“The only one?” I batted him away, flustered. “No, stop looking at me like that. Do you know the people in the journal?”
He looked at the chest. “I can’t comprehend knowing any person listed within.”
“Why are you always trying to seduce me when I ask questions?”
“With you, it’s what I constantly desire. Do you not feel what I want from you even now?” He trailed his fingers along his wrist.
I shuddered as the sensation skimmed my own. “Edgar just felt someone walk his grave.”
“Edgar can’t feel this. His don’t react this way. No one else’s marks ever have.” He leaned back against the wave of the serpentine chest and worked at the buttons on his shirt, sliding one out through the hole, then another, without looking away from me.
I wet my lips. “Gabriel—”
“Do you want me, Marietta?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “But I’m scared.”
He pushed a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers curling around the lobe. “What happens now, what happens after will always be your choice. I make no promises. I can’t. But I will never intentionally hurt you.”
“Just suck me dry?” Only levity would stop my fall.
“To some, virginity is a sacred gift. For my own reasons I do not find it such. Better quality refinement can be had between two partners with actual trust rather than investing in the overstated rituals the gilded prize. I value much more the choices one makes than the actual state of one’s chastity.”
“You have slept with so many?”
His eyes darkened. “Not so many as I see reflected in your gaze. While I find the pleasure usually to my taste, it takes much for me to find a partner that stokes it.”
“Sable?” I had been wanting to ask that question for weeks.
He looked amused. “Your maid? No, not to my taste at all.”
But the sounds she had made, and the abundance of information he had gleaned—
“You find that hard to believe.” He tipped my chin up. “Because you think yourself ordinary.”
I swallowed.
“I did challenge you to read me, though, and you were doing remarkably well. What do my eyes say?”
Fire. Truth.Promise.
“You can read my desire. Can you trust me with your body, with your magic, with your mind?” His lips brushed mine in a fleeting touch. “You want to know why I want you.”
“Yes,” I whispered. I wanted to understand him. I wanted the comfort and security I felt in his presence. I wanted him.
“Will you trust yourself to me? Let me spread your magic?”
I just had to give up the notion that I was alone. To admit that I had given it up weeks ago. That I could give myself to someone, and know I would be caught if I fell.
To stop hiding—in defiance, in protection. Such a minor thing. Such a major thing.
“Yes.”
He peeled away my clothes, one piece at a time. His magic seeped into my skin as his fingers moved. The veins that had been stretching, growing, eagerly reached for him.
He lifted me onto the bed. Taking control, as always, teasing and taunting, pulling my strings tight, stretching my magic like he was kneading it, knowing exactly where to push. Demanding responses my body was more than happy to give. I opened myself to him.
“Just like that.” He pushed into me slowly, magic spreading with every press. “Now what do you see?”
