The Treasure Keeper

'Zee,' he whispered. He didn't have to whisper, it wasn't as if anyone else was going to hear them, but she was here, and she seemed naked, and his first raging instinct was quick hard lust— followed instantly by guilt. 'What's wrong?'

'Nothing.' She whispered as well. She leaned closer, touched her fingertips to the quilt; he felt that, all the way through the cotton. How her fingers bunched the material and dragged it slowly down his chest.

Perhaps he was asleep after all. Perhaps he was dreaming. Only an idiot would think to lift his hand and wrap his claws—gently, very gently—around her wrist to stay her. But he did it anyway.

'What are you doing?'

'I can't imagine you're that obtuse.' He thought he saw her smile, a little smile, hardly there. She did not release the quilt. She pulled it farther down, all the way past his stomach. And his hand did nothing to stop her. His hand only moved with her, not resisting, no longer a part of his best-of-intentions resolve.

'I really don't think this is what we—should be doing right now,' he tried. He swallowed, fighting the incredible sensation of her fingers rubbing a circle against his skin through the cloth. 'You're tired. You're grieving.'

'This is what you wanted.' She turned her wrist until his fingers opened; she used both arms to inch closer to him, leaned her face down to his. 'All those nights you watched me. All those times you stared at me, tried to touch me. All those pretty words about love. You said you wouldn't lie.'

'You weren't listening. I said I was proficient at lying, actually. So listen now. This isn't what I want.'

She came so close her lips met his: sweet, so sweet and warm; short, teasing contact that rippled pleasure all the way down his body. He felt himself arch with the power of it, rising to her.

'I don't think you're proficient at all. You're doing a terrible job of it.'

'The circumstances,' he gasped, trying not to move or inhale, 'are somewhat intimidating.'

'Are they? Good.' She kissed him again, full and hard on the mouth, with her hair fragrant on his face and her soft tongue tasting his and Rhys lost himself. He pulled both hands free of the mattress, and goose down floated about them like snowfall.

Easy as silk, she slipped above him, rubbed her bare skin to his. He felt her breasts crushed to his chest, her nipples peaked. As carefully as he could he raised both arms to embrace her, to urge her closer still.

It was the best, best—God, the most amazing dream ever. All his pain forgotten, drowned in her touch, in her heat, in the heavy curtain of silver that hung between them. He wanted to run his fingers through the strands and it killed him that he could not. He wanted to stroke her as she was stroking him, her hands hot and urgent all up and down his body—and he couldn't, he wouldn't.

Because he might hurt her.

Because he might bring her hurt.

'Zoe. Zee. Stop.'

She cupped his face and held him for her kiss, and despite himself Rhys felt his neck strain as he reached up to kiss her in return. When he couldn't breathe any longer, when he thought he'd black out with the hunger for her, she turned her face and pressed her lips to his cheek. To the scar.

'I'm not going to do this with you now,' he said, as quickly as he could; he wanted the words out while he could still speak them. He squeezed his eyes closed so he wouldn't see her face. 'I love you, and you're not ready, and I'm not going to do this.'

'This is just another way to love.'

'No.' He turned his head away from her. 'This is one of the most sacred ways. It's meant— between us, between mates, it's meant to be sacred.'

He felt her chest rising and falling against his. 'More pretty words. Where were your principles the other night, when you were in another man's body while with me?'

'It's different now.'

She stilled.

'I love you,' he whispered again.

She rolled away and off the bed, gone in a tempest of stale-smelling feathers. He still couldn't bring himself to look, so he only listened as she walked, very swiftly, out of his room.

When he finally woke up the next afternoon—he thought it must be afternoon, judging by the shadows—the maison was empty. Zoe's belongings were missing. James's belongings were missing.

Even the diamonds from the garden were missing.

He couldn't believe it. He did not want to believe it. She'd actually abandoned him.

Rhys stalked a final circle around her room: the neatly made bed, the washbasin and chamber pot empty, the drawers of the bureau and the door to the closet politely closed, everything left tidy as by a houseguest departing who did not mean to return.

'Right,' he muttered. 'We'll just see about that.'

Chapter Twenty-Two

 She gave the diamonds away, one by one. She ventured down the back lanes of St. Antoine, boulevards that grew smaller and more crooked with every step, buildings pushed and crammed together so tightly that the only way to tell one from another was by the changing colors of paint. Wan-faced Others stared at her from stoops, out from windows. When she wandered too near a cluster of grubby children gathered around a spinning top, they surged toward her, hands reaching.

Zoe gave them each a gemstone.

A man with a red beard who was missing an arm and smelled of beer.

A girl with a baby on her hip and a toddler behind her crying soul-sobbing tears.

An elderly woman.

A toothless young man.

The last diamond, heavy and round and colored canary yellow, went to a gray-haired fellow surrounded with cats—he'd been feeding them before she walked up, feeding them painstakingly the crumbs of something from a greasy sheet of waxed paper. All the cats scattered, and the old man looked after them without trying to call them back, his hands trembling.

She took up his nearest one, pressed the diamond into his palm, and then added a louis for good measure.

It took some time after that to trace her way back to a street respectable enough to house a grocer's market. A few of the very first children she'd encountered recognized her as she walked the other way down their lane, cried aloud and stampeded across the cobbles to her, and persisted in begging even after she told them she had nothing more to give.

'Madame! Madame!'followed her for blocks, and those children picked up more as they went, starveling boys and girls trailing along behind her like she played a magical pipe to lure them.

She had dressed too well for this faubourg. It was difficult to judge sometimes; everyone in Darkfrith was the same, barring the marquess and his kin, all the villagers were the same. The same fine houses, the same clean streets, the same fresh foods and imported wines in every home, even the farms and shepherd's huts.

Paris was not like that. Perhaps there was no other place on earth like that.

She was wearing her last French gown, salmon-pink satin with yards of deep orchid lace, and even with her shawl of plain wool she would have done better with the cook's second frock, but when she'd arisen this morning she hadn't known what she was about to do. She hadn't thought through anything beyond leaving the maison, removing herself and her belongings and everything that had belonged to Hayden. Even the diamonds he'd buried. Even the jasper, which she'd already thrown into the river as far as she could.

Zoe waited until she and her entourage of urchins reached an especially narrow passage, one with tilted buildings looming so far over the street the upper floors had been propped in place on stilts and all trace of the sun was blocked. As soon as she stepped fully into the shadows she whirled, raising her arms and Turning invisible, rushing abruptly toward them with the most unearthly howl she could manage.