by M. J. Scott
“It caused a lot of trouble the last time.”
“It doesn’t have to. Things can be simple. It’s just you and me, after all. Just us.”
His smile was crooked. I’d never had much resistance to his smile.
“My way. Whatever I want?”
“Your way,” he agreed.
It couldn’t be a lie. He couldn’t speak a lie. Which meant he at least believed that he would walk away if I asked him to. Maybe he was better at self-deception than I was.
But here he was. After all this time. And I knew I couldn’t send him away. Not just yet. “Stay,” I said.
The candles flared to life behind me.
“Show-off,” I said softly.
“I always liked you in candlelight.” Ash studied me for a long, slow moment, heat deepening his eyes to a nameless shade of gray. “I still do.”
“You liked me in any light.”
“True. I still do.”
I drew in a breath, not liking the small happy pang in my heart that leapt to life with his words. “This isn’t that,” I said. “You agreed.”
“I did,” he said. “But that would be easier if I could lie.”
“You can’t. So don’t say anything. Or we’ll both regret it.”
“A little regret seems like a small price to pay right now,” Ash said. He stepped closer, touched a finger to my lips.
I closed my eyes, wishing that I could believe that the regret—and the rest of the price—would be small. But I doubted it. I couldn’t lie, not even to myself when it came right down to it. I would do this thing and I would take Ash to my bed and let him ease the ache inside me and I would pretend that it meant nothing more.
And I’d hope that the Veil might offer me grace and let me survive him a second time.
I’d almost lost him back in Summerdale. A second or two longer and he might be dead. I might be too. And even though I knew this was a terrible idea, I also knew that I didn’t want to go to my grave without knowing his touch again.
I’d denied the memories of him for thirty years. And now I wanted to store up some more against the years to come.
I opened my eyes, met the dark gray gaze watching me with a mix of tenderness and hope and fire that burned me to the ash he was named for.
“Kiss me,” I said simply.
He took his time. Back at my father’s house there had been urgency and fire and desperate, dazed chance taking. But now we had time and no particular risk of discovery and there was no need to rush through the moment.
Ash’s mouth sank over mine like the brush of velvet wings, tasting me gently, tracing my lips with his as his hands settled around my waist and drew me close with a pressure that asked more than demanded.
I sighed into him and did as he wanted. Did as I wanted. Moved into him until we were thigh to thigh, chest to chest, mouth to mouth. He was taller than me but not by much. I’d always liked that about him, the fit of us when we moved together.
He felt familiar, like an extension of my body. I remembered this. Remembered the hard lines of his muscles and bones and the harder line of his cock standing to greet me as my hips settled into him. Just at the right point to send the heat flaring a little faster through my veins.
But I ignored that pull of wanting, determined, as he was, to enjoy the moment. There had been nights I’d lain awake when he first left, jolted from sleep by the phantom taste of him in my mouth, the ghost of his hands on my body, and the whispered echo of his voice in my ears. I’d cursed him then, cursed my memory and the treachery of a heart and body that couldn’t forget, but now, now I remembered as he kissed me. Remembered precisely how it was between us. The reality was so much more than my memories.
“Bryony,” he said softly as he pulled me closer still. His kiss went deeper then, his tongue stroking mine, dragging me deeper into him.
I curled my hands into his hair and let him kiss me, though it was harder now to just stay still and not move against him. His hands grew restless at my waist, fingers tightening, then loosening, his grip moving softly as one hand began to stroke my back, fingers walking up the line of buttons that fastened my dress, as if memorizing their position for later reference.
I hoped he was paying attention.
Lazy as our kisses were, I knew we were approaching the point when they would turn more serious. Where we would catch fire and burn.
I’d always burned for him. From the first time I’d seen him at court, so bright with confidence and power that he drew the eye like a diamond.
I’d never met a man like him before. Not that he was the first man who’d shared my bed, but he was the first one who caught my heart along with my desire and turned it into something more than a shared pleasure.
He made me laugh, my Ash, and laughter was something not in ready supply in my father’s house.
Disapproved of.
Much as the way that Ash’s hand was stealing to my breast would be disapproved of.
I, however, approved heartily and let him do what he wanted. His lips drifted down my neck, finding every secret nerve along the way and setting them to tingling life.
Fingers over velvet brushed against my breast, against the nipples turned sensitive and wanting.
His hands were warm, hot even. His skin always felt hot against mine, as if he carried the fire he commanded within him. I pulled away, suddenly too warm in my dress.
“Take off your clothes,” I said when he murmured a protest and reached for me.
That earned me a grin and an answering murmur of “whatever my lady desires,” before he stripped off with a speed that made me blink. Maybe living in tents and on horseback had taught him the need for disrobing rapidly, but before I knew it he was naked before me and the sight of him stilled the hands I had reached to the neck of my dress to start on my own buttons.
“Oh,” I said stupidly, drinking in the sight of him.
His body was different now. Harder. Stronger. The lean lines that I remembered were more ruggedly curved, though still sleeker than a human man’s. His skin was the same golden brown shade, though, seeming to almost glow in the candlelight, the flickering light lining him in shadows and highlights that painted him into a living statue. A testament to the beauty of our kind.
And then there were the scars. A long curve of silver down his right thigh. Another arc along his ribs and a less elegant ragged circle on his left biceps.
The sight of them angered me.
Someone had hurt him. Could have killed him.
But at the same time, they made him seem even more tantalizing.
He was different now. He knew things I didn’t know, had seen things I hadn’t seen.
Once upon a time we’d spent every minute possible together and had few secrets. Now we had been apart.
What might he have learned in that time?
What secrets was he hiding?
One of them was the story of the tattoo that splashed across his chest, an elaborate spiraling design that covered the left side of his chest and spiked down and across to curl around the scar on his arms. Bold and black with accents of red and golden brown.
The colors of his house.
The ink matched the jewels glimmering in the ring that hung from the golden chain around his neck. I’d wondered where he’d been hiding his Family ring. He hadn’t even worn it to court and I’d seen the quickly hidden flash of uncertainty in his father’s eyes when he’d seen his son’s naked hands.
For a Fae to hide his Family colors was to proclaim he belonged to no one. But despite Ash’s not wearing his ring, here he was with the colors of his house inked into his very skin.
What had he been thinking when he chose that?
Was he defying or trying to remember who he was despite being sent away to fend for himself?
I stepped closer, hand reaching for him. I wanted to touch him, to see if he was changed beneath the outer differences. And if he was, what did that mean?
But Ash caught my wrist
before I could reach him.
“Not fair,” he said. “You’re still wearing clothes.”
I paused then, drawn back from the startlement of what his nakedness revealed to the reality of what we were doing as just the folding of his palm around my wrist made me want again.
I let my gaze drift lower than it had before. To the part of him that was very much as I remembered. Hard and hungry.
I smiled up at him. “You said my rules, remember?”
“So I did. But there’s a lot less fun to be had if I can’t get to you.” He leaned in and ran his tongue against the curve where neck met shoulder. My skin quivered.
“Don’t you want my hands on you?” he said softly. “I want to touch you. Want to feel you writhe against me. Want your heat. Want to taste you.”
The heat spiraled up and through me then and seemed to dissolve every thought in my head. My head tipped back and he feasted on my neck, raining kisses over my skin that burned like warm honey, then sank into my skin, the heat blooming out and through me from each point his lips touched.
His fingers made short work of the buttons of my dress, and the heavy fabric sank to the floor with little urging from either of us.
Ash swung me up then, lifting me with as little trouble as he wielded a sword, and he carried me over to the bed. I still wore my underwear, but the silk was flimsy and transparent and the next best thing to being naked to his gaze. The heat of his eyes and the look on his face were nearly as potent as the touch of his lips.
I felt my objections melting away, my good sense melting away. Gone like ice met with fire. Vanished into steam and heat and the overwhelming desire to know more of the same.
I held out my arms and he set to work, removing the rest of my clothes. There was nothing teasing about him undressing me. There was no time for more tantalizing now.
No, just as I’d known we would, we’d reached the point where it was too much for games.
It had been like this from the start for us. A conflagration of two bodies meeting. Ash touched me and I burned and he answered the fire.
It was like a drug.
An addiction.
If this was what the Nightseekers gained when they drank vampire blood, then I could understand why they chose to give themselves over to it.
Pleasure. His fingers slipped between my legs, slipped inside me, began to move, and I saw stars.
“Ash.”
His hand stilled. I reached for his wrist. “Don’t stop.”
He smiled then and his fingers set to work again.
Veil’s sacred eyes.
“I’ve missed that look,” he said, and he bent to set his mouth to work, helping those long, knowing fingers drive me insane.
He could keep such things up for hours—and he had done so—keeping me on the brink and begging while he played. And while we had the whole night, I was suddenly out of patience for long, drawn-out beginnings. I pushed his head away.
“Problem?”
“Not if you come join me up here.”
“I thought you liked that.”
“I do. But right now I want you. We can play later.”
“Promises, promises.” He was trying to keep his voice light, but I could hear the roughness that had crept into it and the darkness flaring in his eyes. I wasn’t the only one who burned. Oh no.
I eased myself back up the bed, until I rested against the pillows, and then I let my legs fall open. Time enough for acrobatics and permutations later. For now I wanted basic. I wanted him inside me, the weight of him bearing me down into the bed so I could feel every inch of him as he moved with me.
It seemed he needed no second invitation.
He came up the bed and over me, pausing only to kiss me fiercely before he set himself against me, and I had one perfect second to glory in the feel of him right there, where I wanted him, before he drove home with a thrust that left no mistake as to where he wanted to be.
He groaned as I arched to meet him, wrapping my legs around his hips and my arms around his neck.
The fire took us then, burned through any last scraps of control. We moved together in a passion more like a battle than anything else. Desperate to get closer, deeper, harder. Trying, it seemed, to crawl inside each other’s skin. I felt his power flare around me, felt mine rise to meet it, and then felt the dizzying burst as they melded around us and suddenly it was almost as though I felt what he felt.
Almost.
It was never quite true.
Never quite enough, and that made us even more frantic. As though, if we only tried harder, we might somehow get to that point where we were truly one.
But the only prize to be had was pleasure, it seemed, and it was pleasure that boiled and spiked and drove as we gasped and moved and touched. Pleasure that built and built and built until it was nearly unbearable. And then pleasure that I surrendered to as it crested through me and exploded and left me boneless and separate once more.
Chapter Twelve
ASH
The rumbling roar shook me awake. I sprang out of bed on instinct, reaching for the gun that wasn’t in its usual spot beside my bed. Because it wasn’t my bed. It was Bryony’s.
Bryony, who had snapped awake as quickly as I.
“What was that?” she said.
“I don’t know. Stay there.” I reached the spot where my trousers—and my pistol and belt—lay, grabbed the gun from its holster, and sprinted for the window. Gouts of bright light shot up around the gates of the Brother House. Flames.
Fuck.
“What?” Bryony said as she joined me. I noticed she had a gun too. Good.
“I think Ignatius isn’t waiting for us to decide what to do.” I pointed toward the flames.
“He attacked the Brother House? Is he crazy?”
“I don’t know. But I need to go.” I felt the fire licking at the edge of my senses, felt the burgeoning heat of it. If I could feel it, I might just be able to control it. It wasn’t that far to the Brother House gates. I pushed a burst of power toward the Brother House, feeling the resistance of the iron close around me like taffy, but it didn’t stop me. Across the way, the flames sputtered and died.
My hand tightened around the grip of the pistol. It felt strange in my hand. I still wasn’t used to the silver alloy bullets the Templars had provided. They changed the weight of the gun. But I would adjust. I’d hoped to have more time to practice before actually fighting one of the Beasts the bullets were designed for. But I might have just run out of time.
Speaking of fights, I was doing no good standing where I was. “I have to go,” I said. “You should look to the wards here.”
She nodded, put her gun down, and started to snatch pieces of clothing up from the floor, shoving the ones that belonged to me in my direction. The chain at her neck sparked red and purple in the dark room. Angry. Good. Angry was better than scared.
I pulled on my clothes and boots, wishing desperately that we had more time. Time to talk about what had happened here tonight between us, time to see if it would happen again, but it seemed the few hours we’d stolen were all that we would get for now.
“I have to go,” I said again, and left after stealing one more quick kiss.
• • •
I bolted back down the stairs, taking the route Bryony had brought me. It was stupid, perhaps, to go outside rather than look for the tunnels that connected the Brother House and the hospital, but there was no time to waste. Shouts and cries and the snap of flames—apparently I hadn’t completely doused the fire—carried through the night air. The cathedral bell started to toll an urgent warning. What I couldn’t hear was anything that sounded like a fight. No clashing metal. Definitely no gunfire. Was this just a diversion, the real action happening elsewhere? Or was this a first strike . . . a declaration of intent by the Blood?
Pistol in hand, I ran on and almost had my head taken off by the Templar guarding the gate in the wall separating the hospital and the Brother House. My reflexes
saved me, sending me ducking just low enough to dodge the sweeping blow of his sword.
“Stand down, idiot,” I yelled, with no time for politeness. “It’s Captain Pellar.”
The Templar, to his credit, stopped himself almost instantaneously mid–second thrust. “Sorry, sir.”
“What happened?” I demanded as I passed through the gate.
“Someone set a fire at the main gate.”
“Any sign of an attack to follow that up?”
“Not yet,” he said grimly. So I wasn’t the only one wondering what this meant.
“Don’t let anyone else through this gate you don’t know personally,” I said. “If the healers come, send them back. Tell them we don’t need them. Better yet, if there’s a way to get word to them without using any of your men, do that now.” If there’d been no attack, there were no patients and the healers were safer at St. Giles, behind its wards.
“A patrol is already on its way to St. Giles to guard the front entrance,” the man said.
“Good.”
I continued on my way, running toward the remnants of the fire. It was trying to regain a hold, sparking as the heat sought for fuel. I funneled more power to it, sending the heat deep into the earth where it was safely kept away from anything flammable.
Or usually. Once I had accidentally directed a spike of heat straight down into an underground armory. Which had been half-full of barrels of gunpowder. Luckily, I had done it from a distance and it hadn’t cost me anything other than considerable embarrassment and reparations to the man who’d hired us.
I’d been fortunate enough not to kill anyone. So I’d learned to scan ahead of my power now. And I didn’t blow things up unless I intended to.
Tonight, the urge to do just that burned in my gut.
I wasn’t one of the Templars, but I was feeling distinctly territorial about the City right at this moment.
If Ignatius Grey wanted it, he was going to be sorely disappointed.
Another group of Templars loomed up in my path, but they recognized me before they drew their weapons.
“Is anyone hurt?” I asked. Quickly followed by “Where’s Sir Guy?”