by Mia Sheridan
He reached up and touched his face, running his fingers over the scars, his fear increasing. No . . . no. He wasn’t ready. Not yet.
Maybe he wouldn’t answer at all, although the thought itself made his panic increase. The idea of Clara leaving more terrible than the thought of her staying. His stomach churned. Fuck.
She called his name again, her voice ringing through the property, through him. What if there was something wrong? What if she needed him?
He let out a frustrated growl, shutting off the few lamps he had turned on inside of the house and then heading downstairs where he flipped the switch to shut off the sconce that lit the back door.
The blackness closed in, wrapping its fingers of safety around Jonah, calming his heart rate. The knocking ceased. Clara had obviously seen the light go out and knew he was coming for her.
“He arrives in darkness,” she whispered when he unlatched the gate, reaching for her and pulling her quickly to his side before kicking the gate closed.
The side door to the house opened into a short hallway that led directly into the kitchen. Jonah closed the door and pressed Clara against the wall in two quick movements.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, close to her face.
She pulled in a breath, and he had the sense she was inhaling his scent, which made a shiver of arousal quake inside of him. “It’s you,” she said.
“Yes, it’s me. Who did you think it was?”
“No, I mean, it was you on the news.”
Unease prickled Jonah’s skin. “The news?” Those two words were enough to send fear ricocheting through him. The news only conjured negative reactions for Jonah. Once upon a time, the news had flayed him alive. “I wasn’t on the news.”
“You were,” she said, and there was something in her voice . . . wonder? “You’re going around New Orleans helping people who need it.” Her voice held a note of incredulousness, and still, that same wonder he’d heard.
“No.” Jonah took a step back, turning his face slightly in the darkness that wasn’t quite complete because of a shaft of moonlight shining in the kitchen window beyond. He could only see her outline, no details, so he hoped it was the same for her.
“No,” he said again, but even he could hear the way the word came out, sounding more like a question than a statement. “What did they say?”
“The way you turn your face like that,” she murmured as if she were speaking only to herself. “I recognized that the minute they showed the video.”
“Clara, what the hell are you talking about?” Jonah demanded, his unease increasing.
“Sorry.” He thought he saw her shake her head slightly, her movement mixing with the darkness that surrounded her as she leaned against the wall.
Without thought, he stepped toward her, seeking. Always seeking this woman.
“There was a news story about how this masked guy is helping people anonymously in New Orleans. They had a woman on who has a sick little boy who was just accepted into a study. He’s having surgery tomorrow.”
Jonah let that piece of information slip past his unease, his heart filling with momentary happiness to know that Matthew would receive the chance he deserved.
“She said this man paid for it, approached her in the middle of the day, wrapped in bandages, and just handed her a check.” Clara was speaking quickly now, her voice soft and breathy. “And other people reported him patrolling with these volunteer crime-fighters, the . . . the Silver Angels you told me about the other night. The guys I thought were chasing me.”
“The Brass Angels,” Jonah muttered. Jesus. How in the hell had the news gotten hold of that? And now he was some public interest story? Well shit. He had never intended on any of this. It was not welcome news.
“It’s you,” she repeated. “There was footage of you from the hospital’s garage camera. It was the outline of that mask I saw you in and then . . . you tilted your head.” She raised her hand and reached blindly for him, running her finger over his jaw. “And I knew. I knew it was you.”
“Clara—”
“Don’t lie to me, Jonah. Tell me the truth.”
Jonah sighed. What did it matter? He trusted her. She wouldn’t expose him. What did it matter if she knew the truth? After this, he wouldn’t be able to anonymously patrol the streets anyway. They’d probably be looking for him. Looking to make a story out of him again. He wouldn’t allow it, so his short but illustrious time of crime-fighting with the Brass Angels was over. “Yeah. Yeah, it was me.”
Clara was silent for a beat, and he thought maybe she was gaping at him. He shifted uncomfortably. “Why?” she breathed, that wonder in her voice again. “Why are you doing it?”
“Why?”
“Yes. I mean, it’s wonderful, but . . . why did you decide to start helping people? To be a hero to others?”
“Oh Christ, Clara.” He let out a soft bark of laughter. “You keep trying to turn me into a hero, and I’m not.”
“To me you are. And you can’t do anything about it, Jonah Chamberlain. You can’t change it even if you want to. To me you are and that’s all.”
That’s all? He sighed, feigning frustration, but in reality, a flush of pleasure shot through him, making him feel alive. Not because he considered himself a hero to anyone, but because he wanted to be one to her. He did. God, but he did. And she’d told him he was. And it wasn’t only in her words. Right that minute he could sense it emanating in the space around them, the feeling that he had done well in her eyes and that she was proud of him in a way a woman finds pride in the man she wants to call her own. And it lit him from within. It lit his soul. He lived in the darkness, but Clara, she was his light.
He whispered her name, and she moved forward, bringing her face to his and finding his lips in the dark. “Hi,” she whispered right before she pressed her mouth to his.
He smiled against her lips and then took charge of the kiss, eliciting a small moan from her that felt like a zing of electricity straight to his groin. Hi.
They continued kissing, and Jonah lost himself in sensation, the accelerated heartbeat, the warm flush that ran through his veins, the excitement that filled every cell of his body. “I missed your mouth,” he said between kisses.
He felt her smile. “The things it says or the things it does?”
“Both.”
He drank down her laughter, kissing her again, not able to get enough. He ran his hand under the collar of her jacket, along the dip where her neck became her shoulder, his finger hooking on the leotard she wore beneath.
“You came straight from practice,” he said, his lips moving down the side of her throat. She tilted her head back, giving him better access to the places his lips wandered.
“Yes. I was heading home and stopped at my neighbor’s. That’s where I saw the news.”
“Hmm,” he hummed, and he felt her shiver. His gut clenched with want. He loved the way she reacted to his touch. Loved every damn thing about her. Loved her. “And so you headed straight here.”
“Of course.”
“Of course.” He smiled. Of course she would. Clara was thoughtful. She considered a situation if she was unsure about it, but once she’d made up her mind to confront something or someone, she did it right then, without hesitation.
“I loved the music box, by the way,” he said between mouth brushes.
“Was I self-centered to give you a gift in the hopes that it would make you think of me every day?”
He chuckled and again, she shivered. “No. But it wasn’t necessary. I already think of you every day, Clara. Every morning. Every night. Every second.”
“Jonah,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around the back of his neck, bringing his mouth back to hers. “Dance with me again the way you did at the masquerade ball.”
“That? That was hardly dancing. You dance. That was just swaying,” he teased.
“So you want me to teach you some ballet moves and make you a real dancer?”
J
onah chuckled. “God, no. I would be tragic at ballet. You wouldn’t know this, but I had some moves back in the day. Do you know how many galas and charity balls and fancy parties I went to as an esteemed member of a prestigious law firm here in New Orleans? I was the toast of the town.”
Clara breathed out a laugh, kissing the indent at the base of his throat and making him groan. “Show me.”
He tensed and she shook her head, her nose rubbing against the base of his throat. “With your body. Let me feel it,” she amended.
His shoulders dropped and he laughed, pulling on her hand, leading her quickly through the kitchen and into another darkened hallway.
“Stay here,” he whispered, their fingertips brushing as he left her, walking to the library beyond and turning on the old turntable, feeling with his hands as he placed the needle on the edge of the record already in place. It was the record he’d put on after receiving the gift from Clara, wanting to listen not only to the tune, but to the words of the song she’d chosen for him.
The strains of All I Ask of You filled the room, and Jonah turned it up to its highest volume, making his way back to Clara where she waited for him in the blackened hallway.
She gasped softly when he suddenly took her in his arms, having not been able to hear him approach over the music filling the air around them.
“You knew the song,” she said, a smile in her voice as he spun her once, and her smile turned into a laugh, bubbling sweetly from her.
“Did you choose it on purpose?” Jonah pulled her flush against him, leading her down the hallway and lifting her slightly when he came to the place where there was a step up into the front foyer.
Moonlight filtered softly through the window high up on the wall and Clara laid her head on his shoulder as she followed his lead. “Yes,” she said, her voice wistful, dreamy.
He spun her around once, twice, as she laughed again, moving her through the unlit rooms, the steps he’d known so well once before coming back to him as though it hadn’t been too many long, lonely years since he’d held a woman this way.
And this wasn’t just any woman, just any partner he might dance with once and forget about after the song ended. This was Clara, and she was in his arms, and he never wanted to dance with anyone else again. Only her.
Jonah smiled each time a surprised burst of laughter erupted sweetly from her, spinning more quickly, picking her up as he took the small steps up and down into different rooms of the house he knew like the back of his own hand. The rooms he’d walked through in the dark night after night.
He was leading and she was following, and in the darkness like this, with her pressed so close to him, trusting him not to let her fall, he could almost believe he’d gone back in time . . . he was just himself, just Jonah, unscarred, a man with the freedom he’d taken so much for granted once upon a time.
But no, he wasn’t. He was scarred—damaged—and it hurt too much to pretend otherwise. This was his new world, but the real miracle was that Clara had come into it of her own free will, and she was holding him just as tightly in her arms as he was holding her.
He spun her past the windows emitting the barest glint of moonlight, a soft pearlescent glow barely peeking through the heavy drapes, but enough to see by if he stopped rather than spinning them back into the shadows.
She laughed, pulling him closer. “You dance between moonbeams, don’t you, Jonah Chamberlain?” Her laughter had faded, her voice sounding huskier than it had. Her words sounded familiar somehow, as if he might have heard them somewhere before, or thought them himself, but he couldn’t quite remember.
“We dance between moonbeams,” he said, spinning her again.
“We,” she repeated. “Yes.”
The music dwindled and then faded away, static from the needle replacing the notes. Jonah stopped, both of them breathing heavily in each other’s arms. He could feel his own heartbeat—hers too—the blood pulsing between them, the gravity that suddenly filled the air.
“Kiss me again, Jonah,” she said. “Only this time, don’t stop.”
His heart skipped a beat and then took up the same rapid staccato. “What?”
She took his shirt in her fists and pulled him closer, impossibly closer. “Don’t stop kissing me. Take me to your bedroom.”
“My bedroom?” His blood was pumping furiously through his veins, he could feel every sweet curve of her softness against him, and his heart was beating so harshly, he couldn’t think straight.
“That place where you sleep?” she said, a smile in her voice. She let go of his shirt with one hand and placed it over his pounding heart. “The place where I’m going to sleep.” He heard her lick her lips, and it sent a hot pulse of blood to the already-throbbing place between his legs. “Under you. And on top of you and—”
She let out a surprised gasp as he swooped her into his arms and headed for his bedroom. He made a brief pause in the library where he switched off the record player now playing a song from Phantom of the Opera that he didn’t know the name of.
Silence enveloped them as he walked the rest of the way to his bedroom, kicking the door closed and putting Clara down, her body sliding against his before her feet hit the floor.
He kissed her as she grabbed his shirt once more, leaning into him so his back hit the door. He was losing the ability to think at all, losing the ability to reason, but before he allowed himself to fall into the oblivion of pleasure, he had to be sure she would not regret this. “Are you sure? You haven’t seen me. I’m—”
“I don’t care,” she said between kisses. “Don’t you know that by now?”
He groaned. He was painfully hard—desperate—and her hands were everywhere, moving down the plane of his chest, her fingers tracing the muscles of his abs through his T-shirt. Slow. Slow down. Speed up. Don’t stop. More. God, he wanted everything, and all at once.
He didn’t know this version of himself, this Jonah so frantic with lust that he was coming apart at the seams. He’d always been the one in control, the one who set the pace and made the terms when it came to the women he’d been physical with.
But Clara . . . oh God, Clara . . . She was making sweet little panting sounds, making him delirious, causing him to pulse hotly in his jeans with each small utterance. Christ. He was going to explode. It’d been so long. This wasn’t going to go well. If she pressed her hips into his one more time, he was going to come in his damn pants.
“Clara.” His voice was filled with desperation. He tried his best to add a hint of levity, as though he found the situation vaguely amusing, when in fact, he did not. Maybe they could laugh about it. No big deal. You touched me once, and I lost it.
“I’m not going to last—” His words left off on a moan as she unbuttoned the top button of his jeans, the sound of his zipper barely breaking through the lust fog he was in. “W-what are you doing?”
“Helping.” Her hand wrapped around his hardened flesh and he groaned, his back pressing into the door behind him.
“Oh God,” he panted, as her hand gripped him more tightly, stroking up once and then down. Jesus. Jesus. It felt so good. He should stop her . . . maybe. But he couldn’t begin to figure out why.
Clara leaned in and kissed his neck, nipping it softly as her hand continued to work its magic. He grew harder, and his gut clenched with pleasure before he came, breathing out her name raggedly as his head fell against the door.
“Better?” she asked on a whisper, releasing him as he fought to catch his breath.
“God, yes.” That small trickle of embarrassment returned, and yet the bliss still coursing through him dulled it. He’d be embarrassed about it later. Or not. Because for now the happiness lighting his insides was too great to allow him to fully believe that was possible.
“Good,” she said, kissing him again. “I need to take a quick shower. Is that okay? I came straight here from rehearsal and—”
“Let me,” he murmured, taking her by the arm and leading her before she could p
rotest.
She clung to him as he guided her around the bed and through the door to the master bathroom, letting her go for a moment as he turned on the faucet, the sound of water splashing into the tub filling the room.
Moist steam, invisible in the darkness, rose in the air, and as Jonah tested the temperature of the water, he could hear Clara’s movement, the very soft sound of her clothes as they hit the floor and fire ignited in his veins once more.
He helped her step in and she let out a moan of pleasure as she sat down in the rising water, laying her head back against the porcelain rim of the claw-foot tub.
Jonah sat on a stool behind the tub, gathering her hair and running his fingers through the silken strands.
“This is heaven,” she said, the final word ending in a sigh.
She had no idea. But how could she? She hadn’t been to hell, not like him.
He washed her hair as the water rose higher, the fragrance of his shampoo scenting the room and mixing with the steam.
“Sorry I don’t have anything more . . . floral,” he said on a smile, his fingers massaging her scalp. “I didn’t exactly expect female company.”
Clara laughed, the sound half-drunk as though she was so relaxed she could barely muster the sound. “I love it,” she said. “It’s like you’re all around me. Behind me. In the air. Filling me.”
That was all it took. Jesus, he was aroused again, hard, ready. His body trembled as he brought water to her hair with a cupped hand, rinsing the soap.
“Someday,” she said softly, a note of trepidation in her voice, “I’d love to do this by candlelight.”
Jonah paused, waiting for the fear. But it didn’t come. He pictured the steamy room, bathed in candlelight, pictured her turning her head, her gaze ghosting over his damaged face. And instead of terror, hope blossomed inside of him, the idea that maybe, just maybe, Clara could look upon him as he was, not with horror, but with . . . love.