Chapter 17
Seventeen
Kyrith
His answering head tilt is surprised, but his grey eyes flicker with a single heated question.
This is a bad idea. I’m exhausted. My bones still ache with the terror that accompanies knowing that Mathias almost caught me today. Pierce is battling with his own demons after his mother threw him to the wolves.
Sex right now would be a distraction. A temporary balm to the wounds festering within us both.
So why is the air suddenly warmer than it was when we got here? Why are my breasts heaving on a shaky inhale?
His hands fist by his sides, like he’s interpreted my hesitation as rejection.
It’s only when he turns away, and disappointment hits me, that I reach out and grab his arm.
That contact is all it takes.
Our mouths fuse together as we collide hard enough to knock the breath from our lungs. Pierce drags me against him. One of his hands cups the back of my neck, and the other presses against my lower spine, holding us together so I can feel the ridge of his erection caught between our bodies.
My fingers weave into his hair as his tongue sweeps out, tasting me. Addictive and arrogant in equal measure. I’m being kissed like he owns me, so I kiss him back the same way. The scent of him, of that expensive cologne that I like more than I’ll ever admit, wraps around me in a sensual fog.
Every single sense is consumed by him.
My right hand leaves his hair, falling towards the handle behind him. I want him, and I’ve waited long enough. The door swings open, and Pierce lifts me before we can tumble through it.
My legs wrap around his waist, but he turns to his left instead of heading for the bed at the back of the room, depositing me on top of…a baby grand piano?
It barely fits in his bedroom. Did he conjure it for himself?
The lid is shut, and I brace myself against the smooth surface as he spreads my legs wider, settling himself between them as he continues to devour me. My feet bash against the keys, producing an awful racket that reverberates through the instrument beneath me.
I don’t care.
His lips make their way down to the hollow at the base of my neck, leaving goosebumps in their wake as his tongue darts out. I want him to taste me everywhere. I want to taste him too, but the collar of his shirt is in my way.
My fingers fumble at his jacket, shoving it down his arms. Stars, why does he always wear a tie? I loosen it but leave it in place, heading for the buttons of his shirt. I want skin. My fingers shake, body trembling with impatience.
Pierce and I have danced around this for too long. Now everything is bubbling over. He rips my jumper over my head. My heels dig into his ass. His mouth follows his fingers as they work a frantic path down the buttons of my blouse, stopping when he finds my corset.
I expect him to step back, or get confused, but he just buries his face in the upper slopes of my breasts, nipping and sucking and biting until the flesh is oversensitive. I abandon my attempts to undo his buttons and clutch his shoulders for dear life.
“Next time, you’re taking this off,” he orders against my skin.
“Next time,” I promise on a gasp.
Once we’ve fucked this urgency out of our systems.
My pussy aches, arousal dripping from me. It only gets worse as his hands find the hem of my skirt, shoving it up and out of the way. Our eyes lock as he lifts his head, and in my peripheral vision, I notice something.
The door is still open.
Not cracked. Wide. Open.
Pierce notices the direction of my gaze, and his fingers grip my jaw, forcing me to look at him. “You checked the box. Have you changed your mind?”
I know exactly which one he’s talking about. Public sex.
This isn’t public. It’s a private bedroom connected to a hallway exclusively used by me and the heirs. Most of them have seen me in equally scandalous situations at one point or another.
And yet the risk of discovery is still there, the thrill of it twirling in my abdomen alongside the pulsing heat of my own need until I can’t distinguish one from the other.
“Keep going.”
Pierce takes me at my word, releasing my face and shoving aside fabric until my sex is on open display to him and anyone walking past. He drags the stool out from beneath the piano, settling in, and then grips my inner thighs, holding me open so he can see every inch.
The move makes my feet skid across the keys, drawing more protesting clangs from the instrument, but neither of us notices.
His pupils are blown as he traces two fingers down my slit, sinking them into my pussy with a curse.
“Drenched,” he murmurs in a silky whisper against my inner thigh, pressing his lips there. “You were more than just curious. You like me, Librarian, admit it.”
I let out a hoarse half-laugh that cuts off as he slips his fingers free and then fucks them back into me hard. “Maybe just a little bit.”
He hooks those digits against my front wall, finding my G-spot with unerring accuracy as his mouth descends towards my clit.
It’s cruel, really, that someone so arrogant should have good reason to be. I collapse back onto my elbows with a moan.
“That’s it,” he murmurs as he licks up the mess he’s making with those talented fingers. “Keep soaking my hand like that.”
He sucks my clit sharply; the tug resonates through my body, dragging a cry from the depths of my lungs.
My muscles tighten around his fingers as he continues thrusting them in and out of my sopping pussy.
He’s stopped curling them, but something about the angle and power behind them is different.
He rotates his hand, doing something that scrambles my brain.
“Let go,” he murmurs. “Trust me, darling. Let go.”
Pleasure is building deep and low in my abdomen, and when he adds a third finger, stretching me, it rushes out of me in a gush.
No. Not a gush, a flood.
My mouth drops open with a scream as I soak Pierce’s face, his hand, and probably the whole piano. I’m left panting, shivering, and completely wrecked as he wrings the final drops from my body.
“You’ve been holding out on us, Ice Queen.” North’s voice breaks through my exhausted fever dream, and I lift my head to find him leaning casually against the door frame.
“I didn’t… I’ve never…” My cheeks flush, and words fail me.
I’m not a squirter. That’s a mythical romance novel thing.
Stars, if I’d known this could happen to me, I would’ve insisted he put down a towel. And why are North’s golden eyes blazing with envy?
“She can’t help it if you’re just not talented enough to get her there,” Pierce taunts, completely unbothered. “I hope you enjoyed the show, Ackland. That’s as close to sharing as I’m getting tonight.”
With that statement, he withdraws his hand from between my legs, leans over and shuts the door, kicking North out.
Without the light from the hall, darkness falls over the room, like the final curtain at the end of some erotic performance.
I can just make out Pierce rubbing that same hand over his mouth, spreading the shining evidence of what just happened across his lips.
I reach for him, intent on slipping to my knees and returning the favour, but he gathers me into his arms, heading for the bed instead.
His sheets are satin, a far cry from the cotton ones on my bed down the hall, and I smirk because he must’ve conjured his own rather than accept the ones the McKinleys provided.
Of course, Pierce would never sleep on anything but the best. He is a Carlton, after all.
He sets me down, flicking on the small lamp beside the bed and watching impassively as I lay a hand on the runeform inked into my stays and murmur the incantation to unlace them.
They fall away easily, but when I reach for him, naked and ready to continue, he simply rolls up his sleeves and tucks the blankets around me.
Those grey eyes are soft as he says, “You were feeling rough before we started. You need rest.”
I hate that he’s right. Benny’s potion did alleviate the worst of my symptoms, but I’m still tired.
“Will you stay?” I ask, unwilling to argue.
He nods, settling on top of the covers. “It’s my room, after all.”
I rest my head against his arm and let the darkness and the steady rhythm of his breathing lull me to sleep.
When I wake, it’s to the gentle chiming of the piano.
It’s so peaceful, so unexpected, that it takes me a few bars to realise I’m in Pierce’s bed.
It’s still dark outside. The soft light from the lamp throws the ghosts in his eyes into sharp relief as he leans over the keys, wearing nothing more than a pair of loose pyjama bottoms.
The lid is still down, muting the sound, but I recognise the piece.
Rachmaninoff’s Lilacs.
Pierce plays the instrument like it’s second nature to him, and I file the information away in the small mental folder of things I know about him.
The light is so dim that it takes a moment for me to realise what I’m seeing.
Scars.
So many scars.
He’s taken off his cuffs. They glimmer on top of the piano in a careful pile of multicoloured metals. Without them, the twisted lines across his skin are plainly visible.
It’s painful how purposeful each mark is. Aside from the covenant mark, none of them touch his hands or venture above his collarbone. He has the cuff, but even without it, all of them could be hidden by a shirt.
“I hoped I wouldn’t wake you.” It’s not an apology, but it holds the same careful regret. “Do you want me to stop?”
I prop myself up, resting my head on one hand. “No. Keep playing.”
He bows his head in acquiescence.
I should go back to sleep but watching him is oddly soothing.
“Do you think Anthea will come out of this alive?” he finally asks, the words almost swallowed up by his playing.
Oh. He’s thinking about his sister?
“If she’s smart, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that she might evade enforcement for years.”
There have been a few arcanists in history who ran for decades before being caught. They benefited from periods of chaos in society or within enforcement’s ranks. Both of those scenarios are happening now that Benny has set the cat among the pigeons. Was that part of his motivation for doing so?
However, none of those fugitives were the daughter of a rector, or open necromancers, and all of them were caught…in the end.
“My grandfather set her loose to be hunted down like a rabid dog, and my mother told enforcement I was a necromancer so they could do the same to me.” He shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. “I know Anthea can take care of herself, but…”
“She’s your sister.” I hug his blanket to my chest. “Do you want to help her?”
The piano music continues, filling the void in the conversation.
“We have a complicated relationship. I…I’m not proud of myself for how I behaved when she asked for my help to gain Sanctuary.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” I tell him. “Enforcement likely would’ve turned on the Arcanaeum had I tried to offer protection to a known necromancer.”
I walk a delicate line every time someone invokes Sanctuary.
On one hand, my rule over the Arcanaeum was absolute; enforcement had no jurisdiction.
On the other, I did my best not to get in the way of the law, helping them when requested.
Would I have helped Anthea, knowing she was a necromancer?
Possibly not. Necromancers killed me. I don’t trust them.
And yet…I offered Pierce Sanctuary, even though I suspected him of being one. I could make excuses, say that it was solely down to the deal with Benny, but was it?
Or is it just another case of the heirs being the only exception to every rule I’ve ever made?
Pierce trails into a new song, something modern that I don’t recognise, and more melancholy than the first.
“She’s made the accusation now,” he mumbles. “I’ll never escape it, even if I somehow convince them I’m not one.”
“No. You likely won’t.” Arcanists have long memories. “But sometimes that can be an advantage.” As a parriarch, having a rumoured dark side often garners its own kind of respect. “Do you have a plan to prove your innocence?”
His head shake is small, uncertain.
Despite it all, my heart sinks on his behalf. He didn’t choose any of this, but who would really believe that? Necromancy is a black and white line in the sand for most arcanists. One is either a necromancer and evil, or they aren’t.
To my shame, I’ve allowed myself to fall into that same moral absolutism, but Pierce…Pierce is different.
“I have, on occasion, given testimony that was sufficient to persuade enforcement to look the other way,” I begin.
The piano cuts off, and he swivels to pin me in place with a dark look. “I’m not asking you to lie for me. One look at my grimoire, and they’d know the truth anyway, then you’d be in just as much trouble as I am.”
“The Arcanaeum is more than capable of creating a forgery that will fool any enforcer,” I retort. “Books are, after all, our speciality, and we have a unique connection to your magic that would allow us to convince even their most skilled divinator of your innocence.”
“In exchange for what?” The sudden flatness in his voice is startling, and I lift the covers a little higher.
Pierce doesn’t come from a world where things are given out of kindness.
To him, favours are transactional. Even Benny, for all that he professes to care for his grandchildren, is so deep in the depths of his own machinations that he’s utilised Pierce as a spy for years, which can only have translated to conditional love in the mind of a child.
Our relationship can’t be built on a foundation of tit-for-tat, but I doubt I’ll be able to undo a lifetime’s worth of trauma with one gesture.
“In order for me to do that, you have to help me get the Arcanaeum back,” I reason poorly. “It’s a self-serving offer.”
His shoulders soften. “I would’ve done that anyway. Try again.”
I sink back against the pillows with a sigh. “Sometimes people do things simply because they care, and that’s enough.” I pause, wondering if he’ll say anything more, but he simply sits there, staring. “Will you play some more?”
There’s a heartbeat where I think he’ll deny me, but then he swivels, resting his fingers back on the keys.
And in the melodic darkness, I think I catch a glimmer in the corner of his eye, but it’s blinked away so swiftly that I might’ve imagined it.