Page 97 of The Devil in Her Bed
“Precisely.” She pushed back on her elbows to regard him. “The man said he doesn’t believe that the tiger and dragon are fated to battle eternally. Instead of fighting, they might be falling, spinning, perhaps… becoming.”
“Becoming what?”
“They are spirits so vastly different, and yet sowildly similar that their destiny is intricately linked. He said the battle is won when they find a way to come together and create wholeness. Then the hard and the soft find a place in the universe to live in harmony.”
He stared at the tattoo for a long moment, his gaze pensive before he said, “I think this man was trying to sleep with you.”
She made a sound of mock outrage and shoved at him. He chuckled and fell back dramatically.
Rolling away, she took the sheet with her to pluck a knife from a silver tray on her nightstand and skewer an apple from the repast of cheese, fruit, wine, and cold meats she’d rung for earlier.
Interested, he rooted closer to her, accepting the wine she handed him and taking a careful sip. Arranging a wealth of pillows so he could both recline and drink, he sat back to watch her with heavy lids as he rested his hand in her lap. He looked like some bacchanalian god, replete and reclining.
She’d have donned a robe and worshipedhim, of that she had no doubt. A body such as his begged a devotee, and what they did to each other was something like a religion.
Or a blasphemy.
“In all seriousness, I appreciate the analogy. What it means to you, what you think of me…” He seemed to lose what he wanted to say next in a furrow of abstraction as his gaze turned inward for a moment.
Burning to hear his thoughts, and to ask him a thousand questions, Francesca summoned her lacking stores of patience and busied herself by peeling the flesh off the apple.
His faint rumble of amusement gave her pause. She looked up to find him scrutinizing her intently.
She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “What?”
He lifted his hand behind his head to cup his own neck, and the movement did something distracting to the muscles in his arms. “You just reminded me of something I’d quite forgotten.”
“Something good?”
The bracket on one side of his mouth deepened as a memory lifted it. “Something… rather sweet.”
He reached for the peel hanging from her apple, examining it in the lamplight before he ate it.
She made a disgusted sound. “You just ate the peel by itself?”
He lifted his shoulder. “It’s the best part.”
She made a face and then prompted, “Tell me the memory. Am I in it?”
He swallowed, his gaze swinging back to hers. “I always had terrible nightmares as a boy… I still do sometimes. At Mont Claire, I used to sleep in that room behind the boiler for warmth, and Pip, she would hear me cry out and flail in my dreams. Ears like a hawk, that one.”
She stilled, a slice of apple halfway to her mouth when she noted the lamp cast something like fondness on his features.
“Pip’d sneak something from the larder and come down to wake me up,” he continued. “I’d wake with all the gentility of a hibernating bear, because the nightmares would steal me away from myself and—” He swallowed and didn’t finish the thought. “Well… she stayed with me, through it all. And I never told her Iappreciated that. I didn’t want to go back to sleep. I… didn’t want to be alone. She might have sensed that, I think.”
Yes. She had.
Francesca returned her slice to the small plate. She couldn’t have swallowed past the lump of emotion in her throat.
He didn’t seem to notice her reaction to his story, so lost was he in the memory.
“One time,” he continued, “she brought more than one knife, and she gave it to me. We played at being buccaneers, and she told me something as she ruthlessly stabbed my apple, peeling it much like you’ve just done. She said,I’m going to steal your heart one day, me hearty, and ye’ll never get it back.”
He was quiet for a moment, long fingers digging into the covers as he visibly battled emotions both bitter and sweet. “I thought—I thought she meant it as a threat at the time. I was a boy, it was all blood and battle for me then, and she was just the kind of little savage that would rip a heart out and lock it in a box.”
The thought made him chuckle, and had her swallowing convulsive emotions.
Then his smile fell. “I should have been kinder to her. Looking back with a man’s eyes… I think she meant to do exactly that. I think she wanted to steal my heart and keep it. That… she might have considered it a treasure.”
