giving him his answer. She reached up, touching her own reflection as she touched his face. And she remembered again that it was Mask Night, and the time of Change….
“I want to get out of here,” he said, almost desperately. “Let’s go somewhere else—there are parties all up and down the Street, there are—”
“No,” she whispered, feeling the pressure of his body along her own, exquisite, unbearable “Come with me, instead.…” She broke away and took his hand, leading him the last few steps across the floor toward the stairway. She did not look back, because there was no one left in the dwindling, faceless crowd who mattered, who cared where they were going now, or why. He followed her without question, without hesitation, up the white cascade of steps. They moved through the shadowed hallways of the upper levels until at last they reached the bedchamber that had been hers alone for too long.
She stopped before the doorway, stopping him beside her. She reached up and removed his mask, with infinite care; needing to see his face before another moment passed… before they crossed the threshold into an unknown future. “This is the time of Change, when we cast off our sorrows—”
His hands removed her mask with equal tenderness, set it down beside his against the wall. They stood, not touching now, but only gazing at each other’s faces. At last he took her in his arms, holding her as if he had never let her go, and she felt him trembling, as he had trembled on that night, not with cold but with fever heat…
They entered her bedchamber, and she let go of him only for the moment it took to close the door, sealing them into a private space where the greater universe could have no hold over them. But as the door closed behind her, she felt him hesitate; saw him look toward the bed she had shared for so many years with another man. “Are you sure…?” he whispered. “Moon, are you sure?” He looked back at her. “Because this time, by the gods, I won’t give you up.”
She glanced toward the empty bed, and felt her throat close. But she looked at him again, and as she saw his face, all doubt, all regret, vanished. She put her arms around him, drawing his head down, and kissed him deeply, passionately, with the yearning of years; keeping her eyes open all the while.
He lifted her off her feet in a sudden impulsive motion and carried her across the room. And then the wide, soft expanse of her bed was beneath her, and he was beside her on it, stroking her hair, caressing her face, his kisses like nectar as she drank the sweet draught of his soul.
They broke apart at last; were caught up short by the sudden tangle of silver in silver, the barbed spines of their trefoils tangled in an embrace of thorns. She lifted her hands to slip the chain over her head. BZ did the same, setting himself free; the trefoils dropped to the floor, still entwined. But she saw the tattoo on his throat, like her own. still marking them both.
She began to unfasten the clasps of her robes. Her fingers stumbled over her sudden, painful awareness of time: of all that lay between their first night of intimacy and this one. His eyes were to her the eyes of a stranger, to whom she was about to make her body utterly vulnerable.
He stopped the stumbling motion of her hands, moved them tenderly aside. “Let me…” he murmured, his voice husky. She lay back, letting her body go fallow, as he began, lovingly and gently, to remove her clothes. Every touch of his hands against her skin was like fire and ice, until she lay beside him, shivering with desire, feeling as if even her soul were laid bare. He touched her breasts, her belly, touched her softness— She caught hold of his hand, pressing it against her.
But he withdrew his hand with a gentle insistence, whispering, “Wait.…”
She watched him loosen his clothing, his own movements suddenly hesitant and selfconscious, as if he were afraid she would be disappointed by what she saw as he revealed himself to her. He stood before her, and she saw how quickly his breath came, how his heart beat, the smooth sheen of perspiration on his skin; how achingly eager he was.
She touched him once, gently, felt him go rigid all over, heard him gasp. He sank onto the bed beside her. She kissed the tattoo in the hollow of his throat, as all her inhibition dissipated like smoke; kissed his chest, tasting moisture and salt, kissed the dark, soft line leading downward, while he buried his hands convulsively in the silver waves of her hair. His hands opened again, falling free, circling down her back in motions that were more and more urgent, as she devoured him with her hungry mouth; as he discovered her every hidden and private place until she had no secrets left, no thoughts, nothing but desire.
She felt his arms go around her again, lifting her gently, drawing her down beside him as he laid his body against her, sliding onto her, between her, inside her, until at last their separate beings were joined into one. She sighed as he began to move inside her, with the same slow, sensual motion of their dance. The rhythm of their lovemaking was like the restless sea; they sank deeper into the waters of sensation, without fear, willing to drown in the depths of pleasure.
She cried out as orgasm swept over her like an undersea swell; he moaned softly, and shuddered with reaction. But the swell passed, and the rhythm continued, building again.
“Gods…” BZ murmured, his eyes stunned, his face dazed with astonishment. “Oh, gods.” He murmured something more, in Sandhi, a lilting flow of words, like a prayer to something inside himself. And then his lips were on hers again, and his hands covering her breasts, and he was still inside her moving like the waves, as he had been meant to be; as he had always been, would always be.
Their lovemaking was as endless as the sea, and still she sank deeper and deeper into the golden/black waters with every surge and fall; until she knew that she had been falling forever, been born to drown in these depths, and revive, and drown again … that she had waited a lifetime to share her own depths, and be filled with the waters of his life; to become one being, one soul, one with his mind. It was impossible now to conceal any secret at alclass="underline" not her love for him… the children already born of it… even the impossible secret that she could never share with anyone, although her tongue were to be torn from her mouth—