Page 30 of Lady Macbeth

Roscille takes a step forward, feeling the knife against her ribs. Lisander starts to rise. But as soon as he is on his feet, she raises her hand, and does not merely lift her veil but removes it completely, tearing it off, letting it drift to the floor.

Unguarded, her eyes meet his.

She has only ever known this feeling once, with the stable boy, but years have passed since then, and as her body has grown, her passions have grown with it. Bloomed red and hot, as quick as marigolds. Roscille takes another step, and then falls, and Lisander catches her arms with his arms and her mouth with his mouth.

Once he has hold, he presses her to him. Her hand finds the nape of his neck, and his skin there is as soft as she imagined it would be, like the velvety petals of a rose. Her lips part for his tongue, and he moves into her without contrition, as if his body is made for this purpose alone. One arm lowers to circle her waist, and the other tangles itself in her hair, tugging her head back so that his lips can brush along her jawline, down her throat.

Roscille whines, a keening, puppyish sound she never knew she could make. That coiling heat in the bottom of her belly moves lower, deeper, until it is a pulse between her thighs. And then, as if it is pulsing outward, this desire, Lisander grasps her firmly by the waist, lifts her easily, dexterously, and lays her on the bed beneath him.

He looks down at her, straight into her eyes. No mortal man has done this and lived. Her hair spills out silver against the sheets.

“You are beautiful,” he whispers.

She does not know what compels her to whisper back, “Strange. Unnatural.”

“No,” he says. “You have been made to fit a shape that confines you. That does not serve you.”

Roscille cannot figure out where her compulsion ends and he begins. Whether these are her words that have merely snuck into his mouth. She considers it for a moment, with a twist of guilt, of grief—and then finds she does not care. The air is heavy, thick and sweet. Whatever this fire is, it consumes them both.

His lips are against her throat, and another sound rises up in her, unbidden. She feels shameful in her need, so she presses her face to his shoulder, muffling her moan against his jacket—the leather, too, impossibly smooth. His mouth will leave marks; she has seen them on a hundred serving girls before, a cluster of bruises, purple with red pricking through them as blood rises to the surface but does not spill.

Roscille almost protests, for this is certainly beyond what her husband will allow, even within his order (Kill him). Before she can, Lisander unclasps her necklace. He slips it off her, and it is lost in the sheets.

“I have hated seeing you wear this,” he murmurs.

Roscille unhides her face. “Why?”

“Spoils from his conquest of Cawder, yes? Your husband’s garish pride, stamped upon you.”

She feels bold enough to capture his face in her hands, tilting his chin toward her. “What if I told you it was not only his pride, but my protection? It is like a shield.”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Then I will allow you your armor again when we are through.”

Lisander slides between her thighs. His hips, cleaving her apart. He kisses her mouth once more, and her fingers fumble at the laces of his jacket, but he is not there long enough for her to get it loose: His lips touch the hollow of her collarbone, and then he follows the line of her bodice with his mouth—the knife, the knife, she panics briefly, but the fear is washed away in waves of pleasure—until his head is ducked between her knees.

He kisses her up her thighs, grasping at her flesh, which is white and soft with the ease of a noble lady’s life, until he reaches that place where she has hardly dared to touch herself—first because it is a sin, for a woman to find pleasure on her own terms, absent of a man, and second because she does not want to be weak in her wanting, slave to the lusts of her body. She has always believed her form cannot be trusted, that it will betray her calculating mind.

Now she cares nothing for these convictions. She fists the sheets as Lisander moves between her thighs, his mouth hot and sweet, and there is something cresting in her, like blood trying to break the skin. She arches her hips off the bed, and puts a hand over her mouth to muffle the mortifying and too-human sound. She has never felt so horribly, wonderfully embodied before.

Suddenly he stops. Lisander lifts his head and leans over her, no longer gentle as he grasps the knife through her bodice.

Roscille’s heart crashes to a halt, but she cannot speak. When he meets her gaze, there is no more languid tenderness there. It is sharp, like green cut-glass.

“Wait—” she chokes out.

She tries to push him off, to rise from the bed. But then his hand is around her throat.

Eight

His hand does not exert enough pressure to hurt, not really—not unless she strains against him, and then it is more panic than pain, the feeling of breath slowly leaving her. Roscille makes a wordless noise of protest as Lisander’s other hand reaches beneath her bodice and retrieves the knife. He examines it for a moment, with a low exhale that is almost amused, and then tosses it aside. It clatters against the stone, far out of reach.

“Macbeth must be an impoverished warrior, if he sends his wife to do such ugly work for him.”

“Please,” she says. “Let me go.”

“So you may try and ensorcell me again?”

“I was not— I am not—”