There were other activities he’d prefer. Ones with a soft woman between his thighs. Ones with Jane’s warm breath on his cheek, her sweetly curving hips gripped by his knees.
Damn. He was hard. One swift thought led to one swift erection. He knew better than to let his mind drift Jane-ward while carving. When his body was on fire, swelling with power, other parts of him swelled much more easily.
Think of the guards instead, the cold dormitory where the children slept. That fired him up. Anger made it more difficult to control his movements. It demanded all his attention now, and he flew through the next three figures. His shirt was slick against his skin with sweat, and he wiped it from his brow, then stretched an arm over his head.
He felt alive, his skin sensitive to the heat of the nearby fireplace, his senses more intense. The crackle of the fire like thunder and the hiss of Felix’s breathing rushing like the wind. He could even hear Rembrandt shift about in the back garden. Hooves and swiping tails.
Something else, too. Something unexpected. A soft whisper across the floor. Another body breathing. The swish of… skirts. The scent of winter air, sharp and fresh, uninvited, had stolen inside, bringing with it another scent entirely, a familiar one that flushed throughout the room with each new exhale.
He and Felix were not alone. Nico braced his palms against the worktable, closing his eyes. It could not be. What wouldpossess Jane to come here again? What would possess her to comeinsidethis time? To explore his house until she found his workroom. It had to be her. Mrs. Grady would not return until tomorrow. And she did not smell like winter and woman.
“Jane,” he grumbled, “if that is you, and I am positive it is, leave.”
This time her inhale and exhale contained a little sound, part gasp. But no rustle of skirts. The scent of winter and Jane did not recede.
“I’m not fit for company, Jane.”
“I-I,” she stammered, “I see that. I do not mean to intrude, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen you, and?—”
“Seven days.” He’d felt every second of those days in excruciating detail. All of them depravation. No Jane meant no joy. He’d been so careful not to think past friendship in the past year, not to think beyond that hem of her skirt she never let rise up. Oh, he imagined the stockings, red and caressing her legs, but nothing more than that. Her kiss had cracked his walls. Her kiss had ravaged his control. And now, with the magic thrumming through him, he wouldn’t be able to deny his desires. “You should have made it eight, Jane.”
“I cannot.”
Hell. What did that mean? A revelation of desire or something else? “I know what you want, but I have nothing to offer you but mischief.”
“I did not come for… that. I will not repeat my folly from the garden. I have come for evidence.”
Do not turn around. Not in his current state, with all his senses heightened and screaming for action of some sort. Some men, like Temple, divested themselves of the power that came into them with their use of their alchemy connection as they stoked that very connection. Iron required brute force. Templepossessed a heavy hammer to swing and exhaust his senses as he honed the metal.
Nico’s silver did not work that way. Silver required the smallest of movements, a gentle dexterity. It required, at times, greater stillness than action. He could not exhaust the power running through him as he shaped the silver. It built up and required release.
And release had just shown up on his doorway.
Heneededto see her. He moved his neck first, twisting until his chin was at his shoulder, caught a glimpse of her. She might have been wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing a week ago when she’d invaded his garden—shapeless velvet to the neck. But in the greater light of the fire nearby, he saw its color more clearly. Red. Perfect in all its shades, especially the shade that rushed across her cheeks now as he turned his shoulders, his hips, and leaned against his worktable, crossing his arms over his chest.
Her mouth hung open for a moment before words slipped between those pretty lips. “You look different. Bigger.”
“Connecting with the silver has that effect.”
Her head cocked to the side. “Connection?” She looked like Felix when he was busy trying to understand the incomprehensible. Bloody adorable.
He chuckled. Despite his title, he’d not had much to do with the transcendent sort. Alchemists had their villages and cities, and transcendents theirs. Only in London did they mix, and even that was a city divided into transcendents in the west and alchemists to the east.
He shouldn’t tell her anything more. The Grants’ scandal had taught every alchemist that lesson—keep your lips sealed. But he already had one secret from her. and he didn’t like the idea of having another.
“All alchemists experience a connection with their bonded metal. As we shape it, it shapes us. It is more visible with me because silver crafting does not require overt strength. More of a delicate touch, dexterous fingers.” His bodily strength swelling as his connection to the metal did. An hour ago, his shirt had hung loose about his frame, but now his muscles strained against the linen.
Her gaze dropped to his hands, then roamed all over him, across his shoulders and down the length of his bent arms then across his chest, roving lower, lower, hitting the waistband of his trousers and bouncing back up to his face so quickly her eyes might as well be a rubber ball.
“That explains the size difference,” she mumbled to herself. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
She shook her head, shook the haze from her eyes. “Evidence. I’ve come to collect evidence. And to warn you.”
“Curious woman.” His fingers itched and flexed to be a little naughty, to reach for her and take her, to kiss her as he had in the garden. But he kept his ass right on that worktable, the hard edge of it digging in. A little pain helped keep him good. For now.
“The guards. There are five of them, and?—”
