Chapter 5
EARNING COIN
Persephone’s heart was a drum beating beyond her control, a separate beast trying to claw out of her chest and into the duke’s.
They slumped to the ground together, and he rolled into the wall, resting his back against it.
She followed his lead until they were shoulder to shoulder.
Almost but not quite touching. That slim half inch between them drew a cry to her throat.
But she choked it down and worked, too, to calm her maddened heart.
It still beat everywhere—in her wrists and chest, of course, her palms and soles of her feet, her belly and lower, and along every inch of her brain.
He’d barely touched her, and she’d fallen to pieces.
And she wanted to do it again.
Mornington banged the back of his head against the wall, his eyes closed. “Hell.” The word a groan. “What was that?”
She laughed, and the sound felt light, possessed the rising ring of a church bell on a sunny day. “That was… that was not entirely unexpected from my perspective.” Had to be admitted.
“Oh?” He rolled his head to look at her, his mouth the curved picture of cocky satisfaction.
“It’s been too long since I’ve felt the touch of a man. I have been… admiring your physical form. If not your personality. Or your morals.”
“Witch.”
She shrugged.
“How long?” he asked.
“Three long years. More. And I should have waited longer for a more pious man. I’m sure you’ve gone not even a day.”
He snorted. “Two years. More. My mistress didn’t believe in fucking a man for pity’s sake. And I’m quite particular about who I honor with my attentions.”
“See, there’s that personality.”
“My body is still pulsing.” He shook out his hands. “It’s like I can feel your satiation in my skin.”
She cracked her neck side to side and shook out her hands. “Me as well.” She didn’t drop her hand but lifted it higher to study the ring. “It’s so plain. You can’t have procured it from the family vaults. From whom did you steal it?” She meant it as a joke.
But he said, “I stole them from one of the tombs. Meant to sell them, but they’ve proved useful.”
She startled to her feet. “The tombs? When? I was with you! I didn’t see.”
“You were turning on the light. I scooped them up before you were done.”
She yanked at the ring. “It’s stuck. Oh no, no, no. It can’t be stuck. What are you doing?” He was sitting there on the floor like a fool, looking at her as if she’d gone mad. “Take yours off!”
“It’s a chunk of metal, nothing more.”
“It’s an alchemist ring! It’s binding metal!”
He scowled at the ring on his hand. “Binding metal? What’s that?”
“Oh God, get. It. Off!” She tugged and tugged, but it was stuck.
He ripped his off and sent it skittering across the floor then grasped her hand. “Stop. You’ll hurt yourself. Hold still. Damn you, Persephone, hold still!”
She froze, her heart pounding with horror.
And holding her gaze, he sucked her finger into his mouth, grasped the ring with his teeth, and gently tugged.
It slid off with ease and he spit out. Hell, it felt so good, that tease of his teeth across her finger.
But of course it did. The metal was trying to bind them, flooding them with the memories of the dead.
When he released her hand she whipped it to her stomach, cradled it there like it was injured.
“Now,” he said, his voice rough, “tell me what that was all about.”
She stared at her finger where she still felt the subtle tug of his teeth. What should she do with it? Pretend it never happened? Pretend the act, the slow sucking and withdrawl of her digit from his mouth hadn’t struck like lightning in her core?
She wanted him to do it again, to do something about the aching he’d caused. And the ring wasn’t even on her anymore. Could she blame the ring? Or did she only have herself to blame?
“Well?” He nudged her chin up with his knuckles.
She licked her lips. “They are wedding bands. But more than that, too. Alchemist rings are… different. They are made from a chunk of metal an alchemist has kept on him since childhood. When he finds his mate, he fashions the metal into two rings. Usually, they are buried in them. The rings open up a… I shouldn’t tell you. ”
“I put the damn thing on my body. You’d better tell me, Persephone.” His grip on her chin tightened, and he was using her given name as if it was his right. Well, considering what they’d just done with one another, perhaps it was.
She brushed his hand away and resettled against the wall. She’d already told him enough to be exiled from the alchemists for the rest of her life. Why not tell him more. And he was right… He’d worn the ring. It had made him act in ways he wouldn’t have otherwise.
“The rings open up a connection between the wearers. If we wear them, I can feel your emotions and you can feel mine.”
“Why weren’t they buried?”
“Sometimes, if a husband and wife are estranged at death, they’ll be put in the tomb, there in case they want them back but not forced on their bodies as they cross into the afterlife.
But the rings can… well, others are not supposed to wear them.
The metal has bound two specific souls for decades, and some of that raw emotion is left behind. ”
“So you’re saying what just happened only happened because of the rings?”
“Yes, precisely.”
“Bollocks. I wanted to fuck you before I put the ring on.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Well… if I’m being entirely honest, I rather… wanted… you to do that… to me. Before the ring. Oh God.” She drew her knees up and hid her face in her skirts. “I wouldn’t have, though. I would not have acted on that particularly ridiculous desire.”
And then, like a breeze on an autumn day, his knuckles were skimming up her neck and his chuckle was raising gooseflesh on her chest.
And the rings were somewhere else, discarded and forgotten. But still alive with memories. Unlike her own alchemist ring, wherever that was now.
“Perhaps,” she mumbled into the fabric, “the influence of the rings is still working on me.”
“Don’t give the rings credit, Graves. It’s me.”
“Your hubris knows no bounds.”
He picked up the rings and stood, held the other hand out for her.
She hesitated but took it, and he dragged her all the way up against his body. “I’m thinking we continue this liaison.”
“Certainly not.”
“I’m glad you took some time to consider the matter before rejecting me.” He swung her around and stole her breath. The world tilted as he dipped her and pressed her into the bed, a wicked grin making him irresistibly handsome. “Can I convince you to reconsider?”
She slapped her palm against his chest, pushed, and said in her coolest tones, “Tempting as it is…” And it was tempting.
With his hair hanging like that, and his eyes still glowing with that golden light common to transcendents.
There was a heat there. He still wanted her, and she still wanted him.
She could not deny the truth of her body.
“No. Thank you.” She rolled out from under him, and he crashed against the bed with a dramatic huff.
“I suppose it’s for the best. I am a duke, after all.”
“I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.” She picked up the rings with a handkerchief and wrapped them up tight, stowed them at the very bottom of her ratty valise.
If she was going to end her yearslong desire drought, it would be with a man who possessed a heart, not one who cared for no one but himself.
They ate dinner and prepared for bed in almost complete silence. The next words they shared were facing one another from either side of the rather narrow bed.
“I’m not sleeping on the floor,” he growled. He wore his trousers from that day and a loose, untucked shirt. It billowed about him, and the open V at the neck revealed too much golden skin.
“I’m not sleeping on the floor.”
“You’re used to less comfortable sleeping circumstances.”
“Which is why I deserve a little holiday. You’re the one inconveniencing me. I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t forcing me into it.”
“You could sneak away.”
“Perhaps I will.” She wouldn’t. He’d stomp about the London alchemist cemetery as if he owned it, destroying what he couldn’t profit from. “But until then, I’m taking the bed.”
“So am I.”
“Fine.” Not fine. Her body still throbbed for him.
He threw the bedding back, holding her gaze, then slipped in. A flash of his feet. Big and sinewy, and she’d never been attracted to a foot before. Stupid rings.
She threw back the bedding on her own side and slipped in.
Wearing only her chemise. She should have kept more clothing on.
But she hadn’t, and she wasn’t getting up again, not with him settling in comfortably against the headboard, hands cradling the back of his head.
He was terribly long. Even propped up as he was, his feet were too close to the end of the bed. They’d hang off at night.
“You didn’t blow out the candle,” he said.
“I don’t trust you enough to sleep with you in the dark.”
“But you’ll share a bed.”
She hugged the edge. “You stay over there.”
“Are you positive that’s what you want?”
She nodded because she didn’t trust herself to not tell the truth. She wanted his hands on her. Everywhere. But only as a prelude to his lips traveling the same places across her skin. She ducked under the covers and squeezed her eyes closed.
“Stay over there,” she warned.
“As you wish, Mrs. Graves.”
At least he wasn’t calling her Persephone anymore. He seemed to shape the name into something erotic. She’d never heard satin in it before, but on his lips, her own name seduced her. She shivered and pulled the covers more tightly about her.
After a few minutes, the bed rocked and he shifted, and she didn’t look to see if he was lying down, but soon after that his breathing evened, and she didn’t think she’d ever get to sleep with him one unfortunate and unintentional movement away from her.
But she did.
* * *