Page 108 of Dead Beat

A bolt of embarrassment shot through her. But really, who was she kidding? “You are. It’s annoying.”

Again he laughed and she felt like she had won a prize. She’d lifted Daniel Arlington V’s melancholy. Better than a winning scratcher.

“How did he do it?” Darlington asked, shaking his head. “My great-grandfather had a long, human life. He went to church every Sunday. How did he vanquish his demon when the rest of them failed?”

“You think there’s a secret there,” she realized. “An answer to how we beat Golgarot.”

“Reiter got eaten. Kittscher did too. Hector’s demon chased him into an early grave.”

“I don’t think that’s why Hec did what he did.”

“Then why?”

But Alex didn’t want to answer. She knew what it would mean if she told him. They would call Dawes and Turner back to Il Bastone. They’d put on a pot of coffee and scheme and argue, and she didn’t want to do any of that. Because in the end, they’d be right back where they started. She had glimpsed the nightmare that was coming. She grasped the unlikelihood that she would survive it any better than Hector had. And some voice inside her wondered if that wouldn’t be the universe setting itself to rights, the mistake erased, balance restored. She didn’t want to talk about any of that.

Instead, she leaned forward and she kissed him. She knew it was a mistake, but she had always been too greedy, reaching for things she knew she had no right to. His lips were soft, cool, and startled. Then he was kissing her back.

She could feel the intense focus of him, his studiousness, his attention, all on her, his hand cradling her face, his long fingers cupping the nape of her neck, as if he were reading her closely, the most fascinating passage of a book he intended to commit to memory so that he might recite her in full. She wished this could be her first kiss, her only kiss; here in the winter light of this room with the snow falling outside, she wished that no one had come before.

He drew closer, and she felt herself suddenly light and giddy as he lifted her and placed her gently on the edge of the desk. She pushed aside the damp wool of his coat, letting him shrug it away, then reached for his sweater, wriggling it over his head. Now there was just the cotton of his shirt, and she could feel the muscles of his arms, his back. She felt when the demon took hold, felt his shoulders broaden.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

But she wasn’t and so she pulled his mouth back to hers and let him slide between the bracket of her knees. She paused only long enough to yank her sweater over her head and then she was kissing him again and she felt a kind of wild happiness. In this darkened house, she might be a girl he brought home on a date, might be someone he loved, might be someone who could dream of a future with him.

There was an easy confidence in Darlington, there always had been, and now that surety surrounded her, the heat of his mouth, the certitude of his hands as they traced her spine, as he gripped her hips and fitted her body against his. She felt a shudder of want flood through her, warm and welcome.

Alex let her hands slide beneath his shirt. She had never been with someone built like this, strong and perfect, less a man than the dream of what a man might be. He shivered and she dragged her fingernails lightly over his skin, wanting to feel his reaction.

“Alex,” he said, and she could hear the hunger in his voice. “Do you want—”

“Yes.”

“You can command me.”

“What if I want you to command me?”

He growled against her neck.

He pushed her back on the desk, sliding her jeans down her thighs, taking her panties with them. She was still in her boots, but she didn’t care, not when he buried his face between her legs and his hands took hold of her thighs.

“I dreamed of this,” he murmured against her, and then she only knew the pressure of his tongue, his fingers. She stopped thinking, and what a blessing that was.

Outside, snow had started to fall, and Alex let herself fall with it, lighter than she’d ever been, nothing and no one, the scrap of a star, pale as a ghost, drifting on the cold winter air, until at last she found a place to land and melted into nothing.

38

Darlington remembered the night of the Manuscript party, the shame that had burned through him, the mix of dread and desire. He hadn’t understood who she was then, maybe he hadn’t understood himself either. He could pretend it was the demon who longed for her or that hellfire had created a mutual madness between them, a thread of need that had tightened to the point of demanding release.

But the truth was messier, and more embarrassing, and it began the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, a monster girl with hollow eyes, Undine who had come to steal his soul. He had resented her natural talents. He had flinched at her ruthless honesty. But he had believed in her from the start, that she was more than anyone had predicted, that this driftwood girl washed up on his shore could somehow save him. And she had.

That was why he had needed to bring her to Black Elm. Who else would walk with him into this echoing tomb, this inheritance that he no longer understood? His great-grandfather had gone to hell. What did it mean that a hundred years later he had followed in his footsteps? But then she’d kissed him and the worry had stopped.

Now he carried her out of the old study and up the stairs, like a hero in an old movie, or maybe a villain, bent on ravishing his prize. He should have felt like a fool, but he only knew a sense of rightness. All that training, all that study, all that hope for some great mission, when really his strength was meant to serve her. He was meant to serve her. He’d been made to kiss her again, to touch her again, to make her moan against his ear.

Darlington laid her down on his narrow bed, on the old wool blankets in the tiny circular room surrounded by stacks of books. At last, he’d brought her home. He had a moment of concern about the cold, and then they were warm in the circle of hellfire.

He was allowed to look now at this woman whom he had forced himself to look away from again and again. He wanted to turn on every single light and gaze at her, the splash of her hair over her narrow shoulders, the plush curve of her lips, and here, the arch of her back, the shudder moving through her as his hands traced her neck, her breasts, the jut of her hips.