The Dream Thief (33 page)

He unwound her hair. He looked up
and then away from her, staring out at the starry distance just as she had
done.

“No,” he finally said, without a
trace of inflection. “I do not promise.”

She pressed back against the
glass. “I won’t take you to it.”

“Won’t you?” His eyes glanced
back to hers as his smile returned. “Allow me a bit of conjecture, my lady.”
With a sudden deftness he left her, walking back to the bed. “I think your
dreams have had nothing to do with sunny Tuscany. I think they have to do with
you, and me, and this most enthralling diamond we’re about to recover. I think
I somehow end up with it whether you take me to it or not.” He began to
unbutton his coat. “You dream the truth, don’t you, Lia? How spot-on am I? You
asked me about this once, years ago. It’s rather embarrassing that I’ve only
just now recalled it.” The coat was tossed to the edge of the bed, pale gray
across the violet-and-slate-patterned counterpane; it slid slowly to the floor.
“I don’t claim to be a prophet or a mystic. The vagaries of fate have never
much interested me. But
you…
you interest me, Lady Amalia. Everything
about you interests me. Why is that, do you suppose?”

Lia did not drop her gaze.
“Because you are in love with me.”

“Is that what this is? I see
myself in you, I know that. Your thoughts, your moods, your eyes—I see me. And
I never realized that either, until tonight. Is that love, then? I fear I must
rely upon your greater wisdom, my lady. It turns out I have no experience with
the subject.”

She
shook her head, frustrated; his tone was sardonic but his expression was not.
He was taunting her and he was serious, but she couldn’t tell which he meant
more. She couldn’t tell anything any longer— that damned prince and his damned
stupid story, ruining everything—and it was like a long, winded free fall,
frantic, pinwheeling. Everything was changed, everything was dark. She felt
trapped and afraid, and the person she wanted most in the world to comfort her
only stood nearby, idly removing his garments.

He took
off his waistcoat, his shoes, and unlaced his shirt, his bare skin gleaming. In
his breeches and stockings, he lifted his arms and pulled the tie from his
hair. His muscles worked; the fire threw silken shadows. Without meaning to,
she let out her breath.

Zane looked at her askance—a hot,
merciless look. “Shall we examine the notion further? I’ve an excellent idea
how.”

He dropped the tie to the floor
and undid his breeches, one button at a time. He stepped out of the last of his
clothing and turned to her fully, allowing the firelight to reveal him. He was
lean and tanned and aroused, unashamed. His hair brushed halfway down his back.

She felt panicked. She felt
desperate. She could not look away.

He lifted a hand to her, palm up,
waiting. Her blood sang and the dragon in her burned, but she did not move.

“Lia-heart,” her true love said.
“Nothing either of us can say will change this night. No amount of
hand-wringing will end our story any sooner or cast our fates any differently.
Tomorrow we can be enemies, if you like. Tonight we can be the very best of
friends.”

Over her pounding pulse, she
heard herself say, “You’re bloody practical, aren’t you?”

“Hazard of my profession. Come
here.”

She closed her eyes, fighting
this, fighting the want and the fear and her aching need for his touch.

His voice went smoky. “Lia.”

She felt herself begin to
crumble, little pieces, small as miller moths, winging out into the unknown.
She took one step toward him, and then another.

And then she stepped into his
arms.

She was rumpled a little, perhaps
from their time outside. Her hair was still falling down, strands pulling loose
from their pins, and her cheeks were stained, just faintly, from the wind or
the fire’s heat. He found that in these small, unkempt details she became more
real to him, less a creature he knew by myths than the woman he had slept
beside, and shared his body with, argued with and admired and lusted after with
black hopes and a blacker heart.

For all the tint in her cheeks,
she was cool when she came to him, flowers brushed with frost; he felt the
chill of her through her clothing and brought his head down to hers, to rest
his cheek on the loops of her hair.

One by one he removed the pins,
feeling for them, tugging them carefully free. He enjoyed the sensation of
weighted locks unwinding through his fingers, darkened gold, as the pins
pattered down to the floor like tinny rainfall. She remained motionless for it,
her eyes closed, until finally the last coil was undone and he put a finger
under her chin to tip her face to his.

Her lips were as chilled as the
rest of her, chilled and tender soft. She kissed him back but only just,
tentative. He felt hot and alive and hungry for her; with her very reticence
she inflamed him. Her arms had slid up to rest around his shoulders. He put his
own around her waist and turned her to the bed, breathing against her skin, easing
her backward until her legs bumped the edge.

“My
word, an actual mattress,” he murmured. “How exotically different.”

She
smiled, just as he’d hoped. He scooped her easily into his arms, clambering
atop the covers on his knees. The mattress was thick and very soft; he lost his
balance at the end and they landed flat together, his chest over hers, her hair
a ripple of wheat and honey tossed across the linens, her brown eyes wide.

He bent down and kissed her. He
kissed her eyelashes and her brows, and the tip of her nose, and the corners of
her lips. Her palms stroked up his arms to his bare back as he found the
underside of her jaw and behind her ear—she began to laugh without sound,
hiding her face against his shoulder.

“It tickles,” she whispered.

So he did it again, just to feel
her laughter shaking him, then dragged his mouth harder against her, tasting
her neck, more serious, and her breathing grew quicker and her hands more
restless down his back.

Her gown was combed woolen, soft,
but not as soft as her skin. He held his cheek to her chest, finding her
heartbeat, her breasts, and turned his mouth to her there—snowy skin and the
stiff edge of her stomacher, a few layers of cloth and wire and bone all that
lay between his flesh and hers.

Zane took his time remedying
that. He discovered her shape, the corset that bound her, the hidden ties that
cinched her waist. He tasted Brussels lace and her, inhaled the scent of Lia—no
cosmetics, no powder—and it was so delicious and drunkenly sweet he felt he could
swim in her forever, here in this bed, in her arms, her head back and her
closed lashes dark and smudged against her cheeks.

He didn’t know if this was love.
Surely whatever love was, it couldn’t be finer.

With steady hands he loosened the
ties and then the stomacher. He found a nipple, luscious and pink, and suckled
until she was gasping, until her hands threaded through his hair and her figure
writhed beneath his. He knew her like this, his marvelous dragon; his teeth bit
her gently, and she said his name, a catch in her throat. She was musk and
succulence, her arms outflung. She helped him shuck off her gown.

He didn’t wait. He drew his
tongue between her breasts and down, over the curve of her belly—lush, soft,
delightfully rounded, and he bit her there too—to her thighs, to the warm amber
curls between her legs, his own hair trailing dark along her white skin.

She did not protest. He’d
expected her to; she was young, and she was new to this game, and he knew for a
fact she’d never been with anyone else. But she only stilled beneath him, her
body tense, the muscles of her legs and stomach flexed and smooth and feminine,
so lovely he had to taste her again.

He found her place. She kept her
taut serenity; he heard her breathing, softly agitated, and his own, and his
heart, and the muttering fire. He dug his fingers into her buttocks and nuzzled
her and kissed her and thought,
This is love,
because his body was a
firestorm set to kindle, and still he pleasured her until her gasps became the
shape of his name.

He adored that. He adored her
willing body and her wanton mind and the broken, breathless sound of his name
rising from her lips.

“I’m here,” he said, lifting up
to his elbows, plunging into her.

“Don’t stop,” she said, her
fingers in his hair, tugging. “Please, Zane.”

“I
won’t.”

She
stretched beneath him as he filled her, she turned her head. He murmured words
in her ear that meant
yes,
and
that,
and
oh, God, that again.
When she turned back to him he tasted salt on her cheek. It checked him, enough
so that he framed her face with his hands and slowed. She bit her lip and
closed her eyes, her lashes squeezed to a straight line, beaded with tears.

“What is it?” He was caught
between her pain and his own release, trying to focus. “Am I hurting you?”

“Yes.” And when he stilled,
instantly appalled: “No—don’t. I don’t want this to end.” Her body arched. He
went deeper as her legs opened, and when she spoke again her voice was broken,
more hushed than a whisper. “I love you so much.”

She pressed her face to his neck.

He hovered above her, dazed and
delirious. Too late—she’d spoken and he’d already stolen her words, lifting her
face and holding his lips to hers so she could not amend them or take them
back. They belonged to him now.

She loved him.

He moved once more, his hair
drifting over his shoulders to brush against her cheeks, her lips parting. Her
lashes lifted, and she gazed up at him.

Something inside his chest
unlocked—wildly, slowly, a peculiar sort of melting. He was lost. He was the
thorn and the thistle, blown upon her breeze. He felt, strangely enough,
staring into her eyes, like
he
was going to weep.

Zane had told her the truth
before. He didn’t truly know what love was; from the corners of his soul, he
could barely guess. He’d loved Rue with a boy’s infatuation, and as a man he’d
loved the thrill of his life and power and hard-won luxury. He’d loved his
home, and peaches and scones, the heavy hush of London fog and outwitting the
law and his rivals. He’d loved concepts and he’d loved things. But her, so
brave and rapt beneath him…

But this…

He was naught but her will. Zane
gave her his body and his seed and everything else of value to him: things he
had no names for, reflections of himself he’d kept quiet and hidden, fear and
hope and unfurling desire. He gave her all he could, including her
climax—shuddering and gorgeous around him, a delicious throbbing that sent him
splintering beyond stark bliss—and when it was over, when he held her lax and
drowsing in his embrace, he mouthed the words to her that she could not see,
and that she could not hear. It was all he dared tonight, strangers in a
castle, strangers to this land, their future a great black question mark and an
ending he could not foresee. He bent his lips to her ear and said without
breath:

Lia-heart. Little dragon. I love
you too.

And with her cradled at his side,
Zane stared up into the darkness. He knew what had to come next.