Page 44 of Enthralled

With surprising gentleness, he turns me around. All the wild passion of his initial embrace gives way now to a lingering, luxurious precision that drives me wild. He unfastens the buttons, peels away the fabric, revealing the lacy chemise and corset underneath. Finally he slides my bodice away, and I feel the touch of his fingers against the curve of my neck and shoulders. Lava roils in my gut.

I yank the rest of the bodice away, drop it to the floor. With shaking fingers, I unfasten my skirt as well and let it fall in folds of fabric at my feet. Then I turn to him again, my breasts rising and falling, still caught in the restricting embrace of my corset.

Castien breathes out slowly, his gaze drinking in every inch of me before finally returning to my face. Playful light glints in his eyes. “And do you want my help this time?”

Heat flares in my cheeks. For a moment I flash back to the first time I’d stripped in front of the Prince, standing on a cliffside above a frigid sea. I’d refused to ask his assistance with my corset then but struggled with the troublesome laces on my own. He remembers as well by the look on his face. He stretches out one hand, running one finger lightly along the edge of my corset, toying with the lace, lightly brushing my skin so that it prickles deliciously in response. “You don’t know,” he murmurs, “how badly I wanted to rip off those remaining few garments and take you then and there.”

“I wish you had,” I answer breathlessly.

His eyes flare and his lips part in a smile so brilliant, it sheds years from his face in an instant. “And what would prim and proper Clara Darlington have thought?”

I know the answer—she wouldn’t have thought at all. She would have absolutely given in to anything he tried, anything he offered. She would have devoured him with a desperate hunger she scarcely understood but which nearly consumed her every hour, both waking and dreaming.

But she is not here. That version of me is gone forever, everything I believed I was, everything I stood for, everything I thought I needed. And who is left? Just this poor excuse of a woman, her heart full of both remorse and hope. Hope that I may someday be worthy of the love this man freely offers.

He steps forward, unfastens the laces, and pulls the corset free, while I slip my hands under his ragged, wine-colored shirt, which now strains across the breadth of his chest and shoulders. I slip it off and caress his glorious, golden skin. Leaning forward, I kiss his chest, right above his heart. Then I kiss up to his throat and jaw, until he growls and claims my mouth once more. He pushes me back against the library ladder, his clever hands finding their way beneath my petticoats, sliding up my thighs until he finds my center. I gasp, my head thrown back as his fingers move in rhythm, toying with me, calling my heat to life. His mouth burns against my neck, my shoulder, down between my breasts.

“It’s been too long,” he sighs even as he rips open my chemise, heedless of the laces. “I feared I would forget the taste of you.” He takes my nipple between his lips, sucking and teasing with the tip of his tongue before kissing his way over to the other. All the while his fingers play with me, and I can do nothing but cling to the ladder, propping myself in place. Fire builds in my stomach, ripples through my body.

“I dreamt of you,” I whimper as though confessing a sin. “Of your touch, your kiss. I dreamt of . . . of . . .”

“Of what, my love?” he asks, his lips smiling against my skin. “Tell me your dream.”

I tilt my head, looking down into his eyes as he kneels before me. My lips part, but I cannot make a sound. My breath is too tight, too fast, too eager. A lock of dark hair falls across his forehead, gleaming in the moonfire light. “Ah!” he says. “I know that dream well. It has haunted me these seven years.” He pushes my petticoats up higher then kisses the inside of my knee, my thigh. His teeth scrape against my sensitive skin, sending thrills through my core. “Perhaps,” he whispers, “we can bring that dream to life.”

His tongue trails up, farther, farther, until he once more finds my center. I bite my lip, struggling to strangle my cries. A moan vibrates in my throat, and I grip the ladder hard, moving my hips in time to his rhythm. My fire, already stoked to fever pitch, mounts higher and higher with every stroke he makes.

“Castien.” I let my head fall back as he licks and kisses with a ravenous hunger. “Castien, more.More.”

“Everything, my Darling,” he answers. “Everything I have. All that I am.”

I grasp the hair atop his head, twining my fingers in those dark locks as I sling a leg over his shoulder. He deepens his angle, devouring me like a starving man fallen to his knees at the banquet table. My body erupts as he takes me over the edge. His name bursts from my lips before vanishing in a wordless cry. I’m alive, every atom of my body singing in a magnificent symphony of sensation, of joy, of regeneration. In this moment I no longer care that we are in the depths of the Doomed City, surrounded on all sides by terrors and death. This dream is real. Real and bright and beautiful, beyond the reach of any grasping nightmare.

We lie on the floor atop the pile of her discarded skirts. Clara rests on her back, one knee drawn up, while my head lies gently against her stomach. She looks down at me. Me—her lover, her husband. She looks at me the way I once only dreamt she would look, with a light in her eyes I thought I should never see again. Reaching out one hand, she runs her fingers through my hair. “Is your glamour not fully restored?” she asks musingly.

Frowning I pluck the hair, pull it away from my face to focus on it. The moonfire glow reveals streaks of silver still wound through the black. It will take more glamour than I have the energy to expend to disguise it. “I don’t know, I think it gives me a roguish edge,” I say and smirk at her. “Wouldn’t you agree? Do you not find me all the more irresistible with a grizzled edge?”

She quirks an eyebrow. “There is nothing about you that’sgrizzled.But . . . I do like it,” she admits, stroking my hair again, swiping it back from my forehead.

“Then I’ll keep it. For the time being.” I roll over and kiss her stomach, so smooth and soft and gently curved under my mouth. My lips linger for a moment, before I murmur, “I feared the passage of time. Feared what it might mean for you and for . . .”

My words trail away, too terrible to be admitted. But Clara slips a hand down over her stomach, her fingers gently splayed. “It’s been no more than two days for me, Castien. Two days since last I saw you.” She shudders then, inexplicable pain in her eyes. “An agony, but a short one.”

“And our child? Did Estrilde . . . ?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I believe . . . I hope . . . Oh, Castien!” Her voice breaks, but she struggles on bravely, catching my hand with hers. “Before the idea terrified me. Just one more impossible responsibility, one more small being dependent on me for everything in a dark, dangerous world. But now you’re here, now we’re together . . .” She drags in a ragged breath, tears sparkling in her lashes. “I want a chance to bring this life into this world, however dangerous it may be. I want a chance to drive back the darkness with the sheer audacity of life! But I don’t know if our little one is still alive. I don’t know if it survived traveling between worlds, being unmade and remade. I simply don’t know. And I’m afraid.”

I rest my head against her stomach, closing my eyes. At first I feel nothing but her tension, her terror. The pulse of her blood, the knot of pain and anxiety in her soul. But when I send my awareness down deeper, there is more to be discovered. Something small but bright and burning. An infinitesimal speck of infinite wonder.

“Keep that hope of yours alive, my Darling,” I say, lifting my head and meeting her eyes again. “There’s little more we can do. But maybe hope is enough.”

The shadows in her face momentarily lift. She strokes my cheek with her delicate hand. “So . . . you didn’t need . . . well, um.” She flushes, lowering her lashes. Then: “You didn’t needmoreto restore you?”

I prop up on one elbow and trail a finger along her bare skin, tickling around her breast and one hard, pink nipple. “What more did you have in mind?”

She bites her lip, that pretty flush deepening. “I think you know.”

“Yes, I think I do.” I bend over and kiss her bare stomach again, lingering and a little regretful. “But in fact, no—it would seem I do not need that particular pleasure to restore me.” I sit up, rest one elbow on my updrawn knee, and gaze down at her. Gods, but I could indulge in this view for an age and never grow weary of it! In all those years of lonely searching, I had often tried to call to mind this very image. As time passed, and my life force drained, the memory faded to nothing more than an impression, a feeling. I’d held it fast in my heart, locked away as a final defense against despair. I’d long ago ceased to believe I would bask in her presence again.

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