Tempered: Book Four of The St. Croix Chronicles

by Karina Cooper

  The rain turned his waistcoat and trousers nearly black, and the state of his now transparent shirtsleeves stripped from him aspects of the gentlemanly demeanor he’d labored to claim.

  In the blustery gloom, which painted his pale skin to something more like carved moonlight and his hair to a ruby-studded gleam, he looked even less the part. With the markings upon his forearms stark against his sodden shirtsleeves and the harsh light in his eye when he raised his gaze again to mine, Ashmore did not look quite so mannerly as I’d grown accustomed to. In truth, he seemed rather more untamed.

  The muscles in his arms bunched as his hands closed into fists. “You challenge what you don’t understand.” Thunder rumbled, as though to lend his warning heavenly credence.

  “What challenge?” I raised my chin in a semblance of dignity. “You have already made your rejection clear.”

  “I have offered no rejection,” he growled, patently impatient with my obstinacy.

  I thrust my face closer to his, teeth bared. “You have rejected everything!”

  His eyes flared, blazing with an unholy light captured in an echoed streak of violet above our heads. He moved so fast that the shadows had not yet encroached again when I found myself crowded against the veranda railing, his hands taut on either side of my hips and his mouth a hairsbreadth from mine. I gasped in surprise, and as though he had only waited for that opportunity, he took my lips in a kiss that not only contested the cold with the heat of it but scorched the walls of that desolation I carried inside me.

  It was as if the storm possessed us both. I seized his head in my hands, twisting my fingers into his sopping hair, and gave back a kiss every bit as hungry as that he levied upon me. Like two challengers too long denied, we dueled by way of tongue and lips; by the roughness of his grip at my nape and the coarse fabric of his trousers clenched between my bare thighs.

  Somehow, he had torn my skirt out of his way, flung the fabric to the side to free my legs. I wrapped them around his hips as he ground his body against mine. Such blatant need robbed me of all breath and reason—his kiss was not the sort any self-possessed gentleman would ever have allowed.

  All perfectly within my desires.

  I did not want a gentleman, and I did not want to be loved. I was no treasure to be carefully handled. I wanted forgetting, I wanted bliss that did not require the tar I so craved to consume again.

  I wanted this, now, and although I did not know what had changed in his mind, I thrilled to be getting it.

  All thoughts of cold and memory vanished as I clung to his shoulders. All feelings beyond that of hunger and furious need fled as he spanned my hips and dragged me to the very edge of the balustrade. Although the stone was wide enough that I could sit comfortably, it wasn’t so wide that I wouldn’t fall over the side if he let me go. The veranda was too high to survive the fall.

  A flutter of fear only heightened my arousal.

  The rain hammered down upon us, as fierce a thing as the passions that drove us to ignore the tempest raging overhead. Ashmore’s eyes were heavy-lidded as he drew back, his mouth parted on a rough gasp. I cried out my denial of his loss. One hand left my hip, and I allowed my legs to fall open farther as he freed himself from the placard of his trousers.

  There was precious little to debate—and nothing at all I wanted to do less. I wanted this too sharply, a veritable pain within me, and so I panted with impatient hunger as he took himself in hand and met my urging stare.

  His eyes were wicked gold and green, as fierce as I’d ever seen him, and they pinned me to the wet stone with an intensity that stole the will from my limbs.

  He said nothing. I expected nothing to be said.

  As my trembling thighs once more bracketed his hips, he closed that distance between us and his flesh entered mine.

  A part of me expected cold, as his fingers had been, but I could not spare the energy to be surprised when it felt of heat and intensity. I screamed from the relief of it, from the fierce joy coursing through me. My flesh tightened around this ungentle intrusion, and my nails dug into Ashmore’s still-clothed shoulders as he filled me so completely in a single thrust.

  He did not wait to see if I was well, nor did he pause to kiss me again. Instead, he withdrew, leaving me aching and wanting, and entered me hard once more. I cried out with every impact of his flesh against mine, clung to him as he steadied me upon the veranda rail and drove into me with all the ferocity of the storm around us.

  Again and again; he drove me to unimaginable heights, only hesitating once when I let him go to brace my hands just behind me on the stone balustrade. His grip tightened at my waist, his eyes flared, and his skin gleamed like wet marble as he threw his head back and pounded into my body with all the savagery I demanded.

  The words he spoke were lost forever in that tempest, but I didn’t imagine that they would be sweet, gentle or appropriate.

  My release fell over me not like the rain, but like a tide welling from somewhere low in my belly, between my legs. My fingertips burned, my muscles ached with the fury of it, and I screamed in mingled passion and violence as that spring within me uncoiled.

  Ashmore’s voice did not join mine, but his body seized, hips tight against the vee of my legs, and his eyes clenched hard as he found the same release as I, nearly as sudden and ultimately as forceful.

  We each panted for breath.

  The rain continued unabated, and lightning scored a brilliant swath overhead. It turned us both to living statues, locked together with my sodden skirts draped over the rail and his arm curved around my lower back lest I tumble over the edge.

  We said nothing. Bliss filled my body, my limbs. A sweet lassitude plucked at my senses. For this instant in time, this strange and surreal moment, I felt nothing but the glow of satiated pleasure.

  It wasn’t to last. All too soon, a low groan torn from him, Ashmore’s forehead fell to my shoulder.

  I cupped the back of his head, my fingers trembling. Tipping my face to the violent sky, I exhaled a slow and shuddering breath.

  When I burst into tears, it surprised nobody more than me.

  Chapter Twelve

  Bless the demon who ravaged my senses, for Ashmore did not leave me to my embarrassment. Hurriedly adjusting his trousers, he scooped me from the rail, ensuring the drenched folds of the tea gown fell appropriately, and carried me inside.

  I clung to his shoulders, torn between abject mortification and the sobs that would not release me from their iron-fisted hold, and buried my face against his wet shirt.

  Though we must have left a trail of water in our wake, Ashmore did not seem inclined to care. The air inside was only marginally warmer, and I shivered within his arms.

  “Is she all right?” Maddie Ruth’s voice broke sharply from somewhere beyond me. I cried all the harder, hiding my face.

  I couldn’t stop. I wanted to—bloody bells, did I want to—but the tears blinded me, tore from me all reason.

  “She’ll be all right,” Ashmore said over my head. “Stoke the fire in my room, Miss Halbard, I’ll be watching her tonight.”

  Maddie Ruth did not hesitate. “Aye,” she replied, and her footsteps hurried off.

  A large hand splayed over the back of my head. “All will be well,” he murmured against my hair. “Have it all out, then.”

  I heard no guilt in his voice. If he felt himself responsible for this outburst, as I feared, he did not share it. Instead, he murmured nonsensical reassurances as he carried me through the hall and into the bedroom he’d claimed as his own.

  This was a large one, with a fireplace to keep the chill at bay and a sitting room for visitors and proper dressing. By the time Maddie Ruth had finished fueling the fire and took her leave—likely smiling the whole of the way; that girl knew most all the secrets of life already—my sobs had slowed to the occasional whimper.

  Ashmore did not ask me of my thoughts. He did not encourage me to speak. With gentle hands, he sat me down upon his lap and slipped fr
ee the narrow buttons seaming the back of my gown. My braid had fallen, made too heavy by the wet to retain its shape with so few pins, and he carefully wrung it out over the hearth.

  A strange sort of listlessness filled me, then—a dissolution of care or shame. It was all too familiar, for Hawke had taken care of me in a like manner and I recognized in me a weakness for it. Stripped of my gown, shivering as the air slipped over my damp skin, Ashmore lifted me once more off my feet and placed me in his bed.

  It all afforded me an illusion of care.

  I watched as Ashmore undressed, doffing his clothing with a neatness indicative of efficiency. He did not waste efforts with unnecessary motion, and if he was at all concerned for my watching, he still did not show me.

  Oliver Ashmore was not a man easy to read.

  It seemed I would forever be drawn to them what weren’t.

  When he was as nude as I, and the firelight wrapped a pale glow about his so white flesh, he reached for a dressing gown hanging from a rack.

  “Ashmore.”

  He hesitated.

  I did not. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “I am not leaving you.”

  I shifted, the bedclothes rustling, and a fascinating play of tension slid through his shoulders. “Lay with me.”

  His head lowered, as though he might find answers to his thoughts at his feet.

  I thought I might be rejected once more, but before I could decide to ask again, his hand lowered from its reach.

  With the same economy of motion I had earlier admired, he turned and approached the bed. His eyes were dark in the firelight, the occasional glint of gold caught inside their hazel depths, but his expression was not unkind.

  Wordlessly, he slid beneath the covers.

  I gasped as his skin settled against mine. “You’re warm.”

  “As will you be soon enough.” He reached about me, gathered up my body in the crook of his arm and tugged me more fully against his side.

  We lay as lovers entwined, one of my legs wrapped about his and his heart beating against the palm of my hand. His flesh was so light in color as to make me think of ice and snow, but it was soft beneath my cheek and oddly cozy.

  Thunder rumbled in harmony with the fire’s crackle.

  True to his word, I warmed soon enough. Shortly thereafter, as his heart sped beneath an open-mouthed kiss upon his flesh, he rolled so that I lay trapped between his arms and his eyes burned into mine.

  Again, he did not speak of what lay in my thoughts. Perhaps he felt he did not have to; whatever lay inside his own mind, he did not bare it for me, either. Instead, he took my invitation with a kiss that was much more gentle than the last, though no less searing for it.

  I learned that Ashmore was a man whose preference for love-making tended to an inescapably thorough finesse. In the course of a few short hours, he taught me many things about my body that I had not considered—including that of graduating pleasure, teased out so slowly as to leave my mind shattered in the wake of final release.

  It made me wonder what it was that had seized him out upon that veranda. The demons that must ride him to force him to behave that way seemed to mirror my own.

  Was it me that had forced that encounter? Or was it his own burdens torn so violently free?

  And in so doing, did it allow him now to behave so gently?

  The man was a puzzle I was eager to unlock.

  Some time later, we sat before the fire—once more stoked to a cheerful blaze—and shared a cold meal Maddie Ruth left outside the door. I knew that soon I would be forced to leave this chamber. I owed Maddie Ruth some explanation, and no doubt she would demand details no girl of sixteen should know how to ask of, but for now, I enjoyed this oasis of harmony between Ashmore and I.

  I wore his abandoned dressing gown, which smelled of his woodsy shaving soap and the warmth of his skin. He wore a pair of trousers and little else, copper shadow clinging to his jaw.

  He offered me a bit of sausage. I took it from his fingers with my lips, earning a crooked hint of smile from him. “Mind that,” he warned, “or you’ll never be free of this room.”

  I swallowed the morsel before asking, “Would that be so bad?”

  His smile turned thoughtful as he studied me. We were seated across the hearth from each other, but it wasn’t so large that my feet could not burrow under his leg for warmth and comfort. A pillow behind me provided comfort, and I felt rather less weary than I should have.

  “It might,” he finally said, but without the sting such an admission should have engendered. “Would you care to talk about those things on your mind?” He picked up his tea, still steaming within fragile porcelain. It smelled of bergamot and, as famished as I was, heaven. I had already finished mine, denied more until I ate.

  That he even bothered to ask for my thoughts was a mark in his favor. Still, I flushed as I turned my gaze to the fire. No less bright than his eyes, but at least the fire did not leave me feeling as if I had no secrets left to hide.

  I plucked a bit of winter cheese from the plate, broke it in half with my fingers. If Fanny could only see me now. What an awful fit she might have.

  “There is no need to force yourself,” he added gently into the lingering quiet.

  The storm had raged on past, leaving behind nothing but the soft rush of rain as it pattered the roof and the always constant groans of the house as it shifted in the dark.

  I frowned down at the bit of cheese crumble stuck to my fingers.

  This sense of security, this gentle atmosphere, did more to soften my resolve than anything I could have dreamed. I looked up. “I have little enough to hide.” The truth, as I meant it, and spoken so firmly that he nodded in acknowledgment of the resolution.

  Fear tugged at my heart.

  Though I said the words, I trembled at what they might mean. There was a great deal I had not told anyone, and more that I wasn’t certain I knew how to say. So much was so complicated, wrapped forever in a hazy cloud that forced me to struggle to remember what was real and what was not.

  The awful feeling within me when I had ended a man’s life—regardless of who it was I’d killed—had been so real. Yet now as I considered that the Ripper might well be alive, I could not sort my thoughts on the matter.

  Was it relief I felt that I had selfishly avoided the act of taking a life? I could no longer avoid the truth of that particular shortcoming. Once upon a time, I might have considered that one death was no different than five—that if I’d murdered even one person, it would be as ghastly as if I’d murdered many more.

  I was ashamed that when confronted with this very truth, I felt relief that I might have only been directly responsible for killing Teddy. It was my doing that put us both in front of the train; he saved me that night, compounding my guilt. Thinking that the vile Ripper escaped my blade should not have made me feel so comforted.

  Shame upon shame, especially when I considered that in so failing to take his life, I had also failed in my commitment to collect the Ripper before he killed again. My failures always seemed to cost someone else’s life.

  When I considered this burden too closely, my throat closed and the ache in head and belly burned so sharply as to steal my breath.

  It was times like this that I thought it prudent to ask for help, yet knew no manner of asking would gain me what I wanted.

  Ashmore was too strong a man to give in to the likes of my pleading.

  There was so much wrapped up in my conflicted emotions that I couldn’t even begin to think how to give voice to them, much less offer solutions where I saw only failure.

  I tucked a broken bit of cheese into my mouth and concentrated on the sharp flavor as it dissolved upon my tongue. It was no tar, but it would do for the moment. For this, for Ashmore’s care and my own sense of self, it would do.

  He was patient as I considered all of these things. That Ashmore had slipped inside this nest of worries I carried was an entirely different matter.


  What would he say if I told him I did not want to return to London?

  Such a declaration would not go unchallenged, and I feared that as much as I welcomed it. As with the rest of my conflicted thoughts on my future, I was not even certain of what I wanted, much less what I needed. I considered how wonderful it might be to leave London forever. It seemed an eternity since I last imagined the life I’d wanted to lead—laden with my father’s fortune and taking to the skies in a private airship from where I might see the world at last.

  Ashmore traveled extensively. Would he take me?

  Would I be happy if he did?

  Somehow, I could not imagine that I would be. Something, a part of me laden by the bonds I’d forged in the city I’d left behind, would not let me fly free.

  I sighed. “I find myself,” I said to the flickering orange flame, “balanced upon a rope. To my left, there is London. On my right, the vast and unexplored world.”

  He inclined his head. The fire caught in his hair, turned it to a glittering mass of hammered copper and sparks of red. It fascinated me. Mine was much darker, with only the occasional bit of copper glint and surprising thread of violet gleam. To find another with hair even more ginger than mine delighted me to no end.

  I could be so very shallow about the oddest things.

  “The problem with this,” I continued, toying with my remaining bit of cheese, “is that each requires a long tumble down and a rather sudden stop.”

  The muscles of his thigh bunched as he shifted his weight upon the floor, then eased again against my feet when he leaned back against an array of cushions dragged into place. He looked nothing less than a sultan as pale as moonlight, sprawled bare-chested and barefoot upon the floor and ready for his harem girls to tend him.

  I giggled at the imagery and swallowed it back when he raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Passing fancy,” I said quickly, dismissing his curiosity with a wave. “Pay no heed.”