T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
Being with her is like touching the sea. He watches the way energy ripples out across her torso. They radiate from the place upon her lips where his mouth hovers. He thinks, somewhere, some world might be ending with the tragedy that his mouth does not find hers. The monk does not need to think what she might taste like, to his shame he already knows. Boudika tastes like salvation should. She is the passing of the sun across the sky, present in his mind from his waking to his fitful sleep. She is wet of rain upon his lips, drawn up from the sea that cradles her and shed by the clouds that rain down upon him.
Oh, he is close, close. Every breath is filled with her and he does not move from where he feels the heat of her body. It is a warm caress across his face. If this was all he could have of her, it would sustain him for all eternity. He is content. He is a lion sated.
But Boudika is not.
Alarm slips through his veins and spooks his heart into running. There is a drum in his breast. It is his heart going to war, each thundering beat a cry of warning. Violence looms and yet, Tenebrae, always the warrior marches at its front lines. He is to be struck down by arrows filled with the violence of want and lust and love.
His heart thunders on and Tenebrae wages his war - he does not retreat, not when she pleads with him to stay. Her voice is raw, rough like the salt of the sea and the granules of sand nestled in the fine hairs of her copper coat. It sounded like the words hurt her, each one leaving her with the friction of desire. He moves to touch behind her jaw, at the junction of her throat where imagined words are made by sound and tongue - but he stops. The only balm he presses to her throat is that of his breath. Another sigh, a touch only dreamt of. Another heady dream.
The pomegranate seeds glisten, fleshy, red and sweet as he considers her words. “You will be the death of me, Boudika.” Tenebrae breathes against her jaw, still close, still not touching.
He does well, to resist her, to never let himself kiss her, nor let their bodies touch. Though he dreams of it, though he remembers the touch of her body to his as a blasphemy for how close it brings him to the divine.
Another desire slips past her lips and he feels the air vibrate with it. “I will swim with you.” He whispers a pledge that paints itself across the delicate contours of her face - that moulds itself around the wicked edges of her new, wild sea body. It seems a small gift to balance all the others he cannot give her. It is small gift to him also, to see her in the sea, where it cradles her,a formidable ally to a forbidding huntress.
She looks up at him with eyes as bright as a crimson rose. He wonders when she has become just a girl for the look in her gaze is as fragile as a flower’s petal. He wonders when he let her lead him so far from his holy order. Tenebrae takes a breath and in the darkness that breathes around them (that blots the stars out of the sky and the dancers from their swirling orbit) Boudika fills up every corner of him with the scent of her skin. She is too close, he can almost feel where their shoulders and hips threaten to touch. Temptation is a candle in the dark, bright and warm and alluring. Her shoulder presses into his, the touch of her body to his sudden and warm. Boudika is soft beside him. She is not a warrior, but a girl, craving. He learns what it is to be touched without violence. He learns what it is to yearn. The Disciple learns what it is to be weak. His eye close and suddenly the darkness scatters and the stars blaze in their thrones above and dancers reappear swirling and laughing. Revely comes flooding back in and Tenebrae’s chin is lifting up that he might breathe air that is not full of her. He puts space between his mouth and hers.
I do not play games. She says and he might call her a liar when she is here, pressed against him. But she is so suddenly fragile, her confessions raw and plaintive in his ears. He feels where her chest rises against his with every heavy breath she breathes. He does not like her this way: suddenly delicate, frangible, a girl working out how to fall in love. She is a creature as wild and strong as the sea, she is made for better things than sinful men. “Do not give your heart away, Boudika,” the monk warns her. He turns to look at her, the moon-bright white of her face is stark beneath the midnight sky. Never before has he let the light hold her as it does now his shadows are banished. He is naked without them, only the glow of his half-moon sigils mark him a monk amidst men.
“Especially not to a monk.”
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