Chapter 13
ERYX
All morning, I’d been trying to find a way to thank her for what she’d done for me in the garden.
To tell her that it had changed me to finally finish grieving Frannie.
That it had shifted something fundamental for me.
I wasn’t sure if I could try again with someone, but I thought if I was going to risk it with anyone, she was the only one who was worth it.
And before I could, she’d said all those things... We have eternity to deal with one another. To deal with one another? It had stung to hear her describe us that way, as though we were doomed already.
But then she said the words that unlocked her heart for me, though I was sure she didn’t know it—I can’t be the cause of more trouble. Rhiannon wasn’t saying no to being with me. She was saying no to herself.
In the time I’d taken to let my grief find its place within my heart, she’d been filling her head with the kinds of stories about herself that I was all too familiar with. I had to do this carefully. I needed to show her what things could be like between us. I needed to show myself.
That’s why I’d asked her to dinner… and then spent the rest of the day avoiding her so that she couldn’t walk her yes back. From upstairs, I heard the sound of the bathtub draining. My suit was hanging on the back of the downstairs powder room door. I’d just finished pressing it.
I listened carefully to the sounds of her getting ready from the couch I’d slept on when we first came to the cottage. Maybe if we both just let each other in a little, if we just tried, we’d find our way tonight.
We’d walked by the famous Paradiso restaurant several times over the past few weeks, and last week it had finally come to life.
I’d even gotten steaks to-go one night last week, just to see.
The steaks had been real, but the staff and patrons of the restaurant had barely noticed me.
It was the same as it had been with the post-lady.
If I spoke to them directly, they acknowledged me, but otherwise, they hadn’t been able to see me at all.
It was the perfect place for us tonight. Somewhere quiet. Romantic. A place to start over. I heard the sound of the closet doors opening upstairs. She was getting dressed. I got up off the couch and did the same. Five minutes later, I was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.
When she came down, she was an absolute vision in a white gown, made from some light, diaphanous fabric. The sleeves were long, but the front of the dress plunged deep between her breasts, gathering and flowing in all the most alluring places.
The fabric was not transparent, but I could see the outline of her body through it. Her hair waved away from her face, pulled back partially by sparkling combs. As she made her way down the stairs I could see the reflection of her bare back in the mirror on the landing. I let a slow breath out.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No,” I breathed. “You are magnificent.”
There was that blush I loved so much. My heart beat faster as she held out her arm as she reached the bottom of the stairs. I took it, lacing it through mine so that her body was tucked against mine, a perfect fit.
“You look lovely as well,” she said, glancing up at me.
Her teeth sunk into her rosy bottom lip for a moment, then she seemed to think better of that.
She pressed her lips together again, likely to make sure her lipstick wasn’t ruined.
It wasn’t, but I wanted to do things to her mouth that would muss it.
“I am so nervous,” she finally said, her fingernails digging into my bicep. Even that was so sensual I suddenly wanted to stay home. The fact that she was nervous nearly unnerved me.
“Me too,” I replied. “It’s been a long time since I took anyone on a date.”
Her eyes darted up, her brows furrowing slightly. “So, this is a date?”
I thought I might vomit. She didn’t know this was a date? “I mean… I hoped it would be, but if not…”
“No,” she said, practically breathless. “I want it to be.”
Calm rushed over me. That breathless tone. The way her skin had flushed. She wanted this too. “Oh, good.”
She let out a little laugh. “We’re a pair.”
I let myself get brave and slide my hand around her waist, my palm grazing the bare skin of her back.
The sound of her drawing in a tiny little breath had me hard in an instant.
I let my fingers slide down, feeling how deep that dip in the dress went.
She made that noise again and her nipples hardened behind the thin fabric of her dress.
Her eyes raised to mine, her long black lashes fluttering a little as I dipped beneath the edge of the dress, letting my fingers graze the spot right above her ass. I bent down, letting my lips brush her ear. “You could stop a man’s heart with a dress like this.”
Her back arched and I had a flashback to her on top of me in bed.
Saints it had been a trial to not touch her all these weeks, and now that my fingers grazed her skin I thought I might lose all control.
It was that exact moment that I realized Rhiannon was wearing only one thing—the dress. She had nothing on under it.
As I thought that, she smiled up at me, wicked and lovely. “You’re made of sturdier stuff than that, though, aren’t you Necroline?”
I flattened my hand against the small of her back, pulling her against me, dragging her body against the evidence of how far gone for her I already was. She let out another of those whispery little breaths.
“Plenty sturdy,” I assured her as I pushed her against the front door. “Now, if I kiss you here, we’ll miss dinner, and I’ll ruin your hair and makeup.”
“Yes,” she said, arching harder into me. “Ruin all of it.”
I ran my thumb across her bottom lip. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” she insisted.
“What if I want to eat out?” I asked with a smile.
Her tongue grazed my thumb, and she dipped her head to take the tip of it into her mouth. I growled in response, pressing myself harder into her. She was just so damn warm and pliable.
“Promises, promises,” she replied, slipping out from under me to open the front door. I had to adjust myself before stepping out to follow her into the night, grinning. Finally, Rhiannon Bronte and I were on the same page.
The restaurant was crowded with glittering patrons, though I didn’t recognize anyone. Everywhere I looked, there were flashes of sequins and furs, pinstriped suits from another age, gowns in styles popular just twenty years ago. It was as though time had collided at the Paradiso.
The spirits of Trinity luminaries were out in force.
I was sure of it. This was one of those places.
The dynasty higher-ups loved to come here to do deals.
There’d been more political murders at the Paradiso than almost anywhere else in the city.
It had always been a hotbed for depraved activity, and I was curious to know whose spirit still lingered here, but every time I attempted to focus on their faces, they blurred a little, or turned just before I could make out their features. It was an unsettling phenomenon.
Opera played in the background as the hostess seated us at one of the curved half-moon booths.
Rhiannon moved towards the back of the high-backed, tufted leather seat, candlelight diffusing all her features into a warm glow.
I slid in next to her as the hostess disappeared.
There were bullet holes in the richly paneled walls, just behind her head.
The blood of our people had soaked into the bones of the Paradiso over the years.
Ares and I had chosen not to come here very often. This was the kind of place that Magnus and Roman had frequented, and we were trying to do things differently. But being here now, I wondered if we’d made a mistake. Power thrummed through the walls of the restaurant. Even I could feel it.
There was a bottle of sparkling wine already open on the table, two glasses poured. Rhiannon took a sip from hers, scanning the room. “I’ve only been here once, twenty years ago.”
I nearly spit out my wine. “The night Lara was taken to the Asylum?”
She nodded, a wan smile on her face. Perhaps this had been a monumental mistake if it was going to make her think of her ex, and what had happened to her when the Authority had hauled her off to the Asylum.
“I don’t hold it against the restaurant, of course,” Rhiannon said, her smile brightening a little.
“You and Lara stayed close after you broke things off,” I said, changing the subject a little.
Rhiannon made a little noise. “In some ways. But she and Ember are really better friends with each other than either of them are with me.” I frowned.
That was not the impression I had of them.
To me, it seemed like they both depended on her more than that.
“It’s all right,” she assured me. “I’ve accepted that this is the way it is when you end things with someone and have to work with them for the rest of eternity. ”
She took another sip of her wine, and I tried not to draw connections between that and what she’d told me in the kitchen.
Rhiannon was so perceptive about so many things, but she sometimes didn’t understand how her words might affect others.
I wondered if that was because she thought herself unimportant.
The only thing to do was to show her I cared about her, about her past. “Can I ask why things ended?”
After a long breath, she answered. “We were a bad fit. Everything that was good between us was ephemeral. The bad stuff stuck. We nearly ruined each other, and our cohort, with our fighting. We actually work a lot better as friends. When there’s no sex involved, we seem to stay on the right side of things. ”
“Is that a struggle?” I asked, worried it might seem like I was interrogating her.