17. The Library That Isn’t A Library
Chapter seventeen
The Library That Isn’t A Library
Three in the morning was the hour Eli had been telling himself he’d wait for.
The trail-sigil was already on the workbench.
He’d drawn it slow, the tremor in his off-hand pressed against the underside of the wood so the working hand could draw clean.
The ink at the outer ring was still wet.
Tara’s bayou stabilizer ran around it in two concentric chalk circles.
He’d used her chalk. He’d asked her if he could.
Take whatever you need from this box, Voss, she’d said. The voice she’d been using for him since the comforting brush of understanding hand in the afternoon. The voice that wasn’t committed to anything and had stopped pretending it wasn’t committed to something.
He bolted the door at the top of the stairs from the inside.
He sat at the workbench. He laid his palms flat on either side of the spellwork.
He breathed.
The silver thread at his center tightened a quarter degree. He let it tighten.
He set the working in motion the way Tara had taught him. Without rushing. Without forcing. The bayou stabilizer lit up under the chalk in a slow warm seam he could see at the edge of vision. The trail-sigil at the center answered.
The architecture rose.
That was the only word he had for it. The bond didn’t open with the working. It built. Eli watched it build from inside his own chest. Walls. Ceiling. A place neither of them had been before.
A library came up around him at the edge of perception and resolved.
***
Three walls of shelves running up to a ceiling higher than any ceiling he’d stood under in his life.
Candles. A stone hearth with a fire he hadn’t built.
Books in languages older than Sumerian, Aramaic and Nod.
His historian’s brain noted the impossibility and, for the first time in his life, decided not to comment on it.
She was already there.
She was at the long oak reading-table at the center of the room, in a dark green wrap dress he’d never seen her wear, hair down across her shoulders, her hand flat to the wood. She lifted her head.
“Hi, Eli,” she said.
“Serena.”
“You built this.”
“Tara and I built it. The architecture is mine. The stabilizer, foundation, is hers.”
“Tara’s with you?”
She walked around the table and stopped beside him. The silver thread stirred the second she got close. He could feel the strain in her through it now almost as clearly as his own body. Exhaustion. Anger. The careful steadiness she’d been carrying since her last bout with Marcus.
“Eli.”
“Yes, beautiful.”
“I don’t have a lot of time.”
“I know.”
“He tried to take... He’ll be back.”
“I know.”
“Tell me why we're here.”
He took her face in his hands.
“I’m going to tell you what I plan to do,” he said. His thumbs along her cheekbones. His forehead against hers. “Stop me if you want me to stop. Tell me to skip if you want me to skip.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to undress you first.”
She closed her eyes. Her hand came up to his wrist.
“Then I’m going to put my mouth on the place at your throat where Jasper put his. And the dip of your collarbone where Callum put his. And the inside of your thigh where I put my hand in the grove.”
She made a sound at the back of her throat.
“Then I’m going to put my hand between your thighs and make you come on it. Once. Something for you to hold on to until we get there.”
“Eli.”
“Then I’m going to put my mouth where my hand was and make you come a second time. You can hold on to that, too.”
“Eli.”
“Then I’m going to put my cock inside you and make you come a third time. That one’s going to have my voice in your ear and my arms around you and my hand on your ass.”
“I want all of it: all of you, Eli."
“There’s one more thing after that. Before I let you go. I’m leaving a mark, a sigil on the inside of your thigh.”
She opened her eyes.
“It’s not a claim, beautiful. It’s a way home.”
She nodded once.
He got to work.
***
He undressed her the way he’d said.
The wrap dress untied in his hands. His palm spread flat to the bare skin of her back as the fabric fell open. His other hand found the bra strap at her shoulder and slid it down the line of her arm. She watched his face. She didn’t help. She let him do every piece of it in the order he’d told her.
When she was naked, he stepped back half a pace to look at her.
The wolf in him went still.
Two days of careful restraint vanished in a single breath.
“You’re staring.”
“Yes.”
He took her in. The dark gold of her skin in the firelight.
The narrow rise of her ribs. The bruise his brother had left at the dip of her collarbone, warm and dark and entirely hers.
The fingerprint shadows at her hips where Jasper had held her in the grove.
The fresh blood-bruise at the side of her mouth where Marcus had hit her tonight, soft at the edges because the bridge wasn’t real and her body had decided how it wanted to show up here.
Her mouth was beautiful. Her typically luminous eyes were present but carried the haze of exhaustion.
He stepped back into her.
He kissed the place on her throat where Jasper had been.
Slow. He moved his mouth across the line of her collarbone to the dark bloom Callum had left.
He held his lips to the bruise of his brother’s kiss for the length of three slow breaths.
The bond hummed the brindle frequency that was Callum’s and the gold frequency that was Jasper’s and the silver that was his own, three notes ringing into a single hymn.
She had her hand fisted in his hair.
He went lower. He put his mouth to her breast. He took her nipple slowly.
Drew on it. Worked it with his tongue. Used his teeth at the edge until her hand fisted tighter and a sound came out of her he was going to be hearing for as long as he lived.
He moved to the other side and gave it the same patience. Her other hand fisted in his hair.
He kept going down.
The curve of her hip. The dip of her navel. The soft inside of her thigh where he’d put his hand in the grove yesterday. Her thighs trembled once under his mouth before he slid his palm up between them.
She was slick.
She was wet enough that the heel of his hand had her on it before he’d done anything else. He held himself there for a moment. He watched her face.
Her eyes were open. Her mouth was open. Her breathing was completely different from where they had been thirty seconds ago.
He slid one finger in.
Her whole body bowed off the table.
“Eli.”
“Yes.”
“You’re teasing me.”
“Hmmm.”
She writhed against his hand
“Slow down, beautiful. I’ve waited a long time to have you all to myself.”
She made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob.
He added a second finger. The stretch made her gasp.
His thumb found the place that mattered.
He worked it nice and slow. She was so wet her honey was running down his fingers, creating a pool in the palm of his hand.
He placed his mouth on her inner thigh. He set his teeth at the edge of her pulse without pressing.
He curled his fingers.
She came on his hand harder than he’d expected her to.
She came with her thighs locked around his wrist and her hand fisted in his hair, and the silver thread sang the whole wave through with her, and Eli held her through every second of it with his thumb still moving in tiny circles and his mouth trailing kisses across her stomach.
When she came down, he kissed the place his teeth had been.
“That’s one,” he said.
“Eli.”
“That’s one, beautiful.”
He laid her down on the table.
***
Books moved themselves out of his way because the library was his architecture and was his to ask things of.
He spread her legs and slid all the way down between them. He looked up at her once, and she looked back at him through eyes that were warm and tired and hungry, and he put his mouth on her.
He’d thought about doing this with her at least fifty times a day since the day she’d first pulled into their drive.
In the small private hours when he’d been trying to go about his work, she’d intruded on his every thought; possessed his every waking moment just looking at him the way she looked at him.
He worked the same place his thumb had been working.
Slow strokes of his tongue. Long, patient.
Flicking at the little pink peak, before working his way back down.
Her hand came down and fisted in his hair and held him there.
Her thighs trembled at the sides of his head.
He took his time.
He ate her pussy, savoring every taste as if she were a rare gourmet treat. Her thighs trembled around his ears. Her hips tried to come up off the table. His hands held them down. He let her get almost-there. Then he slowed. Then he made her almost-there for longer.
“Eli.”
“Yes.”
“Please.”
“In a minute.”
“Eli.”
“In a minute, beautiful.”
He went back to the steady pace that had built the first one.
He added two fingers inside her at the same rhythm his tongue was working.
She was tight and slick around them, and the angle of his fingers and the work of his tongue and the sound she was making in her throat all came together at once, and she came the second time with her thighs locked around his head and her hand pulling at his hair and a sound coming out of her mouth that was halfway between his name and a curse.
He stayed where he was through every wave. He didn’t lift his head until her hands eased.
“Two,” he said. Quiet. Against the inside of her thigh.
“Eli.”
“Two, Serena.”
He came up over her.
***
She wrapped her legs around his hips.
He hadn’t undressed himself. The architecture accommodated. He was bare against her where it mattered, his heavy, hot cock pressed against the inside of her thigh, and her hips came up off the table to find him.
He pushed into her with all the careful precision he had lavished on her at every single part.