Page 112 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
No. She wouldn’t permit it. She must preserve her dignity.
There was a rush of music. All eyes were on the stage.
Want and rationality warred in Aurienne.
She bit her lip. Again an inquisitive finger ran up her thigh. Softly it ran over her skin, a question, a test, anIf thou darest, I’ll give thee remedy.
A hundred years hence, none of this would matter.
She swung her leg a little wider.
There was a moment when nothing happened and Aurienne told herself that she must have misread Mordaunt. Then she felt his lips on the sensitive skin of her innermost thigh, slow kisses, approval. His fingers formed a V and began a slow, circling rhythm against her.
Aurienne blushed at his audacity and at hers. She kept her breathing controlled. She dared not glance behind her. All they could see was her silhouette against the lights, anyway.
Mordaunt bumped her knees apart and repositioned himself under the dress. Her underthings were pulled out of the way. Then came the heat of his tongue. Aurienne withheld a gasp as he explored—slow, hot, wet. Her hands found the balcony ledge. Mordaunt’s mouth pressed and sucked, in keeping with the cadence of the music.
Aurienne stood trembling and tense, alternating between holding back gasps and trying to breathe normally. She was weak in the knees. The music swelled in volume. The opera was nearing its climax. Mordaunt’s tongue worked rhythmic circles. The signet ring brushed against her where she ached the most. She twitched her hips forward to grind against it. She was wet and slick and wanting to be filled. He slipped a finger into her, then another. Willpower alone kept her standing; she wanted to collapse on him.
She was going to come. Here. In public. In front of Madame Florimont and Aedan and the entire opera house.
His tongue lapped at her as she clenched at his fingers. She couldn’t believe she had once threatened to perform a glossectomy on him; it would have been a loss.
The players came together in a swelling chorus, louder and louder, rhapsodic, tragic, deafening. They sang of death. The orchestra wouldn’t be outdone, and accompanied them in an ascending torrent of music: the brass split the air, the violins yearned, the percussion hammered, and with every upward octave, Mordaunt’s tongue sped up. Fingers pressed on strings, fingers pressed into Aurienne, breaths were held, final counts were counted, the air throbbed and rippled in a cadence increasingly frantic, matched by her pulse.
The floor of the house was an agitated press; waves of excitement swept through the audience; thousands of hearts raced along with Aurienne’s. The orchestra reached a fever-pitch crescendo. Mordaunt’sfingers kept time. Aurienne contracted against them. Her limbs were light. She shook. She breathed through clenched teeth. She mustn’t make a sound. She grasped the ledge hard. The air vibrated with music; she trembled at the same frequency.
The aria came to its magnificent, soaring, pulsing climax. Aurienne threw her head back as she came. Her blood bloomed and clouded with pleasure. Her orgasm went on for as long as Madame Florimont held the final note.
Madame Florimont sang of death, and Aurienne found it on Mordaunt’s tongue.
22
The Leyfarer
Osric
Osric panted under Fairhrim’s gown. His chin was soaked. He breathed in sex. One hand was occupied with her; the other was on his cock. She went over the edge. Wetness seeped around his fingers as she clamped them. He barely needed to touch himself to finish. He came hard, burrowing his face into her thigh to keep silent.
Waves of applause echoed through the opera house, muted by Fairhrim’s skirts. A standing ovation, by the sounds of it.
Osric’s legs were cramping. His kneecaps were shattered. His neck was broken. And he had just experienced the single most arousing thing of his life.
He stuffed his spent cock into his fly, where it proceeded to dribble come down the leg of his trousers. At least Fairhrim wouldn’t know about this indecency; she had been too busy having her own standing O.
He tasted her one last time—a goodbye kiss—her thighs quivered on either side of his face, and he shadow-walked from under her dress to the vestibule to the corridor.
Delicious. Naughty. Terrible. Kinky. Osric was going to remember this for a long time. He was going to fantasise about it. He was going to crave more of it.
This was bad. But also, he had no regrets. (He would have them later, he was certain, but that was Future Osric’s problem, not his.)
On his way out, wiping his chin with a handkerchief, Osric glanced back towards the box from the dark corridor. The players were still bowing onstage. Fairhrim was in the vestibule. Her face was impassive, but there was a radiant blush upon her cheek.
She was full of surprises. He had expected her to rend him for even touching her with a suggestive finger; he hadn’t expected her to straddle his face.
He heard Fairhrim call to Aedan that she was going to the loo. Osric melted into shadow as she stepped out of the vestibule and into the dark corridor.
To light her way she pulled out a torch, the buttons of which she pressed with impatience and with a mutter of “Typical Ingenaut overcomplications.”
