by Alexa Egan
He merely grabbed her arm and dragged her farther down the hall.
“What are you doing? Let me go,” she stammered, stumbling on her hem as he frog-marched her forward with a bruising grip on her upper arm.
Sebastian pulled her into an empty bedchamber and closed the door silently behind him, an ear to the panel.
She wrenched away. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He closed the space with one ground-eating stride, put a hand over her mouth. His voice when it came was warm and soft against her ear, though his tone was as sharp and precise as a cutthroat’s dagger. “Shut up and listen, Sarah. The prince is right behind me.”
* * *
She sat on the edge of Sebastian’s bed, her arms hugging her body as if she were cold . . . or afraid. But was she afraid of him or of the current dancing in the air between them? Would it always be like this? Would he always feel this crazy charge jolting every nerve whenever he was within twenty feet of her? Would her marriage change that? Would his? Or would there always be this horrible gut-seizing temptation when he spied her across a room or across a street?
“I don’t know what Christophe is, but he’s not human,” Sarah said.
“So you thought you’d just root through his unmentionables, hoping to discover what nature of creature he might be? Have you taken leave of your senses?” he demanded, the strain of not touching her stretching his already taut nerves to the snapping point. “I told you to leave it alone, Sarah. I told you not to get involved.”
Her chin gave a slight jerk, but otherwise she appeared calm. Even relaxed enough to drop her hands into her lap, though she continued to fumble with the strap of her reticule. “I just told you what he said to me. Something’s wrong, Seb. I must know what it is.”
His heart leapt at her use of his nickname, but otherwise he made no sign he’d noticed her slip. “How would you have explained yourself if he’d caught you? Did you think of that?”
“I wouldn’t have had to explain anything.” She rose from the bed and walked toward him, hips swaying provocatively, eyes dreamy and soft, a sly smile curving her full lips. “Men are all the same. None would question finding a woman in their bedchamber. They’d be too busy congratulating themselves on their good fortune.”
He folded his arms over his chest. Easier to keep himself from reaching for her. Though whether he wanted to embrace her or throttle her was still under debate. “And after the congratulating was over? What then, Cleopatra? He’d have expected more than a wink and a smile.”
“Perhaps, but you forget I have a talent to make people see what I want them to see, believe what I want them to believe. I’d have found a way to persuade Christophe to let me leave. And he would have done so, thinking it was all his idea.”
The very air seemed to shimmer with expectation, her sultry intoxicating scent reminding him of hot summer days and even hotter summer nights. He yearned to touch the soft curve of her cheek, trace the strong line of her jaw, and draw the combs from her thick dark hair.
Duncallan had claimed she was Other. Was she using her Fey-born power now? Was that what this mesmerizing siren call was that drowned out the last sensible thought in his head until all he desired was a pair of long legs wrapped about his waist and a moan from those full red lips? He closed his eyes as if he might wipe her from his mind, but still the images burned, need coursing like fire through his body.
“Stop it,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “Just stop.”
“Stop what?”
He pressed a fist to his forehead as he heaved a deep shaky breath. “Damn it, stop making me feel what I don’t want to feel. Stop working your bloody magic on me.”
She stiffened and shook her head. “I’m not.” Her brows snapped low in a furious glare. “You think that’s what happened that night, don’t you? Why you and I . . .”
She stood a mere arm’s length away, her sober gown with its maidenly neckline and long fitted sleeves far from the diaphanous silks and rich velvets she wore in London, and yet it only seemed to heighten his anticipation. He pictured the luscious curves and creamy skin lying hidden beneath the staid layers. He recalled the fierce joy and sensual abandon beneath the unruffled façade. Every drop of blood in his body fled southward, leaving him giddy and reckless, drunk with desire as if he’d downed a jeroboam of champagne.
“What kind of woman do you take me for?” Her gaze flashed with both hurt and anger. “I don’t need magic to dazzle a man . . . and that includes the great and powerful Earl of Deane.”
“Then how do you explain it . . . explain us? Because I sure as hell don’t understand. Nothing makes sense. Not how I felt then . . . not how I feel now . . .”
“How do you feel?” she asked, and though she never moved, the same flickering zing of electricity as before crackled the air between them.
Before he surrendered to the urges singeing his mind, he swung away. Crossed to the window to look down upon the park. Tomorrow an eclipse would blot it from the sky, but tonight the moon rode above the trees to the west, full and silver as a coin. “I’ll inform Duncallan of your suspicions. We’ll make some discreet inquiries about Prince Christophe and his secretary. Will that keep you from rifling the man’s rooms again?”
He heard the rustle of silk and felt the drift of her perfume across his face. A hand touched his sleeve. “Seb.” She did it again, but this time he knew it had not been a mistake. She had done it deliberately. A single syllable but it tore at his heart.
“You’re playing with fire, Sarah,” he said, keeping his gaze locked on the moon as if that might save him from himself.
“I’m not afraid of Christophe.”
He could take it no longer. He turned to face her, jaw clenched as he gritted out the words. “I’m not talking about Christophe.”
Her lips pursed to a small bow, her gaze darkening. Her chest rose and fell in a series of quick breaths and a tremor ran beneath her skin, but she did not step away or offer a laugh to turn aside his assertion.
“We’re alone, Sarah, and it’s neither afternoon nor is there a household to intrude on our privacy.” He paused. “Or you can come to your senses again and leave.”
He saw her throat working, her downcast lashes fluttering against the white of her cheeks as she composed herself. Then she met his stare with one equally as candid, a flash of gold against the stormy gray of her eyes. “It’s the hour,” she said, her voice low and solemn as a promise.
He cupped her face, her blush hot against his palm. “And the situation.”
He slid his other hand around her waist, her body swaying toward him as if he’d tugged an invisible cord.
“And the moon,” she said raggedly. “Definitely the moon.”
They came together in the dark, their lips brushing tentatively at first, then as the moments elapsed and his control evaporated, he ventured deeper with more urgency, his hand gliding lower on her back, his other pressed against her rib cage, where he felt her breaths coming faster, her body trembling wherever his fingers traveled. His own body was ablaze, both with the power of the moment and the realization of his feelings. He’d not revealed them to her, but in his heart, he understood them as if they had been burned there with a brand. She could not marry Christophe. She could not marry anyone.
Not anyone but him.
He smiled as he kissed her, possessively, protectively. As if his future depended on it as he now knew it did. He could not envision his life moving forward without her at his side . . . and in his bed.
She threaded her hands into his hair, wound them behind his neck, dragging him closer, nearer, as if she wished nothing between them. He would oblige.
It took but a few subtle movements and a slow melting turn to drop them onto the bed, wound together as if to break free for even long enough to disrobe might shatter their sudden abandon. Instead she popped the fall of his breeches and shoved them down over his hips even as she kissed him with increasing sensual hunger. He dragged her skirts to her waist
as his tongue danced and dove within the sweet heat of her mouth. There was no time for soft words or slow explorations. Instead the force that carried them this far, carried them over.
She welcomed him with bold invitation, her gold-shot gray eyes greedy for all he might give. He knelt above her, pausing for a drawn-out excruciating moment to enjoy the flushed cheeks and smile on her parted lips, before he sheathed himself inside her, gasping as she closed around him, bliss already licking at his limbs as it moved like liquid fire inward toward their joining.
It had been so long. Six months . . . an eternity. She locked her legs around him, arching into his thrusts, meeting him, matching him, taking him deeper and faster, her head thrown back, her neck taut, her hands skimming beneath his coat and his shirt to the hard plane of his chest.
Every frenzied stroke wound him tighter as they found their rhythm, a hard and furious plunge of bodies as if they sought to outrun the sobering reality awaiting them. He ignored the battering of doubts, shoved aside the uncertainties assailing him. She would be his. He would hold to that one thought. He would let nothing shake him from his one conviction.
She bucked beneath him, every muscle in her body going taut as she arched off the bed like a bow, her skirts rucked and ruined, her hair a wild tangle falling from its pins. Her eyes were black with desire, her mouth a scarlet bruise from his kisses. And before she could scream her release, he covered her mouth with his own, kissing away her gasping cries, her body racked with tremors.
Her release sent him spinning over the edge, his mind fracturing, his body alive with an inferno’s rage. Magic seemed to thicken the air, dance along their skin, sparkle with each shuddering breath they took, each trembling aftershock. He cradled her against his side, her head upon his shoulder. Her hand remained resting upon his bare chest beneath his shirt. “Your heart is racing,” she murmured.
“Funny. I thought it had stopped.”
She leaned up and kissed his cheek.
He opened his mouth, words boiling up his throat, and then her lips found his mouth for another kiss that left him reeling, and just like that, his arms were empty. She rolled onto her feet, shaking out her skirts with a forlorn sigh. Repinning her hair with deft feminine expertise.
“They’ll be wondering about our absence soon. I can’t return to the others looking as if I’ve been tossed in a hay barn. I’ll sneak away to my chambers. If anyone asks, you can tell them you saw me on my way up and I make my apologies but I have a headache. Katherine will understand.”
“I . . .”
She turned from the mirror and the look he’d seen on her face only a moment ago was gone. Vanished beneath a frozen calmness like the still waters of an icy lake. “Did you think we could stay up here all night?” She smiled, and he wondered if she was more disturbed than she let on. Then the expression was gone and he was left to guess whether in his unthinking rush to claim her, he’d only pushed her farther away.
She leaned to eye her face in the mirror, a hand to her throat. “This was a moment out of time. Somewhere out there is a woman with blood as blue as yours who will make you the wife I never could.”
“There are ways.”
She straightened, her spine straight, her posture rigid. “I once told you I would be no man’s whore. That’s still true. I won’t be kept as a sop to your libido or a shameful secret on the side.”
“What makes you think that’s what I had in mind?”
Her gaze shimmered as she reached for the door latch. “Because whatever else you may be, Sebastian Commin, you’re no fool.”
* * *
Faces wove in and out of her consciousness, some as clear as if they stood beside her . . . a fine-boned blonde, her eyes green as new leaves . . . a sultry, black-eyed brunette . . . an older woman, her mouth bracketed with years. Others were mere gray shapeless forms with no recognizable features. There were eight of them. All of them reached for her. All of them called to her. All of them wore Christophe’s bracelet.
Sarah gasped as she came awake, heart racing, dread shivering up her spine. The nightmare clung heavy and vivid. The taste of blood in her mouth where she’d bitten back a scream. The scents of pine and damp moss and grave earth filling her nose. The feel of rough stone at her back as she crouched in the lee of a high crumbling wall running north onto the moors. And the sight of eight figures standing beneath a starless sky within a raised earthen circle, faces contorted with terror then agony as an enormous shadow overtook them one by one, leaving naught but smears of oily gelatinous muck behind.
She felt the cold of the shadow like a dagger through her chest and rubbed a palm over her skin, half expecting to feel the roughened flesh of an ugly scar. Nothing but the soft linen of her nightgown beneath her fingers, lace bunched at her throat. Still, it would be hard to close her eyes while the sinister images lingered.
She rose from bed, whispering the household spell that flickered the candles in her room to life. Paced as she fought a childish urge to seek out a comforting embrace against the bogeyman. Sebastian was the last person she should run to for anything. Being together in the same house had been dangerous. Being together in the same room had been a complete disaster. And yet, he was the one she longed for. The only person who could erase the shade of her nightmare.
She sank into an armchair with a huff of frustration that turned into a hiss of pain as something hard dug against her ribs. The Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage she’d been reading earlier had wedged itself between the cushions. She drew it free with a wry smile. If anything could lull her to sleep while dousing any ideas of a future with Sebastian, this book was it.
She opened to a page at random. Viscount Falmouth. Married to the daughter of Henry Bankes of Kingston-House. Another page. Another viscount. This time it was Lord Torrington who married the daughter of Phillip Langmead, Esq. She couldn’t seem to stop the turn of her thoughts. She found herself seeking the entries out one by one . . . daughter of General Graeme, sister of Lord de Clifford, daughter of the Earl of Leitrim, daughter of Sir Hugh Dalyrimple. The names went on and on, as did the titles. Not one of them less than a gentlewoman with a sterling reputation to match her superior pedigree. Certainly, no actresses from the crowded tenements of Thames Street and Billiter Lane. No fishmongers’ daughters bearing the wharf stench of brine, blood, and tar.
There was a reason for that absence.
Even if hard work and determination had won her a new life far away from the mean streets of her birth, Society would scorn such a lopsided union. Women like her had their position within the accepted order, and countess was not among them.
Sebastian might believe he could ignore his peers’ derision, but could she bring that disgrace down upon him? If she truly cared for him, could she allow him to ruin his future for her?
She’d contemplated marriage to Prince Christophe knowing these same social obstacles lay before him. Why then did she shrink away from marrying Seb?
She stared out the window onto the snow-frosted park, barely registering the bright moonlight glittering across the high rugged hills to the west or the flicker of a torch moving between the black arms of the trees below. Instead, she pictured Sebastian’s hard chiseled jaw as he argued with her, the curve of his full lips when he teased her to laughter, the wicked desire in his eyes as he sheathed himself between her legs. These things made her want him.
But it was the way she saw herself when she was with him that truly touched her—clever, talented, determined, courageous. As if he drew the best from her. As if he made her feel like the great lady she would never be, no matter how many diamonds or silks she wore.
And there was her answer.
She did not love Christophe.
She loved Sebastian.
The pain in her chest she’d felt upon waking had dulled to a hard tangled knot and a sick uneasy feeling in her stomach as she considered another option; she could accept Sebastian’s protection and become his mistress. A situation that, until now, she’
d scorned as beneath her contempt, but twice now, she’d let her runaway emotions get the better of her. So could she really continue to maintain that argument?
She pressed a hand to her midriff, but the ache and the questions remained.
At what point did she give up the pretense of self-righteous virtue? Where did she draw the line between her moral fortitude and her desperate heart? Or had point and line already been crossed and all that remained was acceptance?
She thought of the years of hard work as she’d struggled to outrun her upbringing and already knew her answer, making the pain in her chest expand a hundredfold.
* * *
The second time Sarah woke, the dream was more vivid, the dread tightening her shoulders more painful, and the panic burrowing frozen into her center enough to double her over.
“Naxos,” she whispered.
The word curdled her stomach while a wild thought singed her brain. “The door,” Lucan had muttered, but another term for door was gate. Could he have been referring to the Gateway? She’d seen more than one reference in her research to the Imnada’s tales of a mythical passage between worlds. The shapechangers were said to have come through this portal to earth, their souls traveling back to the ancestral homeland at their deaths. Perhaps she needed to adjust her focus and start there.
And what better time to start than now.
She’d not find sleep again. Not now while her mind reeled with nightmare visions of amorphous shadow monsters and her heart ached for the bitter loss of a dream. If she went now, she’d have hours to herself with none to ask questions or wonder at her sudden scholarship. None to question the tears swimming in her eyes or the waxen pallor of her face. Mind made up, she dressed quickly, bundling her hair up in a loose bun, donning a heavy velvet dressing gown against the drafty halls of Sharrow House.
A few sconces still flickered as she made her way downstairs. A musty breeze lifted the hairs at the back of her neck, whispered gibberish in her ears. Ignoring it, she hurried across the hall and pushed open the door to the library. Four walls of shelves stretched up to be lost amid the shadows hugging the ceiling. Thousands of books. A needle in a haystack.
