Chapter 11 #2
He frowned. “He’s in Sandover right now, looking into a smuggling ring there.
Three hundred miles is a bit far for a chat.
But I have Octavia’s address. Perhaps you can locate the brief there.
” He paged through his papers, organized and neat as they were.
“Here it is. A rental. No servants. She barely had the funds for a facade.”
I took the paper. “Thank you, John.”
I was thanking him for more than just the address, and he seemed to know it. He nodded solemnly. “I know you’ll find the bastard.”
I ran those words through my head as I walked home, along with his parting ones: Are you going to tell Marietta?
No.
It had to be this man, this nearly faceless servant. It couldn’t be someone I knew or loved. It couldn’t be someone from Marietta’s family. We would both be pleased at the end. Free to do whatever we wanted.
If only I could convince myself of that. If only I could keep my mind from churning over escape routes and contingencies.
I forced myself to think of Thorne Worley. Of the man I would catch, the man who would confess to everything. Cause to celebrate tonight—to take back the control that had slipped from my fingertips this morning.
With every step I convinced myself more and more. I recognized the irony of the delusion, but forced that section of my mind to lie dormant. I had always been a realist. A disgusting survivor.
I hated the weakness. The fear. I had thought them stamped out long ago.
Anger surged. I would catch the servant and bury these weak emotions six feet down where they belonged.
I would hunt Thorne Worley.
I shed one set of emotions for another. Brushing up on my hunting skills—I smiled wickedly, ignoring a passing girl’s gasp—was a task I could enjoy tonight.
~*~
MARIETTA
Sitting in the kitchen, absently pawing through papers and fuming, I waited. I was back earlier than expected, obviously.
Ferris had vacillated between raving and staring, so I’d told him to behave like a grown man, read him the list of rules, and left in disgust.
So yes, back far earlier than expected. Gabriel was nowhere in sight.
Not going to do anything exciting—just going to sit here and pore over legal documents—the liar.
I knew he looked shifty earlier. Was he investigating without me? What if he met Dresden and I wasn’t there to save him?
I picked up a note from Phineas that listed the first victim’s former name: Iris Forester. The name was vaguely familiar in the way fringe society names were.
Remembering titles, talents, natal, and married names was madness.
A gilded could be addressed in a hundred ways—based on their own talent, a powerful husband or wife’s moniker, or their natal line.
Shifting societal factors created a thousand ways to trip the unwary into ruin.
It was enough to send a mage to Shatterfield for mind work.
It was so overwhelming a task that there was a spell for it. Spells could be seen, however, so slipping one in unnoticed meant mixing it with others at precise measure. Social memory minders were frequently embedded in glove charms for cleaning and softening—since everyone needed those.
Memorizing each title and form of address was a task undertaken by only the most diligent social mavens. The ones who used no spells in introductions or greetings and prized that as a sign of might.
I had never cared to spend the magic or memory on any of it. Another failing. A deep one.
Instead of keeping abreast of the gossip, I had focused on keeping us fed.
The front door opened and banged shut. Measured footsteps clicked down the hall. Gabriel came into view, hair mussed and windblown, eyes dark and predatory.
The image of a hunter who had finally found his prize.
I sprang from my chair. “You said you weren’t leaving. Where did you go? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He strode forward and kicked my chair aside. One moment I was standing, the next I was flat on my back on the table, papers crinkling beneath.
“What—”
I barely took another breath before he tossed up my skirts and pushed my legs up and out. His mouth pressed against the core of me and power flooded through me. Waves of it. Dear. Spirits.
A sound tore from my throat and out between my lips.
I bucked against him as he licked one broad stroke, then another.
I didn’t have time to ask him what he was doing, to be mortified at what he was doing, as all thoughts to his mouth.
Papers bunched beneath my fists and my head arched so far back that my shoulders no longer touched wood.
His arms hooked beneath my legs as he buried himself between. His tongue thrust inside, his lip pressed, his thumb circled, his magic pulsed through me, and ohdearspirits I was flying and dying as my hips bucked upward and papers tore beneath my hands.
I panted on top of the table, legs shaking and forehead damp. What in heaven’s name had just happened? What was that?
He pulled me forward and took me in a demanding kiss. Drugged and sated, I could only hold on tight, legs splayed, as he kissed the spirit right out of me and then refilled me with more.
He tasted like me. It was a strange thought, but I couldn’t be unnerved by it when the absolutely clever things he was doing to me blocked all thought.
“You are going to let me have you, aren’t you, Marietta?”
The wobbling of my head must have said yes, because a triumphant light lit his eyes.
“The thought of tossing your skirts up consumed me all the way home. Today has dealt quite the emotional upheaval. I discovered some interesting information. Do you want me to tell you about it?”
“Yes.” My brain started to right itself.
“How should I deliver it? Information between kisses?” He sucked my bottom lip between his and his hands moved to cup my rear against the table. “The most pertinent items as I’m filling you?”
Scrambled thoughts crossed as he pulled me against him, the aching parts of me he had just devoured pressed tightly to his thickened trousers.
“Or is it morbid to talk about these types of things while making love? Most likely.” He was the seducer once more.
A man in control. Whatever had ailed him had been suppressed by the shadows lurking behind bright green eyes glinting with promises of pleasure.
“But we are closer now, Marietta. Soon we’ll have everyone cleared and there will be no more family worries. ”
A strange comment. Phrased oddly.
“What did you just do to me?” My breath came fast. Of all the things demanding answer, that was the question I asked? But, spirits, the rush of magic.
“I tasted you. I’m not displeased to say that you taste exactly as promised. Strong and sweet.”
Flabbergasted and hot, the clutched butterflies that had been born the night I met him—the ones that had returned fuller and brighter after being scattered to pieces last night—beat more furiously against cracking binds.
“That was a quick taste, though. Furious. Should we slow it down and try again? I wouldn’t want to disappoint.”
“You couldn’t,” I said faintly. I was trying to read his eyes, which always told the truth, through the haze clouding mine. His words were the practiced ones of an extraordinary rake, but his eyes were hot. The cynicism in them tempered by real passion.
I wasn’t ashamed to admit that his practiced words would have been enough alone.
False as his words might prove, it was hard to believe that even the most stalwart of women wouldn’t succumb—wishing to be special enough to gain such attention from such a man.
But the look in his eyes made his words pale in comparison.
My chest, my throat, my cheeks were on fire.
Scorching heat that leaped right from his green eyes into my skin.
My wrist pulsed.
“Good.” He unbuttoned my dress and let the pieces hang as he laid me back on the table, spreading me across the surface.
The silk ties on my stays were next. “I could use a magic unbinding charm on these, the one taught to maids from infancy. Or make you do it. Did you try one this morning to lace them up? With the magic you were unable to access before. Do you want to free yourself from these binds with the magic I can feel unlocking from its own? Or should I simply do it by hand, one string at a time?” One pulled cord, slithering across my skin and through a bolt, then the next.
He touched my exposed skin as he circled the table, fleeting touches that left lingering lines of magic.
He kissed a stripe up my chemise and the material dissolved beneath whatever magic he was using, splitting to give him full access.
“I’ll buy you more.” His fingers gripped my hair at the nape, arching one breast into his mouth. Thrill and heat.
“I haven’t had dinner yet. This looks like the most marvelous feast I’ve ever seen.
” The rational part of my mind said I was far too bony and gangly to be attractive.
The rest of me took a blacksmith’s hammer and beat that part of my mind into submission as his warm breath ghosted over my skin.
“I don’t know where to start. Everything looks so delicious. ”
He drew a finger over my breast. I followed his path, the rise and fall of my chest in continuous motion.
“Your dress, your stays, your chemise. All removed. Should I have kept them on? Let the layers of cloth rub together? Let the silk rub your skin? Let the linen perk your nipples? Have them become taut and peaked and grasping for my touch?”
My chest heaved. My body arched, following his fingers as he stroked from the outside of my breast to the tip.
“What do you wish, Marietta?” he whispered against my skin. “For me to take your nipples, one by one, between my lips and feast?”
Whatever had happened to my body before was returning. I was hot, my body languid and sleek. The poor butterflies kindled in the flames.
“For me to—”
My hands moved, touching his cheeks, framing his face, interrupting him. “Yes, Gabriel. Anything.” I smoothed the skin of his cheeks, the feel of silk with just a hint of bite.
I arched into him and it took me a moment to realize he had gone still. His fingers frozen in place. The look on his face foreign and strange.
“Gabriel?”
He summoned a rakish smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which were fixed on mine.
“I—” His eyes shut. Pinched together. “I—”
His eyes opened and darkened to jade. Leashed control. As if he had lost it for just a moment and reined it back with all his might. “I will make you beg for the want of it.”
He hiked my bunched skirts to pool around my waist, intent and demanding. His fingers, seeking and purposeful, curled into my warmth, into the place where everything coalesced.
“Pure liquid gold.” He gave a little hum of pleasure and his eyes darkened further. Magic vibrated through his questing fingers as they dipped inside. “I want to coat myself in it.”
Before last night I would have wondered if such pleasure was possible. I crushed a paper in my hand. His thumb grazed exactly where I wanted it to and my hips jolted up. I couldn’t stop a moan.
“That’s right, Marietta. Show me what makes you sing.”
I was a marionette on a set of strings, and he was pulling every one. Begging with words was unnecessary, as my body spoke plainly, noises uncontrollable. I would be self-conscious about it later, but right now I couldn’t summon a care.
His thumb grazed me again and one of his fingers dragged inside.
A moan escaped. I started to pant. The heat was too intense.
Unlike the first time on this table, when I’d been taken by surprise, the buildup was steadier, stronger.
He was pushing harder, deeper. The lovely feeling built—but in a maddening, jaw-clenching way as it continued to climb.
Like a carriage that wouldn’t go fast enough, or a dream where I kept trying and failing to run.
“Tell me again how I’m going too slow.” I groaned as his thumb pressed. “Yes, just like that. The price of the payoff, love. Open yourself up and let me unlock you more.”
He bent and licked into me. I arched back, grabbing his hair as he bowed between my legs, worshiping, my skirt obscenely bunched around my waist, my knees bare to the air.
Everything he touched and licked and sucked burned with fire.
Like a magical puppeteer, pulling on veins instead of strings, it felt like he was extending mine.
Reaching into my core, extending the tendrils of my magic, pulling all the blocks free. My stomach clenched as he pulled my magic up into his grasp, then pushed it back through me, circulating my own power around my body in a loop.
My body, my magic, sang.
I arched on the table, suspended. He caught me as I lost control. Tremors wracked me, and he continued stroking me as I rode the lovely feeling. The end of the frustration.
I settled one hand on my stomach, breathing deeply. This was different from earlier, which had been a new experience from the night before. Languid exhaustion softened my body.
He watched me from between my bent knees, arms hooked beneath, hands cradling my hips. There was something dark and dangerous in his eyes. My wrist pulsed.
“Marietta Winters, you are now mine.”