“Damn me.I want to.Not yet.”
“Please.”She arched her back to bring her breasts closer to his face.Hopefully a temptation.
And yes, he looked tempted, his jaw twitching.“Not yet.I’ll have you fully naked before me on our wedding night and not a bit sooner.”He flashed a grin.“Now you know my terms, you must decide if you’re willing to abide by them.”
She might be, oh she might be.
“But,” he said, his hand sliding down her waist, her thigh, and settling her knee, “I’m not fool enough to deny us both… something.”A flash of lightning in his eyes, and his hand bunched the fabric of her gown.Then again, and again, each bunching revealing a bit of her leg until he clutched the hem.Then he smoothed the mass of skirts upward, revealing her thigh.He left the fabric at her hip and dragged his blunt fingernails down the top of her exposed thigh.Gooseflesh broke across her skin.She was not cold.He was a bonfire to warm her always.His heat seemed to leap right into her, become part of her.
No, cold did not raise bumps along her skin.
His touch did.
His hand slipped across her inner thigh and then roamed high, to her very center, his fingertips flirting with her throbbing sex.“I’m going to touch you here.Unless you tell me no.Your favorite word, Diana.Use it or?—”
She clutched his arm, keeping it right where it was.“Yes.Touch me here.”
The world had it wrong.Transcendents were not charming, powerful wizards.Alchemists with satisfied half grins were.
“You surprise me.Often,” he whispered, setting his lips to hers once more.“Tonight, I should like to surprise you.”He stroked his fingers through the curls between her legs and dragged his knuckles across the folds of her sex.
He kissed her as he stroked her, and between the attentions of his lips and his hand, she lost track of time, lost track of self, lost herself entirely in pleasure and in Temple.And when his thumb found the little pulsing bud at her center and circled it, massaged it, she cried his name, shattered into a thousand, tiny, divine pieces.
And did not particularly care if she ever came back together.
When she stopped shaking, he rested his hand on her belly beneath her skirts, beneath the edge of her corset, just above her curls, and he kissed her softly, slowly, as if he might never stop, as if the general buzzing business of the world would not make him stop eventually.Time stretched out infinitely before them, and they would never grow bored.Not in one another’s arms.
He rolled away from her, she made a frankly humiliating mewling sound, reaching for him with limp arms.
He chuckled and patted the bed.She managed to open her eyes and found him leaning against the headboard, perfectly composed, as if he had not just pleasured a woman in a boarding house above a potion shop.He held a book in one hand, and he patted the bed again with the other.
“Join me, Diana.I’ll read to you while you lie against me.”
She crawled to him with heavy limbs and flopped down against his chest.Unmarried women did not lie against unmarried men and read with them.
Married people who liked one another, who, perhaps… loved one another.Her parents had often curled up in one another’s arms on a rainy day and read.Sometimes she’d curled up with them, and sometimes she’d played on the rug beside them, and she’d never thought to get those moments back.
Yet here she was—rain pattering at the window, and a man’s arms curled around her, his voice reverberating through her.Cozy and comfortable and satiated and sleepy.
Was this what he wanted to give her when he proposed marriage?Not simply safety, not only the protection of a powerful husband.But the satisfied comfort of a loving man?
Marrying him meant re-entering the transcendent world.Something she would not do for any reason under the sun.She’d have to risk her life.And for what?
Love?He’d not said the word.No, he’d saidI am a temple to Diana.
She swatted his chest, chuckling.
“What?”He stroked a hand down her hair.
“You.”She yawned then closed her eyes.
“Diana?”He shifted a bit, rocking her about.
“Hm?”
“Look here.”He grasped her hand and pressed something into her palm.
When she opened her eyes she found a rock there—smooth and black with a metallic sheen.“What is it?”
“My iron.All alchemists carry a bit of their chosen metal around with them.What does it feel like to you?”
“Warm.Silky.Is it supposed to… pulse like that?”
He closed her hand around the stone and captured it up in his own.“Not sure.Alchemists are so secretive, there are some things even we don’t know.”
She laughed, closing her eyes once more as he put the iron in his pocket.
Such wild, lovely daydreams he gave to her.She should not encourage them, should send them away at the door as she should have done with his book.But even before her cousin had tried to kill her, she’d had little of this.Few warm moments where she felt completely safe, a little bit adored.She could not chastise herself for savoring it.If only for a moment.It could not last.Savor it.Lock up the sweet memory for colder nights to come.
She listened to his heart beating and listened to his deep voice reading.Their rhythms and tenors matched, and together they sang the perfect lullaby to send Diana into a dreamless sleep.
