Chapter 7 #2
"I need the full document. The complete copy is in the Hadley collection, and I need Tom's accession number to find it. He won't give it to me."
"Then we'll get it another way."
"There is no other way. He's the bottleneck."
Severin turns from the laptop. The fury in him is quiet tonight, older than anything I've seen on his face before.
Fritz died comfortable. Fritz married Margarethe. Fritz inherited the family position and lived out his life with full knowledge of what he'd done. The only justice available is a partial confession written by his wife in handwriting so cramped it took a professional archivist to read it.
"Correcting the record is justice," I say. "Fritz's lie has stood unchallenged since the day he filed it. Breaking it open and proving what he did, proving who you are, that matters even if he's beyond punishment."
"Does it?" His voice is flat.
"Yes. It does. The historical record is the only court that's still in session."
He looks at me, and the flatness gives way to something sharper, something searching.
"You hide behind professional purpose like other people hide behind locked doors.
You'll fight for the truth of what Fritz did to me.
You'll fight for the evidentiary record.
You'll fight for the investigation. When are you going to stop building a case and admit that what's happening between us isn't journalism? "
The question cuts through every defense I've built since the first night I opened this door. He's right. I know he's right.
"It's both," I say. "The investigation is real. What I feel is also real. I'm capable of holding two things at once."
"Eliza loved me." His voice drops. "The Gate took her."
"And you think stopping now will change what I already feel?"
His hand closes around my neck. "No. I think every time I touch you, I care less about what the Gate wants."
"Then stop pretending this is protection."
His thumb presses over my pulse. "Not in here."
He lifts me before I can react. One arm under my knees, the other behind my back, and I'm cradled against his chest like I weigh nothing. The strength in it is new. On Night Four he couldn't have done this. Tonight his arms are solid and sure, and the authority in the gesture isn't a request.
He carries me down the hallway to the bedroom. My mother's bed, my mother's cottage, and the man my mother fled from is carrying me toward the only room in this house that doesn't belong to the investigation.
He sets me on the edge of the bed and stands in front of me, watching. Waiting.
"I'm choosing this," I tell him.
"I know you are."
I cross the distance myself. I put my hands flat against his chest and find silence where a heartbeat should be. The hollow of it reminds me what he is, even as the heat of his hands makes it hard to remember anything.
Then I drop to my knees.
The stillness that hits him is absolute. His hands freeze at his sides. He looks down at me with an expression I've never seen on his face, and for the first time since I've known him, Severin von Brandt has no idea what to do with a woman.
"What are you doing?" His voice is rough.
"Something you haven't experienced in 250 years." I unbuckle his belt, unbutton his trousers, and push them down far enough to free him. He's already hard. "Possibly longer."
"Ashley."
"Are you telling me to stop?"
A beat. Then: "No."
I wrap my hand around him first, and his breath leaves his body like I've punched it out of him.
Then I take him in my mouth, and the sound he makes is so raw and so unprepared that it changes the temperature of the room.
His hand finds the back of my head, not guiding, not controlling, just holding on.
His fingers curl into my hair and his breathing fractures.
He's harder than Night Four. Thicker. The heat of him against my tongue is new, and I take my time learning the shape of it, the weight, the way he swells when I press my tongue flat against the underside and drag it slowly from base to tip. I take him deeper and his entire body goes rigid.
His thighs tighten against my shoulders.
His grip in my hair tightens until it stings.
When I hollow my cheeks and suck, the sound that leaves him is guttural, raw, the sound of a man who has spent centuries in command of himself being unmade by a woman on her knees.
His hips push forward once, driving himself deeper into my mouth than I expected, and he catches himself immediately, fingers loosening in my hair as if he's afraid of what his body will do next.
"Stop." The command comes out strained. "Stop or this ends before I decide it does."
I look up at him with my hand still wrapped around him. He looks wrecked and furious and more dangerous than I've ever seen him.
"I didn't give you permission to do that," he says.
"I didn't ask."
He pulls me to my feet by the back of my neck. His mouth doesn't meet mine. Instead he walks me backward until my legs hit the edge of the bed, and a single push against my sternum puts me flat on my back.
"You don't move until I tell you to move," he says.
He strips my shirt over my head without fumbling. My bra follows. He doesn't ask permission and doesn't pause.
His lips drop to my collarbone, then lower, and when they close around my nipple the heat of it sends a jolt straight down my center. His tongue is slow, circling while his palm presses flat against my stomach to keep me still.
The command pins me as effectively as his body.
He takes his time with my breasts, one then the other, his mouth thorough and unhurried while the ache between my legs builds into something with weight and urgency.
My hips roll toward him before I can stop them, and he clamps down on my hip bone hard enough to freeze me in place.
"What did I say?"
"That I don't move."
"Then don't."
He removes his own clothing and the remainder of mine. The cool air against bare skin makes me gasp, and then his fingers are between my legs and coherent thought becomes a luxury I can no longer afford.
He finds me wet and swollen. He puts his fingers to work.
He doesn't rush. He builds pressure with the patience of centuries, circling and pressing while he catalogs every response. When I arch against him, he pins my hip to the mattress with his free palm and holds the pace steady.
"You're analyzing me again," he says.
"You're a dead man getting warmer under my hands. Analysis seems appropriate."
His fingers go still. "Then report accurately."
"Your temperature has increased. Your touch is sharper. You're harder than last time." I hold his gaze. "Your control is deteriorating."
"My control is exactly where I want it."
"Prove it."
His grip tightens in answer.
His thumb finds my clit and presses with a slow, devastating focus while two fingers curl inside me, and the combination tears a moan out of me that I feel in my spine.
He watches my face while he works me, reads every shift in my reaction.
He adjusts pressure and speed with the focused attention of a man who treats this like command: total authority, total responsibility for what happens under his hands.
"Say it," he tells me. "Say what changed."
"Your hands." My voice comes out wrecked. "The heat. You're warmer than last time. I can feel your pulse through your fingertips."
His grip falters for one breath. His fingers go tight enough to bruise, harder than intended, and he releases instantly, adjusting back to control. Returning sensation has made him stronger faster than it has made him precise.
"Keep talking," he says, and his voice is raw at the edges.
He builds the orgasm with the patience he brings to everything.
I feel it gathering low in my belly, tightening with each stroke, and when it breaks, it breaks hard.
My body bows off the mattress. His free hand presses my hip down, keeping me open, keeping me still, making me take every second of it while his fingers keep working.
"Don't you dare close your eyes," he commands.
Pleasure is easy. Letting him watch me surrender to it is something else entirely.
He doesn't give me time to recover. He positions my hips at the edge of the bed and pushes into me while the aftershocks are still rolling through my body.
The fullness of him is different tonight. The last time he was inside me, he was pressure and outline, sensation experienced through a layer of distance. Tonight every point of contact is specific.
I feel the stretch as my body adjusts to him, the exact angle he's chosen. When he's fully seated, a low, rough groan escapes him, stripped of every pretense he's carried all night.
"Keep looking at me," he says. "You chose this."
He pulls back slowly and drives forward, and the headboard strikes the wall.
"Tell me what I couldn't make you feel last time," he says. His voice is ragged. "Tell me what this feels like."