The Shadow and the Star

  Ah, no…but he would not. He would contain the black fire that ran in his veins, that shamed and scorched him.

  From the bed came sounds of movement. Her feet touched the floor, a vibration he felt rather than heard. “I really should find my dressing robe, if you wish to hold a conversation.”

  She stood up, a tumble of hair and luscious sleepy scent, the warmth of a woman’s body beneath the bedclothes. He could have evaded her. But his will and his action split apart from one another. He stood planted, with a lifetime of endurance fracturing, and allowed her to walk straight into him.

  In spite of the hand she’d put out to feel her way in the dark, she came up against his chest as if she had struck a wall. He caught her arm, imposing balance. “I don’t wish to hold a conversation.”

  His voice was low and rough. He had anarchy inside him.

  “Oh.” She stood fixed in his hold. “What, then?”

  “What you wish. What you said.”

  She lifted her face. “Goldfish?”

  “Oh, Jesus.” He cupped her cheeks, bent his head to her mouth. “This. I want this.”

  His lips grazed hers. A heaviness weighted him, an overwhelming pressure. Kai—there was Kai; there was what he had forged of his mind and his body. He could not do this. It was destruction.

  He did not know how to kiss a woman. He thought he should press his closed mouth to hers, but the contact disarmed him, the softness of her cheek sent soundless shudders of pleasure down his body. He opened his mouth, breathing in, taking the essence of her deep inside him as he tasted the corner of her lips with his tongue.

  Her body fluttered. He perceived a blush in her, a warmth beyond the range of eyesight in the dark. She brought her hands up between them. “I suppose—I suppose that you must be distressed by the reception of your necklace?”

  He cared nothing for the necklace. It seemed only one more step on the course that drove him.

  “I daresay—that is why you are here.” Her voice sounded breathless and thin. “I could have wished—that you had not been so eager to present it. I advised—that is—oh, dear. Mr. Gerard.”

  How could she imagine that was why he was here? He stood holding her, tasting her, feeling her agitation, knowing himself part of the shadows in his midnight-gray clothing. He doubted she could even see him—and suddenly he let go of her, brushed one hand across the other in a familiar sorcery, and made light in his open palm, heatless blue, like ocean phosphorescence illuminating the startlement on her face, the puffy sleeves and lacy tucks of her white nightgown.

  He felt suspended, offering himself in the open, without the dark to hide him.

  She gazed for a moment at the rounded stone in his palm, and then up at him. In the ethereal light she seemed bewildered, and more lovely than he could have imagined, the luster of her unbound hair and the velvet curve of her face, all of his forbidden fantasies materialized into life. He rued the light already; he would frighten her, a black warrior conjured out of the night: what he desired so unmistakable, without disguise or softness.

  “Oh,” she said in a hushed, plaintive voice. “You should not be here. I’m afraid this is very foolish, Mr. Gerard. This is most dreadfully ill-advised.”

  He closed his eyes, his fist going tight over the stone. “Let me lie with you,” he whispered.

  “I don’t believe…that does not seem…it really would not be—” She sounded dazed. “With me?”

  He reached up, stroked her cheek with the back of his closed hand, the glowing light barely perceptible between his fingers. “Here. Now.”

  She hesitated, as if she could not quite comprehend him. “I daresay you are weary, to be up so late, but—”

  He took her chin and lifted it on his fist. “I’m not weary.”

  “Oh.” She looked up into his eyes. “Oh…” dear sir, is it that you are lonely? If it weren’t such an awkward hour, I might have rung for tea.”

  Lonely. God. So hot and intense and alone.

  He opened his hand, and the ghostly light colored her for a moment as he brushed his mouth against the side of her throat. Her fragrance was of pristine woman-things, powder and flowers, and that underlying heat of her body: deeper, provocative, a veiled flame that caught fire and blazed inside him.

  “Oh—you should not.” Her voice echoed what he knew; her hands held a light quiver as she nudged them ineffectually against his shoulders. “This is not—decorous.”

  It was not decorous. It was madness. But he did not let her go. He gripped his arm across the small of her back, pulling her to him. The lacy collar brushed across his temple. He allowed the lightstone to fall away onto the floor as her hair slid back in a heavy mass over his hands. Excitement flooded him. He had imagined it that way when first he’d seen her in daylight, at the dressmaker’s; when he’d reached down and picked up a coronetted note inscribed to her and realized what it was.

  He exerted a subtle pressure, compelling her backward toward the bed. She yielded, wavering and easy to control, her lack of resistance telling him that she did not even recognize the leverage that directed her.

  At the edge of the bed, his expertise ended. Not his hunger, not his visions, not the sensation of her pressed between his body and the bed as his leg braced hard against the wood of the frame. He was breathing deeply, unevenly, ungoverned in his physical action, on the brink of a fierce and all-consuming void. He held himself savagely in check, resting his forehead against the curve of her throat.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he whispered.

  Utter truthfulness, Dojun said.

  “No,” she said. “Of course you would not.”

  Her simple conviction shattered him. She could not trust him; he was lying, he knew he was, and yet he would not let go. He surrendered sixteen years of bruises and sweat and dreams, sinking slowly to his knees as he pulled her to him. He pressed his open mouth to her body, meeting the soft underswell of her breast. The flannel held her scent and heat, slipped over her skin beneath his tongue, promising silk beneath.

  “Oh…Mr. Gerard.” The protest was hardly more than warmth in the night air.

  “You said you wished it.” He slid his hands down, tightened them on her waist. He had dreamed of this; dreamed of it for a thousand years.

  Her voice held a clouded wonder. “I suppose…because my mother was—French…”

  Her hand lay against his hair. He turned his head and kissed her palm. She curled it closed, and he kissed the back of her fingers.

  He felt her stillness. And then: lightly…gently, she drew a lock of his hair between her fingers.

  It took all the strength he had to restrain the force inside him. He touched her as if she might vanish in his hands, a skim of contact when what he wished was to crush her to him, a brush of his fingers outlining her shape, the curves beneath her breasts, the swell of her hips. He felt himself so hot and hard that he was afraid he would terrify her if he did not contain his moves.

  He had never in his adult memory touched a woman for so long before. His life had been Kai’s quick hugs and a skip away, or Lady Tess’ brief, quiet welcomes. The sweetness of the embrace amazed him; he felt absurdly close to tears with the warmth of her against his face and beneath his hands.

  He wanted to tell her, but he had no words for it. He wanted to say warm, delicate, soft; your hair, your beautiful hair falling free, your hands, your waist…do you understand? I won’t hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m dying.

  Her hand rested around the back of his neck. He felt her breathing, the rise and fall of her breasts against his cheek.

  “I am afraid we’re very shocking.” Her hand tightened slightly. She lifted a lock of his hair, slid it through her fingers, and brushed it back. “But…dear sir…I have been a little lonely, too.”

  “Leda.” He had only a hoarse whisper to answer her. Slowly, so very slowly, not to frighten her, he rose. A ribbon held the nightgown at her throat; he caught the loop in his forefinger and pulled the bow fre
e. His hand slid downward—he had expected buttonholes like a man’s shirt, but there were none: his finger caught light satin hooks that fell away from tiny pearls of buttons without resistance, descending almost to her waist.

  Her body went stiff as he did it. The base of the slit stopped his hand; he closed his fist on the fabric.

  “Don’t be afraid of me,” he said fiercely. His own muscles were tense; his body felt unfamiliar to him, as if he were moving within heavy armor.

  She stared up at him. He could see the dismay dawn upon her, saw that—God—until this precise moment she had not really understood him—that somehow she hadn’t expected it, would require him to stop; that the words to deny him were rising to her lips.

  He would not let her. He covered her mouth with his, a relentless kiss to stop those words, pulling her to him with his hand spread in her hair. He broke his promise that quickly; the kiss hurt her—he knew it must, because the violence of it bruised his own mouth. He made himself a catalyst, created influence, a controlled force that overcame her equilibrium and took her down onto the bed full-length with him.

  Her hair fanned across her face. She braced her hands against his shoulders. He hung above her, breathing hard, instinct and memories and desire driving him. His body was shoved against hers, exquisite sensation, so close, so close to explosion, her legs all along his with only thin layers of fabric between them.

  The glowing stone frosted barely perceptible outlines in the room. She lay wide-eyed in his shadow, holding him off.

  Her strength he could have conquered in an instant, and they both knew it. But she looked up at him with a sort of desperate dignity, all tumbled and sober. “I’m sure—Mr. Gerard—you would be sorry to behave dishonorably.”

  He could have laughed at an appeal to his honor at this moment. But her face…in her face he saw doubt and faith and earnestness, a wholehearted dependence upon him…and a sweet, impossible bravery: the heroism of small defenseless creatures facing peril.

  In her weakness, she defeated him. He could not go on, and he could not let go.

  He lowered himself with his arms around her, shaking, his face buried against her ear.

  Leda lay without protest in his embrace. He was solidly heavy, and held her quite tightly, but that somehow seemed comforting rather than uncomfortable. After a long time, she felt a slow easing of the tension in his arms; he shifted, moving to her side, still embracing her but not so closely. Neither of them spoke.

  Finally she drifted in and out of a strange sleep, constantly startled to find him there, constantly pleased and then confused by it. It was so singular. Rather wonderful, really.

  In a dreamy way, she understood it; he’d asked to lie down with her, and who would have thought it to be anything more than an odd fancy? Who would have thought it could be so gratifying? She lay at an unfamiliar angle across the bed, without a pillow—waking to find herself snuggling into warmth, flinching at the hard pressure of his arm beneath her head. Whenever she started awake in that way, he moved his hand, brushing back her hair in a soothing gesture, and the natural thing to do seemed to be to nestle closer into the cradle of his arms and body and sleep again.

  The alien stone had long ago lost its glow—it seemed like a dream by the time the faintest gray of dawn tinged the room.

  Waking then from a sounder sleep, her first drowsy impression was of a black shadow beside her, too dark to discern a shape or detail. Then she distinguished form, comprehended the line of his leg, the length of chest, his arm curved over her. She blinked her eyes fully open.

  He watched her. From six inches away, she could see his dark lashes tangled at the edges. His eyes were translucent gray, colored like the outermost perimeter of the winter dawn, the place where starlight became day.

  His wakefulness, the way she was settled and sheltered from the cold by his body—she knew, somehow, that he had not slept for one moment.

  A sudden consternation gripped her. She remembered something that had happened long ago in her schoolroom days—a maid and an illicit follower—something the cook had whispered to the man who brought the coals. She sleeps with him. Cook had muttered. Don’t think she doesn’t, the little strumpet. And soon after that the maid had been sent away in awkward circumstances that Miss Myrtle never would explain.

  Leda stared into his dawn-gray eyes.

  She had slept with him.

  Dear God.

  In the night she had felt that she’d been saved from something—in the daybreak she knew that she was lost far beyond anything Miss Myrtle had ever warned her against. He was in her room. He had touched her. Undressed her. He had kissed her in a way no man would kiss a respectable woman. She had slept with him.

  She shivered convulsively. His arm rested on her shoulder; he tightened his hand for a moment against her neck, then opened his fingers and slid them through her hair. The mahogany strands fell away from his hand. He pushed himself up on one arm.

  Gracious heavens. It was done already—and so little to it! She had slept with him. And she felt no different; no worse, no better—not even ashamed for it, not in her heart.

  Belatedly, as he was moving away from her, she realized that he meant to leave. For no reason, with no sensible thought in her mind, she reached out and caught his wrist.

  He looked around at her with a startling intensity, going still in the faint morning light. Again she thought of demigods, lonely deities born of the mountains and sky and sea.

  She sat up, her hand on his rigid arm, not knowing what to say.

  “I shouldn’t have stayed.” His voice was hard. “I’m sorry. You fell asleep.”

  The sash that held his black coat had loosened. She saw the base of his throat and the curve of his chest. Something glittered within the hidden folds of dark fabric. A weapon…violence and elegance; a master of both—and somehow she wished to reach out and draw him into her arms and hold him very near her heart.

  “You didn’t sleep,” she said.

  He gave a caustic chuckle and looked away. “No.”

  She did not want him to leave. The morning was coming; she did not want it to come. What she would do, what she would say, how life would be changed…it still seemed impossible. She had slept with a man. He had kissed her.

  She did not feel properly guilty at all. She felt—feminine. A little shy and flustered. “Must you go?”

  His eyes lifted to hers. “Why should I stay?”

  The harshness in his tone perplexed her. It was as if he accused her of something. She moistened her lips and spread her hand across his forearm, sliding her fingers over the fabric, feeling the strength beneath.

  His muscle flexed under her palm. “Tell me yes or no.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Stay.”

  He did not move toward her, nor away. “Last night…you said yes. You said you wished it. And then—God.” He blew out a rasping breath.

  She blushed at the bald mention of last night. His hands on her, his mouth. She should be ashamed, and instead she felt…flattered. Excited.

  Oh, was this what it was to be a strumpet? To be a fallen woman? To be selfishly glad that when he was lonely he had come to her instead of Lady Kai?

  She could not bring herself to be vulgarly bold, even cast as a strumpet. Really, she could not seem to think of herself in that way at all: as one of the blowsy shopgirls who winked at cab drivers and cried, “‘Aven’t yer got a kiss for me, gov?”

  It just did not seem as if it were the same thing, to wish for Mr. Gerard to kiss her again.

  The chill in the room went through her gown, now that she was no longer sheltered by his nearness. She shifted, drawing the down-filled counterpane around her shoulders, and glanced at him hopefully. “It’s quite cold, don’t you think?”

  She held the counterpane up to her mouth, peeking over it to see whether he understood the hint.

  He sat unmoving, leaning on his hand. But he didn’t draw away.

  She grew wildly venturesome at the
meager encouragement. Tentatively, she reached out and touched his hair. She drew her fingers down his cheek, fascinated by the faint prickly stubble there. Last night—had it felt so last night? How remarkable; how exotically appealing a man could turn out to be. She remembered that Mrs. Wrotham had very carefully preserved her late husband’s razor and brushes in a rosewood box. Personal things, that had had no particular meaning, no very clear reality, to Leda until now.

  She had always wondered a little why the gentle old lady would so cherish a razor, while at the same time using the much-respected book of sample letters that Mr. Wrotham had written for an incidental doorstop. Because of this, she thought now. Because in a few short hours, a man’s face was different to touch.

  She bit her lips together, overwhelmed suddenly by emotion: empathy for gentle, fluttery Mrs. Wrotham who treasured her husband’s razor; a mysterious tenderness for the man who did not move beneath her hesitant caress, whose only response was a deep tremor, a motion within stillness.

  She leaned forward, touching her lips to the corner of his, as he had done to her. Maleness: her tongue found him both smooth and bristly, with a heated tangy scent. She opened her mouth to sample more, and brought up her hands to explore his hair.

  The tremor in him grew to hard stiffness. He gripped her shoulders with a rough sound. He turned his face into hers, capturing her mouth.

  For an instant she felt nothing but stirring excitement in it. Then his strength took control of her; forcing her backward and down into the pillows. He sought within the disarray of bedclothes, dragging her gown up; his fist tangled in her hair, holding her fixed as he kissed her face: everywhere on her face, her throat, down the open length of her gown.

  He shocked her. She had no time to protest before his full weight came over her, pushing her deep into the bed. His leg shoved between hers, his body pressed against her thighs and her tummy, his hand dragged and yanked at the fabric between them—then the heat of bare skin against bare skin in the most appallingly intimate place—and something—something else—what?