Dark Season (31 page)

Take Phillipa home.

His ragged breath was at her ear.

“You’re with me now,” he said. “Stay with me.” She buried her face in his coat, clinging to him, humming deep in her throat so she wouldn’t have to listen. She couldn’t hear what he was saying. She didn’t want to understand.
She felt the pounding of his heart, heard only that beating. Flesh and blood, speaking to her, at last, without words.

He let himself into his house. The hall was dark. He’d given his staff the night off. He led her up the stairs. When they reached the top, he looked back at her.

“You’re still there,” he said, softly, wonderingly, foolishly. Of course she was still there. He held her hand in his, too tightly. He was grinding those delicate, bird-boned fingers. Becoming brutal in his haste
.
His eagerness. He lifted the hand and kissed her fingertips. The music they made could put the birds to shame.

He couldn’t master the urgency that made his heart hammer in his chest. Now that he had her, he was afraid she would disappear. He backed into his bedchamber, never taking his eyes off her. The room was cool. The fire had dwindled to embers. Nonetheless, he helped her out of her cloak and threw it on the chair along with his coat and waistcoat. She wouldn’t be cold for long. He lit the candles. She turned a circle on the carpet, looking around his room. He watched her. Was she gazing at his bed or trying to make out the title of the book on the bedside table? The shadows that hollowed her eyes made them seem even larger. She looked so fragile—an illusion, perhaps. Assurances, promises, again rose to his lips. But when she turned her gaze on him, he could only say, “Come here.”

He reached for her, and she stepped forward into his arms. The rustle of her dress maddened him. One by one, he ripped the roses from the bodice. The sound she made was like the sound of the tearing silk. He slid his fingers along her collarbones and followed the edges of the bodice down, his two hands meeting at its lowest point. He let his fingers rest there, feeling the rise and fall of her breasts.

“I can’t stand the sight of this dress,” he murmured. He gripped the bodice and pulled his hands apart, splitting it down the middle, all the way to the waist. He pushed the two halves from her shoulders. Now her slender torso in its white undergarments rose from the masses of red and black silk. Aphrodite emerging from a sea of gore. Yes, he would burn the gown himself. He would buy Ella new gowns, silks silver as starlight. Green as moss. Forest shades. Colors Phillipa would never have worn.

Ella’s dark eyes were wide open. Her lips were parted.

“I want to see you,” he said. No gown was best. No fabrics padding and pinching, distorting her shape. Her hair loose around her face, her throat, her breasts. She caught his wrist as he felt for the pins holding the wig in place. The expression on her face didn’t change. She looked mesmerized. Almost blank. He couldn’t allow that. He couldn’t let any part of her vanish, not by any means.

He fumbled with her lacings in his impatience. Almost reached for his knife to slice the corset from her body. The air sawed in and out of his lungs. There. He tugged skirts, crinolines, petticoats, corset, linens, down around her hips. She made no move to help him. She was watching his hands work with fascination.

He felt, suddenly, like a snake charmer. He didn’t like it. He didn’t want her hypnotized, pliant. He wanted to rouse her. He wanted to take her into his mouth, taste her, feel her break against him.
Communion.
Like the moment they’d shared in the coach, freezing, desperate, fiercely alive. He wanted this experience to feel like the sonata, give and take, sun and moon, joy and sorrow. He
would
rouse her. But first, he had to step back and look at her. Luminous. Darkness pooled in the hollow at the base of her neck, spilled along her collarbones and between her breasts, curving beneath, highlighting their pale swells. Her body was not symmetrical. Her hips were slightly uneven, the right riding higher, closer to the lower ribs. The dip of her waist was slightly shorter, shallower on that side. This irregularity moved him, queerly. He couldn’t have predicted this hint of displacement in her contours, couldn’t have composed her correctly in his mind with abstract formulae. He felt suddenly humbled before her, by her presence, frail, naked, mortal, facing him. Singular. For the briefest of moments, he had a glimmer of who he could become if he accepted her, if he carried, instead of guilt, the burden of love. Responsibility for another. Grief and jubilation mingled with his desire.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, closing the distance between them, grazing her nipples with his palms, sliding his hands down the smooth curve of her belly, veering just below her bellybutton to grasp her hips and pull her against him. She staggered, feet tangling in the puddle of ruined silks, and threw her arms around his neck to catch herself. He hoisted her, hooking her knees around his waist. She was panting, wiggling to get free, and he cupped her soft, full buttocks, holding her firmly, grinding the sensitive folds between her legs against his arousal. He looked down into her face. She wasn’t watching any longer. Her eyelids fluttered; the deep, rosy indentation of her upper lip held a bead of sweat. In two strides, he deposited her on the bed.

He put a knee on either side of her, pressing kisses to her throat, sliding his head to her breasts. He kneaded them, forcing them up, kissing the damp creases beneath. He closed his teeth on her nipple, teased it with his breath, his tongue. She arched against him. He kept his palm flat against her breast and found the rim of her ear with his tongue. The black curls tickled his nose. They didn’t smell like her. The wig had been scented with citrus in the shop. His nostrils flared. He wanted to inhale
her
only, not scent, not soap, just the salty-sweet essence of her skin. He dug his fingers into the chignon. Her arm shot up. She was trying to pull away his hand.

He hadn’t expected it—this particular battle—but he knew how to rout her. He caught her bicep, kissed the tensed muscle, and bent her arm back, kissing the hollow inside her elbow. He pushed her arm down to the bed, trapping it above her. He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her cheekbones, parted her lips with his tongue, sweeping the silken inner flesh. Ah, now her tongue followed his, entered him, mouth opening fully. He broke the kiss, face hovering an inch above hers.

“Open your eyes.” He meant to coax her, but the words emerged as a command. Nothing. The lids didn’t lift. He let go of the arm and inched himself backwards, pressing kisses between her breasts, down the curve of her belly. He laid his hands on her thighs, felt them shiver. He dug into the flesh of their inner slopes with his thumbs. As he moved his hands up, she squeezed her legs together.

“Do you want me to stop?” Nothing. She was breathing quick, shallow breaths. He spread her thighs, roughly, wide enough to fit a knee between. Then the other. He splayed her. Feasted his eyes on the sight, the darker flesh glistening. Like glimpsing a fruit in a briar. He pressed his palm to her, felt the pickling heat, the softness beneath. She gasped. Her eyes snapped open.

“Ella,” he said, rubbing, giving her this broad, crude pressure: a chord in the key of the finer melody he was preparing to play. Now. He stroked with his thumb. As he flicked the nub at the top of her moistening folds, her upper lip lifted in a snarl.
Yes.
She was fighting her way back through the mists.
Here.
He slid a finger partway inside her, groaning aloud as the wet passage constricted. She jerked up, and he pushed her chest with the heel of his hand, pinning her with his weight. He slid the finger deeper, rubbed harder with his thumb, forcing her legs farther apart with his knees. He wanted to lower his head to taste the slick skin, but he couldn’t. Not yet. He had to watch her as her head tipped back. He saw a flash of white as her eyes rolled toward the ceiling.

“Look at me.” She didn’t meet his eyes, but her gaze followed his hand as he removed his finger. He could work with that. He smiled slightly, lifting his hand, sliding the finger into his mouth. His mouth flooded. Rich, coppery.
Blood.
Her eyes flitted to his. Did she read his surprise? Confusion slowed him. He lost focus as his mind raced, and he lost her in that moment. Her gaze fell; she took a deep, steadying breath. He felt her limbs stiffening.
Goddamn it
. He leaned over her, pushing two fingers inside, noticing now the narrowness, so slippery, but so tight. She struggled to rise. He dropped his face to her breast, bit her nipple, hard enough to make her gasp. He pressed up with his fingers, searching for the sensitive, roughed patch … She bucked against him. Moaned, sweet and wild. The urgency of the cry ignited the passion he’d tried so hard to bank, to keep at a low smolder
.
He slid his arm beneath her back, lifted her into a sitting position. Her weight drove her down on his fingers. She rode him, thrashing her head from side to side. He lowered her upper body slightly, her buttocks sliding up, resting just above his knees. Her bent legs butterflied, opened wider. His wrist burned with the angle, wedged between them. Again he moved his fingertips, working the ridged center inside her. A short cry burst from her. Sharp. Staccato. He gritted his teeth as her convulsive movement sent a tremor through his legs to his groin.

Her head hung back, the wig askew. A glimmer of fair hair peeked out, slanting across her forehead. He had always fancied that her beauty was like the moon, mutable, shifting its portion of light and shadow. It was true; she could dim herself to a sliver. She could slip behind a cloud.

“Don’t hide from me.” There was more he wanted to say.
I want all of you.
But the constriction in his throat didn’t allow speech. His words became motions. He thrust his fingers rhythmically inside her, and she jolted. He couldn’t wait any longer. He pulled her up so her chin ground into his shoulder. He gripped the back of her neck, buried his fingers in the wig, and yanked. The pins that held it in place had loosened, but a few silvery strands of her hair still went with them. Pale, drifting, like spider silk. He threw the wig from the bed, surging with a triumph so strong, so primal, he nearly spurted. Restraint
hurt.
He cupped the back of her skull, turning her head, claiming her lips. She was whimpering into his mouth. He felt the first contraction grip his fingers, the pulse of her pleasure. She shuddered, and he pulled her head back, exposing her face, her features blurring, straining, mouth opening wide. He hungered for this, this moment.
She looked at me as she did love.
The horror in her eyes froze the blood in his veins. Her sweet moan changed pitch, became a wail. She kicked, clawed, and he let her break free, too stunned to hold her. She scrambled back on the bed, huddled against the headboard, knees drawn up, face pressed into them, arms crossed, knuckles white where she gripped her own elbows. Her body twitched. Shook.

He was sweating beneath his clothing, and the air made his skin feel clammy. He struggled to quiet his breathing. It sounded harsh in his ears. Shock, disappointment, concern, and self-reproach warred within him. He approached her slowly, as though she were a wild creature that might startle.

“Ella,” he whispered, stroking the nape of her neck, fingers sliding into her hair to massage her scalp. “Talk to me.”

• • •

His caress was as soft as his voice. She couldn’t endure either. Her body still thrummed. She wanted to wiggle, scream, burst out of her skin.
Biting and knocking.
Oh God. What was happening to her?
Excitation of the nerves
.
Loss of voluntary movement.
She dug her fingernails into her skin. She clamped down on her tongue so hard she tasted blood. No good. She could still feel it, the fluttering between her thighs. Her calves were cramped. At any moment, this tingling would reach her brain. Inflaming her white matter.
Deranging that portion of the nervous center that governs intelligence and sensibility.
She had the same vertiginous feeling she recognized as the precursor to her fits. The abyss yawning open.

First, volition fled. Then consciousness.

For a delirious interval, she had almost imagined she
was
Phillipa. She was Isidore Blackwood’s beloved, responding to his lips, his fingers. His tenderness was her right. His touch
worshipped
her, and she gloried in it. The sensation that flooded her was sanctified. She rolled with the waves, her body light, undulate, floating on the surface. Then everything changed. Feeling overwhelmed her. She was tempest-tossed, battered. She couldn’t catch her breath. The sediment stirred in her blood. Madness crested through her.

The arches of her feet had spasmed with the force of it. Her face … it must have become livid. Had he glimpsed it? Had it appalled him?

Her disease transformed sweetness into savagery. Pleasure into violence. And she had
craved
it. For the first time, she had wanted to lose control. She had nearly surrendered, nearly seized in his arms.

“Leave.” It was absurd of her—she couldn’t banish him from his own bedchamber—but she said it again, her voice oddly high-pitched. “Leave me,
please
.”
Panic closed her throat. A fit was coming, and he sat on the bed beside her, fingers tugging gently through her hair. He would see what she became. She shuddered, waiting for the disorientation, the blinding pain, but the fit did not take her. The signs had lied. She gulped air noisily.

“I should have stopped.” He stroked her arm from shoulder to elbow. “When I realized … ” He paused, knuckles resting on the curve of her neck.

She tensed.

“You’re a virgin,” he said. She raised her head. His eyes were brilliant. Grave.

She almost laughed at his simplicity, but the sound lodged in her throat like a sob. Should she admit that she hadn’t spared a thought for her virginity? That she had been imagining herself a ghost’s vessel in a marriage bed that never was?

“I frightened you.”

“No.” She shifted, raising her shoulders slightly and, when his gaze fell, remembered that she was naked. She hunched, pressing her breasts against her thighs. What did virginity matter to her? A fallen woman is still a woman. She was different. She transformed into a beast.