Cale sat, an amused smile softening his mouth. “So he does not want the opium for himself?”
“Oh, he does, but he doesn’t indulge very often. He avoids anything that lessens his control of himself or a situation.”
“I have come to that conclusion.”
“Now, if you could cease from speaking for a moment, monsieur,” she commanded. “I must get your mouth.”
“I will if you will continue talking to me.”
“Very well. Cezar wants the opium for his own occasional use, but also so he can use it to influence and control not only his allies, but also the powerful people in Paris. Mortals and otherwise. They’ll buy it from him, or he’ll gift them with it in order to get what he wants done.”
Silence descended again as she concentrated on making the shape of his mouth perfect. With an artist’s detachment, she drew the lips and shaded them, the top lip always darker than the bottom because of the way it was formed and the way it slanted out and curved into the seam of one’s lips…but as she finished, her femaleness began to take over. Remembering how those lips had molded to her palm, the slip of his tongue over the sensitive skin there, and the delicate brush of his mouth, hot and tender…she had to close her eyes for a moment to steady herself.
“When you trust me enough, you’ll kiss me,” he said, reading her thoughts with uncanny ability. Her eyes shot open and were captured by his. “And,” he added, “you’ll tell me what was in the little lead box in the other chamber.”
Narcise licked her own lips nervously, and felt his eyes slip to her mouth. If nothing else, the man owned his control. His desire, his taste, for her was palpable, undulating through the chamber. Her own want made her fingers shake so that she couldn’t finish the stroke.
“Feathers. Brown sparrow feathers,” she said softly, ignoring the sharp slice of pain from Lucifer’s Mark. Even though it was no great secret—many of her rivals obviously knew what was in the lead box, and Cale could easily find out himself. But he asked, and she wanted to give him the information freely. She wanted to give him something of herself. “The first thing I saw when I woke the morning after…the morning after Luce visited me…was a sparrow, singing in the tree outside my bedroom window.”
He nodded in acknowledgment. “Thank you, Narcise. That’s a beginning. And that’s all I need from you now.”
He looked as if he were about to say something more, but then his body tensed. At the same time, Narcise turned to look toward the door. She heard the footfalls, too. By the time Belial and Monique entered the chamber, Cale had stuffed the peach pits back into his mouth and replaced the hat. He was holding a cup of the coffee, and a piece of the sweet bread David enjoyed in the other hand.
Narcise positioned herself closer to Belial in order to distract him from Cale as the latter packed up his satchel and prepared to leave. She was favored with one covert glance, warm and intense, from beneath the hat brim, and then her false tutor was walking out the door.
She wondered when and how she’d see him again, and realized all at once how badly she wanted to.
Was she falling in love again?
7
Giordan Cale found a way to visit Narcise three more times during her brother’s absence in Marseilles. Each time, he took her by surprise, each event was carefully planned and executed, and each time, he remained at a physical distance from her—despite the fact that she could feel the heat and desire between them the moment he walked into the chamber.
If he was trying to prove his trustworthiness to her, he was succeeding. If he was trying to breach the walls around her protected heart, his attempt was formidable.
Although she didn’t fully understand why Cale was so intent that Cezar not know of their meetings—after all, he’d been instrumental in that first night they spent together in The Chamber—Narcise didn’t argue, nor did she attempt to make their liaisons open. Instead she found herself growing more and more enamored with him, with his sense of humor and element of levity, and more and more desirous of tearing off his clothes and kissing him.
When she thought about what it would be like to cover those warm lips with hers, to taste a bit of lifeblood if she nipped one of them, mingling with their lips and tongues…to have their bodies lined up, mouth to mouth, breast to breast, hip to hip…Narcise could hardly imagine why she’d resisted so far.
But kissing, in her mind, was the last frontier of intimacy. The one thing that she could control; the thing that the men who wanted her body didn’t particularly care about. Kissing, which was often the first stage of love and lust—and had been for her and Rivrik—was now the last step for her, and one she guarded jealously.
When Cezar arrived from his travels, he called her to his private parlor within hours. As he always did when they met alone, he had a tray of three brown sparrow feathers sitting on the table next to him. They were close enough to sap her strength, yet far enough away that she could talk and move, albeit a bit more slowly than usual. But most of all, they were a deterrent to her getting close enough to attack him.
He’d made that mistake once, fifty years ago. One thing about Cezar—he had absolute attention to detail, and a long memory.
“You look well, dear sister,” he said, his eyes scoring her. He didn’t appear pleased, but then, he never particularly did. “How have you been amusing yourself during my absence?”
“Other than fending off the hot-breathed stink of your friend Belial, nothing out of the ordinary,” Narcise replied flatly, selecting a seat as far from the feathers as possible. Already, her body felt slower and heavier, and her lungs tight and constricted.
“Belial?” Cezar’s face tightened, and for a moment, she felt a notch of pity for her brother. To believe that one of his most trusted allies and servants—for no one was a confidant of Cezar Moldavi—would betray him and his trust in that way was a blow to his carefully controlled world. “He attempted to touch you?”
Narcise gave a particularly unladylike snort. “He went further than that, dear brother,” she said with a sarcasm-laden voice. “He wore a ring of feathers around his wrist one day when he came to deliver some wine to me, and attempted to convince me that I should allow him to feed on me.” The tremor was more from anger than anything like fear; Belial was a make, and she could squash him like a bug if he didn’t have the cowardly feather bracelet on his arm.
“Indeed.” Cezar’s voice was cold. “Did he succeed?”
She shrugged nonchalantly, despite the fact that her blood had begun to surge and race. “He did not, which was fortunate. I would have been powerless against him in the presence of those feathers—for no sooner had he backed me into a corner than one of the fabric merchants arrived. Monique interrupted and I was forced to decline Belial’s proposition.”
It must have been coincidence that the fabric merchant had, in fact, been Giordan Cale, in another of his disguises. He had sensed her upheaval, and when she told him about Belial, he became so still and quiet that she feared he would expose his identity and attack the servant. It was only her assurances that she was untouched and that Cezar would manage the problem on his return that kept Cale from throwing off his cloak and wig and going after the man.
“I suggest,” she now told her brother firmly, “that you keep him away from me in the future. Or I’ll kill him.”
Cezar nodded, and it was to her credit that he didn’t ask how she would do that. “I’ll see that he won’t bother you again. Perhaps you’d like to take matters into your own hands?”
Narcise smiled. “It would be my pleasure.”
“Very well. I don’t wish you to kill him,” Cezar ordered. “But do whatever else you wish. I’ll arrange for him to select his sword tomorrow night.” He picked up his ever-present glass and looked into the blood-red liquid that clung to the sides when he swirled it. “But tonight, we have been invited to Monsieur Cale’s private club.”
Narcise’s heart skipped a beat. “Have you accepted the invitation?”
Cezar looked at her as he raised the glass of blood-drenched Bordeaux, one of his favorite drinks. She wondered whose blood was in there, and shuddered at the thought—the certainty—that it might be that of a child.
