Stranger:. Zoe Archer

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Right. “Astrid’s miserable.” She addressed this to Lesperance. “Right now she’s downstairs trying to drink herself into a good night’s sleep without you.”

      Lesperance made a low whine of distress, getting to his feet. Or was it getting to his paws? She really had no idea.

      “You need to be with her,” Gemma continued. “The two of you are …” She searched for the most fitting word.

      “Bonded.”

      Lesperance rumbled his agreement. And Gemma realized she was having a conversation with a wolf. She doubted she could ever write such an outlandish scene.

      She held the door open. When she’d left her room, she hadn’t shut the door behind her, so now the empty room waited across the hall. “Go to her.”

      Making no noise of protest, Lesperance trotted out of the room and into the other. He even winked at her before nosing the door closed, as if they were two collaborators in Astrid’s waiting surprise. Gemma shut the door of Catullus’s room.

      And now they were alone together. They both knew it with the powerful awareness of the rising moon, tidal.

      “I think they would have survived a night apart,” Catullus said dryly.

      “But not well. I’ve never seen two people so connected.” Which awed her, knowing that such love could truly exist in this world. “And,” she added, willing herself not to blush, “I … heard them.”

      “Heard them?”

      “On the ship. At night, when I would be …” “Eavesdropping.”

      There really was no way to dispute that, since it had quickly become clear that Astrid and Lesperance weren’t discussing strategy or secret plans in their cabin. “Yes. They’re a very … passionate … couple.” Very passionate, and Gemma had the singed ears to prove it. The sounds the two of them made would arouse a glacier.

      Catullus lost the war against blushing, his own face turning a deep, burnished henna. “Ah,” he said.

      Without the distraction of a wolf in the room, Gemma allowed herself to look her fill of a partially dressed Catullus Graves. His crisp white shirt was undone and untucked, leaving a swath of bare skin from his neck to his stomach. A lone candle upon the nightstand illuminated the room, so his exposed flesh became a tantalizing play of gold and mahogany, planes and valleys of distinct muscle that revealed him to be not just a man of the mind, but also of the body.

      No coat, jacket, or waistcoat hid the way his fine shirt clung to the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his arms. And his trousers, of course, fit him beautifully, the expensive drape of wool delineating the lengthy muscles of his legs. His feet, large and long, were bare. This, more than even the bare flesh of his torso, struck Gemma as unbearably arousing, strong yet vulnerable, and she swallowed past a lump of heat that had suddenly formed in her throat.

      Likewise, his gaze traveled over her, from the tips of her own bare toes, up along the expanse of threadbare cotton nightgown—lingering, it had to be noted, on her breasts—to her hair spilling over her shoulders, and then her mouth, her eyes. A thorough perusal, not a bit analytical. If anything, Catullus’s gaze held the same haunted look of yearning she had seen before. Yearning, and desire.

      He forced his eyes away from her, and his voice, when he spoke, was a growl. “It’s not right for you to be here.”

      Which wasn’t a rejection, exactly. But he didn’t exactly cross the span of the room separating them and enfold her in his arms either. His kiss still resonated through her, many hours later, much more memorable than the leap and fall from the train, and she wondered with an almost detached desperation if such heat could flare between them again.

      “Neither of us follow the rules,” she said. “Now is no different.”

      Astrid could be heard outside, ascending the stairs. She moved lightly, but the timbers were old and creaked with little provocation. Both Catullus and Gemma held themselves still, listening, as Astrid opened the door to her room. The cry she made—a girl’s shriek of unmitigated happiness—caused Gemma’s heart to contract with bittersweet satisfaction. Lesperance gave a low laugh, said something, though his voice was too deep to distinguish words through the walls, and the door to Astrid’s room shut quickly. Then came the unmistakable sounds of two people throwing themselves onto a bed, the headboard knocking into the wall.

      The next few hours were going to be rather noisy.

      Catullus turned from her to stalk the length of the room, but the chamber’s small dimensions made him ricochet from side to side like a bullet in a cave. “I don’t want you to go to Glastonbury.”

      She hadn’t anticipated this abrupt turn in the conversation and struggled to gain equilibrium. “You’ve got no choice. But I can help, and I can fight—not as well as you and Astrid and Lesperance, but good enough.”

      He pulled off his spectacles and rubbed aggressively at the space between his eyebrows, as if trying to push her out of his vision and thoughts. “If anything were to happen to you …” His teeth clenched. “Blades do their damnedest to prevent any civilian casualties.”

      This stung. She had seen herself as more than a naive bystander blundering into the path of danger, a foolish woman who needed constant protection. “I see. I’m just a civilian whose blood you don’t want on your conscience. A liability.” Maybe this was an unfair accusation, but she wasn’t feeling entirely impartial at the moment.

      His breathing changed, hitched. She thought, at first, that he had no response to her accusation. Deliberately, he set his spectacles on the nightstand. Gave them a little push with one finger so they aligned precisely with the table’s edge.

      “You’re more than that to me,” he said lowly. “Much more.”

      His words sent a deep, resonant thrill through her. Yet he did not move, ruthlessly holding himself back.

      She drew a breath. She felt herself hovering in an elemental moment, the suspension between two worlds, with possibility on every side. A single movement from her would cause everything to shatter into shards and dust.

      For almost a lifetime, he gazed at her. And then, something snapped, broke within him. He stalked toward her, halting not a foot away, so that she felt the warmth of him radiating out, filling her senses to repletion. Even without the splendor of his elegant clothing, his presence was a palpable thing, the depths of his intelligence and dynamic force of his body.

      He stared at Gemma, and without the protective shield of his spectacles, his dark eyes were piercing, sharply aware. His gaze delved into her, probing, as though she were a paradox to be solved, and he had but to stare long enough, pick her apart with the precise machine of his mind and a definitive answer would arise.

      Yet she was no equation. No contraption of metal and wood and canvas. She had no single answer—or, at least, she hoped she was more complex than that.

      “I want to know more about you,” he said lowly, his voice a rumble of silk.

      “It’s the same for me,” she answered. “You’re a wonderful enigma I need to understand. Although I believe, in a way, we do know each other.”

      “But—”

СКАЧАТЬ