The Dream Thief (25 page)

“I cannot swim.”

“Floating along on a midsummer
breeze. A butterfly given wings. Everything is effortless.”

“So say you,” she muttered,
rubbing her nose. “It might be easier if you didn’t stare so.”

“Am I staring? I beg your pardon.
It’s just that I find the process…”

“Freakish?” she suggested, tart.
“Unnerving?”

“…amazing,” he finished, and
deliberately aimed his gaze down at the rocky floor. “Like you.”

She nearly sighed but didn’t want
to waste the warmth. “Was that a compliment?”

“Sorry,” he said meekly, without
looking up. “Sometimes it happens. I’ll try to contain myself.”

Lia felt her lips flatten.
Frustration welled up in her once more—it wasn’t
working,
she couldn’t
do
it, nothing
helped
—and when her breath hissed out, a small plume of
flame ignited in the air, landing upon the sleeve of his coat.

He leapt to his feet, agile as a
dancer, slapping out the flame. For the long, astonished minute that followed,
they only stared at each other, he standing, she seated, his fingers clasped
over the stench of scorched wool.

Zane
recovered first. He held out his sleeve to examine it; his voice was even. “I
really thought that part of the dragon legend was embellishment.”

“So did
I.” She rose, finding her shoe. “I don’t know anyone else who—no one from the
tribe has ever…”

“Can you do it again?”

She wiped quickly at her eyes
with the heel of her palm, glancing up at him from over her fingers.

There was his smile again, a
dangerous thing, handsome and sharp and brutally sensual. “Lia.” He crossed to
the entrance of the tunnel, where leaves and twigs had blown into corners, and
began to toss them all together into a heap. “Do it again.”

“I don’t know,” she wavered,
eyeing his pile. The wind shifted, scattering snowflakes along the base.

“Fine. Don’t know.” He came back
to her, took her face between his hands, and kissed her hard on the lips.

She
barely felt it at first. She was cold, her mouth was cold, and so was he. He
felt like a wall against her. And then he felt like unshaven whiskers. But
then…oh, then something between them softened, and his lips became velvet, and
her entire being began to warm and sting. She stood on her toes to meet him
better, and his arms wrapped around her in a fierce squeeze before letting go.
“There,” he said, breathless. “Now. Do it now.”

She did
not take the time to be angry. With her blood still stinging she looked away
from him, toward the stack of debris.

Lia thought,
Fire.

And when she blew a little breath
the flame came once more, floating down to the paper foliage, exploding into
light. The snow melted instantly, water, gas, wispy pale filaments that twined
upward into nothing.

Zane gazed at the fire, at the
pine needles and leaves curling black.

“Well
done,” he said.

She sank to her knees. He went
behind her, crouching down with an arm sliding loose around her neck, and held
his lips, chaste, against her flushed cheek.

He did not sleep. He tried. God
knew he should be accustomed to the sensations by now: her soft body, her cool
fragrance. How her hands tended to wrap over his forearms during the night, her
fingers digging in; the small, pretty noises she made as she dreamed.

Her
fire was burning well. He’d gathered as much fuel from the tunnel as he could
find and then ventured outside for damp tree branches, just to see them through
the night.

The
branches burned more slowly. They also gave off more smoke; it bubbled at the
ceiling before being siphoned off in long white fangs down into the mines
below.

The floor was an unholy bed of
chips and edges, but he’d done his best to secure her comfort. She slept atop
the sheepskin—it was only big enough for one—and the horse blanket was wrapped
all the way around her, with just the tail folding over him. He’d lied to her
and said he was warm enough from the fire.

Zane followed the shadows
shifting and dancing along the jagged tunnel walls as he considered the
resources they had left.

The blanket. The sheepskin.

The garments they wore.

His boots, and in them the stack
of coins he’d transferred from the valise the night before; he was too canny to
store their cash very far away.

His greatcoat, and the bank
vouchers from the Marquess of Langford tucked in a pocket.

His picks, in the same pocket.

His dagger.

His new knife.

Her new knife—or so he hoped. Now
that he mulled it over, he didn’t recall asking her if she still wore it. The
silver flask. His hat, her cloak, their gloves—and her. Lia. The girl who
breathed fire.

But she was no longer a girl.
She’d told him so more than once, and for all he wished to God he’d never
noticed it, she was right. Lia was a woman. More than that. She was plush and
heavy in his arms, she was grace and smoke and temptation, and Zane was
wretchedly certain he must be mired in some unnumbered level of hell to be
forced to hold her like this every night and bound not to act upon his
instincts. Whatever he had done to deserve this torment—and he had done a great
many unpleasant things—he was deeply, sincerely, soul-scrapingly sorry now.

She shifted a little, murmuring
in her sleep. Without disturbing her he drew up a lock of her hair, very
gently, and held it pressed to his face.

He might never see London again.
He might never see his home, or taste plum cake, or sip brandy from the best
smugglers in Cornwall in front of his carved agate mantel. He might never slide
through St. Giles or steal through Pall Mall, inhale the distinctive odor of
coal lanterns and whale oil, feel the thrill of an opening lock, or the shimmer
of raw silk over his hands. He might never see Lia safe again.

He scowled up at the shadows.
Sorry, as it turned out, really didn’t help.

His fingers released her hair. He
placed his arm over his eyes and commanded himself to go to sleep.

He would wake her. He would say
something clever, like: “I have a theory about love, as it relates to itches
and distractions.”

And her brows would raise in that
skeptical, enticing way she had, waiting.

“Scratch the itch, the
distraction is gone.”

“Is that what I am, an itch?”

“More like a rash. But I’m
willing to scratch. If you are.”

Dream-Lia would say to him, “That
is surely one of the least seductive things a man has ever dared utter to a
woman.”

“Well,” he would reply, still
clever, “but you’ve been cloistered away at your little school, haven’t you?
How many men could you have known? Perhaps we’re all like this.”

“God forbid.”

“Aye. One of me, one of you.”
He’d run a finger over her shell-pink lips. “It’s really all that’s required.”

And then he would kiss her.
Softly, deeply, using his lips and tongue and all the artful guiles he knew.
And even though she wasn’t a woman, not really, she would kiss him back. She
would make that sweet little moan in her throat, the one that was just the
right pitch to send him spilling over the edge of reason….

He dropped his arm. He turned his
head to stare up at the ceiling until his eyes teared and the rock crests and
smoke all hazed into gray.

“No,” the real Amalia breathed,
still in her sleep. “No, Zane.”

Zane
sighed. Very carefully, very slowly, he leaned up on an elbow to examine her
face. Firelight flattered her. She didn’t need flattering. She was too
beautiful as it was—but with the gold-amber light she became something
searingly, magically fragile, the fleeting brilliance of a sunbeam slicing
through a cloudburst.

Wife,
he thought, and this time the
word washed over him with a sensation surprisingly akin to desolation.

She wasn’t his. She could never
be his.

“Will you?” she whispered, still
asleep. “Zane?”

“Yes,” he said, and almost from
outside of himself saw his fingers stroke back the few bright strands that
clung to her brow. “Yes, Lia. I’m here.”

It’s only to comfort her.

But it wasn’t. Even as he moved
he knew that it wasn’t, another lie, another tally against his soul. His mouth
brushed her temple, her cheekbone, her jaw. The loosened strands of her hair
caught against his lips and the stubble on his cheek.

Someday, one way or another, they
would part ways; they would have no choice. And bastard that he was, he still
knew what he meant to have happen next.

It wasn’t an itch. It was a
sickness. It was poison blazing through him, thinking of her all the time,
watching her, touching her, wanting and wanting and wanting until his mind went
black.

She turned her face to meet his,
her hand lifting from his arm.

He took her mouth that easily. He
exhaled all his doubts, let them sift from his body as he placed his lips over
hers. And it was just as he’d imagined it, a million fevered times over. It was
honey and desperate relief, only better, because her arm came up and hooked
around his shoulders, and her chest expanded with his name.

He rolled her on her back. He
smelled the cool must of rocks and earth and her, and the smoke from the fire
twirling above them. He thought he might still be dreaming—except that when she
kissed him she arched taut against him, her legs opening, as if she’d been
awake all along and only waiting for him to give in.

He knew all the secrets of her
gown. He knew the creamy flesh of her shoulders, the rise of her throat, the
poem of her jugular. He knew the dip of her waist, the hard, delicious pink of
her nipples. He knew these things as if he knew
her,
every inch of her,
because in the feverish dark depths of his dreams he truly did.

She wore no corset. It was easy
to loosen her bodice. Easy to pull the stomacher from her waist, to drag his
mouth over the satin of her breasts, over the frill of chemise, to close his
teeth around her nipple and tug and suckle until the silk was wet and clinging.