Chapter 20 #3
She stepped closer and put her hands on his chest, over the place where the void scarring had been, and felt his heartbeat under her palms. It was steady and strong, with none of the irregular quality that had frightened her so much during those first weeks of healing.
The channels she’d spent so much time repairing were whole now, running clean and deep, and his magic hummed beneath the surface of his skin with a vitality that told her the work had held.
“Your heart sounds good,” she said.
Was that a glint of amusement in those crystalline eyes? “You’re not on duty.”
“I’m always on duty.” She looked up at him. The lamplight was warm on both their faces, and the distance between them could be measured in the space between her palms and his skin, in the small distance her chin had to tilt to meet his eyes. “Occupational hazard.”
His hands came up to frame her face, the way they had that first time in the hallway of the old Victorian house, with the same care he brought to handling the most volatile objects in his collection.
But there was nothing volatile about this.
His fingers traced her cheekbones, and she turned her head slightly to press her mouth against his palm.
She felt his breath catch — a small thing, almost inaudible, but she was attuned to him in ways that went deeper than hearing.
Then he kissed her. It was slow and thorough, and it contained none of the urgency of that night when they’d come together out of desperation and the terrible knowledge that they were running out of time.
This was something else, something that knew it had tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.
His mouth was warm against hers, and she wound her arms around his neck and let herself sink into it, into the way he kissed, measured at first, almost analytical, and then less so as his self-control at last gave way.
They undressed each other one piece of clothing at a time.
His waistcoat first, because it was always first, her fingers on the buttons while he stood still and let her.
That was its own kind of surrender, the willingness to be tended to by hands that knew him.
Then his shirt was gone, and her hands were on his bare chest, his skin warm under her palms.
He pulled her T-shirt over her head and kissed the curve of her shoulder. The small gasp she made was quiet and involuntary and entirely unself-conscious. There was no need to be self-conscious around someone who accepted her so completely.
They found the bed. He lay back and she followed, the weight of her body against his familiar in a way that still had the power to surprise her.
She hadn’t expected familiarity to be so overwhelming.
His hands moved over her — her waist, her hips, the small of her back — with the careful attention of hands that had spent years handling dangerous, delicate things and which now touched her the same way, as though she was something worth being careful with.
She kissed his throat, his collarbone, the place over his heart where her magic knew him best. He made a low sound and his hands tightened on her hips.
She smiled against his skin; she’d discovered that the most controlled man she’d ever known became much less controlled when they were alone together like this, and that discovery continued to thrill her in a way she wasn’t sure she could really explain.
When he entered her, they both went still like they had the first time, not from hesitation, but from the simple need to be fully present for what was happening.
His eyes were open, and so were hers, and the look that passed between them during that silence wasn’t something she could have described to anyone else, not when it existed in a place that words didn’t reach.
Then they began to move together, his hand finding hers on the pillow.
Their fingers laced together, and she couldn’t help thinking about how strange and yet how right it was that the steadiest thing in her life was a man who’d spent nearly twenty years convinced that steadiness was something he would never be offered.
Afterward, he held her in the dark. The room was quiet except for their breathing and the faint hum of the collection below them, a sound that had become so much a part of the house’s atmosphere that she barely noticed it anymore.
His hand moved through her hair in the slow, repetitive motion she’d learned was his version of thinking out loud.
It wasn’t restless but contemplative, the way his hands moved over artifacts when he was reading their properties.
“Roslyn,” he said.
“Mmm?”
“I’m not good at this.”
She propped herself up on her elbow so she could see his face. In the dark, she could make out the strong lines of his profile, the fall of white hair against the pillow, the slight furrow between his brows that she suspected would be there even in his sleep.
“At what?”
He considered the question for a moment, as if he was selecting the correct word from a catalog of options, each one weighed and measured for accuracy. “Belonging somewhere.”
She lay back down and settled against him, her head on his shoulder and her hand on his chest. “You don’t have to be good at it.”
His brows drew together. “That seems improbable. Most things require competence to sustain.”
“Not this.” She leaned over so she could touch her lips to his shoulder, could taste salt and warmth on her tongue. “This just requires you to stay.”
He was quiet for a long time after she made that comment.
She let the silence hold because she’d learned that his silences were where the real work happened, the places where he turned a new idea over and examined it from every angle before he allowed himself to accept it.
His hand continued its slow movement through her hair as the house settled around them and the night wind sighed through the trees.
“Yes,” he said at last, and it was the simplest word he’d ever spoken to her, and the most complete at the same time. “I can do that.”
She closed her eyes. His heartbeat was steady under her ear. The collection hummed its low chorus below them, and outside, the November stars burned above the valley in the clear, cold sky that she’d missed every single day she’d been away from it.
She was home. And so, for the first time in seventeen years, was he.
The End