Chapter 7 #2
“The alchemists don’t need my glamours.” He stirred a hunk of beef around in his bowl.
“What they do is real. You should see these little toys my brother-in-law makes. Pure silver, and they walk and shift. A rosebud blooms and toy soldiers take aim. It’s…
I hate to say it and”—he pointed his spoon at her—“you are never to tell him I said it, but they are marvels. And other alchemists, they build steam engines and communication devices and who knows what else. Even in death, they are busy with building marvels.”
“What you do is a marvel.”
He grunted, all but hid his face in his bowl.
“A parlor trick. Transcendents are supposed to think we’re special because of our talent, that it chose us long ago and keeps choosing us, but sometimes it feels like…
” He leaned back in his chair and lifted a hand, palm open toward the ceiling.
An image appeared there—a man and woman dancing.
The man had dirty-blond hair and the woman wore a blue velvet gown draped in sheer silk the color of a sunrise.
They danced circles around his palm until he shut them up tight in a fist, crushing the illusion.
He returned to his stew. “Nothing but an image. What good is that?”
What good was that? “For a moment, I was lost in the illusion. I’ve been cold and hungry and worried and ill and exhausted in the last few years of my life, but I think if I had a little image to warm myself with each night, it would take some of that away.
Like a book come to life. Or a play. Have you considered selling your talents to the theater? ”
“I’m not a spectacle.”
“I thought you possessed no more pride.”
He snorted. “That’s shame I’m all out of. They’re different.”
They finished their stew in silence.
She yawned as the wine coursed through her, and somehow, at the same time, they were standing and unwrapping themselves from their clothing and from the day’s travel dust. They moved about the room like the couple waltzing on his palm—coordinated, intimate—until he wore only his trousers, slung low on his hips and she wore only her chemise, thin and gauzy and not enough to protect her from herself.
Hugging her body, pressing her back against a wall, and doing her best not to look at the bed, she said, “You should sleep on the floor tonight.”
“And why’s that?” He pulled back the cover, ducking his head, but not before she saw him grin.
“Fine then, I’ll sleep on the floor.”
He jolted upright. “No, you will not.” Grin gone. Fierce scowl firmly in place.
“Yes, I— aah!”
He’d stormed across the room and swung her into his arms in less time than it took her to blink. He bounced her onto the bed then crawled in after her. Over her. His big limbs caging her until he got to the other side. Then he pulled covers up over her as if they were enough to keep her in.
They were not. She rolled for the edge.
He caught her, one steel arm wrapping around her. “Persephone.” A warning.
“We cannot both sleep in this bed.” And she could not pretend his arm wasn’t laying directly atop her breasts, blooming her nipples to life.
“We slept in the same bed last night.”
“Yes, well, I do not want to tonight.”
“I’m not sleeping on the hard floor. I’m a duke.”
“And I’m trying to sleep on the hard floor because I’m not one. I’m no one. But…” She pointedly eyed his arm.
“You’re not no one. And you’re staying in this bed.” His golden eyes blazed. “Or you can use me as a mattress.”
“What? No. That makes no sense.”
But caught her up in his arms and rolled her until she laid directly atop him.
Oh no. Now not only were her nipples pebbling against his warm, hard, naked chest, but she could feel an even harder bit of him biting into her belly. Where had the erection come from? So quickly, too!
“Is it any use lecturing you?”
“None. It’s either right here, which is my preferred choice, or it is on the bed. Take your pick.”
“I ha—”
“Hate me, yes I know.” But he did not sound displeased. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
She didn’t hate him. Unaccountably. “I choose the bed.”
He dropped his arms to the mattress. “A disappointment.”
“Get used to it.” She rolled off him and curled up on the very edge of the mattress, and he spread out like he owned the bed, the inn, and the entire county where it resided—legs wide, elbows poking out in both directions from where his hands cradled the back of his head.
She leaned over and blew out a candle on a table by the bed.
“Good night, Persephone,” he said in the dark. “Sweet dreams.”
She didn’t know about sweet. But they would certainly be quite hot.
* * *
She woke up curled into his side. It was still dark outside, and the fire in the grate had died long ago. No shadows dancing on the walls. No sounds from other rooms. Only the heat of his skin, the comfort of his muscle, the rush of his breathing, and the gentle rhythm of his heart.
Her heart? Pounding.
What a dream. She’d forced herself awake from it because as luscious as it had been, it had terrified her too.
Then his arm had chained her waist as she’d straddled his hips.
Now his arm was a pillow for her head.
Then she’d lowered herself onto his shaft and ridden it until his eyes had flashed golden.
Now… well… the thin blanket covering them was rather tented in the center of his body.
What was he dreaming of?
Perhaps the same thing she had been. The evidence certainly pointed in that direction.
She chuckled.
And woke a sleeping beast.
The arm beneath her head tightened in a ripple of muscle, the beginning of a chain reaction as he rolled on top of her. He nestled his weight on his forearms.
And he kissed her. Soft. So soft. It did not feel like the beginning of a kiss. It felt like he dipped between her lips right in the middle of something heated, something that had been happening for hours. Perhaps forever.
Oh, she liked the feel of his lips—sumptuous and sinful. For a poor girl, they were a luxury, and they knew—he knew—exactly what to do to make her moan.
The kiss flamed higher quickly, their bodies finding the rhythm of it.
This no different than the last time they’d tempted one another, tasted one another. But more dangerous. There were no rings binding them through recollections of pleasure. Nothing to blame it on.
But themselves.
She broke away, turning her head so he could not stop her from speaking. “We shouldn’t.”
“Why not?” He kissed her temple.
She stared into the darkness, a tunnel with no end. No answers either. “You have more or less abducted me.”
He kissed her cheek. “I have elicited your help in a delicate matter. You have agreed to join me.”
“Only to see if I can stop you.”
His laughter rumbled through her. “I should have known. Mrs. Graves, you minx.”
“It is a bad idea when we are so at odds.”
He brushed a lock of hair off her forehead. “Our bodies are not at odds. Just our minds. It’s only a bit of fun, Persephone.”
“I—”
He put a warm hand beneath her chin and nudged it center until she was forced to meet his gaze. “Only a bit of pleasure.”
She inhaled, tasting him in the air.
“It’s in no way an agreement,” he assured her.
“You may still block my efforts to steal objects from dead people during the waking hours if that’s what you wish.
Though I wish you’d simply let me do it and be done with it.
Consider—once I have what I want, I’ll leave my life of crime.
Establish another foundling hospital, dedicate myself to good deeds.
I could hire you to work there. You’d be done digging graves. ”
She licked her lips, unable to keep her greedy gaze from tracing every visible, shadowy line of his body and face. “A likely argument.”
“A persuasive one, though? Hm. I see not. What about this?” He settled his mouth against the pulse on her neck, and with one hot exhalation, ran his tongue across her skin, kissed her, bruised her, made her needy.
She clutched his back, pulling him closer. She dropped her head, opening that most vulnerable of places to him.
But he took no further, despite her offering.
No. He rolled off her and propped himself on his side.
She knew what he was doing, the mad man, and she clenched her fists and squeezed her eyes closed against the lust.
Only a bit of fun. Only a bit of pleasure.
“If you don’t want to, it’s a shame,” he said, “but I’ll respect your wishes.” He rolled all the way around until he faced his side of the bed.
“Damn you,” she whispered. Because the thief did possess a shred of decency. And he was applying it at the worst possible time. His retreat revealed truth. She wanted a bit of fun, a bit of pleasure.
With him.
She could roll too, and she did until she was curved around the back of him.
She wrapped her arm around his waist and reached for what she wanted.
When she found it, he hissed, his every muscle tightening.
She snuggled closer, learning the length and circumference of him.
When she found the nape of his neck, she inhaled—soap and man—not how a duke should smell—too plain—but certainly how he did. She kissed that nape, and he shivered.
“Are you certain?” he asked, his voice rough, his body poised and ready.
“Absolutely,” she breathed near his ear.
He had her beneath him before she could take another breath.
No doubt now. No room for it as he ripped the neck of her chemise down her shoulder, as he sat back on his heels to marvel at her.
His hands trembled as he reached for her, but the tremble smoothed to nothing but confident caresses by the time he reached her breasts.
Thumbs teasing circles round her nipples, palms cupping, fingers squeezing.
Oh, they were heavy with aching for everything he gave her, and she writhed beneath him.
So long. So long since she’d felt anything but guilt and misery and aching bones and muscle.
“Look at you,” he said, “so beautiful.”
What nonsense, what rot. “Say more.”
His trousers were slung so low on his hips, his shaft rose out of them, long and throbbing, and though he made her delirious with desire, she reached through the heated space between their bodies to grasp him.
He cursed and bucked and kissed her hard.
“Say more,” she pleaded against his mouth. The last words Percy had said to her had been ugly, and she wanted to wipe them away, replace them with something worth remembering.
He slid his body alongside hers and propped his chin into that valley between her breasts. Oh, his grin was wicked. Wicked and wonderful. “You are better than any illusion I could conjure. Your lips riper than any fruit. Your skin softer than any silk.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “You are entirely full of nonsense.”
“But you love it. You need it.” He kissed the soft valley where no one ever touched. Not anymore.
“I do,” she moaned, arching her back. He dragged his lips down her belly, dragged his fingers through the curls between her legs. She knew the magic he could conjure there with just his clever fingers.
He dragged his palms down her ribs, her waist, her thighs. He paused at her knees to stroke lines of pleasure at the bend of her knee. Who knew that hidden little fold could make her leap when touched just so. She’d not. And how wonderful to learn something new about her body after so many years.
Over her knee then and down her shin.
“Exquisite legs, I must say.” He kissed the inside of one ankle. “I want them wrapped around me.”
She moved to do just that.
He stopped her. “Not yet.” With a little pressure of the heels of his hands against her shins, he bent her legs and knelt between her knees. He blew a long slow breath across her cunny.
“Oh, yes, please.”
He did, setting his lips to her center, teasing her, parting her, delving and learning what he could do to make her tremble.
It didn’t take much. Why didn’t it take much? No rings to blame. The only magic between them the chemistry of their bodies together.
And that was scorching.
She rose so high she could not breathe, but every missed breath was a pleasure crashing through her, soaring her higher until she was pleasure itself, shaking and screaming beneath his touch.
She wanted to scream his name. But what name could she give him?
Duke? Morington? No. All wrong for this man.
“You devil,” she barely whispered as she floated feather like back into her body. She had to use every ounce of energy left in her to reach for his hair, to make a fist in the silky locks and tug on them.
He answered the tug and kissed his way back up her body, finding her lips, kissing those, too. “You devil,” she chuckled.
“Maybe. But I sent you to heaven.”
And who could argue that?