The Mirror Said Don't Go to the Royal Academy novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Cellar Furnace

"Not here," I said.

Hedda's boots would come up the stairs in an hour, and her bed was six feet from mine.

"I came to tell you something," Ansgar said.

"I know. You told me five weeks ago."

"Linnea."

"Is it going to change what I want right now?"

He looked at me for a long moment, the lantern shaking a little in his hand.

"It should."

"Then tell me in the morning," I said.

"Tonight I've won a duel, and the woman in the mirror has less scar than yesterday.

"I'm cold and I'm happy and I know what I want."

"What do you want?"

"You," I said. "Your rooms. The door shut."

He didn't say anything.

He blew out the lantern.

His rooms lay behind the cellar, up a short spiral stair, with the furnace wall warming the stone on one side.

There was a narrow bed, a table covered in books, a window with ice on the inside of the glass.

He shut the door and put his back against it.

I stood in the middle of the floor with my heart going.

"Last chance," he said, roughly. "I'm not going to be good at stopping a second time."

"Then don't."

I crossed the room and took his face in both hands.

I kissed him the way I'd been thinking about since the cellar, open-mouthed and slow.

He made a noise against my lips that went straight through me.

He kissed back.

His good hand dug into my hair.

The other, wrapped in linen, spread flat on my back, and he walked me backward until my legs hit the bed.

"Tell me what you want," he said against my mouth.

"Take off my coat."

He did.

The wool fell on the floor.

He unlaced my bodice with fingers that weren't steady, and every lace he loosened was another breath I couldn't hold.

"Your shirt," I said.

"You do it."

I didn't use my hands.

I held, and let go.

The ties down the front of his shirt slipped open one after another.

Ansgar went still.

"Exactly the ones you meant," he said in an odd voice.

"Exactly."

He pulled the shirt off over his head.

In the furnace glow his chest was scarred and hard and warm.

I put my mouth to the white seam over his ribs and felt him shudder.

He lifted my chemise over my head.

For a moment he only looked, and the look alone made me wet and shaky.

"You're beautiful," he said, and his voice cracked on it.

"Touch me."

He laid me on the narrow bed.

His mouth found my throat, then my breast.

When his tongue closed around my nipple I arched off the blanket and said his name out loud.

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