Chapter Forty-Three #2
She has spent so long running from herself. Running from everything that she has done, everything she became when the bookshop closed its doors to her. Lowell glides his fingers across the palm of her hand, stopping shy of her wrist.
“Maybe if it wasn’t me, there would have always been someone else. But I want you to know how deeply sorry I am,” she says, biting back a sob. “He was your brother and I—I’m sorry.”
He brushes his thumb across her face, wiping away a tear. “I know.”
They stay like that for a while, Cassandra fighting to regain control of herself.
The memories of that night break upon her, like waves on a shore.
Arthur, smiling at her just before they’d started.
Arthur, reading, the words clear if unsteady.
Arthur in her arms, the world stripped away to a singular spotlight of tragedy.
Then she takes a shuddering breath—and lets go.
Not truly; even if Lady Fate had ordained the reading in stone, Cassandra is still complicit.
The memories, the actions are still her own.
But the guilt has eaten away at her doggedly over these last months, to the truth, curled tight around her heart in its rocky carapace.
Except perhaps, now with the truth laid bare, the carapace cracked open, it isn’t quite so obliterating.
So instantly fatal to everything it touches.
Perhaps, now, she just has to live with it, bruised and vulnerable and there, like everything else.
“I’m not a thief anymore,” she adds, and her voice wavers only slightly.
“I figured,” he says, amusement tinging his tone.
“But…” She hesitates. “There’ll always be that part of me that remembers how to be a thief before anything else.”
There will always be the version of her that sees a wallet and calculates how to pry it from a man. There will always be the part of her willing to break a rule, to take that risk. To be the thing that an owner should not.
“Cassandra,” he says, and now she knows he’s teasing her, just a little. “A new owner, with an insider’s knowledge of the tributary bookshop, yet from seemingly nowhere? It wasn’t so difficult to connect some dots.”
He caresses the edge of her face, and something warm stirs within her. Though she hasn’t allowed herself yet to think about it too hard, Lowell is still wet from the rain, his translucent shirt revealing the ripple of muscle underneath. She toys with the edge of his cuff.
“I know my first impression wasn’t exactly stellar, either,” he says distractedly, his gaze following her hand. “I was such an ass.”
“You were very proper.” Her finger slides up a tendon in his wrist, taut like a violin string. “Mr. Sharpe.”
Lowell sucks in a sharp breath. “Oh God, Cassandra—”
She lets herself enjoy the way his teeth graze his lower lip, how he leans further in, hungry for touch. It turns out she loves Lowell Sharpe best of all when the polish has faded and all that remains is raw, barely restrained want.
“Lowell,” she says, a question, and he nods.
His throat bobs as she undoes the top button of his shirt, then the second one. Cassandra catches a glimpse of corded neck muscle, the divot at the top of his collarbone, the fine dusting of dark hair.
On the third button, his hands catch her wrists, and she glances up. His eyes are dark, liquid, burning.
His mouth is on hers. Ink and the sharp sweetness of mint, the bite of salt. He casts aside his glasses, and without them, his bare face is almost too intimate to behold. His hands are in control, slipping underneath her shirt, gliding upwards, then tantalisingly low. She bites her lip, hard.
Now it’s his turn to agonise her, as he takes his time easing her shirt from her. His thumb rests on her bra strap, teasing it lower. She shivers.
“I can’t believe you tortured me like this,” he says accusingly. “Over a book.”
In response, she kisses him again, deeper, and hungrier. He presses his mouth to her breast, and lightning fissures through her. He pulls her closer, chest, hips, thighs touching in all the ways she has so deliberately not imagined. When she reaches for the buckle of his belt, he groans.
They take their time parting each other from the rest of their clothes, taunting one another with every exquisite new inch. Until there is nothing left between them. Until that first shuddering gasp, and such a fierce, hungry, perfect joy.
Afterwards, they sprawl out on the rug in front of the hearth, the fire warm and bright. Cassandra can’t stop looking at Lowell. She’s stolen her fair share of glances, but now she simply gets to watch, a luxury she never thought she’d have.
He rubs his thumb against his lips thoughtfully—a sign that he’s about to broach a difficult topic. They have both held the outside world at bay for this evening, but now it’s creeping back in. And with it, questions.
“I don’t remember much of that night,” he says. “I just… I wish I had something of him. At the end.”
“You can ask me,” she says quietly.
He exhales, and she knows she was right.
“Tell me about Arthur,” he says.