chapter Twenty-nine
Wonderful, beautiful, blissful, gorgeous, lovely. Adjectives floated around in Archer’s head like cherry blossoms falling in late spring. He wanted to laugh, shout, and run amok, singing at the top of his voice. Snatches of romantic poetry learned in his salad days came to mind. She walks in beauty like the night; shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? He smiled then, looking up at the ceiling above his bed. He certainly did not possess the talent to fit into words what he felt. Too bad Byron was dead. He’d have hunted him down and introduced him to Miri. The master poet would have found words to do her justice.
He glanced at his glorious, beautiful, wonderful wife lying asleep at his side. The deep curve of her narrow back glowed like Egyptian alabaster in the sunlight. The silken tumble of her hair, golden with glints of fire, fell over her pillow and onto his shoulder. As always his breath came in little stabs of sweet pain when he looked at her. Miri, his miracle, his little fire starter. Laughter bubbled up within him. He ought to have known she would possess some extraordinary power; she was too sensible to have such little fear in dangerous situations. Cheese on toast, indeed.
A small sound escaped her lips, and she shifted in her sleep, lifting her arm a bit. The curve of her breast came into view, plump and pressed against the bedding. Archer’s cock twitched impatiently. He wanted to see her nipples. Nipples that had fulfilled his lewd imagination, deep rose and entirely suckable. He grinned, remembering how she liked that, how she nearly came undone whenever he touched them. That she gave herself fully to him should not have surprised him—Miri never did anything by half—but it did. The tightness in his chest expanded. She was his. Every cell in his body knew her, sang her name, and throbbed with the same thoughts over and over: mine, want, need.
He ought to be satiated. He’d come to her again, and again. It merely had the same effect as throwing brandy on fire. He simply burned hotter. A heat nearly frenetic in its intensity.
His fevered brain drifted back to the early hours of the morning, of sliding against her silky skin, his cock pushing into her tight heat, gently, oh so gently, for she had been swollen and tender. Yet ready. “Now, Archer. Now…” His loins tightened at the memory of the stiff tips of her breasts brushing against his chest. His mouth against hers, lips and tongue slip sliding as that tight, slicked heat slowly milked him.
She had been so hot, a living brand in his arms, and the very air around them heated with her, warming the cold within him until he too grew flushed and feverish. Hot lust coursed through his limbs, throbbing in his cock. Her trembling little hands roamed over his back, one long finger tracing a path of fire down his spine, and then lower to slip between his buttocks and explore there as well. The molten shock of it. He’d come undone then, plowed her softness without finesse or thought. Simple need that made him come in her like a brushfire.
Afterward, she’d burrowed closer, wrapping her elegant limbs about his. Yet there was a touch of fear in her eyes. “The sheets are steaming.”
Heat surrounded them, a caress of balmy air that caused the little red tendrils about her temples to curl in riotous profusion, as they lay damp and limp in each other’s arms.
“The air as well.” He wasn’t capable of saying more. His heart raced, his breath still coming in quick pants.
Her great eyes had gazed up at him, misted and green like sea glass. “And if the fire within me should break free and consume us both?” she whispered, a tiny line forming between her arched brows.
Then I’d die complete. His fingers sifted through her silken hair. “Then it would have consumed us long before.” He’d smiled then, a tremble of lips for all his exhaustion, and touched her face, his fingers weak yet sure as he traced her succulent mouth and felt her shiver. He understood then. Pleasure, fire, guilt, and destruction, they were inextricably woven together for her. To feel pleasure in the midst of releasing such terrible power, how very well he understood that particular dilemma.
His brow rested against hers. “You think I don’t feel that same thrill when I use what gifts I have?”
Her warm voice cracked like a crust on honey. “You’re not afraid? Of what I am?”
Had she not been so earnestly worried, he would have laughed at the irony. Instead, he looked at her solemnly. “You are getting a good look at me, are you not?”
“That isn’t the same. You’re cursed.”
He’d laughed then, his heart as light as air. “Funny, I don’t feel cursed at the moment.”
A weak smile broke over her lips, fighting with a frown. She was not completely convinced. He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks.
“The fire is your strength, what protects you when I cannot. Do not fear it, but embrace it, for it is part of your soul. You know how to use this gift, Miranda. Inside, you know.” When she released a shuddering sigh and gave a short nod, his hand tightened on the back of her neck and drew her near, need and lust rekindled just by holding her close. “Kiss me.” Set me afire again. And again.
Next to him, Miri gave another soft sigh. Pure lust shot through him as he watched her elegant back lift and fall. Even now, should he roll over and slip his hand down that sweeping curve, over the rounded tightness of her bottom, she would turn to him, her slim arms open, that luscious mouth soft in invitation.
Despite his personal vow to give her some rest, he found himself moving to touch her as he craved when the image of a young urchin knocking on his front door came sharply to mind. The boy handed Gilroy a small white box tied with a silver ribbon. For Lord Archer, guvnor. Cold, dark dread sucked Archer away from Miranda. He swung out of bed and headed for his dressing room, aware of each instance that his feet struck the floor, and of every hard beat of his heart. The world had caught up to them.
Gilroy greeted him with some surprise as Archer trotted down the stairs, his dressing robe snapping around his ankles. From somewhere to his right, he heard a sucked-in breath. One of the footmen. Archer had left off his mask, forgotten it entirely in his haste. Did it even matter anymore?
The innocent-looking box lay in Gilroy’s white-gloved hand. A silver ribbon wrapped round it. Christ.
His pulse pounded at the base of his neck as he drew near. “The box, if you please, Gilroy.”
His stomach lurched at the light weight of it, and the faint feeling of something sliding about within. A smell drifted up. Death and rot. Archer thought he might be sick.
He headed for his library, only vaguely aware that Gilroy followed. The ribbon slipped from his fingers twice. Finally, the lid lifted, and with it, the floor seemed to slide beneath him. Miranda’s fragile butterfly mask, spotted with dark blood, fluttered in his hand as he lifted it from the box, and then he spied what lay beneath. Shriveled and brown, one might think it a withered bloom. Merryweather’s ear. Pain sliced through him, white-hot like a brand to his heart. He stood for several moments simply trying to breathe through it, Gilroy’s knobby hand upon his shoulder, holding him steady. But the pain would not abate, nor the terror that made him want to scream. Because his time was up. He’d have to part from her. Miri. He sank to his knees, away from the box, and the card that fluttered to the floor, its message written in a simple scrawl.
—Cavern Hall. On the new moon.