No, seriously, seriously, I am this close 👌 to writing an essay about how the "hot, like blood" wording is just so perfect and accurate for this scene, that is all together about making love, and future loss, and yearning, and tenderness, and hopelessness, and pain, cause, you know, what bleeds? A wound, and oh, they both might felt wounded at that moment (for a bit different reasons, but still) and how this scene is NOT about just having sex, it has SO MANY deeper layers, I AM NO LONGER A PERSON.
And the most, probably, delicious thing - it's when we keep in mind that Damen is the narrator, so "like blood" is his comparison. He felt it (the climax, the culmination) like a blood from a wound - but which wound? The one given him by understanding, that this will be the only night they ever spend together?
Or that this is the end of his life as Damen - a slave, a soldier, a captain, a friend - in Vere?
Or by the fact that he will never be allowed to have it anymore - oh, and/or that he, Damianos, the Prince-killer, never really WAS allowed to have?
Or the wound Laurent is going to get when he realizes who he actually slept with, who he actually finally allowed himself to be vulnerable with?
Whatever the answer is, it feels devastating.
