Page 147 of Stardust Child

“I can’t help it if I remember things.” She took a bite of eggs. “It doesn’t matter to the books if there are fancy gables now or in January.”

“What matters to me is whether youlikethe gables,” he pointed out. He had seen them himself, fanciful constructs that would beautify the high ceilings of the library.

“They are very nice,” she admitted, with her first real smile since yesterday, and Remin sat back, satisfied.

“Is that where you’ll be today? At the office?”

“Yes. I hope I haven’t made you too late.” She glanced at the angle of the sun out the window. “I know you have so much work to do.”

“A little, but Lancer can make some time for me.” Emptying his teacup in a single gulp, he rose. “Shall I send up Lady Verr?”

“Yes, please.” Her fingers caught his sleeve as he bent to kiss her, and instead of a quick peck he found himself sinking down into the taste of apple and her soft, sweet lips. The beguiling caress of her tongue made him feel as if he was falling. Her eyes lifted to his. “Could you come home early today?”

“I’ll…try,” he managed, a little dazed, and departed feeling curiously as if a tornado had struck his home and left it stronger than it had been before.

It was a strange day. To be sure, he was still off-balance from Ophele’s revelations and so dreadfully busy that he very nearly broke down and took notes between errands, which he had never in his life had to do before. But he was sure he wasn’t imagining the sidelong looks and whispers that followed him from place to place, though he looked himself over several times and found nothing amiss. Had he done something to scare them again? When he went to the masons’ camp around noon, a dozen people saw him coming and fled in a literal cloud of stone dust.

There were a lot of people out on the roads today, especially in the afternoon when theyshouldhave been at work. Remin saw a number of wagons trundling toward town laden with strangely-shaped and carefully covered objects that made him turn in the saddle to watch them go. The men in the barracks were behaving even more oddly than usual, which was a high bar for soldiers.

“Are they up to some mischief?” he asked, his eyes narrowing as he watched a half-dozen soldiers from the Third Company—distinguished by the redIIIon the shoulders of their livery—make off with something large, heavy, and wrapped in a tarpaulin. Beside him, Bram spat into the dusty courtyard.

“When are they not?” he asked acerbically. “Didn’t look like anyone was struggling under there.”

That was true.

It was almost a relief to go home early, with the promise that he would make up the missed work tomorrow. But even though he was at least an hour earlier than usual, Remin would have sworn the building site on top of the manor was curiously empty, and he thought he spotted the fleeing form of Sousten Didion in the distance, who had beenducking him for the last three days. Normally Remin would have hunted him down to help unburden an obviously guilty conscience, but today it was sufficient that nothing appeared to be falling over.

Taking the steps two at a time, he came upstairs to find Ophele already coming to meet him, dressed in a different chemise than she had been wearing that morning with her hair unbound and a large fire crackling in the hearth. Remin took in these details with some perplexity, which only increased as she tugged him through the door and locked it behind him.

“Oh, good, I hoped you could come,” she said with relief.

“I said I would,” he said, glancing back at the locked door as she propelled him across the room. “Wife, is something going on?”

“A little bit.” His legs hit the side of the bed and Remin sat down, bemused. “I wasn’t planning to tell you all that last night, I planned—something else. But I’m fine now, really, and itisyour birthday…”

He blinked.

“That’s today?”

“I knew you forgot,” she said, coming to stand between his knees. Her cheeks flushed becomingly as she began to untie the laces of his jerkin. “You’ve been so busy, since you got home…”

“It’s the middle of the day,” he said as she undressed him, entranced by the soft curves under her chemise, that tempting skin of her throat. There had been a dozen things on his mind when he came through the bedroom door, and he couldn’t remember a single one of them.

“You…don’t want to?” she asked, hesitating. “I wanted to surprise you. If you still…want me.”

“Oh, I will always want you,” he said, drawing her down to show her how much.

She might have looked delicate, but Ophele was fully the match for his passion. Even as he drew her against him, his palms squeezing the satisfying roundness of her backside, she was kissing him, freeing him from his breeches with an urgency and hunger that made him groan aloud. And then stroking until his thighs jerked, her breath coming in panting little gasps as she showed him how well she could learn her lessons.

“Remin,” she breathed as she shifted above him, her tawny eyes gleaming beneath her lashes, filled with light. Witch. Enchantress. Hisbreath clogged in his throat as she bent to kiss him again, her long hair falling about her sweet, lovely face.

“Ophele,” he breathed, his fingers curling into her hair, gripping the back of her slender neck. “You are mine, you know that, don’t you? Always, unto the stars.”

“Yes.” She kissed him again, her soft mouth curving. “And you are mine.”

Yes. He would have her say it again and again until she believed it, until her heart was as sure as his own. He had never known he wanted this so much. Not just to possess a woman, but to be possessed by her. To be claimed as thoroughly and eagerly as he claimed her. To see her jealous love-bites on his skin. He lay beneath her and shuddered as her tongue licked the ridges of his belly.

Roughly, he stroked his fingers through her hair, pushing it back so he could see her face as she kissed the wide planes of his chest. In her eyes, he saw his own beauty reflected. Remin rarely thought of himself outside utilitarian terms. His body was meat, trained and honed to a purpose, sacrificed and stitched back together again. But Ophele loved him. She touched and caressed and kissed his body as if his flesh was precious.

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