Chapter 37
When Darlington shut the kitchen door, the copper pans that hung above the stove swayed slightly, as if trying to remind these visitors that they were still here and wanted to be put to use.
Alex followed him through the vast dining room, the living room, and then on to the study.
She had thought of this house as a shipwreck, a bombed-out church, a hundred haunted things.
But she remembered the first time Darlington had brought her here, when she had believed it belonged to him rather than the other way around.
It had seemed so grand, shabby in the best ways, a secret castle defended by its only knight.
“I used to hate my father for abandoning this place,” Darlington said as he took in the study’s still-cluttered desk, the window behind it.
From the back he could be his grandfather, his great-grandfather, any of the Arlingtons who had made deals and fretted over the fortunes of New Haven in this room.
“Maybe he had the right idea.” Then he winced.
“That was a foolish thing to say after—”
“My dad tried to murder me roughly twenty minutes after he learned I existed?”
“Yes. Precisely that.”
“There are all kinds of bad fathers. We don’t have to play ‘who has the longest scar.’”
Alex didn’t know what else to say about it.
She wished her father could be more than he was.
She wished she could be something more too.
She studied the perfect line of Darlington’s profile, lit by nothing but the moon and its reflection in the snow.
This was the prince. This was the golden boy.
What did it mean if he was just as lost as she was?
“I keep coming back here,” he said, looking out over the grounds. “I’m not sure what I think will change.”
“Like going back to the refrigerator, hoping you’ll find something to eat?”
He laughed and she felt a rush of relief. “Not everything is about your stomach, Stern.”
“Not everything. Just the important things.” She stood beside him.
What was it like to look out at the land, at the march of the trees, and know they belonged to you?
That there was no mortgage to pay, or Alban Reed to please, that even if the roof fell in and you couldn’t afford to keep the heat on, it was still all yours?
“Maybe it’s not the place you hope will change. ”
“Probably not.” The corner of his mouth tugged up. “You told me I was pretty.”
A bolt of embarrassment shot through her. But really, who was she kidding? “You are. It’s annoying.”
Again he laughed and she felt like she had won a prize. She’d lifted Daniel Arlington V’s melancholy. Better than a winning scratcher.
“How did he do it?” Darlington asked, shaking his head. “My great-grandfather had a long, human life. He went to church every Sunday. How did he vanquish his demon when the rest of them failed?”
“You think there’s a secret there,” she realized. “An answer to how we beat Golgarot.”
“Reiter got eaten. Kittscher did too. Hector’s demon chased him into an early grave.”
“I don’t think that’s why Hec did what he did.”
“Then why?”
But Alex didn’t want to answer. She knew what it would mean if she told him.
They would call Dawes and Turner back to Il Bastone.
They’d put on a pot of coffee and scheme and argue, and she didn’t want to do any of that.
Because in the end, they’d be right back where they started.
She had glimpsed the nightmare that was coming.
She grasped the unlikelihood that she would survive it any better than Hector had.
And some voice inside her wondered if that wouldn’t be the universe setting itself to rights, the mistake erased, balance restored.
She didn’t want to talk about any of that.
Instead, she leaned forward and she kissed him. She knew it was a mistake, but she had always been too greedy, reaching for things she knew she had no right to. His lips were soft, cool, and startled. Then he was kissing her back.
She could feel the intense focus of him, his studiousness, his attention, all on her, his hand cradling her face, his long fingers cupping the nape of her neck, as if he were reading her closely, the most fascinating passage of a book he intended to commit to memory so that he might recite her in full.
She wished this could be her first kiss, her only kiss; here in the winter light of this room with the snow falling outside, she wished that no one had come before.
He drew closer, and she felt herself suddenly light and giddy as he lifted her and placed her gently on the edge of the desk.
She pushed aside the damp wool of his coat, letting him shrug it away, then reached for his sweater, wriggling it over his head.
Now there was just the cotton of his shirt, and she could feel the muscles of his arms, his back.
She felt when the demon took hold, felt his shoulders broaden.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
But she wasn’t and so she pulled his mouth back to hers and let him slide between the bracket of her knees.
She paused only long enough to yank her sweater over her head and then she was kissing him again and she felt a kind of wild happiness.
In this darkened house, she might be a girl he brought home on a date, might be someone he loved, might be someone who could dream of a future with him.
There was an easy confidence in Darlington, there always had been, and now that surety surrounded her, the heat of his mouth, the certitude of his hands as they traced her spine, as he gripped her hips and fitted her body against his. She felt a shudder of want flood through her, warm and welcome.
Alex let her hands slide beneath his shirt. She had never been with someone built like this, strong and perfect, less a man than the dream of what a man might be. He shivered and she dragged her fingernails lightly over his skin, wanting to feel his reaction.
“Alex,” he said, and she could hear the hunger in his voice. “Do you want—”
“Yes.”
“You can command me.”
“What if I want you to command me?”
He growled against her neck.
He pushed her back on the desk, sliding her jeans down her thighs, taking her panties with them. She was still in her boots, but she didn’t care, not when he buried his face between her legs and his hands took hold of her thighs.
“I dreamed of this,” he murmured against her, and then she only knew the pressure of his tongue, his fingers. She stopped thinking, and what a blessing that was.
Outside, snow had started to fall, and Alex let herself fall with it, lighter than she’d ever been, nothing and no one, the scrap of a star, pale as a ghost, drifting on the cold winter air, until at last she found a place to land and melted into nothing.