Dark Season (32 page)

“You’re frightened of yourself.” He tilted his head, the promontory of his cheekbone rising. “The way you hold yourself … the way you move … ” He smiled faintly. “You walk as though your body’s a hired conveyance that you find uncomfortable. You’d jump out of it if you could.”

She’d never imagined that her very steps betrayed her.

“I walk with one foot in front of the other.”
Too defensive, Ella
. Her tone was sharp. “It’s hardly worth remarking.”

“You think about every gesture you make.” He said it slowly, trying to penetrate her with his gaze, to see inside her. “Such discipline. Such self-command.” His voice burred with amusement. He stroked her arm again, and her breath caught. “I haven’t been able to figure it out. Why you need to soldier yourself through the world. What battle you’re fighting beneath your own skin. Why you want to be other than who you are.”

Her skin was shivering under his touch. Whatever battle she was fighting, she was losing now.

“I thought you’d been mistreated by a lover.”

“I have no lover.” His look made her want to run. It was suddenly predatory.

“You
had
no lover,” he said softly. “You’re here with me, now. In my bed. You, Ella.”
No pretending otherwise.
He didn’t have to say it. Somewhere on the carpet that black wig lay like a dead animal. “You’re here,” he said, fiercely now, as though he needed to convince them both. His hand came up to cup her face. Warm palm against her chin. Fingertips on her cheekbone. “You’re beautiful.”

He had said that before, when he ripped away the gown. She had accepted it then, because she told herself it wasn’t her he was seeing. Now she couldn’t bear the words. She shook her head.

“There’s something ugly inside me.” Her voice was hoarse. It was the closest to a confession she could come. He didn’t contradict her. He nodded.

“You can’t have one without the other.” He leaned over, brushing her lips with his. “Intense experience makes them flow together. Or so you said to me.”

She shut her eyes, felt his hot breath, then the pressure of his lips against her eyelids.

“I want all of you,” he whispered. “That’s the beauty I mean. Beauty and ugliness both.”

She opened her eyes. All of her. Damaged. Tainted. She felt the midnight blue of his gaze like a touch.

“Don’t hold anything back.”

It seemed unfair to her then, that he should challenge her like this when he sat fully clothed in his own bed, daring nothing. She rose to her knees, tugged at his collar.

“Take this off.” Anger made her voice guttural, made her gestures even clumsier. He bowed his head, black wings of hair falling across his face as he unbuttoned his shirt.

The sudden fury that goaded her fled as she beheld the lean lines of his torso, the ridges of muscle contracting as he drew in his breath. She traced the shadows that limned each muscle in his abdomen, scratched her fingernail down from his belly button, fascinated by the dark trail of hair. He made a strangled noise. She laid her hands on the hot, smooth skin of his arms. He felt hard as metal, but molten. As she considered this paradox, his sinews knotted. He reached for her. She brushed his hands away, gratified that he let them fall. Submitting to her.

“More.” Her audacity acted like a tonic. She was giddy, issuing demands. But she couldn’t bring herself to fumble with his trousers. He had to undo the buttons, tug them off. “Dear God,” she breathed.
This
was ugly, the length of muscle that protruded from the dark curls between his thighs. Somehow she’d imagined this part on a man would be different. It was so animal. Thick. Veined.

Her eyes flew to his face. He looked wary, grim, reading, no doubt, the judgment in her stunned expression.

“Both.” She got out that one syllable, and he raised a questioning brow before his face cleared, and he grinned that crooked grin.

Both. Not ugly. Not beautiful. Something else, the two together, more than either.

He pulled her against him, and she gasped. The friction of skin against skin. Satiny heat. The solidity of his arms closing around her. She slid her hands down the slabs of muscle stretched taut over his ribs, felt the angular jut of his hipbones, thumbs brushing the dampness of the curling hairs that thickened beneath. Another inch and she would touch the base of it. But he didn’t let her. His lips teased her throat as he bent her backwards. He lowered her to the bed, and she slid her hand up, clung to his shoulders. His broad body covered her, heavy, squeezing the air from her lungs, that hard length digging into her thigh, and then he was up on elbows and knees, crawling backwards, silky strands of his hair tickling as he moved lower and lower.

She wound her fingers in his hair, trapping his head against her belly. She felt him smile against her skin, the wetness of his teeth, then the shocking probe of his tongue into her navel. She tightened her hands in his hair, but he reached up for her wrists and with just the pressure of thumbs and forefingers made her release. Light kisses, licks—he continued to explore her, his hands now pushing her thighs apart.

She clutched the blanket. His breath blew hot
there,
in that spot his fingers had already tortured. She couldn’t endure it, not again, she would shatter this time. She had barely held on to her sanity.
I want all of you.
He’d said it, but he didn’t know what all meant. If he struck deep enough, he would find the rot. The putrefaction would billow up. She couldn’t allow it.

“Isidore.”

His murmured response was accompanied by a rush of air. Her mind went blank as her flesh kindled. She arched in protest, but this movement brought her into contact with his mouth. He made a pleased sound that she
felt
vibrating down her thighs and up into her belly, a buzzing in her flesh that had to be madness itself. His hands slid under her bottom, keeping her pressed against his lips. He was sucking her, licking her, and she writhed, twisted, fought to get away, before it was too late, before the tension that was coiling around the sudden pressure of his tongue became unbearable, before her reason broke and she ceded her humanity and howled.

“I can’t … ” She gasped. “I can’t … ”

He dragged his head from her, but now his fingers … Oh God, the madness was pushing into the center of her being, and this was worse, far worse, because he was watching her, his mouth glistening, his eyes locked on her face.

She put her knuckles into her mouth and bit hard, covering her eyes with the other hand. Sounds came out of her throat she’d never heard. Mewing, sobbing, rasping sounds. She felt his teeth close on her earlobe as his fingers thrust to her very core. She wasn’t going to convulse, she was going to explode.

He pulled her hand from her eyes as the buzzing became a keening, high and wild, the noise of her nerves, her tissues, her blood, and she was crying out with it, jerking helplessly, as the ugliness burst from her. Her body heaved and heaved again, opening and closing, rippling with something beyond her control. It wasn’t pain. It was as powerful as pain, but it was the opposite. She had moved through pain into this sweeter, hotter fire. She tried to breathe, still trembling, his weight against her side, his hand buried between her legs. She could feel herself beating around his fingers, as though her heart were suddenly lower in her body.

The ripples were subsiding, and she felt delicious, swollen with sweetness. It wasn’t like a seizure after all. The moment of peril had felt the same, the leap into darkness seemed also to threaten with annihilation, but the descent was different. It was like a dream of falling, and suddenly she could fly.

There wasn’t less of her returning. There was more of her. She had lost control, but she had gained something else. Trust. In her body. In him.

“Breathe, my love.” He kissed her throat. “You can breathe.”

Ella lay curled in bed, on her side, knees bent. She often slept in that position, protecting herself, conserving her warmth. This morning, though, her knees pressed the back of Isidore’s thighs. Her arm wrapped his side; his arm crossed hers. She wiggled closer, nestling the hard curve of his buttocks against her belly. Her lips rested in the hot groove beneath his shoulder blade. She’d slept without dreaming. She woke knowing exactly where she was.

She let her breath puff out so her lips opened, and she tasted the salts on his skin. She tried to memorize the feeling. Time was running out. The clock hands were moving forward. The clock hands were like iron bars, levering them apart. Soon it would be over. She shifted, drawing her arm down, exploring. Her hand descended the ladder of his ribs, dropped into the taut, steep valley between rib and hip. She slid her fingers around his hip, dipped her fingertips into the depression beneath the bone then down the ridged muscles of his stomach. She bumped the silky, hard length of him and felt it twitch. She jerked her hand away, flushing. He rolled over, tipping her onto her back and coming up on his other side to look down at her. Somehow, she kept herself from pulling the covers over her head.

His hair was tousled, his eyes heavy-lidded but alert. Stubble darkened his jaw. The lazy smile on his lips made it start again, that beating between her legs.

“My dear Ella,” he drawled. “Were you ravishing me as I slept?”

Her face had to be crimson—purple, even—with embarrassment. But her curiosity was whetted. Why not satisfy it? She’d come too far to turn back. The remembrance of these hours she spent with him—she would cleave to it during the lonely years to come. It would be a balm and not a torment. She wouldn’t long for what she couldn’t have. Instead she’d think fondly on what she once—albeit briefly—possessed.

“I don’t know,” she said breathlessly. “Were you asleep?”

His eyes glinted. “No.”

She rolled onto her side too, inching toward him, pushing her leg between his so that they fit together.

“And what exactly,” she whispered, “constitutes a ravishment?” She had one image in her head for a ravished man, a god, really. It came from the first poem she’d read that she hadn’t wanted to discuss with her papa. “The Vine” by Robert Herrick. The speaker dreamed his mortal part became a vine and writhed all around his beloved.

So that my Lucia seemed to me

Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.

She twined her leg around his and wound her arms around his neck.

“That depends on you.” She heard the catch in his voice. His smile had faded.
It
twitched again, and she felt the movement high against her hip.

“Do you control it?” she asked.

“Do I control what?” he asked, dryly.

“This.” She worked her hand between their bodies and touched it, deliberately this time. “Your … mortal part.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Mortal part? Ah, yes, of course.” He cleared his throat. “Mortal part.” He couldn’t suppress the low rumble of laughter. “I’ve never heard that one. Your coinage?”

“Herrick,” she muttered. “What do you call it then?” She curled her thumb and forefinger around it, and he gasped. As though being … ravished. She smiled up at him, pleased with herself. He wasn’t laughing anymore.

His voice was husky. “Cock.”

She tightened her grip. “How do you make it … stand?” She slid her fingers down to the soft, heavy base, cupping it. The hot skin slid over the roundness within.

He gritted his teeth. “Inside every man’s body,” he rasped, “there is a system of pulleys … ”

She giggled, and suddenly she was on her back. He was braced on his arms above her.

“What else do you want to know?” he asked softly. His face was serious.

She looked up into his eyes and saw the fierce emotion that burned there.

“Everything,” she said, and his gaze grew hotter. He lowered himself so he lay full upon her, his weight so welcome she gave a little cry of triumph, pressing the muscles of his back, wanting him to drive her even harder into the mattress, wanting their bodies crushed together. He slid down to suckle her breast, pulling the coverlet and sheets back with him, and the sweet, tugging feeling—like a tide moving out, rolling from the crown of her head to her toes—stunned her with its familiarity. God, she wanted this, but what if she was growing to need it?
Worry after. Worry when it’s gone.
She touched his hair, and as she ran her fingers over his ears, she felt the difference between them: the one rounded on top, the other truncated, cartilage slanting at a steep angle. Lopped. What had happened to mangle him so? Then he moved lower, and she stopped thinking coherently. His hands swept her hips, her thighs, kneading her, stroking her. There was a thump; he’d gone over the side of the bed. He knelt on the carpet, flicked away the sheets, gripped her ankles, and took her toes into his mouth. It tickled, and she gave an involuntary cry—loud, far too loud—something between a laugh and a gasp. He kissed his way up her calves, climbing back onto the bed, nuzzling between her thighs. His new growth of beard scratched the delicate skin. He lifted his head, and their eyes met. No smile on his face. Nothing soft. Raw desire. Blazing joy. He lowered his head, and she reared as she felt the slow, long lick. He was on all fours, muscles bunched in his arms as he leaned in, pushed with his tongue. She released a shuddering breath.

“Please,” she gasped. He stroked upward, and she rolled her hips helplessly, no longer sure if she was trying to ease herself by escaping his lips or by pressing harder against them. Again he stroked, and again, and sensation shivered out from that pulsing center. She moaned, and he rose to fit his mouth on hers, swallowing the sound, drinking in her cries. His lips tasted odd, tasted faintly of the sea, and she knew this must be
her
taste and part of her marveled.

He lay between her legs, and when she lifted her hips she felt his cock rubbing that spot, which still quivered, still throbbed.

“Ella,” he said, and she realized her eyes were closed. She opened them and looked up at the brilliant blue, his gaze focused, burning. “We can stop.”

We.
Her hunger intensified because it was his hunger as well.
Our hunger.
She kissed him, but this wasn’t answer enough. He gripped her face, thumb lifting her chin.