CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT #2
She looked down at him. “Do not sound pleased with yourself while injured.”
“I contain multitudes.”
Duncan’s hand slid from her neck to the buttons at the back of her dress.
He stopped.
“May I?”
The question undid her more effectively than any command could have.
“Yes.”
His fingers moved with care. Button by button.
No rush, no presumption, only the soft loosening of fabric and breath.
Archie watched him do it, and the heat in his face made Ceci feel beautiful in a way that had very little to do with the dress falling open at her shoulders.
When the dress slipped lower, Duncan’s hand steadied it.
His knuckles brushed the bare skin between her shoulder blades.
Ceci shivered.
Archie saw and went still with satisfaction.
“Careful,” she said.
“With which of us?” Archie asked.
“Yes.”
That made Duncan laugh softly. The sound passed over her skin.
Ceci turned and caught his mouth again. This time, she was less careful.
Duncan answered at once, one hand at her back, the other at her waist, drawing her closer as though he had finally given himself permission to want the shape of her beneath his hands.
Archie’s fingers closed around her wrist.
The feather.
He pushed the sleeve back until the small black mark showed. Then he kissed it again, as he had in the gallery, with the same startling reverence.
It was not enough.
Ceci felt it in the way Archie held himself still, as if desire had become another injury he was trying to manage politely. His body wanted what his ribs would not allow him to chase. The knowledge went through her with a fierce, tender clarity.
She broke her kiss with Duncan and looked into his eyes.
He understood before she said a word.
Duncan’s hand stilled against her stomach. “Ceci.”
“I want to.”
Archie’s eyes opened. The humor left him so quickly it made him look younger for half a second, exposed and startled by wanting.
“You don’t have to make a mercy of me,” he said.
“I’m not.” She shifted carefully, keeping away from the bruise dark across his ribs. “I want to see you stop hurting for five minutes.”
Something moved across his face.
Duncan’s hand slid higher, over the loosened front of her dress, his palm resting just beneath her breast as if he needed the warmth of her there while he watched Archie understand. His thumb brushed the soft underside of her through the fabric, slow enough to make her breath catch.
Archie saw. His mouth parted.
Duncan bent close to her ear. “If you want his mouth, his hands, or mine to stop, you say so.”
“Yes.”
“And you,” Duncan said to Archie, his voice gone lower, steadier. “You lie still.”
Archie swallowed. “That feels less like care and more like a command.”
“It is both.”
The words struck all three of them.
Ceci moved before she could lose her nerve. She kissed Archie first, deeply, tasting the laugh he tried to make and failed. Then she kissed his jaw, the hollow beneath it, the open collar of his shirt, avoiding the bruise with careful reverence. Her hand moved lower over the flat of his stomach.
Archie’s breath broke.
Duncan gathered her more firmly against him.
His hand slipped inside the loosened bodice of her dress, not hurried now, not teasing, simply claiming the place where her body had already answered.
He cupped her breast, his thumb passing once over the tightened peak, and Ceci felt the answering pull low in her belly.
He touched her as she touched Archie, as if every act had to pass through all three of them.
“Ceci,” Archie said.
She looked up.
He had gone utterly still against the pillows, one hand twisted in the sheet, eyes bright and almost disbelieving.
“May I?” she asked.
A flush rose along his throat.
“Yes.”
The word was barely audible.
She unfastened him with hands that shook more than she expected. Duncan stayed behind her, one arm around her waist now, his mouth at the back of her neck. He did not hurry her. That made the wanting sharper. It gave the moment weight.
Archie watched her as if the sight alone might finish him.
Ceci lowered herself between his thighs. She kissed him first through the linen, slow enough that his head tipped back against the pillow. Then she drew the fabric aside and took him into her hand.
The sound he made was wrecked and beautiful.
Duncan’s breath changed behind her.
“There,” he said softly. “Let her.”
Archie gave a broken laugh. “I am making every heroic effort.”
“Make fewer.”
Ceci smiled despite herself, then bent her head.
The first touch of her mouth silenced him completely. His hand flew toward her hair, stopped halfway, then curled uselessly against the sheet as if he had remembered his orders. She took pity on him and guided his hand herself, setting his fingers lightly in her curls.
He looked at her then with such naked gratitude that her chest tightened.
She took him deeper.
Archie’s whole body shuddered, then stopped short with pain. Ceci drew back at once.
“Ribs?”
“Pride,” he said hoarsely. “Mostly.”
“Archie.”
“All right. Ribs. A little.”
Duncan reached past her and laid one firm hand at Archie’s hip, holding him down without force. “Then let her do the moving.”
Archie stared at him.
The room shifted again.
Ceci felt the command in Duncan’s voice pass through Archie’s body, then through her own.
Archie’s fingers flexed in her hair, careful now.
Duncan’s hand remained at his hip. His mouth moved to Ceci’s shoulder, then to the bare skin at the edge of her bodice, where her dress had slipped lower.
He kissed her there once, open-mouthed and reverent, while she lowered her mouth again.
This time Archie did not move.
He obeyed.
That undid her almost as much as the taste of him, the heat of him, the impossible intimacy of having him helpless beneath her while Duncan held them both inside the same command.
Ceci found a rhythm that made Archie’s breathing turn ragged.
Hand and mouth. Slow pressure. Softer when his ribs pulled at him.
Deeper when his fingers tightened in her hair.
Duncan kissed her shoulder. “That’s it.”
The praise went through her like fire.
Archie heard it too. His eyes opened, dark and dazed, and found Duncan over her shoulder.
“Don’t sound so pleased with yourself,” he managed.
“I am pleased with her.”
Archie’s breath hitched. “Yes. God. So am I.”
That answer seemed to take the last clever thing from him.
Archie’s head fell back against the pillows. His hand tightened in Ceci’s hair, careful even in the grip, and then reached blindly past her shoulder for Duncan.
Duncan caught his wrist first, then bent over Ceci’s back and took Archie’s mouth.
There was nothing careful in that kiss. It was deep, hungry, wet, almost angry with relief.
Archie opened for it at once, a sound breaking low in his throat as Ceci kept him in her mouth.
Duncan kissed him harder for that sound, one hand braced beside Archie’s shoulder, the other sliding back to Ceci, fingers spread over her back as if he could feel both their bodies answering through her.
Archie tried to lift into the kiss and winced.
Duncan followed him down at once, refusing to let him chase anything that hurt. He kissed Archie where he lay, mouth open and demanding, holding him there with pressure and will.
Ceci felt Archie’s body change beneath her hands. The effort went out of him. The performance. The last bright scraps of deflection. He gave himself over to both of them with a shudder that moved through his thighs, his stomach, the fingers tangled in her hair.
Duncan broke the kiss only enough to speak against Archie’s mouth.
“Let her have you.”
Archie’s eyes opened, dazed and dark.
Ceci drew him deeper.
His answer came apart before it became words.
His hand tightened in her hair, then gentled at once.
Duncan kissed him again, swallowing the broken sound Archie could no longer hold back, and Ceci felt the whole of him gather under her mouth: want, relief, pain, trust, the dreadful fear of nearly losing the room and everyone in it.
Then Archie surrendered.
He came with a rough, helpless sound against Duncan’s mouth, one hand shaking in Ceci’s hair as pleasure broke through him. Duncan held the kiss through it. Ceci stayed with him, slower now, tender now, until Archie’s body softened beneath her hands and the last tremor passed out of him.
When Duncan finally lifted his head, Archie looked ruined in the lamplight.
Ceci swallowed, then pressed a kiss to the inside of his thigh.
Duncan’s hand came to her cheek.
She looked up at him, breathless, flushed, still close enough to Archie that she could feel the lingering tremor in his body. Duncan bent slowly, giving her every chance to turn away, though his eyes told her he already knew she would not.
The kiss he gave her was deep and reverential.
Ceci opened to him at once. Duncan made a low sound against her mouth as he tasted Archie on her tongue, and the sound went through her with shocking force.
His hand slid into her hair, careful and possessive at once, holding her there while he kissed her as if she had become altar, witness, and temptation all in the same breath.
Archie watched them through half-lidded eyes, wrecked and smiling faintly, one hand still loose in the sheets.
Duncan drew back only far enough to rest his forehead against Ceci’s.
“You beautiful woman,” he said, voice rough.
Ceci’s breath caught.
Behind her, Archie stared at the ceiling.
“I have,” he said faintly, “reconsidered several theological positions.”
Duncan laughed under his breath and touched Archie’s cheek with two fingers.
As he caught his slowing breath, Archie touched her face. “Stay with us.”
“I am.”
“No.” His thumb brushed her cheek. “Here. In this room. No gate. No Voss. No century.”
Her throat tightened.
Duncan’s arm firmed around her. She closed her eyes and let herself be held between them.
For a few minutes, that was the whole miracle.
Breath slowing. Skin warming. Archie’s heartbeat beneath her palm.
Duncan’s mouth resting against her hair.
The house beyond the locked door carrying on without them.
Then Ceci opened her eyes. The window had gone silver. At first, she thought it was moonlight.
Then the glass trembled.
A faint shimmer moved through the reflection of the room, so subtle she might have missed it if fear hadn’t already trained her body to notice wrongness first. She sat up too fast. Archie cursed under his breath and caught his ribs.
Duncan was on his feet before either of them spoke, reaching for his shirt, then the lamp.
“What is it?”
Ceci stared at the window. For one second, in the dark beyond the reflected fire, she saw the red gate. Impossible from this side of the house. Impossible from this distance. Impossible as an image and present all the same.
Then it vanished.
The room returned. Glass. Curtains. Night.
Her skin went cold.
“The gate,” she said.
Archie had gone white beneath the warmth still lingering in his face. “Here?”
“No. I saw it.”
Duncan crossed to the window and looked out over the lawn. “There’s nothing.”
“I know what I saw.”
“I believe you.”
The speed of that answer nearly broke her. Archie pushed himself upright, careless of pain now. “Vale said synchronization could let travelers feel disturbances in advance.”
Duncan looked back at him.
Then at Ceci.
The room, so warm moments before, seemed to sharpen around them. Ceci clutched the loosened front of her dress to her chest. “It’s starting.”
No one answered.
Because somewhere below, in the deep quiet of Hawarden after midnight, the front doorbell rang.
Once.
Long and hard.
A summons.
Duncan moved first.
Archie caught his wrist. “Together.”
Duncan looked at him, then at Ceci. The word did not need to be said again.
Ceci reached for her dress with hands that had begun to shake for a different reason now.
Duncan helped her with the buttons at her back, swift and careful.
Archie dragged his shirt back over his shoulders, face tight with pain but eyes clear.
The bell rang again.
Margaret’s voice carried faintly from below, low and furious.
Then a man’s voice answered. Ceci knew it before the words reached them.
Duncan knew because of her face. Archie knew because Duncan had gone still.
The night had not given them an aftermath.
It had given them a threshold. Ceci felt Duncan fasten the last button at her neck and looked at both men.
“Voss.”
Archie reached for his jacket.
Duncan unlocked the door.
And together, the three of them went down.