She went onto her hands and knees, he slipping from her for a tormenting moment while she did so, then putting the curiosity back to work. His rhythm instantly became more urgent, his fingers in her sex, his voice in her head, both expressing ecstasy. The glyph brightened in her mind’s eye, fiery from end to end. She yelled out to him, first only yes and yes, then plainer demands, inflaming him to new invention. The glyph became blinding, burning away all thought of where she was, or what; all memory of conjunctions past subsumed in this perpetuity.
She was not even aware that he’d spent himself until she felt him withdrawing, and then she reached behind her to keep him inside a while longer. He obliged. She enjoyed the sensation of his softening inside her, and even, finally, his exiting, the tender muscle yielding its prisoner reluctantly. Then he rolled over onto the bed beside her and reached for the light. It was dim enough not to sting, but still too bright, and she was about to protest when she saw that he was putting his fingers to his injured side. Their congress had unknitted the wound. Blood was running from it in two directions: down towards the curiosity, still nestled in the condom, and down his side to the sheet.
“It’s all right,” he said as she made to get up. “It looks worse than it is.”
“It still needs something to staunch it,” she said.
“That’s good Godolphin blood,” he said, wincing and grinning at the same moment. His gaze went from her face to the portrait above the bed. “It’s always flowed freely,” he said.
“He doesn’t look as though he approved of us,” she said.
“On the contrary,” Oscar replied. “I know for a fact he’d adore you. Joshua understood devotion.”
She looked at the wound again. Blood was seeping between his fingers.
“Won’t you let me cover that up?” she said. “It makes me queasy.”
“For you . . . anything.”
“Have you got any dressing?”
“Dowd’s probably got some, but 1 don’t want him knowing about us. At least, not yet. Let’s keep it our secret.”
“You, me, and Joshua,” she said.
“Even Joshua doesn’t know what we got up to,” Oscar said, without a trace of irony audible in his voice. “Why do you think 1 turned the light out?”
In lieu of fresh dressing she went through to the bathroom to find a towel. While she was doing so he spoke to her through the open door.
“I meant what I said, by the way,” he told her.
“About what?”
“That I’ll do anything for you. At least, anything that’s in my power to do or give. I want you to stay with me, Judith. I’m no Adonis, I know that. But I learned a lot from Joshua . . . about devotion, 1 mean.” She emerged with the towel to be greeted by the same offer. “Anything you want.”
“That’s very generous.”
“The pleasure’s in the giving,” he said.
“I think you know what I’d like most.”
He shook his head. “I’m no good at guessing games. Only cricket. Just tell me.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed and gently tugged his hand from the wound in his side, wiping the blood from between his fingers.
“Say it,” he told her.
“Very well,” she said. “I want you to take me out of this Dominion, I want you to show me Yzordderrex.”