by Archer, Zoe
“I always have important knowledge to convey.” She smiled, however, seeing how her ghostly radiance bathed the room. “Think of all the lamp oil that can be saved.”
“Very economical.”
They drifted from the kitchen, down a cramped corridor. An empty storeroom and an even more cramped closet lay off the passage. Judging by the cot and battered chest in the closet, it once served as a servant’s chamber. They ascended a staircase to the main floor. One room was empty of everything but a broken mirror leaning against the wall and a dented metal serving platter. At some point, the room might have served as a place for dining. Now, one would receive a mouthful of grime for a meal. The other, larger room still had furniture, but dust filmed everything. Bram discovered a nest of mice within a chair’s stuffing, a mother and her wriggling pink young. Pellets were scattered across the floor, evidence that other creatures called this place home, and spiders presided in the corners.
“The world goes wild so easily,” Bram murmured. To her surprise, he did not disturb the spiderwebs, nor toss out the mice. He left them as they were. At Livia’s questioning glance, he said, “I’d be a terrible landlord if I threw out the only occupants with nary a warning of eviction.”
She shook her head, and glided up the narrow stairs. He followed, the steps groaning beneath his weight. Shadows were thick here, scarcely pushed back by her glow. More cracks threaded up the plastered walls. Something scuttled across the floorboards as Bram reached the top of the stairs. Two doors led off the hallway.
Before he could open the first door, Livia glided straight through it. Bram made a soft snort of amusement. He entered the chamber in a more customary fashion. They didn’t linger in the chamber—moth-eaten curtains covered the windows, and more broken bits of furniture were scattered around like the bones of slow-moving herd animals.
The front-facing room revealed its purpose by the presence of a canopied bed. The canopy itself had been removed, leaving behind the bare wooden posts like trees in winter. No blankets covered the mattress. Bits of horsehair poked through the ticking. Bram gave the mattress a shove. Apart from a cloud of dust that made him cough, nothing else came out.
“Don’t want to share my bed with rats,” he said.
Aside from the bare bed, the chamber’s only other furnishing was a small table that listed on a splintered leg and a few piles of debris huddled in the corners. Bram toed through the debris, shoving aside rags and broken ceramics, but seemed to find nothing of value.
“A poor protector, your father,” Livia murmured, peering through the grime-streaked window. It looked out onto the street. After the chaos and noise of the earlier fight with the demons, the utter absence of sound and movement here felt yet more ominous, as though in suspension, awaiting a greater threat.
“This place has fallen into disrepair since Mrs. Dance’s time. He kept her in fine style. A live-in servant, and a maid. A line of credit at the mantua maker’s. She never complained.” He stared at the sagging bed. “She may have even cared for him. Arthur said she went into mourning after Father died, and didn’t live much longer beyond that.”
“You might’ve installed your own woman here, when the house became available.”
“I never had a mistress. As well you know.”
That, she did. She did not know what humor provoked her to make such a comment. Untrue. She knew precisely why she had mentioned his nonexistent concubine. They were in a small bedchamber, utterly alone in this narrow house, and had fought side-by-side this night. Were she flesh, she would have pushed him back to the bed—though she suspected he would allow her to push him to the bed—and put her hips to his hips, her mouth to his mouth. Felt him. Tasted him.
Impossibilities.
Her desire understood nothing of what was impossible. It—she—wanted, without thought, without considering realities.
He must have seen the hunger in her gaze, for his own blazed hotter, and he took a step toward her.
She could not feel the warmth of his body, nor could he span the distance between them and take hold of her. Yet she moved away. An instinctively protective act.
“I’ve never known such frustration.” She could not look away from him, though she kept herself as far from him as she could. They faced one another across the bare expanse of floor. “I thought that over a thousand years trapped with the Dark One was the greatest torment I’d ever known. To watch the world slip past, all the experiences of life that I could never have. Condemned to be a pair of eyes only.” She now shut her eyes. “It was agony. Cost me my reason. But, in time, I regained my sense. I believed myself entirely sane.”
“And now?” His voice was a rumble.
She forced her eyes to open. “Now I verge on madness again. So many things I want and cannot have. Because of this.” She glided toward the bed and passed her hand through the post. “Without my flesh, my magic is only a shadow of what it needs to be. But I want more than my magic.” She turned her gaze to his.
Hunger shaped the contours of his face, honing him to impossible sharpness. “You can have whatever you desire.”
He strode to her. There was no thief’s silence or cunning. His step was bold, direct. Only a few inches separated them, and she imagined what his heat must be like, the scent of his skin. Yet those few inches may as well have been miles, for it was a distance that couldn’t be breached.
“You can have me,” he said, husky and low. “Because, of a certain, I want you.”
“More of your cruelty.” She pressed her lips tightly together to keep from kissing him—ludicrous.
“The truth. I’ve never wanted a woman more.”
His words were an agonizing caress. “Because you have not—what is the word you used—swived anyone in days.”
“It’s not desperation that makes me want you. It’s you.” He smiled, faintly mocking himself. “The first woman I cannot touch is the one that I need to have. It’s not your body I desire, though,” he added, with an appreciative glance, “that has its temptations.”
He shook his head. “I thought I was finished with firsts, that I’d done everything and all things. Yet it turns out that there are still unknowns for me. A woman I want for herself.”
Aside from the wound she’d sustained in the battle, she thought herself incapable of physical pain. As he spoke, however, she felt a bodily ache of loss. “Look at me, Bram.” Staring down at herself, she noted that the floorboards were plainly visible through her translucent body. “I’ve no way to touch you, no means of feeling.”
“If that is your challenge,” he said, “I accept.”
She deliberately moved through him. “Enough. We’ll speak of other things. We should—”
“Get on the bed.”
Turning to face him, she raised her brows. “What?”
“I said”—he drew off his coat and tossed it to the floor—“get on the bed.”
For a moment, she did not move. Instinct and self-preservation made her want to disobey his direct command. She bent her will to no one.
They stared at one another. She felt the tug and pull between them, the continuous will and desire. Neither of them obeyed readily or ceded control.
Yet she would do this for him now. He would be hers to command another time.
With deliberate concentration, she made herself sit on the bed.
“Lie down.” His throat was revealed as his neckcloth joined the coat upon the floor. The angry line of his scar ran beside the fast beat of his pulse.
Using more concentration, she stretched out on the bed. It felt odd, mimicking of a quotidian action. How long had it been since she had lain upon a bed—both for sleep and for sex? Her memories were both too vivid and shrouded in lost time.
His gaze still holding hers, Bram pulled off his boots. The movement tugged his fine shirt tight along his shoulders, his arms, the supple doeskin of his breeches snug along his thighs and the thick outline of his arousal.
He prowled to the bed, then s
tretched out long beside her. The ropes beneath the mattress creaked with his weight. But they held.
Propping himself up on his elbow, he stared down at her. “Take off your tunic.”
She did not move, another instinctive fighting of command. Yet deliberate acquiescence took nothing from her. She was unbroken, even in obedience.
She worked the clasps at her shoulders. Yet they grasped at nothing. The tunic was just as formless as she, and part of her, as well. “I can’t.”
“Doesn’t matter. That’s not where I would start. No,” he murmured, half to himself, “the first thing I would do is take those ornaments from your hair. I’d unpin them, and then I’d coil a lock of your hair around my finger. It must feel like coarse silk, your hair. Heavy, soft. And it has a fragrance. Spice and temple smoke. I’d breathe that in, touching only your hair, watching it move as it falls over your shoulders.”
“I used to scent my bathwater with cassia,” she whispered.
A corner of his mouth tilted. “Ah, I was right. Spice. But I’d touch your hair for only so long before I’d need to feel your skin. Here, and here.” He moved his finger to right beneath her ear, at the juncture of her neck, then down her throat to tarry at the hollow between her collarbones. “Like velvet, your skin, and warm.”
She could not feel his touch, yet his words stroked her, drawing forth silken ribbons of sensation. It stunned her. She could not feel, and yet she did.
“I’d feel the beat of your heart,” he said, relentless. “You’d respond to me. That wouldn’t be enough, though. I’d want your mouth. To feel it against mine. To taste you. I’d start slowly, just little sips, the brush of my mouth against yours. How silky your lips are, so full and ripe. Your lips are made for kissing—did you know? You might think they were for shaping the words for spells, or issuing commands to your trembling underlings, and they do those things very well, but their true purpose is in kissing me. I’d show you that. I’d kiss you deeper. You’d taste of spice, too.” He licked his lips and gave a small hum of pleasure.
By the gods, she could almost feel his kiss.
“There was a time when I loved nothing more than kissing,” he continued, almost conversational but for the depth of his voice and the blue fire in his eyes. “Could do it for hours, and be satisfied. Perhaps I’ll do that with you. Kiss you until you melt in my mouth and I drink you in.” His nostrils flared. “Another time. This kiss is a prelude. I’d take my lips from yours and then I’d run them down your neck. I’d bite you there, too. My teeth just here.” He circled the convergence of her neck and shoulder. “Hard enough to leave a mark, so anyone who saw you would know exactly what happened. They’d know that I bit you like a wolf claiming his mate. The mighty priestess marked. By me.”
An involuntary moan crept up her throat. She could well imagine it—the gleaming flare of pleasure and pain, his hot breath upon her, the red indentations left by his teeth. His audacious, animalistic marking.
“What if I threatened to turn you into an actual wolf?” she breathed. “Transform you into a beast? Would you be so impudent?”
He grinned savagely. “I’d bite you harder. Until you give in.”
“I never submit.”
“Then this will be a delightful challenge. For, you see, as I’m biting you, I’d unfasten your tunic and slide it down to your waist. Cup your bared breasts in my hands. You’ve full breasts, but my hands are large. Nothing would go unattended. I’d stroke and caress them. They’d feel like . . . like paradise. So soft. Lush.” His hands hovered over her breasts, and he stared with open need.
She arched up, even though she could not feel his palms against her.
“Your nipples would harden. I’d run the tip of my fingers back and forth over them, and you’d feel it all through your body. Then I’d take your nipples between my fingers and pinch.”
She couldn’t stop the gasp that formed on her lips. His words burned her, banishing the chill of her cold nullity.
“I’d take my fingers away and put my mouth in their place. Lick you. Have your nipple between my lips and tug. I’d make your breasts glisten from my tongue. Until you’d writhe beneath me, begging me not to stop.”
She did want him to stop. This was a torment, a tease, and could end only in frustration. Yet if he stopped, she would tear the walls down with her scream.
“The tunic would come off, all of it. I’d push it past your hips, until you’d stand completely naked, wearing only the ripe curves of your hips and the dark gloss of your maidenhair.” He moved a hand down to hover above the junction of her thighs. She instinctively widened her legs.
“We’d have a bed nearby. Not this one. A better bed, with a good, firm mattress, and silk sheets. I’d urge you back to the bed and lay you down, your hips right at the edge, your feet on the floor.”
“And where would you be?” she asked, breathless.
“Kneeling between your legs, of course. My hands would grip your thighs. They’re sleek, your thighs, and I’d feel the tension in them, the muscles beneath your skin as you’d hold yourself in readiness. Waiting. Waiting. You’d jump a little at the first touch of my breath on you. A sigh, that breath, and a breathing in. This close, I’d smell how much you want me there. I’d see it, too. That gleam of wetness. Can you picture that? Can you see how your body would demand me?”
“Yes.”
“But I’d be a hungry man, standing at the banquet. I’d not be able to wait for long before feasting. A few gentle licks at first, learning how you taste, feeling your impossible softness. You’d be so wet my face would be glistening. And you’d get even wetter. I’d suck on you, consume you. I’d thrust my tongue inside of you. God, you’d be delicious.”
He groaned. “I’d take your bud between my lips, swirl my tongue around it. Back and forth. Inside you, over you. I’d fill you with pleasure. And you’d scream when you came, your fingers in my hair, pulling me tight against you.”
She wanted to close her eyes, stop her ears, but he had her in his thrall, and she truly did writhe, gasping even though she’d no need for air.
“You’d think we were done,” he went on, inexorable, “but I’d continue. I wouldn’t stop. Not until you came so many times you’d go limp and had screamed yourself voiceless.”
The dark tapestry he wove with words ensnared her. She fell, farther, farther, tangled in fantasy, craving what he offered, needing to give him what he gave her.
“That wouldn’t be all,” she breathed. “You’d be hard, and aching. Wanting inside me.”
His lids lowered, and he dragged in a breath. “Yes.”
“I’d undress you. This time fast, but there will come a time when I’d go slowly, peeling away layer after layer to bare your skin and your body. But for this moment, I’d be swift, because I would not be able to wait. I’d have you naked before ten grains of sand hit the bottom of the hourglass.”
She had already seen him unclothed, but picturing it now within the illusion they shaped made her tight and ravenous. The moonlight would be silver upon the wide expanse of his shoulders, tracing the solid arcs of his muscles, disappearing into dips and hollows.
“And I would see how hard you’d be,” she continued. “Curving up, as if made to fit precisely within me. The head pulling upward. There’d be a small drop weeping from the slit, because you’d want inside me so badly.”
His breath came raggedly, and he pressed his hand against the hard ridge of his cock. “Yes—just there.”
“But not yet. I wouldn’t let you between my legs right away. I’d stay on the bed, just where I lay, and make you kneel on the mattress beside my head. Your cock would be so close to my lips. I’d lift up, like this.” She raised herself onto her elbows. “My mouth would open. You’d put one hand behind my head. And then . . . I’d take you into my mouth.”
Bram gave another groan. His groin pressed into his hand. Yet he held himself back.
“Go on,” she urged. “Let me see you.”
H
is fingers flew over the fastenings of his breeches. With a hiss of relief, he freed his erection, his hand wrapping around its thickness.
Never had a crude piece of flesh been so tempting. His cock was dark, flushed with blood, and just as she had predicted, fluid glistened at the top of the round head. She wanted him within her so badly. But she was only spirit, so she gave him what she could with words.
“I’d lick you to start. Run my tongue around the top, and just beneath the ridge. There’d be a bit of salt on my tongue from your own need, and I’d lap that up. Then I’d draw you deeper into my mouth. Slowly. Inch by inch, stopping along the way to taste you. But I would take more and more of you within me, until I could go no further. And that’s when I’d begin to suck.”
His hand slid up and down his shaft as she spoke, yet she saw how he kept his strokes slow, light, as if trying to prolong the pleasure. No hurried release for him. He was a voluptuary, taking delight from sensation even more than the release.
“You’d feel my tongue on the underside of your cock. I’d run it all over you as I moved up and down. Every so often, I’d lightly scrape my teeth along the shaft, just enough to remind you that I’m a woman who is always in command, even with your cock in my mouth.”
“And when you’d do that,” he breathed, “I’d push a little harder on your head. Making you swallow more of me.”
“Both of us could not be in charge. Someone has to follow.”
“Neither of us are followers. We’ll make it succeed. That I don’t doubt. See, as you’d be sucking me, I’d reach over to stroke your sweet quim. You’d already be hot and wet from your climaxes, and I’d slip easily between your lips and inside you. Two fingers, I think.” His fingers tightened around his shaft. “See? The two of us in command.”
It would be a wondrous thing—the pull and push of each other, yielding and obdurate at the same time.
“But this wouldn’t last,” he went on. “Only so much I’d be able to endure before I had to have my cock truly inside you. I’d pull from your mouth—”