by D B Nielsen
‘You don’t need to protect me. That’s not your job,’ he said briskly.
‘Tell that to every wife. Tell that to every mother.’ I spread my hands wide. ‘You fight me when you fight yourself ... You conceal things from me yet you get angry when I place myself in danger because I’m blindly poking about in the dark, trying to find out what you won’t tell me, what you keep secret. What am I supposed to do? What alternative do I have?’
I paused so that my words would sink in. It brought me no joy knowing how his birthright would require him to empathise with my position.
‘Do you think it is any different for me just because I’m a woman or human? Do you think I don’t feel the need to rush to the rescue when you’re in trouble? Or that I might not want to protect you too?’ I hammered the nails in the coffin one after the other. ‘I respect the fact that you have been doing this far longer than I have – you’ve been the Keeper of the Seed since forever and I’ve only known about being the Wise One for less than six months – but I’m as committed to this as you are. And equally – no, probably more so – I’m committed to you ... to us.’
He stared at me for a long moment, a minute, perhaps two, his emotions carefully held in check, his expression as inscrutable as a gambler at a poker game.
I dropped my eyes. Despite my passionate speech, I knew that I was in the wrong on this occasion. We both knew it. I should have trusted St. John more.
In a small voice, I gave in to my deepest fear. ‘I just can’t bear the thought of losing you. I just can’t bear the thought of being kept out of any part of your life – your real life. Your work. Your quest. Everything ... because ... because you’re in every part of mine. And if I lost you ...’ I swallowed the last words.
At this, he gave a deep sigh, as if it wracked his soul to confess to me. ‘I understand, mon cœur. If I lost you, I wouldn’t have a life. Sage, you blind, blundering, little idiot, you are my life. You nourish my soul. What must I do to prove it?’
Again, I knew what it cost him to say it. He had been alone for so long that every declaration – no matter how small or how large – was as painful to him as the scars he bore on his back, made by a seraph blade. Every time I made him open himself up was another tiny nick made over his heart.
I watched him bleed emotion – and it was painful to me too – but it had to be done. Love came at a price. I would rob him of his power by cutting each lock of his hair like the Delilah I was if it meant saving him from being chained to a pillar of loneliness and self-reliance.
He regarded me closely. ‘There’s no way I’m going to be able to keep you out of trouble, is there?’
I said nothing. There was really nothing to say.
He sighed again in surrender. But he was as gracious as ever in defeat. ‘I will always try to protect you, Sage. It is in my nature. I cannot turn a blind eye to the danger you place yourself in. Do not expect it of me.’
I felt my heart stutter, then race along again, though slightly faster than before. St. John was looking at me with such a fierce intensity that it was impossible to doubt his words.
‘I wouldn’t expect any less,’ I conceded, trying to sound calm and logical.
He ruefully shook his head at my reply.
‘There are times I wish my birthright was patience,’ St. John muttered under his breath.
Reaching up hesitantly, I stroked his cheek, fearing that he would pull away. He didn’t.
Instead, he cupped my palm in his hand and kissed the soft flesh there – then swore softly when he saw the rough fingerprints marking my wrist in a livid shade of reddish-purple.
‘I’m fine. It doesn’t really hurt,’ I attempted to reassure him, glad that he hadn’t seen any of the other bruises. But he raised a derisive eyebrow as if to say, Who’s telling lies now?
I blushed, looking down at the silk bedspread to avoid facing him. Suddenly nervous, I realised that I hadn’t been truly alone with St. John – and when I meant alone, I was thinking of our current, intimate location in the privacy of his bedroom – since my time in Paris. And despite the vastness of the master bedroom suite, it was unexpectedly confining, as St. John appeared to occupy all of the space, causing the strangest of sensations within me.
Being with him here made me feel both scared and excited. He still held my hand with infinite tenderness but I was as taut as a string on a newly-made instrument, awakening to the music within me; just one shimmering, quivering, golden vibration up and down my spine, thrumming through my veins.
He placed a firm finger under my chin and tilted my face upwards. He knew what he was doing to me – his quick, intelligent green eyes traced every quiver, shiver, and quickening. Shyly, I peeked up at him from under dark lashes. What I saw in his expression made the entire world hush in one perfect, solemn second of stillness and solitude; as if we were the only two people on the planet. I barely heard my breath after inhaling sharply – perhaps I didn’t breathe at all. I certainly didn’t blink – blinded as I was by his sheer masculine beauty.
He pressed his forehead to mine and sighed, fanning my face with the warmth of his sweet-smelling breath. His eyes were emerald green flecked with gold – the intense colour this time fuelled by passion, not anger. I was intoxicated, assailed by his sandalwood aftershave.
It was a good thing I was sitting down on the bed because I felt as insubstantial as air and I knew my legs wouldn’t have held me up. It was as if gravity was falling away and I was adrift, like a star imploding, every particle expanding, dying. Yet I felt more alive than ever.
I trembled with raw emotion as the heat built around us. I was a desert, dry, parched, and I raised my lips to his, hoping for sustenance. He bent his head slowly to capture my lips beneath his – and they were warm and sweet and soft and inviting. I drank from them like a woman dying of thirst, opening my mouth, craving more. Tentative at first, tongues touching, tangling, becoming bold, he cupped the back of my head to taste me, to devour my mouth with his own.
It was wicked. And divine.
He demanded. And I gave.
I gasped into his mouth, making him moan deeply. It rose from his throat and shivered through me – a sensation like I’d never felt before – shivered along my spine, under my skin, sinking into my bones, stroking my nerves like a live current, like lightning.
‘Sage, I–’ He gulped as we came up for air. I saw the savage emotion working in his throat as he swallowed. And I knew that he was as caught up in this maelstrom as much as I was.
Shaking his head, brass coloured locks now unkempt and loose around his face, forming a bright halo under the ceiling pendant light, he said softly, ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
But he didn’t demand that I leave or show me the front door. He didn’t straighten up and I didn’t move away either.
My lips tingled, swollen, and unconsciously I licked them with the tip of my tongue. His eyes fastened on the little motion like a hawk tracking its prey.
A moment later, he was on top of me, pressing me down into the soft, silken bedspread beneath. Still, he bore the burden of his weight as he leant heavily on his left elbow and looked down at me with such a hungry tenderness that my body ached with longing. He reached out to stroke my cheek with the back of his fingers in a gesture that was infinitely gentle but no less passionate. He was deliberately slowing things down. But not stopping.
Involuntarily, despite the heat generated between us, I shivered again. And his green gaze swept down over my slim body, taking in the tightening of my sensitive skin above the deep V neckline of my t-shirt where it was raised in exquisite goose bumps. The intensity of feeling made me dizzy.
I reached out to push a lock of golden hair away from his forehead and St. John caught at my hand and kissed it.
‘Sage, how could you possibly believe that I would deliberately keep you out of any part of my life?’ he asked gently. ‘I have loved you since I first set eyes on you in the British Museum. And I will go on loving you till the l
ast breath leaves my body.’
His kiss was not so rough and raw this time, he did not ravish my lips but, even though his mouth moved slowly and tenderly upon mine, it sparked a flame which burnt white hot and set me on fire.
‘St. John,’ I moaned.
‘Keep you out of my life?’ St. John muttered incredulously as if to himself, his voice low and thick with desire. ‘Waking or sleeping, I can’t even keep you out of my thoughts ... my dreams ... How you torment me, mon cœur ...’
‘St. John,’ I murmured again, his name a naked plea; my fingers tangled in his soft, satiny hair before drifting down to tighten on his broad shoulders.
With a muffled groan, he drew me into his arms, fitting our bodies together perfectly, and deepened his kiss. His hands roamed. He knew just where to touch, stroke, hold – his fingertips and lips searing, scorching.
We were in a fever of ecstasy.
It felt so good.
I didn’t try to stop the tempest building within us and around us. I didn’t want St. John to keep his head, to think, to be calm or careful.
It felt so right.
I gave myself up to the moment and trusted St. John to make it perfect for both of us. But, even if I was a virgin, I was definitely going to push him over the edge of his control.
I slid my hands under his shirt and over the hot, tense muscles of his back. He gasped. And the sound brought the sweetest of pleasure to me – to know that I could arouse him with just such a simple touch.
I wanted to test my newfound power.
I moved my hips in small circles, rising up to meet his. He froze. For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. I waited, suspended in agony. And then St. John reached up and tore his shirt over his head. My hands pressed against his rock-hard abdomen as he bent down to crush my swollen lips against his.
‘Sage.’ He breathed my name against my throat where he planted hot, hard kisses. ‘Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?’
I made an inarticulate sound. And then I think I gave a sharp sob as his thumb – no, not even that – the tip of his thumb grazed the sensitive swell of flesh above my lacy black bra.
‘Please. Yes.’ I wasn’t even sure what I was pleading for him to do, but he gave a raw, shaky laugh and reached for me wildly.
Our mouths fused.
Sunlight poured in through the bedroom’s open curtains, shimmering across his smooth skin, glimmering across the hardness of muscle, his broad shoulders, his bare back, like he’d been dusted in fine gold.
Suddenly, he wrenched himself from my arms, rising and walking away a few steps, tension in every line of his body. It was then that I heard the insistent buzzing of his smartphone. He bent to scoop it up off the carpeted floor where it must have fallen; tumbling out unnoticed from the pocket of his jeans in our lovemaking. I sat up on the bed, waiting, thinking he meant to turn it off, but he didn’t come back. He seemed to be staring intently at the displayed caller ID. Another few seconds ticked by and, again, the iPhone took up its demanding ringtone, vibrating in St. John’s hand until he answered it.
Bewildered, I was still in a fugue of passion. He stood by the window and I swallowed hard at the way his black jeans rode low on his hips, the way the strong, broad muscles of his back rippled as he moved. He no longer seemed self-conscious of his scars in front of me. I took several slow, steadying breaths, trying to switch on my brain.
Perspiration beaded his brow from our exertions of a moment earlier, but his face was chiselled from granite as he spoke. And suddenly the string of words began to make sense.
Shocked, like a sluice of water had been dumped on me, I gasped aloud. He turned. And whatever he saw on my face made him utter a soft oath and end the call abruptly, returning to my side.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said stupidly. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Mon cœur, Sir William and Jacques Renauld are at the museum waiting for me. Your father is already there.’ He frowned, absent-mindedly tucking a strand of loose hair behind my left ear. ‘It’s Isabella. She was assaulted when returning to the museum from her lunch break. She didn’t manage to identify her assailants but the authorities suspect they are the same men who attacked you.’
I swallowed hard. ‘The Fravashi?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ He looked long and searchingly at me, his expression changing to reflect his concern. ‘Sage, dearest, I have to leave immediately. But I want you to be safe. I know–’ He held up his hands, his gesture placating. ‘–I know we’ve just talked about this but I don’t want you anywhere near Renauld or–’
Despite my better instincts, I reached up, pressing a finger to his lips, silencing him. ‘It’s all right. St. John, I understand. You go. I’ll be fine.’
At my submission, the tension left his frame. ‘I’ll have Austin drive you home.’
I wanted so badly to go with him. Our world and reality were changing about us so rapidly that I was afraid to let him out of my sight. I was afraid that there would come a day when I wasn’t there to look after him or to save him. But I knew that my presence at the museum would be distracting for him – his every instinct, now and always, to protect me.
St. John had his duty to perform as I had mine.
I drew a long, ragged breath before saying, ‘I hope Isabella is unharmed. Targeting an innocent human being just isn’t right. I know I wasn’t very supportive before – I mean, about rescuing Ellen Jacobi – but I know it’s what you have to do. And I’m not going to stop you from doing your duty.’
St. John cupped my face in his hands very gently and gave me a long, slow, ardent kiss that set my heart to pounding erratically all over again. ‘You know that I have always done my duty ... and once ... before I met you ... duty came first with me ... and I performed it willingly. But I must confess, mon cœur, that leaving you here at this moment,’ and, at this, he took in my flushed, sensual state as I sat on his bed, ‘the cost seems exceedingly high to me ...’
DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘So, what happened to you then? It looked like St. John was going to go all Christian Grey on you. Though, if I didn’t know any better, you do look kind of – what’s that word they use in historical romances? “Mussed”? Or is it “ruined”?’ Fi eyed me curiously as I walked through the back door and into the kitchen where she was seated at the counter eating from a plastic container of sushi, a mocking glint in her eye. ‘Better not let Mum see you like that. She’d have a cow.’
‘Oh, ha ha. Very funny. Shut up, Fi.’ Sarcasm laced my voice as I threw her a filthy look. Yet her words struck home and, as discretely as possible, I tried to pat down my unruly hair, hoping that our mother wasn’t around. ‘And Mum’d have a cow if she knew that you read that stuff.’
‘What? Bodice ripper romances or erotica? Who do you think lent them to me?’ Fi rolled her eyes in derision.
It figured! I thought, shaking my head reflexively as I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl. Mum and her obsession with the hot guys in Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones – it made us both cringe! It was seriously embarrassing to watch the sex scenes sitting next to her – we both agreed that her remarks were totally inappropriate for a forty-year-old married woman with four children!
My sister just smiled at me as if she knew what I was thinking, popping another piece of California roll into her mouth.
I finally gave up on attempting to restore my appearance. Taking a bite of my apple as I slipped onto the bar stool beside her, I asked, ‘So, what’s got you interested in reading all of a sudden?’
Fi stared at me in disbelief. ‘Are you kidding me? I’m hanging around the most droolworthy immortal hotties on the planet – though they also happen to be the most ancient hotties on the planet – and I’ve got no idea what they’re thinking half the time, let alone how to get me some.’
‘Fi! Not you too! You’re as bad as Mum! And, by the way, Fifty Shades of Grey is not a self-help book!’ I protested incredulously.
/>
‘Meh, it could be!’ she said, blithely shrugging her shoulders, ‘And that’s why you’re still a virgin! Though if that mousy Anastasia Steele can satisfy someone like Christian Grey, there’s hope for you yet. Not that you’re mousy ... but you know what I mean.’
‘Geez, thanks ... I think,’ I muttered, as Indy loped over to plant himself under my feet, a hopeful expression in his chocolate-brown eyes, looking for something more satisfying than a piece of my apple.
Fi laughed at my expression and, standing up to throw the plastic container in the bin under the sink, teased, ‘I was just kidding. Besides, you still haven’t answered my question – what happened to you? St. John looked like he was in a foul mood when you guys left but, from the way you’re blushing, I’d say you did quite a lot of making up.’
I loved my sister but I was in no mood for a kiss-and-tell. Some things were just too personal, too private, too precious to share.
Instead, I skirted the question by admitting that St. John was right in his belief that we needed to save Ellen Jacobi, having changed my perspective after being informed of the attack upon Isabella Donnatelli. My twin didn’t speak as I narrated what I knew with short sentences and frequent pauses but watched me with an intent patience and thoughtfulness, which was unusual for her under the circumstances.
‘St. John’s right. Ellen Jacobi won’t survive much longer in the company of Rephaim like Louis, with or without Finn’s protection,’ Fi eventually responded, after a rather long pause. Leaning up against the kitchen sink, she seemed to be considering her words carefully. ‘Finn’s not heartless but he’s obviously involved in something. I don’t think we can count on him to shield her from Semyaza if it might compromise his plans. And now with the Grigori and Fravashi teaming up, I doubt any one of us is completely safe.’