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Aurelia

It took nearly a week for Selene to send a note.

After observing the conversation she’d had with her mother in the kitchen, I wondered if I would ever hear from her again.

The note said little.

It just asked me to meet her in Temple of Akatei’s library.

When I read the time she’d proposed, I hurried to dress.

I had less than an hour to meet her.

As I rushed through the lobby of the Palace, I spotted a face I recognized: Lysistrata Endymion.

The old witch was one of the oldest sorcière alive on Okairos, and had been the head librarian for the Order of Mysteries for as long as anyone could remember.

She didn’t know me, of course, but seeing her piqued my interest.

The woman rarely left Nuva Troi, or even the Order of Mysteries archives.

I put in a pin in that information and caught a cab out front.

The ride to the library was beautiful; sweeping views of the sea in one direction and a better and better view of the ancient city of Nea Sterlis as the cab climbed the steep switchbacks into the Temple District.

Everywhere flowers bloomed, the fragrance of the lemon groves and lavender filling the city.

Bright geraniums and bougainvillea dotted the city’s stucco buildings with sprays of color, blue agave in cool contrast to the purples and reds that filled the city.

There was nothing like Nea Sterlis when spring’s cool chill turned to summer.

The days were already getting warmer, and today promised to be hot.

The cab dropped me off at the Library.

Selene sat primly on a bench outside, dressed in a striped linen sundress with a fitted bodice and a gently flared skirt.

Her hair was held back by the same silk scarf as the day we’d met.

I took her hand immediately when she stood to greet me, pressing a kiss first to the back of her hand, and then her palm.

She let out the smallest of sighs when my lips brushed the skin of her palm.

I needed her to make that noise again, so I trailed my lips to her inner wrist, kissing the pulse point there, delighting in the way her heart raced.

“What are you doing?” she breathed.

“What you asked,” I said as I let her wrist go, snaking an arm around her waist.

“Seducing you.”

The tension in her body went languid with my words, her back arching as she pressed her body into me.

She raised her chin, her lips parting as her eyes closed.

She wasn’t wearing a lick of glamour, and a constellation of light freckles had appeared over her nose.

Selene smelled of flowers and warm skin; behind that, she smelled of arousal.

If I kissed her, I would need to be inside her, with my face buried between her thighs.

If I didn’t kiss her, I would die.

I chose something in between.

I brushed my lips across each of her rosy cheeks, enjoying the way she flushed for me.

When I reached the shell of her ear, I whispered, “I cannot kiss you here, Selene.”

“Why not?” she asked, her voice dripping with the kind of need that set my skin ablaze.

Selene Krane was exactly what I wanted, provoking in conversation and pliable in my hands.

She would beg for me, and when she cried my name, I would make a mess of her.

I drew the lobe of her ear into my mouth, sucking gently on it, reveling in her soft moan—right here in public, where anyone might hear her.

“Listen to the way you’re moaning,” I whispered.

“I’ve barely touched you.”

She pulled back a little, her eyes ablaze with the challenge.

“I can be quiet.”

I smiled, running my knuckles along her sensitive jawline.

“I don’t believe you.”

Selene raised an eyebrow as her bottom lip jutted out, just slightly in a pout.

I wanted to bite it, but I restrained myself.

She needed to beg.

I couldn’t wait for her to beg .

“What are we here for?”

Her eyes narrowed sharply at me.

It was obvious she was frustrated.

Desire strung tight in my abdomen, pulling all my senses taut.

This was the best game possible.

Each of us getting exactly what we wanted.

And I was going to have her in every way I wanted.

That much was obvious.

I’d never been one to relish the chase.

What I liked was the anticipation.

“I needed to talk to you somewhere private. The Library has muffling spells of all kinds. They are unassailable.”

I smiled.

“Then by all means. Let us test the strength of those spells.”

She bit her bottom lip, her eyes wide with that earnest look again.

That look would be my undoing.

Selene looked like she trusted me.

I let that thought sink in as she walked us through the front door, signing us into the library with her card.

Vaguely, I heard the clerk remind her that she had one guest per month, and she’d now used her allotment.

I followed her deeper into the building, bypassing the reading room and common areas.

The Library of Akatei was ancient, its walls thick, carved from alabaster.

Selene’s hips swished from side to side as she led me through a twisting honeycomb of abandoned halls.

“This is the cloister,” she explained when we reached a hallway crowded with doors.

“My carrel is this way.”

“Your carrel?” I asked, nearly breathless with the idea that we were so alone.

“Yes,” she answered, taking a key from the pocket of her dress.

“My parents are professors, so I am always given preference. We’ll be absolutely alone here.” She had stopped in front of a heavy wooden door.

The way she inserted the key slowly into the lock, while never breaking eye contact with me, was decadent, almost filthy.

Everything she did was sensual.

“And the muffling spells in the cloisters are so thick that no one would ever hear me scream.”

Heat rushed through me, despite the pervasive chill of the cloister.

If I’d thought I had the upper hand here, I was wrong.

Eagerly, I followed her into her carrel.

It was a tiny room, with just enough room for a small bookcase, a tiny desk and a hard chair.

Selene lit the witchlights with a word, and then slid onto the desk as I shut the door.

When I turned back to her, the expression on her face had changed, but I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I simply waited for her to speak.

“I need your help,” she said.

I smiled, taking a step towards the center of the room.

“I believe we’ve already established that.”

Selene shook her head, those big eyes solemn.

“With something else. There’s something you don’t know about me.”

My heart nearly stopped, my mouth went dry.

How had this woman gotten the drop on me not once, but twice?

What else didn’t I know?

“What?”

“I’m something of a thief,” she admitted.

“I steal books … For fun, usually.”

Whatever I’d thought she might be about to say, it was not that.

I was completely without words.

All I could do was repeat her.

“For fun?”

She grinned.

“Yes, typically. Sometimes I just feel that a book doesn’t belong with someone, and relocate it.”

I frowned.

“You … relocate it.”

“Are you going to keep repeating everything I say?” she asked, her tone pert.

My head fell back as I laughed.

Something about this was perfect.

I was a con artist trying to transcend my class status, and she was a justice-minded book thief.

I took the extra step to stand in front of her, pushing the chair aside to pull her forward by the knees.

She gasped, grinning wildly at me as I took her face in my hands.

“You are something else,” I breathed.

“What can I help you with?”

I pleaded with Aphora for her answer to be to make her scream a thousand screams of ecstasy, but that was not my fate.

Not now, anyway.

“I need you to get me back into the Wyndsal house. Geyrion has a book that doesn’t belong to him, and it needs my help.”

I swiped my thumb over her bottom lip and she let out another of those little moans, the tip of her tongue darting out to capture the tip of my thumb between her lips.

She sucked in, swirling her soft tongue over my sensitive skin.

“Wicked girl,” I breathed.

“That is certainly one way to get what you want.”

Her eyes closed halfway as she released my thumb.

“This isn’t even a smidge of what I want, Aurelia. What I want will take all night.”

I gritted my teeth together, trying to maintain some semblance of composure.

“The wards have been reset. There’s a code.”

“Good,” she replied.

“We can go tonight.”

“What is the rush?” I asked.

Selene drew a sharp breath in.

“Lysistrata Endymion is in town for just tonight. She never leaves the Order of Mysteries. It’s my one chance.”

I narrowed my eyes, appreciating how sharp she was.

“To do what?”

Selene bit her bottom lip, her eyes doing that terrible-wonderful thing they did that made me want to kiss her.

“To return The Book of Hours to her.”

It felt as though my heart had stopped.

The Book of Hours was one of the Order of Mysteries’ most precious books.

There were no copies.

No facsimiles.

And someone had stolen it years ago.

It was so precious that there was a vast reward for it, and not just that.

If the person who returned it was a sorcière, they would have the opportunity to gain a fair amount of power within the Order.

And it had been there, in Geyrion’s house.

The ticket to nearly everything I wanted—without a con.

I could agree to help Selene, and then simply take it for myself.

The trouble was, I wanted more than just status and stability now.

I wanted her, and though it was possible that this was mere infatuation, I didn’t believe it was.

Whatever this was between us, it felt written in the stars.

All these years of conning, clawing my way into a stable future, and Selene Krane simply fell into my lap.

That earnest look was in her eyes now.

“I thought about whether it was wise to tell you. That’s why it took me so long to write,” she explained, her eyes darting from mine.

“Because … obviously, you could go take the book for yourself and give it to Lysistrata without me. And then you wouldn’t need to be stuck with me anymore.”

The way she assumed the worst broke my heart.

She knew what people said about her.

That there were those who found her irritating, and she assumed I was one of them.

That I’d agreed to seduce her out of need, not desire.

A sad smile played at her lips, and she bit her bottom lip again.

It was clearly a nervous habit.

“You can take it.” She sighed, her shoulders slumping.

“You need it more than I do, and then you could open your own bookstore, or whatever you wanted, really. With the reward and the status it would bring you, I’d hardly be an asset to you. You could?—”

I kissed her.

I should have asked first, but I couldn’t stand to hear her say another word against herself.

She froze for a moment and I pulled back.

“I am sorry,” I breathed.

“I just?—”

She clutched at my shirt, pulling me down to her mouth again.

Her lips met mine with sweet hesitation, her mouth opening for me like a flower.

She was so soft as I gathered her in my arms, deepening the kiss.

Her arms wound around my neck and the noises she made as she arched into me were pure bliss.

“We’ll get the book together tonight,” I said when I could bear to stop kissing her.

“That is the only way I want it.”

Regret laced my words.

She hadn’t thought of the reason I could never have stolen the book on my own, but she would figure it out eventually.

Selene was smart, and when she puzzled things out on her own, she would have questions about my intentions.

I hated knowing it would hurt her.

I couldn’t see a way around it, though.

We had this opportunity, and we needed to take it, one way or another.

“Tonight,” she agreed with a smile I didn’t deserve.