He drew again on her vein. The stars lit through her body, following the pressure of his mouth. She tensed and shivered and his hand slipped between her thighs, the fingers daintily probing after the sparks of delight. She climaxed instantly, startlingly.

‘Do it for me,’ he said. He licked at her throat hungrily, closing his eyes.

She snared the tower of him, once more erect and satin-hard, rubbing, tickling, feeling the tremors of its second almost separate life.

She felt his urgency as he moved against her and his breathing caught against her neck. The flaming juices of him burst into her hand.

He kissed her. She tasted salt, the spice of her own blood.

‘What will happen?’ she whispered.

‘Nothing. A love bite.’

A faint noise, beyond the dark world of the room, in the corridor.

‘Is it the cat, looking for you?’

The cat never looks for me. He comes and goes.’

‘Would they be voyeurs?’

‘The family? No, they’ve seen it all. Done most of it.’

Rachaela eased herself up from the bed of sheets and pillows, skin and hair.

‘Don’t,’ he said.

‘I want to see.’

She lit a candle from a bedside match, went to the door and unlocked it.

Outside, something lay.

‘One of Camillo’s gifts,’ she said.

She bent down.

It was a peculiar, twisted heart, made of driftwood.

Camillo was the wicked one.

She reached to take the heart and it crumbled, fell to bits.

‘Oh.’

She came back into the room and shut and locked the door.

‘What had he left you? A cat turd in foil? He’s been known to do that.’

‘A broken heart.’

‘I see. Not just a comment on our morals.’

She set the candle down. Its wavering light lit his long body, ice-white now on the lake of hair. He looked like a prince from an uncensored story, a Beardsley illustration of male perfection. Even to the sleeping phallus, which doubtless Beardsley would have fashioned upright.

‘Why a heart which breaks?’ she said.

‘He’s a romantic. Did he tell you about his flight by night from a besieged city?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s like an old baby. Mischievous and clever. He cares about nothing.’

‘Maybe he cares about you.’

‘It’s my heart, then. The breakage.’

‘Come here,’ he said.

She went to him slowly.

He drew her down and again she lay the length of him, over him.

She was accustomed to it now, the torrent of feeling.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘I will be ashamed.’

‘Tomorrow it will be too late.’

‘Yes.’

He circled her with his arms.

She rested her head in the curve of his neck. She mouthed him, as he had done to her before the bite of his lust.

‘You’ve made love to me five times,’ she said.

‘You’re counting.’

‘We haven’t slept.’

‘Sleep tomorrow,’ he said, ‘when you’re ashamed.’

He rolled their bodies over and pinned her beneath him.