“I won’t go anywhere,” I promised.Thiswas the sign from him I’d been waiting for. A crack in his austerity. That glimpse of weakness made me feel as if my dreams were in reach.
He made a low sound in his throat, still looking over my face, my throat, my shoulders above the water. “Tip your head,” he instructed, meeting my eyes. He pulled away, bit the finger of his glove—those white teeth, so sharp in the twilight—and removed them both, then rolled up his sleeves.
Just when I thought I had the measure of him, he changed things. Pulling the chair up to sit beside the tub, he leaned over the edge andgathered my long, black hair like a skilled and capable maid, carefully supporting my neck and rinsing until the locks were soaked. I sat up with it streaming down my back and turned away from him. But he only got the soap and lathered it in his hands. His cool, long fingers slid into my hair and began to massage my scalp.
It reminded me of the weeks he spent tending to my wounds. Shivers of pleasure cascaded down my body and I couldn’t help but give a murmur of delight. The air was warm but the water deliciously cool on my skin. My nipples rode the edge of the water, slipping in and out with his movements. I was so aroused by his touch, by the air, by the slip of water, I didn’t care if he noticed. How could I be ashamed? I knew he watched me, wanted me, and now he called me beautiful. I tipped my head farther in his hands, and he moved to my neck, to my shoulders. Between my legs grew warm and slippery. I wanted to beg for his touch. His eyes met mine, the black even darker with a haze of violent lust—I knew that look. It was the same in Death as in any man. He wrapped the skein of my hair around his fist and wrung the water out, twisting so hard that I was propelled into standing in a stream of water.
The cooling air hit my naked body in a chill that only enflamed me more. He yanked me by my hair into his chest. His dark eyes flicked from my eyes, my open mouth, to my hard, wet nipples.
“How depraved are you?” he asked. “How wicked?”
“Very, my lord,” I said, my voice husky with desire.
“Show me,” he ordered. Then he pulled me down by my hair.
At first, I thought he wanted to use my mouth, and I had a rush of satisfaction that I had reduced him to his need after all. But he pulled me to the floor, laying me on my back with my hair still pulled tight. Instead of releasing me, he placed his boot on the pull of my hair. Keeping me pinned, he stood over me, boot holding me tight to the floor.
I moaned and arched against the floor. I laid myself out for him like on his altar, making myself an offering, edged in the blue light of duskand the heat of summer. I remembered what it felt like to have no say in what happened to my body, in other times and places, but in this moment I felt his equal, his consort, and brimming with unquenchable power and pleasure to make myself an offering. I felt that heat between my legs drip out, wet and simmering.
“Yes, show me the most wicked you are,” he said softly, and I had a passing wish for the crop from the meadow to bite the softness of his words.
“Give me your glove,” I said.
Without letting go, he took one of the gloves he’d laid so carefully off the bed and lowered it to me. I took it, and with the same carefulness with which he removed the glove, I put it on, finger by finger. My hand was lost in it. The glove he wore every day. The intimacy of his capable, elegant hands. I was insidehim, in a way. I wiggled my fingers and splayed them across my stomach. The cool leather hit my skin, familiar. I would make it so that anytime he saw his own hands he would think of them upon my body. I dragged the gloved hand up my ribs and gripped my breast, using the flat of the seam on his pointer finger to tease my nipple. His eyes darkened with need, but he did not move. Using my thumb and finger on my free hand, I pinched my nipples together and hissed at the sting. His eyes followed the graze of his glove back down, over my stomach, between my legs. I spread them, planting my feet firmly on the hard floor.
I was lithe and well fed all these months, sleek with lust, and as the full moon rose above the trees and bathed me in its pearlescent light, I spread myself, touching myself with his glove over my fingers. Lifting my hips, I rocked upward so that he could not miss the sight of that heat. When I was sure he could see, I slowly slid two of the fingers of his glove inside my body. I did not stop. A soft, wet sound filled the darkened room.
“Yes, you’re my wicked girl,” he said, voice dry and ragged. But his foot remained firm on my hair.
I knew I should have been happy—he was mine, I could tell in hisvoice, but I wanted his hold on me to break. I wanted to undo him. Abruptly, I stopped touching myself. Using my teeth, I bit the finger I’d used on myself and pulled the glove off exactly like he’d done every single time before he had touched me. I could remember each time. I could not stop thinking of that act.
When I twisted the glove and slid it completely inside my eager, panting body, he shuddered. His breath caught and the boot lifted, just for a moment, off my hair.
Satisfaction flooded me like my body’s own release, pounding hard through my blood. And then I could bear it no more. With his glove sunk deep inside me, I closed my eyes and slid my bare fingers across the slit of my legs and came in hard shudders that wracked me on the floor. By the time I finished, he had his boot firmly back on my hair.
“Are you finished, ma petite chou?” he asked.
I whimpered and nodded.
“That was wicked, indeed. Will you return my glove?”
I bit my bottom lip and slowly retrieved his glove.
He seemed stern and remote as he wiped the glove off on his leg and then slid it over his hand. But I could see the tension in his jaw and the sunken shadows of his cheeks and the studious way he avoided my eyes.
“Good evening,” he said with a lordly bow. With a whirl, he was gone and the door closed tight behind him.
I was on the floor, wrung out but not satiated. But I had won. I had undone him. I smirked and picked myself up, using the cold water of the tub to wash myself off and dive headfirst into the clean, waiting shift.
I crawled into bed, thinking of all that happened, of Death’s sharp angles and firm grip. But then, unbidden, my mind slid to a softer place, into those molten gold memories of Dacia, the feel of her skin, her hands, and then … the horror in her eyes as she clapped her hands over her mouth in shock, and the way she’d pulled away from me.
I shut my mind against the memory. My throat ached so deeplyagainst the assault of longing, and yet I could not sob. I fell asleep clutching my pillow as if I could reach through the air and hold Dacia.
In the middle of the night, Schneid jumped on the bed. I woke up just enough to notice as he settled in a tight ball at my feet and was drifting off again when a scream pierced the night.
My eyes popped open.
Schneid lifted his head. We both stared at the door.
