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It was still spare, as there had not been much time to decorate it—a standard Institute bedroom, with a wardrobe, a desk, a bookshelf, and a four-poster bed. Little bits of Jesse were visible, though. The jacket he had worn at dinner, hung over a chair back. The books on his nightstand. The Blackthorn sword, which had been retrieved from the Sanctuary, was propped against the wall. Lucie’s gold hair comb that he’d purloined on the night of Anna’s party, what felt like so long ago, had pride of place atop the dresser.
She sank down onto his bed as he went to bolt the door. Of course he did—he always seemed to sense when Lucie needed to be alone, or alone together with him, in order to feel safe. “What’s wrong?” he asked, turning back to her.
“I had an awful fight with Cordelia.”
Jesse was silent. She wondered if—compared to everything else—her problem sounded silly. He stayed by the door, clearly anxious—she supposed it was the first time she’d ever been in his room alone with him, and she’d given him no warning.
She had expected that when she and Jesse returned to the Institute, to live there together, they would be in and out of each other’s bedrooms all the time. But Jesse had been relentlessly, scrupulously polite, bidding her goodbye every evening, and never coming to knock on her door. She’d seen more of him at night when he was a ghost.
She sat up straight, realizing as well that she was wearing only a nightgown of white batiste, with a transparent lace dressing gown. The sleeves of the nightgown were loose and tended to slip down her shoulders. She looked at Jesse. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
He exhaled. “I’m glad you’re here. And you look…” His gaze lingered on her. Heat sparked in her chest. “But I keep thinking about…”
“Yes?”
“Your parents,” he said apologetically. “I would not want them to think I was taking advantage of their hospitality. Their very extreme kindness.”
Of course. Her lovely, caring, pesky family. She had already seen the way that Jesse was brightening under the attention from Will and Tessa, becoming more himself. Jesse had never experienced a family where people were fond of each other and loved each other; now that he was in such an environment, he had become paralyzed by the fear of ruining it. And while she could recognize that this was good for Jesse, it did mean that he did everything in his power to assure Will—even when Will wasn’t there—that his attentions toward Lucie were honorable. Which she didn’t entirely want them to be.
“My parents,” she said, “got up to the most scandalous stuff you can imagine when they were our age. Believe me when I say they will not reject you out of hand if they find out I came to you for sympathy and sat on the end of your bed.”
He still looked worried. Lucie wound a strand of her hair around a finger and looked at him with her largest eyes. Turning a little to the side, she let one of her sleeves slip down her shoulder.
Jesse made an incoherent sort of noise. A moment later he sank down on the bed beside her, though not too close. Still, a small victory.
“Luce,” he said. His voice was warm and rich and kind. “What happened with you and Cordelia?”
She told him quickly: everything from her visit to Cordelia to her silent ride home in a hansom cab after nearly falling off the Carstairs’ roof. “It’s like she never wanted to be parabatai at all,” Lucie finished. “There’s nothing more important to me in all the world, and she’s just—throwing it away.”
“It might be easier,” Jesse said, “to behave as if she wants to throw it away than to acknowledge that it’s being taken from her against her will.”
“But if she wanted it—if she wanted to be my parabatai—”
“She can’t, Lucie. As long as she’s the paladin of Lilith, she cannot be your parabatai. So, like you, she shares the loss of the parabatai bond, but unlike you, she knows it’s her fault.”
“If she cared,” Lucie said, knowing she was being stubborn, “she would fight for it. It’s like she’s saying we were never special to each other. We were just ordinary friends. Not like—not like I thought.”
Jesse stroked her hair back from her face, his fingers gentle. Careful. “My Lucie,” he breathed. “You know it’s the people who we love the most who can hurt us the most.”
“I know she is upset.” Lucie pressed her cheek into his hand. They had moved closer to each other, somehow; she was almost in his lap. “I know she feels I kept secrets from her, and I did. But she kept secrets from me. It’s hard to explain, but when someone is your parabatai, or nearly, and you feel distant from them, it is like a piece has been cut out of your heart.” She bit her lip. “I don’t mean to be dramatic.”
“It’s not dramatic.” As if mesmerized, Jesse trailed his fingers along her cheek, to her lips. He touched her mouth with his fingertips, and she saw his eyes darken. “That’s how I feel when I am away from you.”
She lifted her hand to the ribbon that held her dressing gown closed. Her eyes fixed on Jesse, she drew slowly on the ribbon until it came undone, until the dressing gown slipped down her shoulders and fell to the bed, a pool of lace and satin. She was only in her nightgown now, her skin flooded with goose bumps, all her thoughts a silent whisper: I want to forget. Take it all away, all the pain, all the loss.
It was as if he could hear her. Jesse cupped her face in his hands and brought her mouth to his—carefully, reverently, as if he were drinking from the Mortal Cup. Their lips touched lightly at first, and then with increasing pressure, he kissed her over and over as his breathing sped up, his heart racing. She could feel it against her, his live and beating heart, and it made her want to feel even more.
She threw decorum to the winds. She opened her mouth to his, traced his bottom lip with a pointed tongue, caught at the front of his shirt, her body arching into his until he melted into her. Until she was sure no fear of her parents, no misguided sense of duty, was going to tear him away.
She sank back against his pillows and he rose over her. The look on his face was wondering, hungry. She was trembling: she could not imagine what this flood of sensation was like for him, who had felt so little for so long. “Can I touch you?” she whispered.
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Yes. Please.”
She ran her hands over him, his arms and shoulders, the wiry length of his torso. The heat of him, feverish under her touch. He shivered and kissed her throat, making her gasp like a heroine in a novel. She was beginning to understand why heroines in novels did the things they did. It was all rather worth it for experiences like this.
“My turn,” he said, stilling her hands. “Let me touch you. Tell me to stop”—he kissed the corner of her mouth—“if you want me to.”
His fingers, long and pale and clever, traced the lines of her face, over her mouth, down her throat, danced along her collarbones, cupped her bare shoulders. The green of his eyes had burned away to black. He shaped her body under his hands, over the slight curves of her breasts, the dip of her waist, until his hands were bunched in the fabric at her hips.
