by Olivia Waite
Virginia caught her breath and remembered for one shining moment how much she’d once loved him. Well, maybe not him, precisely—more the thought of him, of being married to a man who was caring and attractive and familiar.
It all felt very distant now, and faint, as though she’d mistaken a candle for a bonfire.
She smiled and said, “But it turned out for the best after all. You are quite happy now, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he replied, a single resonant word that held more than enough proof to convince Virginia. Not that she’d needed convincing. But she felt better all the same, knowing her adventure had done some good. But now he was considering her, his brow furrowed in concern. “But you aren’t, are you? Happy, I mean.”
With anyone else, Virginia might have dissembled, but Lambourne had known her too long and it didn’t seem worth the effort. “It has been difficult,” she admitted. “The city I came back to is not the city I left. There are...other inhabitants.”
Lambourne’s eyebrows lifted. “You can see them too? No wonder you’ve grown so quiet.” He tilted his head toward a group conversing by the fireplace, where Mr. Cave’s former shoulder demon was now curled smugly in Mrs. Gibson’s lap, like an evil and hairless kitten.
“Indeed,” Virginia agreed. “But it’s not just the demons. It’s also...I don’t quite know where I fit in anymore. I have changed too much, I think, and not all the changes are comfortable.” She sighed. “And if I don’t know where I fit in my own life, how can I possibly know where anyone else belongs?”
“Your incubus, you mean,” Lambourne said and she nodded. He reached out and touched his fingertips briefly to the back of her hand. “You know that no matter what happens you can always count on me for help.”
His kindness nearly undid her. “You’ve already done so much. I can’t thank you enough—” Virginia began, but he waved her gratitude aside.
“It is I who must thank you,” he said quietly. “Until now I’ve had no way of repaying you for your kindness toward Idared and myself last year.”
Virginia found she was uncomfortable with the thought that Lambourne owed her anything. “Anyone would have done the same,” she insisted.
He looked at her, candlelight glittering in his eyes. “Do you think so?”
“Any true friend,” she said.
After a moment, he nodded. “A true friend indeed. I don’t have a great many of those.”
“Nor do I,” said Virginia.
Lambourne’s smile grew sly at the edges, a sure sign he was up to some mischief. “Perhaps Idared and I shall give a ball while we’re in town,” he said. “I have noticed that my wife tends to be rather intimidating to certain...unwelcome elements.” He tilted his head in the direction of Miss Lakeland and her lithe demoness, who was being ignored in favor of Mr. Cave. “I’m sure we would be able to promise you a night free from any uninvited guests.”
Virginia felt a weight lift from her shoulders. A purely human night sounded like the greatest of luxuries. “That would be marvelous,” she said.
“Excellent,” said Lambourne. “Give me a minute to brace myself and then we’ll tell your mother.”
* * * * *
First there was the shirt, a billowing piece of linen pulled on over the head. Then the drawers, which had two buttons at the waistband—Virginia couldn’t help but blush as she taught James how buttons worked—and laced in the back to cinch the incubus’s narrow hips. The stockings were plain wool and caused James to flex his toes and frown in suspicion. “These are awfully warm,” he said.
“We’ll get you some finer ones soon,” Virginia promised.
Next were the buckskin breeches, flatteringly tight against James’ muscular thighs, followed by the navy waistcoat and the richer blue sapphire of the superfine coat. Lambourne was apparently broader in the shoulder, so the coat did not sit perfectly against James’ figure, but Virginia thought the fit was close enough not to occasion comment should he venture out of doors. The incubus very nearly refused to don the tall black boots, especially once the first one proved difficult to get onto his unpracticed foot. “You have to point your toes down,” Virginia said, and insisted he put on the second without her assistance. She was, however, compelled to help him to tie his cravat, a doomed endeavor until James brushed her hands away and tied it himself, with indifferent success. It would have caused any proper valet to faint in horror, but it was technically knotted, though somewhat limp.
For the first time James stood in her bedroom fully dressed, limp cravat and all.
He shuffled his feet and tugged at his cuffs, clearly unaccustomed to so many layers of fabric. Virginia found it equally strange to look at him in human clothing, when only his green face and hands indicated that he was something supernatural. Paradoxically, the restrictions of human clothing made him less rather than more ordinary—all at once the distance between his life and hers seemed unbridgeable. How could someone used to complete freedom and immortality possibly conform himself to the strictures and systems of mortal life? He had no manners, no education, no means of earning his living. His natural quickness and wit must help him, and his considerable charm, but every unspoken statute of social behavior lay in wait for him, lurking like pickpockets and cutthroats around a young lord with a chiming purse.
She tried to choke back her doubts as she watched James walk stiffly over to the corner and gaze at himself in the mirror there, golden in the light from a brace of candles. He turned and twisted, trying to see himself from every angle. “It’s very strange,” he said at last.
Virginia couldn’t help but agree. And only now did she realize how much she’d wanted him to be able to fit in. With her parents, with her life, with the world she knew outside her bedroom walls. She’d grown so close to him in the last month that without even realizing it she had begun to hope...
Virginia dizzied as realization struck. She’d fallen in love with an incubus.
Merciful heavens. He’d left her soul alone and stolen her heart. Or perhaps she’d given it away, thoughtlessly, the way a child might throw a rough diamond into a pond like any common pebble.
“Are these bits supposed to dangle like that?” her beloved asked. He was referring to his coattails, which indeed he was flapping about with his hands, glaring at them with his face screwed up. “This can’t possibly be dignified.”
“You look...” Virginia had to pause around a sudden tightness in her throat. “You look quite elegant, actually.”
James shrugged, frowned and tugged at the jacket cuffs. “I suppose I’ll get used to it,” he said. “But I was hoping that at least some of these items would be silk.”
A laugh stuttered out of her. “One suit of clothes and you’re practically a dandy.”
At last he smiled, then turned and made her a surpassingly graceful leg. “So I pass muster, my lady?” he asked.
Virginia couldn’t answer. The sight of him in that pose, grinning mischievously up at her from beneath his dark hair, sent a pang of jumbled longing through her. He seemed less hers now that he wasn’t naked, every layer of fabric a new wall between them. Physical desire tangled up with a yearning for something richer and deeper—a life fully shared, a love wholly acknowledged. She nearly bowed beneath the force of it.
Suddenly it was imperative to claim him, in whatever way she could. She stepped forward, slid her hands into his hair, tilted his face toward hers and kissed him with all the longing she held within her. She felt his lips curve in a smile, then open, his tongue slipping along hers and drawing her deeper. His arms came around her and held her tight against him but it was not enough, not nearly, and with a gasp Virginia broke off the kiss and began fumbling with his cravat.
When she finally pulled it slidingly free and kissed the newly bared skin of his throat, he shuddered. “To dress may be human,” he groaned, “but to undress is divine.”
Virginia smiled and nipped the place she’d just kissed. James hissed in response. “Boots first,”
she said and he sat down at once on the foot of her bed and set his hands to the gleaming black leather. By the time the second boot thunked to the floor, Virginia had shed her own clothing. He pulled her naked into his lap as her hands went to work on the buttons of his waistcoat.
Layer by layer she unpeeled him, while linen and wool fell around them like leaves in autumn. Finally he was naked and himself again. Virginia straddled him at once, his chest solid and warm against her sensitive nipples, his cock long and hard against the slickness between her thighs.
Virginia shuddered with a bone-deep pleasure when his thoughts slipped in to mingle with hers. How could so ephemeral a touch soothe her so deeply? She eagerly sank into the flood of shared feeling, dark and deep but strung with the bright, burning threads of physical desire.
Desperately, she pulled memory after memory from his mind and hers, stoking the flames with echoes of sights and feelings past while her hands traced every inch of his green skin. He hummed low in his throat and ceded her the control she craved. She toyed with the darker green nipples on his broad chest and wrung a groan from him. She felt the muscles of his back ripple and shift beneath her palms. She tugged on his hair, tilting his head back, and bit tenderly at the taut skin of his green throat.
In turn, James fed every throb and thrill back into the link between them, causing them both to shudder and Virginia’s hands to tremble in their course. She knew he was giving her all he could, everything he had within himself. It was still not enough to sate her. Yearning multiplied, a chorus within her whole self, insistent and thunderous.
Reaching down with one hand to position his cock, Virginia plunged down around the hard, gratifying length—once, then a second time. His strong arms were a welcome pressure on her back as she rode him, thighs tensing and releasing, arching up with her hips and brushing her tightened nipples against the sleek warmth of his bare chest. Her breath caught in her throat—she felt his catch in parallel—and all the while his thoughts teased at her, pulses of intense sensation, memories of other nights with limbs entwined and hearts beating in unison.
They were as close now as they had always, ever been—and still her greedy heart demanded more, to stem the desperate need that threatened to pull her down into darkness.
One idea—more brazen and more tempting than the others—flickered like fire through her mind. She wrapped one arm around her lover’s neck to brace herself and leaned back against the spread of his warm hands. Her other hand fell between her legs in the space she had opened up between their sliding bodies, stroking and pressing at that tiny bit of tender flesh that throbbed and ached for contact. At the same time, she gave him back the echoes of those strokes, just as he’d done earlier, offering not only her body but the new part of herself she’d found because of him. James let out a harsh sound, either at the sudden spike of pleasure or the sight she presented—though her own eyes were shut, visions of the scene passed from James’ awareness to hers, red-edged with his passion. So connected, she pleasured both herself and him—as he thrust up roughly into her slick cunt, her fingers stroked faster, reaching for a climax as inescapable and brilliant as the sun. With one great, racking breath she bowed her head and came, her teeth sinking into James’ shoulder as she fought back the scream that filled her throat. Under the combined pain and pleasure his cock exploded within her— his own peak went on and on while his arms banded crushingly tight around her and he buried his face in the curve of her neck.
A metallic flavor on her tongue grew stronger as her awareness dissolved back into her own tingling body. She put her fingers to her mouth and took them away again, reddened—appalled, she stared at the sharp imprint of her teeth on James’ left shoulder.
He was bleeding. Not much, but the ruby shade of it gleamed obscenely bright against the muted green of his skin.
James twisted his head to the side and looked down at the wound. “Another first,” he said. Virginia stared at him, but he only looked mildly interested as he raised his other hand and pressed curiously at the site of the injury.
A second drop of blood welled up from his supposedly invulnerable skin.
Virginia fought the urge to retch and pushed herself away, James’ spent cock sliding free of her body. She stumbled to the washbasin, where a length of soft white cloth lay near a pitcher of clean water—it took an eternity for her shaking hands to wet one part of the cloth, another eternity for her wobbly legs to carry her back to the bed.
She swiped the damp side across the wound on his shoulder, then covered it with the dry side—pressing too hard, perhaps, but she reasoned wildly that it was better to risk using too much force rather than too little. “I’m sorry, so sorry,” she chanted, unable to look away from the injury she’d inflicted.
She only looked up when James’ warm hands closed around hers. “It’s all right, Virginia,” he said and pulled her hands with the makeshift bandage in front of him. His smile was soothing, his eyes warm and untroubled. “It’s hardly more than a scratch.”
“I hurt you,” she said dumbly. How was such a thing even possible?
“Only a little,” he replied, then added, with a sensual quirk of his lips, “and I liked it.”
“But how...” Virginia began, then trailed off, unsure how to continue.
“I seem to have become ever so slightly—well, human,” James explained.
Virginia blinked. The grimoire had said nothing about this, had not even hinted at the possibility. “How did you find this out?” she demanded.
He shrugged as if the change were of no consequence. “I met Miss Lakeland’s demoness,” he said. “She came out on the terrace this evening.”
“And she found you.” Virginia’s heart gave a lurch and something dark and serpentine uncoiled within her, all speed and venom. Jealousy, she realized. It was an entirely novel sensation and not one that she wanted to make a home for.
“She was looking for a soul,” James said quietly. “She found one.”
Virginia’s breath rushed from her lungs at the full truth. Her fingers went slack and the blood-marked cloth fell in a silent slump to the floor. “You have a soul?” she whispered. He nodded. She felt the color drain from her face as a terrible corollary darted through her mind. “Is it my soul?”
He grasped her shoulders and pulled her close against the warm, naked heft of him. Green hands made soothing circles on her back. “Of course it isn’t,” he said, with so much conviction that she instantly relaxed. “Your soul is off-limits, remember?”
She had actually forgotten. Virginia sighed and leaned in to his embrace, her cheek finding the hollow of his collarbone as though it were made to fit there. “It didn’t seem so farfetched,” she replied. “Especially since you already have my heart.”
His hands stilled. After a moment he sighed, a gentle, sweet sound she would have missed if she hadn’t been listening so fixedly for his response. His lips brushed the curve of her ear and he softly replied, “As you have mine.”
Virginia trembled. Such a gift was beyond price, beyond everything else in the world. She wanted nothing more than to bask in the luxury of loving him and being loved in return—but as much as she yearned to treasure his heart, she knew she must also now have a care for his soul.
If only she could live in this moment forever, when their declarations were still new and perfect. But the seconds slipped away and that one shining moment vanished with them. Virginia pulled back and looked up at James. “What do we do now?” she asked.
James smiled. “We grow old together,” he said. “And eventually, we die.”
We, he’d said. A knot formed in her stomach. “Having a soul,” Virginia said slowly, “it means you are mortal? You will die?”
James actually laughed at this. “Yes and no,” he said.
Virginia pushed away from him and fumbled for her robe. Already she knew this was not going to be the sort of conversation one wanted to have in the nude. She cinched the sash and turned back to James, who’d moved
up on the bed and was lounging with satisfied unconcern. “That question has only one real answer,” she said. “Are you going to die?”
James sighed. “Yes,” he said. “But it’s nothing to worry about.”
Virginia gave a snort at this absurdity. “You seemed worried enough this morning.”
James folded his arms across his chest and offered her a teasing smile, knowing quite well how tempting he appeared in that pose. Virginia remained unmoved. “That was before I talked to Lady Lambourne,” he said. “She reminded me that human souls are eternal. You’ve seen them yourself on your journey into Hell.”
And she still had nightmares about them. “But I’ve never seen one in Heaven,” Virginia returned, “so you’ll forgive me if I’m not entirely reassured.”
He shrugged, another distracting ripple of muscle. Virginia gritted her teeth. “If there’s a Hell,” he said, “then there must be a Heaven. Stands to reason.”
“I don’t suppose you have any evidence of that?” she replied.
His gaze turned distant. “I saw an angel once,” he said. “In Shakespeare’s time. She was buying a folio edition of the plays from a bookseller. But by the time I moved in for a closer look, she’d disappeared.”
Virginia’s skepticism was not as easily soothed as that. “How do you know she was an angel?”
“I just knew. Partly, I admit, because she had lovely, white wings—huge, glorious masses of feathers.” His own green wings fanned out suddenly for emphasis, then just as quickly vanished. “I wanted to see if they felt as marvelous as they looked.” That carnal, predatory smile of his was back in full force.