Page 48

CHAPTER 48

Maarja’s clock said 2:11 a.m. when she heard the floorboards squeak and Dante slid into her narrow bed behind her. “It’s our wedding day,” she whispered. “You promised Mom.”

“I promised not until the wedding day.” He kept his voice low, too. “Technically that’s today. It’s after midnight.”

“Hm.” Splitting hairs, but sure. “Traditionally—” she injected a little sarcasm into the word “—you’re not supposed to see the bride before the ceremony.”

“I can’t see you. I can’t see my hand in front of my face.”

“Fog,” she told him in an instructive tone, as if he didn’t know. “It happens in the Bay Area.”

“That, and most of the streetlights are shot out.” He snuggled behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, made her aware of his nudity and his desire.

She asked, “Did Mr. Diddly-Hump wake you up?”

He made a strangled noise. “Mr. Diddly-Hump? My cock? Where did you hear that?”

“I made it up.”

“To pay me back for calling your Miss Tittle-Twat a cunt?”

She grinned into the darkness. “Could be. What do you call your banana splitter?”

He came up on one elbow. “My cock. My dick. In my teens, I called it a woman’s best friend, then a girlfriend told me in no uncertain terms that was a vibrator with fresh batteries.”

She covered her head with the blankets and giggled as she imagined the young Dante’s indignation.

“And…” He hesitated.

She sensed a great secret. “You can tell me,” she coaxed.

“I call my cock Loki .”

“Loki? Like the Norse god?” She groped for an explanation. “Because he’s a mischief maker?”

“Because Loki says, ‘Love is a dagger, a weapon to be wielded far away or up close. It’s beautiful until it makes you bleed.’” The way Dante spoke, all deep dark velvet tones whispered right in her ear…he sent chills down her back.

“That’s so…poetic.”

“Yes, well, also… Loki’s dagger is long, powerful, godlike.” His tone changed, became humorous. “When I saw the show, I named it. You’re the only person I’ve ever shared that with.”

She slid around to face him and put her arms around his neck. “I won’t tell anybody.”

“I trust you.” Three words that were now, before, forever his true wedding vow.

Using all the skills she learned from him and all the techniques she ever imagined, she kissed him, reveling in his taste, his scent, the knowledge that she held a powerful man and could make him tremble. When she drew back, she whispered, “Did you shut the door?”

“God, yes.” He began the long gradual descent of her body, learning her in the dark through touch and taste while she muffled her moans in the pillow she held to her face. When he suckled on her breasts, when he sucked on her clit, when he thrust his strong tongue into her, tears leaked from the corners of her eyes…and when he came up and into her body, and began the leisurely in and out that told her without words that he wanted this pleasure to last…all her senses shut down. There was only the two of them in this bed, skin to skin, breath to breath, dancing to a rhythm only they knew. When at last outside the faintest hint of dawn pierced the fog and climax united them, the glow of la Bouteille de Flamme enveloped them, and they inhabited a new world they had created together. Only them. Only forever.

* * *

At 5:45, with a great deal of unnecessary smoothing of material, Dante helped Maarja back into her nightgown and reluctantly returned to his own bedroom. He left Maarja staring at the sunrise-embracing fog with a smile. This marriage between them was being performed to keep the peace and to heal an ancient grudge. More important, he told her, they did this to ensure her safety, it was a trap for Dante’s enemies, and—hey, it was her idea! Yay, Maarja, for sheer brilliance while facing danger and death!

Yet, although those practical reasons existed, she smiled because she was getting married today. She looked forward to donning the gown Dante had ordered, which she had not yet seen—a light cream, because he’d assured her she could have whatever she wanted as long as it was some variation of a white wedding gown—and his mother’s veil with its newly made crown of fragrant orange blossoms. She looked forward to having Alex stand beside her as her maid of honor, holding her wizard’s rod, while Octavia performed the ceremony. Maarja felt like a bride, and this marriage felt real. She and Dante could make a go of it. They had emotions, moments, attributes in common no one else could ever have, they had passion, and they had love.

That thought made her breath catch.

Did they have love? In front of everyone, he had said that he loved her. He had proudly declared himself to his cousin/half brother Crazyass Jack. Was it rhetoric to flush out the part of his family who would kill him for such a sentiment? Was it a way to change the target from her to him? So many doubts, yet…

She trusted him, and he said he trusted her. For him to say such a thing meant something momentous. The poets wouldn’t agree, but she thought trust from a man like Dante was worth all the pledges of love from every other man alive today or ever.

The question she had to answer was—did she love him?

Her heart began to thump like a bass drum, as it had when she told Dante she’d killed his father, as it had when she believed she looked on the face of death, and that death wore Dante’s features.

Did she love him? If she did, what stopped her from telling him?

Life is brief. From the moment of the explosion that killed her own mother, she’d known that. To hesitate now was a crime. What would he do if she came to him to tell him? Was there any doubt that he would welcome her?

As if to answer her, she heard a creak of the floorboards. She took a calming breath, smiled, and whispered, “Is Loki making mischief?”

When Dante didn’t answer, she glanced toward the door where she knew he waited. In that instant she caught the scent of that malice that had invaded her home on the day she found la Bouteille de Flamme in her drawer. As the knife slashed down onto the mattress, she rolled in the blankets off the far side of the bed.

The thump onto the floor knocked the breath out of her. She struggled to drag herself out of the blankets, to escape before the knife-wielding assassin could vault over the bed after her. She untangled herself, leaped to her feet—and into a cruel grip that lifted her to her toes.

Somehow a man had made his way to the far side of her bed.

His arm wrapped around her throat.

The point of a knife tucked under her chin.

Jack’s icily intent voice spoke in her ear. “Scream, Maarja.”