Page 111 of The Shadow Bride

His hands seize my hips when I find it, and he drags me along its length in a brutal grip. Gasping, I grind harder still, my hands scrabbling at his neck as the pressure builds. “I thought,” he says through gritted teeth, “we’re pretending not to like each other.”

Now I do tip my head back, closing my eyes against the sight of his body as it flexes beneath me, as it coils. Tension has hardened his abdomen to steel, and his biceps clench; his shoulders strain. “In that case”—I can scarcely breathe at the feel of him—“you’re the most insufferable man too.”

His exhales a ragged breath of his own. “The least infatuated.”

“I never think of you,never—”

“I never imagine you like this,” he snarls. “Above me, below me,aroundme, your heels digging into my back.” I gasp again at the imagery, and he releases my hip to grip my chin. “Look at me,” he says, and I respond without hesitation, my eyes snapping open to find his blazing with heat. “I never dream about holding you, and I never lie awake until dusk, torturing myself over the way you say my name—like you revere me, like I’m a fallen angel and not the Devil himself.”

I forget our game instantly, rearing back to glare at him. “You aren’t the Devil—”

“And you aren’t the sun.”

He speaks the words furiously, as if I’ve torn them from his very chest, and in a wave of warmth, of longing, I realize what the confession cost him. And I realize what it means—to him, yes, but also to me.You aren’t the sun.Perhaps I was once, and perhapshe wasn’t an endless night; perhaps we’ve both become creatures darker than we were before, or perhaps we’ve always been this way. The sun and the night. The dark and the light. Two souls reaching for each other through time, twining together at last.

Holding his gaze deliberately, I draw aside my hair to reveal my neck in invitation.

His eyes ask the question his voice cannot.Are you sure?

When I nod, he strikes without hesitation, sinking his teeth into my throat and rolling our bodies, pinning mine beneath him like he did before.Like he never imagined.I’ve imagined it, though—in my darkest fantasies, I allowed myself to be with him like this. I allowed myself to arch, to moan his name, to pull at the laces of his pants until they fall free. When I touch him, he shudders, clutching my chin and pressing his thumb against my lower lip in invitation. With it, I remember another time—anotherlife—and pierce the tip as I wanted to do in Les Abysses. I take his thumb in my mouth, and I suck. Ifeed. The grotto disappears with each pull of my mouth, and blinding white erupts behind my eyelids. A tendril ofsomethingcracks open in my chest as we hold each other. Tentative at first, then stronger.

Just as it swells with peculiar heat, however, stealing my thoughts—my very breath, suffocating in its intensity—footsteps echo down the stairs behind us.Loudfootsteps. They crash through my consciousness in an explosion of awareness, and the heat snaps like a band, vanishing from existence between one step and the next. Leaving me gasping, oddly bereft, as Michal and I break apart, whirling toward the entrance of the grotto.

“If you’re doing what it smells like you’re doing,” Dimitri calls, his voice preceding him into the room, “I suggest you finishquickly. Madame Tremblay is en route with my sister as I speak, and I doubt she wants to see her daughter dancing the Devil’s waltz with anyone.” He pokes his head around the corner as I scramble to cover myself in blind panic—my heart sinking like a stone—and Michal tugs my gown up and over my body in a blur of green silk. Dimitri winks at the two of us, grinning broadly. “Unless, of course, that someone is me.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Precious Daughters

Cheeks flushing, I hasten to refasten my buttons as Michal laces his pants, black eyes flicking to the floor in search of his shirt. He doesn’t blush or duck his head in mortification like I do; he doesn’t feel the frantic need to fill the silence with prattle as Dimitri strolls toward us, grinning like a cat with cream.

“D-Devil’s waltz?” I ask a touch desperately.

“Sex, Célie,” Dimitri says again. “I mean sex.”

In one fluid motion, he bends to seize Michal’s shirt and my discarded undergarment from the floor—the one for my breasts, oh God, mybreasts—and flicks them at each of us in turn. And I cannot believe this is happening. It justcannotbe happening—yet my face flames even hotter as I catch the scrap of fabric against my unsupported chest, using it as a shield against the room at large. Because I am not the sort of girl who can go without support—not without everyone noticing—especially not mymother—

Oh God.Her voice echoes down the stairs now, sharp and pointed, followed by an irritated response from Odessa. Panicked, my gaze darts from Dimitri to Michal, who tucks in his shirt before moving to stand beside me with a resigned expression, as if bracing himself for the fiasco to come. But I don’t need him to standbesideme; I need him to stand infrontof me, and I ignore his eye roll when I duck behind those broad shoulders. “Should I hide too?” heasks dryly. “Perhaps the kittens could make room under the bed—”

“I am nothiding. I am exhibiting good judgment—”

“Ah yes,” Dimitri says, highly entertained. “This all looks extremely prudent. Your mother will never suspect a thing, what with the rumpled bedcovers and your various states of undress—”

“Shut up, Dima,” I snap.

In a hasty attempt to unbutton my dress once more, I fumble with the pearls, but my fingers have grown thick and clumsy. Though Michal turns to help, my mother is practically upon us now. Any second, she’ll burst into the grotto, and—

Michal shakes his head swiftly in defeat, wrenching the gown upward before pivoting to the stairs as Satine Tremblay appears with a sharp, “Célie! What in the world are you doing?” She strides forward, her dark brows furrowing as her canny eyes sweep over the scene. “Come away from there at once.”

Fastening the last pearl behind Michal, I cringe and brace to meet my fate. I clutch the wretched undergarment behind my back and pray fervently that the deep green of my gown will hide—well,everything. Agitation pricks like needles beneath my flushed and oversensitive skin, and suddenly, I fight an overwhelming urge to laugh. What an absolutely ludicrous situation in which to have landed myself. It isn’t as if I didn’t know she’d be joining us soon. What was Ithinking?

With little other choice, I peek my head out from behind him and greet her with a valiant attempt at nonchalance. “M-Mother! Hello! Were—were you able to pack without interruption? Did anyone detect you in the tunnels?”

Pointless questions with obvious answers. If anyonehadobserved her, they would’ve followed her here, and we’d now be battling forour lives instead of standing in this hideously awkward silence. And perhaps such a battle would’ve been preferable, as my mother’s eyes are now narrowing between Michal and me—on my rigid posture, on his casually defensive position—and her nostrils are flaring with understanding.

Then her shrewd gaze lands on my throat.

Damn it.Too late, I clap a hand to the blood there—theteethmarks—and groan inwardly. Odessa suffers no such qualms. She echoes the sentiment with a loud and impatient sigh as she descends the stairs behind my mother, hefting an enormous trunk in her arms and angling it to fit down the narrow passage. She does not, however, look at all surprised when my mother closes the distance between us with the menace of a looming storm.

---