Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Desmond’s mouth crashed down upon mine. His tongue plunged into me with greedy, demanding strokes. His hand slid up my spine and splayed across my back, the heat from his palm burning into me as if the sturdy material of my frock were as insubstantial as a fleeting thought.
My fists tightened again around handfuls of his tunic.
My head tilted, granting me greater access to his mouth, and that one long kiss fractured into a dozen more, urgent and reckless, until we were feeding from each other with each salacious flick of his tongue across my lips, with each ravenous tug of his lip between my teeth.
I did not think.
I could not think.
This moment was not about thought. It was not about analysis, or reason, or planning. A fire burned between us, white-hot and blistering.
In alchemy, fire represented strong emotions such as passion, love, anger, and hate. Fire was yellow, orange, and red: bright, vibrant, flickering colors, constantly in flux as they released energy. Fire, written as an upward-pointing triangle, was considered hot and dry.
Hot, yes. Definitely. But dry seemed wholly inaccurate.
Fire was considered masculine, based on its destructive power alone, yet I’d never felt more like a woman in my life than I did with this blaze burning inside me, changing me as surely as flame changed every alchemical ingredient it touched.
Fire is alchemy. And alchemy is life.
This was my life.
I had no memory of it, and if I’d stopped to think about it, I would not have been able to identify a single bit of empirical evidence, but I knew—knew—that this was right, even if it had never happened before.
Desmond’s hands on my body…his lips on mine…
his tongue—the wet heat and the taste of him…
The fire burned, and it would consume me, as every flame consumes without thought—without reason or restriction—until its fuel is used up.
I knew that.
And I reached for it anyway.
I let go of Desmond’s tunic and slid my hands over his chest, my fingers finding familiar comfort in smooth planes and hard angles I had no memory of ever touching, until my hands slid behind his neck and locked there, anchoring my body to his.
Desmond groaned and turned us toward the empty workstation on my right. He lifted me onto the countertop, where I yipped from the cold seeping through my skirt.
He caught the sound. He devoured it, his hands trailing up my bodice, now that I sat higher. Now that his hands were both free.
I moaned when his mouth trailed from my lips toward my jaw, then down my neck. I leaned back on the table, my neck arched, and his left hand slid behind my head, fingers plunging into my hair, loosening my coiffure as he cradled my scalp.
My breathing felt ragged, every sensation heightened, as if one of Wilder’s elixirs had left my skin sensitive and my nerve endings ablaze. But there were no chemicals at work here. There was only Desmond.
And instinct.
“Why, in the name of utter anarchy, do you taste so good?” he murmured against my skin as he worked his way back up my throat toward my mouth. We kissed again, hands wandering, desperate, as I tugged his tunic up over his waistband.
He moaned as I ran my hands over his chest, beneath the material. Greedy, I pulled him closer, even as I nibbled again at his lips, hungry for something I could hardly even name. My hands slid around his back, then down, until my fingers dug beneath the waist of his pants.
Desmond pulled away, imposing a cold gap between us, staring down at me with his lips swollen and his gorgeous copper-brown eyes dilated. Breathing hard. Powerful muscles bunching beneath my hands as he resisted the same tension—the same need—driving me. “Do you want this?”
I nodded as my gaze trailed toward his chest, then lower.
“Amber.” He took my chin in his left hand and drew my gaze back to him. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “Assuredly, yes.”
The truth was that I wasn’t even sure what I was asking for. Certainly I knew, in theory. I also knew that I’d likely already done this. Though I could not remember it, the feeling was an instinct housed deep in my flesh.
In the moment, that seemed the real tragedy of my lost memory, alchemical theory be damned. I’d forgotten more than just schooling. I’d forgotten my own experiences. My life.
With a vast carnal ache driving me toward a culmination I could not remember ever having reached, all I really understood was that I wanted more.
I wanted to keep touching him. I wanted him to touch me.
I wanted to kiss him, and taste him, and I wanted the conclusion to this throbbing that pulsed within me, in scandalous places.
“Yes.” I said it firmly, holding his gaze.
He made that sound again, that hungry growl deep in his throat, and this time it tugged at something low and sensitive in my own body. It made me crave things I lacked the vocabulary to express and the boldness to demand, and…
Desmond lifted me from the counter and set me on my feet, leaning down so he could kiss me again, long, and hard, and deep.
Then he stood, pulling away from my mouth.
Leaving me panting. Urgently sucking in more oxygen to feed the flames.
He met my gaze, his burning with passion like I’d never seen from him.
Like I’d never imagined could exist in Desmond Gregory, with his stoic scowl, censuring gazes, and the intimidating breadth of his shoulders.
An ache throbbed between my legs, and my feet moved with an understanding—an instinct—my mind lacked.
I turned, my heart racing, and bent over the workstation, a bit in awe of my own bold invitation.
Desmond groaned. His hand caressed my lower spine, and suddenly I felt the warmth of him against the back of my thighs. Lifting my skirt.
My pulse roared in my ears.
My legs felt chilled, exposed so suddenly to the air, but then Desmond’s very proximity gently warmed me, as if his flesh glowed like banked coals through his own clothing. His hands felt scalding as they slid my linen undergarment down, letting the thin material pool at my feet.
I stepped out of the garment, gasping as his hot hand caressed my backside, then dipped between my thighs.
He stroked my most sensitive parts slowly, gently, and my thoughts scattered like leaves tossed by a fierce breeze.
The maelstrom refused to settle, each thought seized from my attention before I could interpret it, leaving me with only fleeting, primal impressions, entirely subjugated by an explosion of sensation far too intense to be sorted.
What I felt could not be understood. It could not be analyzed.
It could only be experienced.
“Close your eyes,” Desmond ordered in a fierce whisper, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.
I obeyed, and my entire existence narrowed to what I could feel.
The cold, smooth table leeching warmth from me through the front of my frock, cooling my overheated cheek.
The hard, straight edge of the work surface, cutting into my palms as I grasped it, anchoring myself to this last semblance of the real world as everything else churned around me, a seething storm of sensation.
And Desmond. I could feel him. The warmth of his body against my legs, and his palm on my back. His fingers…
“Oh,” I breathed as he stroked faster, circling. Teasing. He was diligent, certain of his task, and in no hurry, and yet I groaned, squirming with impatience. Arching toward him, too ravenous to be humiliated by the exhibition of my own need.
“More,” I demanded in a husky voice I’d never heard before. A voice I’d had no idea my throat could produce.
Desmond groaned. His fingers plunged inside me, and his groan deepened into an inarticulate plea.
Then, suddenly, he was gone, and I was left panting, arching toward him. I started to rise, and his hand landed firmly on my spine again. “Don’t…move,” he growled.
I heard the rustle of fabric, and suddenly he was back, his fingers stroking again. Teasing. Testing. He exhaled, a strange, needy sound, and his fingers were gone.
He slid inside me slowly, steadily, and for a single second the world seemed to still around me. As if all of existence had been distilled into this one moment. This one sensation.
Us.
In that moment, I was satisfied. Fulfilled, in a way I simultaneously craved like a habitual dependance and yet could not remember ever before feeling.
In the next moment, I was entirely unsatisfied.
“More,” I demanded again, pressing back against him. And with a moan, Desmond began to move.
His hands curled around my hips, guiding my movements until I understood—until my body remembered what my mind could not.
He gasped as I clenched around him, clutching the table. Arching up. Grinding back against him. Try though he might to take it slow, to draw pleasure out, my body would have none of it.
I needed something—I needed him, now—and it did not take long for him to understand.
He moved faster, stroking into me over and over, bruising my hips on the edge of the table, pushing me closer with every thrust. We raced toward a crest building quickly, mercilessly inside me, and yet the peak remained brutally out of reach.
“Please,” I groaned, frustration rivaling my arousal, and Desmond bent forward.
His hand snaked around the front of my thigh, and with his next thrust, he stroked my tenderest, most aching bit of flesh, drawing a groan from deep in my gut.
Altering my understanding of the sensations building within me.
My body clenched around him, and my breathing hitched. My very existence narrowed again to a single point of focus as pressure—pleasure—built toward a blistering peak, and then suddenly…
A single, infinitesimal point of ecstasy abruptly exploded into a million sparks burning brightly, followed by another wave of sparks, and another, and another, each pulsing within me even as the next burst forth.
My cry echoed through the room.
Desmond leaned over me, thrusting deeper, harder, even as his hand clamped over my mouth.
I bit his finger, still riding out the explosions, and he grunted as he released into me.
For a moment, we both lived in a still, quiet moment of post-release, a cluster of damp flesh and pounding hearts. Tangled clothing and gasping breath.
Then Desmond stepped back, and air cooled my overheated skin.
He perched next to me as I lifted myself onto the unused workstation, primly tucking my skirt around my legs.
He stroked damp hair back from my face and leaned forward to murmur something I could not clearly make out.
But it sounded a bit like “You are a burst of light in a dark room.”
I considered asking him to repeat it. To clarify.
Instead, I leaned back so I could see his face, searching it for something I might recognize. Any hint that I should have seen before, that any of this was possible. That Desmond Gregory, the distinguished Alchemary researcher, the surrogate older brother from my childhood, could also be this man.
This explosive force.
Looking at him from this close was a blistering sort of intimacy unlike anything I’d ever experienced, including the act we’d just shared. The brown of his irises was shot through with bright copper striations, which seemed to flicker with the lamplight.
He blinked lazily. He was not smiling, but he wasn’t scowling either.
He looked…exposed. Vulnerable.
I leaned forward, and he leaned in to meet me. “Again,” I whispered in his ear, and Desmond laughed, a deep, throaty chuckle.
“We cannot do that again here. We shouldn’t have done it here at all. Suppose someone had come in?”
“No one comes to your lab.” I’d worked there daily for two weeks and had yet to see another soul.
He frowned. “That is true, though I have no clear understanding of why.”
“It’s because they do not like you. You are gruff and severe, and your face is fixed in a permanent scowl.”
He scoffed, as if I were teasing. “That is not true.”
“It is. But I am unconvinced that it matters. The researchers all scowl, as if that’s the only expression their faces will form.
This is a cold, soulless building. It sucks the very joy out of what we practice.
So we should do that again, here. Everyone should be doing that here.
Because joy is life. Pleasure is life. And life is Alchemy. ”
He stared at me as if gibberish were my native tongue, and I’d just lapsed into it.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I demanded, tangling my fist in the loose tail of his tunic. Touching him, because I couldn’t not touch him.
But he seemed to have no answer. No words, in fact, at all.
I slid one hand behind his neck and pulled him down until I could whisper in his ear once more. “Again. I demand that you do that to me again, but…different.”
He groaned, and his breath hitched. “Different? An intriguing word, and, in this context, one which requires elucidation.”
My brows rose. “I have theories, about this act we’ve just performed. About the possibilities. And they need testing.”
“You have a theory.” One of his brows rose, briefly casting his natural skepticism as amusement. “About sexual congress.”
“Theories,” I corrected as his gaze locked intensely onto mine. “Plural. And you shall have to pay attention. Details matter.”
“Of course you have theories.” He slid from the surface of the workstation, holding my gaze even as he fastened his breeches. “Will you be taking notes?”
“Copious,” I assured him, sliding off the counter to reclaim my undergarment. “Someone wise taught me that accurate recordkeeping is vital.”
He laughed, gravelly and sincere, and the sound bounced around inside me, setting off an unspeakable ache at every point of contact. “Very well, then, Miss Fallbrook. But this kind of experimentation requires a different sort of laboratory.” He offered me one hand, and I took it. “Follow me.”