“We cannot do that again here. We shouldn’t have done it here at all. Suppose someone had come in?”
“No one comes to your lab.” I’d worked there daily for two weeks and had yet to see another soul.
He frowned. “That is true, though I have no clear understanding of why.”
“It’s because they do not like you. You are gruff and severe, and your face is fixed in a permanent scowl.”
He scoffed, as if I were teasing. “That is not true.”
“It is. But I am unconvinced that it matters. The researchersallscowl, as if that’s the only expression their faces will form. This is a cold, soulless building. It sucks the very joy out of what we practice. So weshoulddo that again, here.Everyoneshould be doing that here. Because joy is life. Pleasure is life. Andlifeis Alchemy.”
He stared at me as if gibberish were my native tongue, and I’d just lapsed into it.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I demanded, tangling my fist in the loose tail of his tunic. Touching him, because I couldn’tnottouch him.
But he seemed to have no answer. No words, in fact, at all.
I slid one hand behind his neck and pulled him down until I could whisper in his ear once more. “Again. I demand that you do that to me again, but…different.”
He groaned, and his breath hitched. “Different? Anintriguingword, and, in this context, one which requires elucidation.”
My brows rose. “I have theories, about this act we’ve just performed. About the possibilities. And they need testing.”
“You have a theory.” One of his brows rose, briefly casting his natural skepticism as amusement. “About sexual congress.”
“Theories,” I corrected as his gaze locked intensely onto mine. “Plural. And you shallhaveto pay attention. Details matter.”
“Ofcourseyou have theories.” He slid from the surface of the workstation, holding my gaze even as he fastened his breeches. “Will you be taking notes?”
“Copious,” I assured him, sliding off the counter to reclaim my undergarment. “Someone wise taught me that accurate recordkeeping is vital.”
He laughed, gravelly and sincere, and the sound bounced around inside me, setting off an unspeakable ache at every point of contact. “Very well, then, Miss Fallbrook. But this kind of experimentation requires a different sort of laboratory.” He offered me one hand, and I took it. “Follow me.”
Iawoke in Desmond’s bed, and I could not tell, at first, whether I was relieved or disappointed to find myself alone.
The other side of the fine wool-and-feather-stuffed mattress was cold, as if he had not been abed in hours, and a shower of possible reasons flooded my thoughts.
None were pleasant.
Contrition. His regret about what we’d done was so strong that he could not pass the night at my side, yet he was too much of a gentleman to send me home, my thighs still damp, after our passion was spent.
Disgust. His needs sated, he now looked upon me the way I once looked upon an empty jug of ale Wilder had pilfered the morning after we’d drunk the entire thing when we were far too young to imbibe, any memory of my joy eclipsed by nausea and head pain.
As the possibilities chased each other through my thoughts, I rose and pulled on my clothing, shivering in the cold, empty room. Though I’d hardly gotten a glance at it the night before, Desmond’s apartment was much finer than my own Dormitory room. It even had a stone fireplace built into one wall. But it was unlit, and though I knew very well how to build a fire, it was not my place to do so in someone else’s private space.
Instead, I stepped into my shoes and glanced around the chilly room for my satchel. But it was nowhere to be found.
The obvious conclusion—I’d left it in the Conservatory— triggered fresh panic as I turned toward the window, where I could see the sun just peeking over the eastern horizon, glowing across the top of the forest stretching down the slope of the island toward the southern shore.
Desmond’s view was different from the one visible from my own window, but no less beautiful. Yet I had no time to truly consider it.
Monday morning. The day of the Black Trial.
Fear swelled inside me like a gust of cold air, swirling up from my gut, blossoming into gooseflesh on my arms and legs.
I hadn’t finished my preparation.
I’d followed Desmond back to his apartment and rolled around in his bed until the early hours of the morning, lost in a passion that had been all-consuming for hours on end, but that now felt…
