Page 52 of Don’t Let Me Go

There are two ways to be drunk—with wine and with love. For the first, God created grapes. For the second, He created Thierry.

Tonight, I’ve had my fill of both and can attest that such a heady mixture is the closest any man can come to tasting heaven

here on earth.

Blasphemous? Certainly. A mortal sin? To be sure. Still, how sweet damnation will be with Thierry by my side. And hell can’t

possibly be hotter than Paris in August.

“Can we open a window?” Thierry sighs beside me, his pale, lithe body made almost golden in the candlelight. “It’s stifling

in here.”

I pull myself out of bed, sticky with perspiration, and open the window of the cramped, airless room we’ve been renting. I

suppose we should count ourselves lucky we were able to find even a hovel like this. Half of France has poured into the city

to witness the princess’s wedding. Though I suspect, like me, most of them are placing bets on how long the marriage will

last.

A Catholic princess and a Huguenot rebel? I’d not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. For how many years

have our two faiths been at each other’s throats? How much blood has been spilled? Frenchman against Frenchman.

Now, though, with one seemingly impossible wedding, all that strife is at an end. Now we are expected to set aside our swords

and clasp hands in friendship with those who only last week were our sworn enemies.

It’s a bold strategy for peace, I’ll give King Charles that.

If indeed it was his idea and not his cunning mother’s.

But it cannot end well. Such things never do.

I may have only eighteen years on my back, but I’ve lived in this world long enough to know that man’s ability to hate his fellow man is an unquenchable hunger. In the end, it will devour everything.

But why dwell on such unpleasantness? I’ve been drinking all night—all week, in fact—to forget such painful realities. And

yet Paris is too quiet tonight.

This stultifying heat that has fallen upon the city is nothing compared to the tension in the streets. I can feel it emanating

from the thatched houses and cobblestones, choking the air with resentment and animosity.

This city is a powder keg. And one match will set Paris ablaze.

Thank God we’re leaving.

“Is that the matins bell?” Thierry yawns as I slip back into bed beside him. If I cock my head, I can just make out the tolling

coming from the Cathedral of Saint-Germain.

“Yes, I’m afraid we’ve been quite wanton. It’s almost dawn.”

“What day is it?”

I laugh. “How much did you have to drink last night?”

“Too much.”

“It’s Sunday.”

“Sunday,” he repeats, breaking into a coy smile. “And do you have anything in particular that you’d like to say to me on this

day?”

“Such as?”

Thierry fixes me with his languid eyes, the green of his irises now glowing with a mischievous glint. “Felicitations are the

traditional custom on the day of one’s birth.”

“Felicitations,” I say, sliding my hand through his luxurious black hair as I lower my lips to his.

Despite the two of us having spent the entire evening in ecstasy together, I find myself wanting nothing more than to forget all the troubles of the world by once again losing myself in the sweet oblivion of his embrace.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope you got me a present?” Thierry teases between kisses.

“I believe I already gave you your present,” I inform him as I climb on top of him. “In fact, I believe I’ve been giving you

your present all night.”

“I was hoping for something more original.” He smirks. “You’ve been giving me that gift for years.”

“I’ve never heard any complaints.”

Thierry’s mouth devours mine, but before I can drink my full pleasure, he pulls away.

“How about a song, then?”

“A song?”

“For my birthday.”

“You want me to sing? Now?” I ask, glancing down at our bodies’ rather rigorous declarations of desire.

Thierry shrugs. “Don’t I deserve something exceptional on my special day?”

I sigh and shake my head. “Did you have a particular ballad in mind?”

“Singer’s choice. Surprise me.”

I rack my brains for something suitable and (more to the point) short.

“ My lover’s lips are as soft as his kisses ,” I sing painfully off-key. Unlike Thierry, I’m incapable of carrying a tune—a fact he perversely enjoys reminding me of

whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Still, I have a plan to use this humiliation to my advantage. I slowly trace a trail of kisses down to his neck, and his laughter melts into quick gasps of pleasure. Silly boy. I learned long ago that there is no part of his body that elicits such passion from him as his sweet and tender neck.

My lover’s skin is as soft as my breast,

My lover is soft in all the right places,

But it’s where he is hard that I like him best.

My right hand slides down his stomach, and Thierry breaks into laughter.

“And where, may I ask, did a well-respected mayor’s son learn a filthy song like that?”

“From a very witty tart,” I answer.

“Oh, dear, I hope you haven’t been consorting with riffraff. Your father will be so disappointed.”

“What can I say? I’m a man who craves a certain variety in his life. It’s hard to keep me satisfied.”

“Is it?” Thierry asks, taking hold of me. “I’ve never found it so.”

I pull his face to mine and bite his lips, and the familiar hunger awakens in me: To taste every inch of him. To consume him

with kisses. To devour him body and soul until we are one body, one soul.

Sometimes my craving frightens me. It’s like a fever that ravages my body, stripping me of reason. Yet I’ve long stopped looking

for a cure.

It was three years ago that Thierry first came into my life, and to this day I do not know if it was a gift from heaven or a temptation from hell.

My father had recently broken with the Church of Rome and converted our family to the teachings of Calvin and his Reformed Church.

Our new minister, a man of great influence, encouraged my father to dismiss all the Catholics from our household lest they spy on us or plot against us.

So it was that Thierry’s father, Old Broussard, a lifelong and committed Huguenot, became my father’s steward at Thouron, bringing with him his son to live on our estate and provide me with constant companionship.

I still remember the first time I laid eyes on Thierry. When he stepped out of the carriage that delivered him to the doorstep

of our estate, I felt like I was seeing the sun for the first time after a life of living under the earth. His beauty blinded

me. And his green eyes, sharp as glass, unnerved me. Even his touch when we shook hands seemed to burn my skin. I could scarcely

stand to be in the same room with him for fear of what would happen if ever I forgot myself.

I was by no means a pious or moral young man. Quite the contrary, in fact. My father frequently fretted for my immortal soul.

But up until that time, my sins had been of the standard variety that boys in the country enjoyed. That is to say, nothing

I couldn’t boast about to my friends late at night in some tavern where we traded tales of our debaucheries.

But the sin I wanted from Thierry was different. I knew it would damn me. Not because it would send me to hell but because I was

there already from the sheer want of it.

Thus began the longest year of my life.

By day, Thierry was the perfect companion. We would ride or hunt, taking endless delight in each other’s company and conversation.

Then by night, alone in my room, I would burn for him until I was exhausted with desire.

I thought I would go mad. I slept with every girl in the village who would raise her skirt for me in the hopes of purging

this fever from my blood. I tried to forget him with drink and dice and (worst of all) prayer. Nothing worked.

Then on his sixteenth birthday, after everyone had gone to bed following a modest celebration befitting the steward’s son, I found myself bold with too much wine and too much longing. I stole from my room and crept through the humid night until I arrived outside his bedroom door.

Without knocking, I slipped inside. The candles were out, but in the light of the full moon, I saw him sit up in bed. He did

it quite calmly, quite naturally, as if he’d been expecting me. As if he’d always been expecting me.

He asked what I wanted, and when I was unable to speak, he rose from the bed, beautiful and perfect as Apollo, and came to

me. Without saying a word, he took my left hand and brought it to his lips, then my right. Then he placed both hands over

his heart and said, “Don’t you know there’s nothing you could ask of me that I would not give?”

His lips tasted of honey. His hair smelled of lavender. My nightshirt fell to the floor, and a second later we joined it there,

discovering new and exquisite ways to astound each other.

Thus began the happiest two years of my life.

Two years in which I’ve never stopped asking for him, and he’s never stopped giving himself. Two years in which the fever

between us has burned so true and strong that, were I not at heart a cynical beast raised in a cynical age, I could almost

dare to call it holy.

“Do you hear shouting?” Thierry asks, pulling his lips from mine.

Intoxicated as I am by my craving for him, it takes me a moment to return to my senses. I cock my head toward the window and

at first hear only the tolling of more bells. There’s nothing unusual in that. Except the louder they clang, the less it sounds

like tolling and the more it sounds like a warning. Or an alarm.

A scream pierces the night, baleful and desperate. It’s followed by another. Then a third.

“Something’s wrong,” Thierry whispers, sliding out from under me and moving to the window.

I’m about to join him when our chamber door is rocked by the insistent pounding of an impatient fist. It swings open, and

the inn’s proprietress, Madame Montague, enters frantically. She’s dressed in her nightgown, her white hair wild and erratic,