Amaunet’s unabashed hunger emboldens him; it steals his heart and his appetites, a vivid reminder that as the youngest son of one of Solterra’s wealthiest families, he is not often privileged to such apparent wants. Everything is thinly veiled; disguised as something it is not; polite yet utterly ingenuine. Corradh thinks of his brothers; he thinks of Adonai and Pilate and how the dishonesty there is treacherous, and larger than life, prevalent and inescapable. Always, always the disdain disguised as brotherly love.
Let us discover it together then. She has pressed against him and Corradh’s heart is in his throat. His entire body rages; he becomes a wildfire in his soul, and without, and where she presses a violent heat blossoms. She is hot like the desert is hot. She is nearly too beautiful to look at. There is no space between them and her voice—like a kiss—is swiftly replaced by her mouth against the nape of his neck.
That is where a jaguar bites to kill.
He read that, somewhere, once.
Their jaws are so powerful they crush through bone, and paralyse their prey.
He had never even seen a jaguar, though. But what Corradh has watched before are the storms that, sometimes, hit Solterra.
He has watched the way they come upon the desert like a blight; flood-waters and torrents, clouds so dark the day becomes night. Corradh, abruptly, feels as if he is beneath that same omnipotence now. His smile is roguish; he finds himself showing all his teeth, a gesture rare for the thirdborn son. And when you are bloated with power and fat with the taste of me, I will let you fall to your knees and pray.
“I am already praying.” Corradh admits, and in the admittance his tail lashes at her flank. Her hunger opens something in him as cavernous as a bottomless pit; it echoes with her appetite, and each touch transforms him from noble, boy, fighter, prince to something wilder, more arcane, less articulate.
“What then, Amaunet, do we conquer first?” Corradh turns his too-green, too-feral eyes to her. “Should I unleash you upon the palace where my brothers live, like a hurricane? Into the citadel? The mountains? The vast, wide desert?” More quietly, in a voice edged with want, “Or do we run into the rising sun and find the power in ourselves?”
@Amaunet || "Speech." ||
in the desert, i saw a creature, naked, bestial who squatted upon the ground, held his heart in his hands, and ate of it. I said, "is it good, friend?" "it is bitter, bitter," he answered; "but I like it, because it is bitter, and because it is my heart."
