"Did your people not used to castrate the Kunzites?" she asked, voicing a passing thought.
Tarteros' stern eyes looked up from his tableau to answer her question. "They did, up until two generations ago," he said, before his attention returned to the flat plains of her abdomen and the lines he was gently tracing upwards with his finger, "but they found that it worked against them."
"Was the Kunzite a unique case, or did this happen elsewhere?"
"Eunuchs were once cultivated for various reasons. Maintaining an uncracked singing voice was one, superior warriors was another, but once it was made law to forbid the cutting of the Kunzite, the practice ended generally." He bent down and grazed his teeth on her left nipple, enjoying the feel of her warmth in his mouth as he raked them along her taut skin and the soft, dark little peak on her breast.
She watched him, enjoying his presence beside her and his affectionate attentions, but the temptation of amusement was too great and she found herself unable to bite her tongue. "And it took your kind how long, exactly, to realise that the barbaric mutilation of one's body was unwise?"
He pulled away and, already laying on his side beside her, he propped his head against his fist. "Is that sarcasm I detect, Lady Venus?" he asked, more focused now on the conversation. His serious tone belied the tiny yet highly amused smile which played on his lips.
"Do you not think it warranted?" she asked honestly. "Is it unkind of me to be unable to offer praise to a people for simply recognising that a terrible, flawed and cruel idea was just that?"
"Are there no cultures within the Silver Millennium which practice some form of celibacy?"
She shifted herself from lying on her back to her stomach, the length of their bodies touching as her movement brought them closer together. "None that require the permanent removal of genitalia." She ran her hand delicately through her scalp to push her hair from her face as he watched, enthralled with the golden silk flowing through her fingers. "Vows of celibacy are there to create struggle and prevent complacency in attaining your true goals. They act as a test of your resolve and fortitude. To remove the temptation rather defeats the point, doesn't it? Although I suppose the true purpose for castrating the previous Kunzites was somewhat different."
"Indeed, the removal of the temptation was the exact goal, but they found that cutting a man only destroyed his most base of urges." Unable to resist touching her, he brushed his hand with feather-lightness along the small of her back. "It did not steal his ability to love, or hate. It did not guarantee that his loyalty would not waiver."
"Was that not obvious to them?" she asked as she planted a kiss on his collar bone and another under his neck. "Silly creatures," she said, her smile hidden from his gaze.
"Perhaps it is more difficult for you to sympathise as you are a Venusian. On Earth our views of sexuality and intercourse are not as… liberal as yours."
She pulled back and raised a finely crafted blonde eyebrow. "Tell me, did you mean to insult or was that accidental?" Her tone was clipped and she sounded affronted, but he would not be fooled by her teasing. His hand subtly drifted past the base of her spine, sliding it's way over her backside while she spoke. "Do you imagine, as others from your naïve little world do, that one can find Venusians humping in the streets like animals in heat at every turn?" As she spoke his hand slipped along the pert curve until it dipped lower, to far below his view. "Do you think that we place love before all other virtues and great deeds? That we do not value honour, intelligence, duty and sacrifice with equal fervour?"
"I meant no offence, rather I am offering praise." He flicked his fingers once the pads of his fingertips brushed against the moist folds and smooth, tiny mound he had sought to find. "What you say proves my point," he said conversationally, despite the fact that she had closed her eyes and raised her hips just above the bed, to allow him better access. "When you refer to love you automatically include what we call eros-"
"Eros?" she asked, amid a pleasure-filled sigh.
His silver eyes, so usually clouded, were light with mirth as his hand explored its surrounding and she began to succumb to his touch. "By Eros we mean romantic love, lust, sexual desire, if you will." He withdrew his fingers once he saw that she was coming close to her climax. "And when you speak of eros and of sex I notice that you do so in the same company as other things which are valued and important. My people would not." He rolled onto his back, creating distance between them.
The sudden loss of his touch and then his body heat snapped her eyes open. At first she wanted to hit him for his toying with her, or to plot revenge, but the broad grin that sat so smugly on his features changed her mind. She had never before seen him so carefree, nor his face so open, so happy. It delighted her to be granted such private access, to know that she was the cause of it. So she settled for a light shove and a bite of his right pectoral muscle instead, smiling satisfactorily when he hissed in pain. "Please, continue. I was listening," she said before he could retaliate. "We Venusians do not separate the act of love with the emotion, and we value all of its forms, as you state correctly."
Tarteros rose from the bed completely and made his way to a tray with empty glasses. "From our earliest days we are taught of the shame of our bodies. We hide our desires and we treat them not as gifts, but as burdens." He brought one back to the bed and laid down next to her again. "For us, only benevolent and chaste love can be seen as virtuous: love which is borne out of purity and not selfishness - love of our Gods, our King, our people and our families." He handed her the glass and she noticed that it was cold to the touch. Looking inside she saw that it was filled with water and she realised that he must have condensed the air in it until it had turned to liquid. "Thank you," she said, impressed.
"Your greatest war, which tore your planet apart and has left you living in giant, glasshouse pyramids, was caused by a love story. Our books have painted it as a terrible loss of life, an unwarranted and foolish reason for such a disaster, made only worse by the fact that they were both married women. Whereas on Venus, the story of Kalifa and Morca was the worthiest and most beautiful reason for war."
She took a few sips of the water, her body shuddering as the cold spread through her, before she returned the glass to him. "But all love is selfish and all forms of love are equally pure. It is by its very nature contradictory and interlinked. How can you separate it into such odd distinctions? How can one be more virtuous than the other?"
"In truth, we see love as the greatest of all forces, but we fear its passion. Too much and it burns us, it is a force of destruction and it harms the most when it takes the form of lust."
"Ah," she smiled, tapping his chest lightly, "you have clarified something which has had me confused greatly for a number of years. This form of passion that you speak of, I could not understand it from my studies, but from what you say, these things are the equivalent of what is known by my people as Pshetah and we distinguish it from love, although it is spawned by it."
"That sounds complicated."
"It is." An idea struck her. "In the interest of furthering our diplomatic relations, I will give you something, as a gift. A book by one of our most revered scholars: Thofos' Contemplations."
He leaned over and placed the glass under the bed. "I look forward to reading it. I am told that he was a master of meditation."
"You have already heard of it, then?"
"I have, but I have not had the opportunity to read it. We don't have many copies of ancient Venusian texts. Our only one is currently on loan to the University of Belladon and has been there for the past thirty years." He kissed her, his lips cold against her warm ones, sending a thrill down her chest at the unexpected dip in temperature. She pulled him in close so that he was almost laying on top of her and he took the motion as a sign to deepen the kiss.
He broke away to trail his mouth along her jawline and her neck. "So how do they control their Kunzites now? How do they ensure that he will be loyal only to their king?" she asked, her lips now unoccupied as his moved lower.
She could hear the humour in his voice when he whispered the answer in her ear. "They get better Kunzites."
She smiled and then rolled him over, straddling him and pinning him down into the bed. "And the vow of celibacy is still sworn?" she asked as she began to undulate her hips slowly over his own.
"In a fashion."
He took advantage of her curious expression and flipped her over again so that he could lie on top. "We now take a vow of chastity."
"Chastity?" she laughed, the very idea ludicrous to her. "Kunzite Tarteros the Chaste: pure as your heavens and yet bloody as your hell. What a paradox you are!"
"Says the Lady of love and also of duty. A woman who is both warrior and princess."
"Are such pairings truly so strange on Earth?"
"Most odd."
"Such a barbaric place is your home, and yet what wonders it births." Her hands snuck down low through the small space between their pressed bodies and her smile twitched when her teasing elicited an involuntary grunt. "Tell me, are you not now breaking your most sacred vow?"
He grinned at her game and sat up, tracing his hands down to her thighs. "To be chaste does not mean to abstain."
"I see that you are aware of the distinction. But what of your purity, Knight of Elysian? I am no earthly virginal bride."
"No," he said, hooking her legs onto his shoulders and lowering his head down to her apex, "you are not. You are a celestial goddess, and I am worshipping most fervently at your altar."