Night-dark gardens, rain falling. His body pressed against mine in shadows, his fingers tangled in my hair, kissing me with desperate hunger while thunder rolled overhead and I arched into his touch, wanting more, always wanting more—
It shifted again.
Dim light, our scientific pursuits abandoned. My hands fumbling with his shirt buttons while he worked at the laces of my dress, both of us clumsy with need, laughing breathlessly at our own urgency before his mouth found mine again and laughter dissolved into passion—
The visions came faster now, overlapping and interweaving until I could not tell if they were memories or fantasies. I gasped, the sound sharp in the confined space, my hands coming up to press against my temples, determined to hold back the flood of sensation.
“Camellia?” Dr. Ambrose’s voice caressed my ear.
I turned in his arms, pulled by a desire I could neither explain nor control. The movement brought us face to face. His hands tightened at my waist, steadying me or perhaps trying to keep me from pressing closer. I was not sure which, and in that moment, I found I did not care. His breath fanned across my lips, the heat of his body penetrating the cold, wet layers of fabric between us.
Another image flashed through my mind.
My legs around him, his body pressing me back against greenhouse glass, the plants surrounding us bearing witness to our abandon as he guided himself into the slick, swollen heat between my thighs—
The urge to touch him became an obsession. I needed it with the same desperate urgency a drowning person needed air, and the force of that need frightened me even as I surrendered to it.
I lifted onto my toes and kissed him, stripping my hands free of the thick gloves, desperate to feel him beneath my fingers.
My lips found his, uncertain and ravenous in equal measure. For a heartbeat he went absolutely still—shocked, perhaps, or horrified by my boldness, by the impropriety of his assistant kissing him in a crypt while rain drummed overhead and death surrounded us.
Then the restraint in him broke with terrible abandon, his careful composure finally shattering. He made a low sound against my mouth and drew me closer. His lips moved over mine, hungry and insatiable, the starvation finally answered before either of us had meant to confess it existed. Something deep within me bloomed, unfurling in the dark with soft, poisonous certainty.
The taste of him was familiar.
Hewas familiar—his mouth, his hands, the angle of his body against mine, the way he held himself back even while kissing me, as though I were the one thing in the world he wanted to devour, and the one thing he could not bear to harm. I knew the shape of his restraint. I knew the sound he made when my fingers slid into his damp hair. I knew the cadence of his breath, hitching when I pressed closer, and the knowledge had no place in my broken memory.
Take it from him, the voice purred.
His hand rose to cup my face, his thumb tracing my cheekbone with devastating tenderness. The other remained at my waist, holding me against him, fearing the darkness might take me if he loosened his grip. I made a sound ontohis tongue, some broken, wordless admission of need or surrender, and his kiss deepened until the mausoleum, the rain, the groundskeeper, and every grave beyond the door seemed to dissolve into the single point of contact between us.
My hands moved over his chest, first with desire, then with purpose I did not want to acknowledge. I felt the rapid beat of his heart beneath my palm and the living heat of him under soaked fabric. I wanted, horribly, to press my ear there and listen. I wanted to bite into that warmth and see if it would spill into me. I wanted to crawl beneath his ribs and make a home in the red machinery of him.
I needed him.
And I needed the thing in his pocket.
My fingers slipped inside his coat and my companion moaned, shoving harder and sending another image through me so vivid I tasted blood.
Cold stone at my back. His body a furnace against mine. A small luminescent flower pressed beneath my ribbon, its tendrils seeking entry. My own hands parting flesh to make room for root to burrow beneath—
I shuddered violently.
His hands tightened. “You are freezing.”
“So warm me,” I whispered, my voice a husky sound I did not recognize.
I kissed him again before he could draw away, before concern overtook whatever desire had seized him. I kissed him because I wanted to. I kissed him because the voicewanted me to. I kissed him because the heat of his mouth made the dead parts of me feel alive.
My hand found the folded cloth in his pocket, and I unwrapped it, distracting him with the heat of our passion.
The moment my fingertips brushed it, relief and euphoria tore through me like a starving root finally meeting water after a season of drought. The combined heat of his body and the plant rushed up my arm, spreading through my chest, and for one radiant instant every cold, rotting part of me remembered what true warmth felt like.
Yes, the voice breathed, reverent now.Yes. Take it.
My fingers closed around the specimen, and it slid easily from his pocket.
His mouth moved to my jaw, the heat of his lips searing the hollow of my throat just above the green ribbon.
