The Treasure Keeper d-4

by Shana Abe

  He spoke into the darkness, his voice so muted she barely heard it. "I don't want to hurt you."

  She twisted around, allowed her hand to briefly brush his waist. "Then do not." She waited. She did not move again.

  He rolled over. He lifted his arm and placed it across her, just beneath where the gown pulled taut against her breasts. She felt his breath upon her cheek, only slightly uneven, and then the pressure of his lips: a kiss that was also chaste and yet not, because it wasn't on her mouth, but his arm lifted and pushed at her a little, and his body curved toward her a little, and his feet retangled with hers.

  All she had to do was turn her head. Not even very far, just a fraction. She kept her eyes open and gazed at the canopy of the bed, the tapestry of purple roses and vines, and as he bent closer she allowed at last that small motion of her head, tipping toward him, and he leaned up and found her lips with his.

  It was a gentle thing, so light and skimming, and yet it warmed her in a way that all the gold she'd ever worn never did. He savored her, faint, delicious kisses at the corners of her lips, her chin and nose and eyes, his cheek scraping hers, because he was still unshaven.

  He began to lean more heavily against her. He drew one arm up by her head to support himself and allowed the other to slide along hers, his hand flexed, the warm skin of his biceps and forearm tracing the shape of hers through her sleeve. His leg lifted, angled across her stomach, gliding slowly up and down as he kissed her, and the hem of her gown rumpled upward until her bare knees and shins touched his.

  She felt the whisper of his hair along her neck, that faint tickle of metallic silk. She reached up and wove her fingers through it, enjoying its heat and satiny weight as he closed his eyes and rubbed his cheek back to hers. He learned her without using his hands, exploring the delicate hollows and curves of her face with lips and eyelashes, his scent intoxicating. She was melting from it, melting from the inside out.

  And he was changing too. She stroked her hands down his back to the sudden rougher edge of his breeches, traced the circumference of his waist from back to front. Wool and linen. Hard buttons. His hips finding a rhythm against hers, the leg curled over her scissoring tighter, aligning his body over hers, one knee between her own.

  She'd seen him before without clothing, more than once, and if he could summon even a sliver of their time together in the house of the sanf, he'd seen her nude too. There were still mysteries between them, the interlocking of their bodies, her gown and his breeches; the gown at least had a simple solution. A few slithering moves and she had it over her head, wadded into a new pillow against the gilded headboard.

  He had arched over her as she'd moved, allowing her the space to disrobe, but that was all. Now he lowered himself again, and she felt the fresh heat of his chest to hers, his mouth moving from her temple to her ear to her neck, to the winged curve of her collarbone. Lower, to the underside of her breast, his tongue drawing circles against her, smaller and smaller luxurious circles. Her pulse matched his circles, thumping and thumping in hard, anxious beats, and when he closed his lips on her nipple at last her heart skipped and the flutter of breath trapped in her throat became a moan.

  He suckled her, a hard pull and a brightness that shot all the way through her like a comet. The gold of his claws scraped the gold of the bed, and the music of their clashing rose in her head; Rhys at her breast and the metal songs in her ears; she could not seem to drag in enough air. Her hands were working at his buttons, her leg lifted to bring him closer, and he broke off with a gasping that matched her own.

  "No, no. Let me."

  His hand moved between them; the bone buttons popped free, one hitting the sheets and the rest bouncing to the floor. He rubbed his face between her breasts and his palm up and down her arm.

  "Sweet Zee," he said breathless, smiling. "Lovely girl. I think I might need some help for this next part, actually."

  She put her hands upon his shoulders, pushed until he sat up. Zoe rose to her knees, kept her eyes on his—a faint gleam of color, framed with lashes darker than the night—and drew her palms down his chest, let her fingers catch against the loosened waistline. She tugged the breeches down to his hips, down to his thighs, pressed him back against the mattress lightly with one hand and finished the job, tugging the tan wool all the way down his legs.

  When it was done she had a moment of dreamlike uncertainty: There he lay, beautiful still in his animal way, with his hair a dark-and-bright flag against the bedding, and his arms spread wide and his legs crooked around her hips. Rhys Langford. And he was looking back at her with that smile that was both knowing and aroused, as aroused as his body; Zoe lifted her hand and covered her eyes with her fingers.

  She felt his legs encircle her waist, muscled warmth, strength that pulled her back down to him. His arms came up too, wrapped around her and held her pinned to the length of him. When he arched his hips into hers she opened her mouth to the hard curve of his shoulder; he tasted of salt. He made a low hum in his chest and used his wrist to guide her lips higher, to the bottom of his jaw, whiskers and the scar, all the while grinding against her. All the melting inside her seemed suddenly concentrated in her loins. Where she felt that male part of him, satiny and hard and demanding.

  But she didn't know what to do next. Silly, spinster virgin—untouched for all her years, untouched despite all her best efforts—and she didn't know what to do.

  Rhys did. Of course he did; there was nothing virginal about him, she'd known that forever. He wasn't smiling up at her any longer. He was watching her through those lowered lashes, breathing as if he'd just run a sprint. She moistened her lips and looked back at him, and he blinked once, a slow and lazy blink. "Am I awake?" he asked.

  "I hope so." She sounded breathless herself, the shyness stealing her words. "Or this is a very frustrating dream."

  "You are the most wondrous, miraculous—you know that; I know you do—but Zee, if this is a dream—"

  She lost her nerve, hid her face against his shoulder.

  "This is how I wanted it," he murmured, holding her. "When I was dead. This was all I wanted. You, with me. To touch you again. To do this ..."

  He tensed, gathered her closer, and rolled them together, so now he was on top and she had the rumpled bedding beneath, and the mattress must have ripped anyway, because there were tiny feathers dusting them both, caught in the mess of their tangled hair.

  "To do this," he whispered, and cradled her head in his hands as he pushed into her, into the center of her heat, his eyes closed.

  She stilled, feeling him, the strange and brilliant sensation of him filling her, stretching her to hurt: She couldn't move, she was afraid to move. He was inside her, and she'd never, ever thought it would feel like—

  "This," he breathed, moving in and out in slow, languorous thrusts, turning the hurt into the worst pleasure imaginable, an aching, throbbing pain that spread white fire through the core of her, that had her opening her legs wider and digging her fingers into his back.

  "I love you." She barely understood him; he'd buried his face into her hair. "I love you. I love you."

  It was a chant, a song, rawly beautiful in his broken voice, a rhythm that matched his body's, and he moved more quickly now, plunging deeper, pulling that white fire within her into a taut coil. She was drawn thin with it, she was desperate for something she could not name. She turned her head from his, searching, held in place by her hair where he pinned it with his arms.

  "Love," he ground out between his teeth, and pressed at once so hard and so deep within her that her entire being lit and burned and she cried out in surprise, a soft startled sound that curled across the floor and walls to die in echo, just as she did.

  Rhys collapsed against her. His skin was slick, his heart racing. She felt that, the pounding in his blood, just as she felt his legs against hers and his face and his talons that curved up and around her head like a spiked metal sunburst.

  He did not lift himself from her; he fe
lt heavy but not crushing, supple and warm and welcome.

  She was floating, astonishingly relaxed, gliding into smooth liquid dreams before he moved, and even then it was only his lips, a bare kiss at the top of her ear, and words she could make out only because she was asleep now, she was finally dreaming .

  "Someday you'll love me too."

  * * *

  He'd hurt her. He knew that; in the morning he found the blood that marked him, and her, the small dark smears on the sheets and between her thighs.

  Zee was a virgin. Naturally, she was. Ice and proper prim on the outside, she'd rebuffed more men of the tribe with just a single, level look than he'd been able to count. Yet her eyes kept betraying her. Poor Zoe; she'd probably never even realized it. No matter how cool her words or demeanor, those exotic black eyes always promised pure, wanton sensuality.

  And last night that promise had transformed into truth.

  He hadn't only hurt her. Rhys had given her pleasure as well. Even like this, even as a miserable scrap of who he'd once been, he'd found the way of her, things he'd known for years because of all those daydreams: how to kiss her. How to stroke her white skin. How to move inside her so that her lips parted and her head arched back and her throat worked, all because of what he was doing to her. All the things he could do to her.

  How to feel that rising release that wanted to shatter her, and him. To coax them both into that place.

  Rhys felt as if his heart was a dry well that had been unexpectedly reflooded with life. He overflowed. He lay next to her and nuzzled his face into silver-glossy hair, and let the waters pour through him.

  Let them spill over.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The hive of the sanf inimicus reeled only very briefly from the discovery of their losses: the house they'd secured breached; the Romanian half-blood they'd persuaded into servitude stolen; the Frenchmen they'd recruited so carefully murdered.

  The body of the beast in the cellar missing. The precious shards of diamonds that guarded him taken too.

  It took them almost no time at all to abandon the house. They'd scrubbed out the blood from the floorboards, wiped down the walls until there was no trace of flour or dust. They'd removed all the boards and shelving of the false pantry to restore, more or less, the original entrance to the cellar. They'd rehung the door.

  They would leave no element of themselves behind. Their enemy was cunning, and they would not be caught so short again.

  The woman named Rez shuffled slowly through each chamber, her nose lifted to the air, her withered fingers tracing nooks and crannies, the hard corners of the wainscoting. When it was done, she pulled the hood of her cloak low about her face and stepped outside.

  Her carriage awaited at the curb. She trundled closer, sighed at reaching the bottom of the towered steps—and the horses in their restraints rolled eyes white with fear.

  When I asked her later what she'd felt as she'd entered the ruined house, tasted the Leftover emanations of the drakon who had ransacked it, the shock of grief that lingered like a preternatural slap over the one who had perished there, her answer was: naught. She'd felt naught.

  Our Gifts are tremendous burdens. You will discover that among us, for all our grandeur, there are those who cannot survive beneath their weight.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sunlight flared red behind her lids. Zoe turned over, reached for a pillow to pull across her eyes, and gradually in that sliding strange world between deep sleep and full awake, realized why there should be no sun on her face.

  Because she wasn't home. She wasn't somewhere safe. She was in Tuileries, and she had ensured that the drapery was very firmly closed the night before.

  She opened her eyes. A shadow man stood against the window, contoured in light, spreading the tall heavy curtains with both arms.

  He turned in place and looked back at her. Yellow sun proved what wasn't shadow: the curvature of a cheekbone; the hard, smooth arc of a shoulder. The muscles of his stomach, rippled and flat. He wore the breeches again, had tied the corners into a knot to keep them fixed without buttons.

  Before she could tell him to do so, Rhys let the curtains fall closed in a pall of spinning dust. "Awake yet? Come with me. I have a surprise."

  He did not give her time to figure her regrets about last night, or wish for a moment alone, or even to do more than toss on her nightgown—which she did, swiftly, using the cool crumpled linen to momentarily hide the heat rising in her face. He kissed her as she'd emerged from the neck hole, kissed her hard and then soft, his lips like velvet, the cuts that were healing still tasting a little of blood. Then he wrapped a hand lightly about her wrist and led her out of the apartment.

  Down the silent, grave hallways of the palace, the bare green tiles. He didn't head toward the servants' stairs, the way she always went, but instead to the main grand staircase, with its black iron design of fleur-de-lis topped with a sickle-curved rail of gold-plated brass, the royal coat of arms set within the iron every six treads.

  They went down together, one step at a time.

  There were windows meant to illume the space, grand, imposing windows, but they had been sheeted, and so they descended three full levels by uncanny, impure light, her gown billowing with a draft of unseen air, Rhys's hair a mussed drape down his shoulders.

  Past galleries of slender pillars and wide arches, ormolu garlands draped along the walls. Faces carved into the decorative friezes gazing back at them with blank stone eyes.

  She'd been here before, but only in the dark. By day it seemed more haunted; through the cool solemnity of the open atrium she could easily imagine the long-dead Others who'd lived here, who'd touched the banister as she did, who admired the ocher-banded colonnades and intricate shining details of the garlands.

  Zoe could not prevent her periodic, nervous glances toward the gloomier corners. She was ready to Turn if she had to, she could shed the nightgown quickly. They were so very open to discovery. Yet Rhys limped his way down the inlaid marble steps with an elan that was almost cheerful. She wouldn't be surprised if he started to whistle.

  A thin, scorched aroma teased her nose, stronger, then weaker, wafting once very close before disappearing altogether. Smoke—not dragon smoke, but ordinary smoke from ordinary wood. The occupied chambers of the palace were still quite distant. Perhaps one of the groundskeepers had lit a torch outside.

  Rhys had moved ahead. Like her, he kept a hand upon the banister, but gripped it harder. His limp was growing more pronounced.

  At the bottom of the staircase he angled to a sealed doorway to the right, double doors, and she knew what was behind them as well; she'd visited every room on this level at least once, and this, she recalled, had been a parlor.

  It was a parlor, but surely one for a queen, for the floors were a mosaic of sky blue and pink marble, and the arabesque flourishes covering the walls had been done in pure silver, still singing bright to her ears but long since tarnished to black.

  There was a picnic laid out upon the floor. A blanket with china dishes—fruit and bread and sliced roast. An Oriental teapot that smelled of warm chocolate, and two thick plain ceramic mugs.

  "I know how you feel about cooking," Rhys said.

  "How did you—" She only just stopped herself from glancing down at his hands. "Where did you get all this?"

  "Here and there." He smiled at her—oh yes, that special smile; her heart gave a little squeeze— and backed into the chamber. "Have you been to the kitchens in this place? One might house the entire English militia in a single corner. Even with only the few, poor hardscrabble souls living here, there were plenty of delicacies to choose from."

  "You stole it?"

  His lashes lowered; his smile grew more wry. "Let's say pilfered. It sounds more debonair, don't you think?" He lifted his hands and flexed his fingers, and his claws blurred in a cascade of wicked symmetry. "Call me cynical, but I doubt they would have volunteered it, beloved, no matter how sweetly I asked."<
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  "But how did you manage to ..." She remembered the odor of woodsmoke. "You set a fire." "Just a small one."

  "Rhys!" She caught herself, lowered her voice. "You set afire to draw them away?"

  "You're welcome. See all the trouble I go to for you?" He came forward at her look, held her gaze in a straight green reply, then leaned in to buss her cheek. Soft, soft, like bluebell petals, a bare tempting brush of sensation.

  "Afire,"she murmured, shaking her head. "What a madman." "Excruciatingly small. Hardly any grass burned, I promise."

  She surveyed the meats and fruits and the peony-painted pot and thought of how much work it must have been for him to get it all here. How he must have made three trips at least in his mangled human form, and the kitchens were nowhere near the queen's elaborate pink-and-blue world.

  The bread was so fresh it sent out waves of yeasty perfume. Her stomach gave a loud rumble.

  "Lovely timing," her shadow said, and lowered himself to the blanket. She stood there watching him, watching how his face went blank and his muscles clenched, his arms and back and calves, how his claws dug ten pointed holes into the immaculate marble floor. When it was done he released a breath and looked up at her. His scar seemed reddened but that was all. She saw not a trace of the pain that must have racked him left on his features.

  "My lady. Won't you dine with me?"

  She gathered up her nightgown and sat beside him with her legs tucked under, close enough to feel the heat of his gold, because like everything in Tuileries, the parlor was cavernous, and her body was chilled.

  She was glad to have the cook's uniform after all. Its tan-and-brown stripes would make her blend better with the teeming crowds of peasants, and it was going to be easier to hide amid them than in the extravagant pockets of nobles who picked their way about the city like jeweled birds hopping through rubble. She could stoop her shoulders and stuff her hair beneath a cap, and if she kept her face lowered, she would gather hardly any attention. Especially with a measure of dirt rubbed upon her cheeks and neck.