Belladonna (Belladonna #1)(70)

His was so far from the life that Signa had imagined for herself. And yet, when he offered his hand and asked, “Will you trust me?” her body moved forward without hesitation. Gloveless, she touched her bare skin to his shadows, wrapping her fingers around his.

Ice tore through her veins, stilling her heart, and she didn’t fight against him. He helped her up and onto her feet, and she felt the burn of her powers stronger than they ever were with the belladonna berries—steady and so potent that when Signa shut her eyes, she felt the reverberation of the earth beneath her.

He shifted so that he was behind her, trailing his hand up to brush it against her bare neck to maintain the connection. Signa bit back a gasp when she felt his chest press against her back, too often forgetting that Death was merely hiding beneath those shadows of his. Forgetting that there was a true man, chest and all, underneath them.

“Consider this the start of tonight’s lesson.” He whispered the words, steadying her. “What do you feel?”

Signa knew there were many ways she could answer: She could say that she felt the firmness of his chest and a heat in her belly as she imagined what that chest might feel like crushed against hers. Or she could tell him that her thoughts were wandering to just what Death could do with his shadows, but that was certainly more than she cared to admit.

She relaxed against him. As her shoulders eased, the world came into focus around her. She could feel it as though it were breathing—in the heat of the stars, leaves wilting from the trees, the chill of the earth as rain threatened from the heavy skies. Heartbeats, too—she could feel their final beats, too many each second.

“I feel… life,” she said at last.

Death made a sound in the back of his throat, low and approving. “What do you hear?” His fingertips slid from her neck to cover her ears.

She’d never heard the world so quiet—like there was nothing else in all existence other than the two of them. But then the world slipped in piece by piece. She listened to final breaths and soft words. To the murmurs of love spoken to the dying, and though there was sadness there, there was also warmth for the lives that had led them to this moment.

“I hear their goodbyes.”

Signa swallowed as Death slid his hands down to cover her eyes. When he leaned in, his lips brushed her ear. She shivered, wishing so badly to see that sliver of hair and the face he hid from her, and to finally look upon it.

“What do you see?” he whispered in a voice that made her knees weak.

The images came to her—the grass itself, beginning to shrivel from the cold. A family surrounding an elderly man as his heart stilled. She saw their faces, heard their voices, and there, dangling just out of reach, was a tether that Signa felt as though she could almost pluck from the air. One that would take her right to each of them.

Death eased his hands away, and Signa turned toward him at once. There was more to do, more tests to conduct. But in that moment she wanted only to look at this man who had spent his life seeing these things and embracing them. He was the first one the deceased saw after their eyes shut for the last time, and the weight of that settled into her.

“How do you handle this day after day?” Signa asked, one hand pressing to her chest. With his touch gone, life was leaching back into her skin, pulsing her stilled heart and forcing her blood to move.

“You become used to it,” Death told her. “Some are patient in their deaths, and their souls will wait for me to come and claim them. Others are more persistent, as you saw a few nights ago. If I don’t find them immediately, they’ll find me. But I am never far from a lost soul, Little Bird, and I am not restrained to being in one place at a time.”

He was close enough that she could imagine pulling down that hood of his, and finally looking upon him. There was a heat in her lower belly, for what she envisioned happening after that was far from chaste. Death stepped closer to take her by the shoulders, as though daring her to act on her impulses.

She was curious enough to do it, too. Not just to kiss him but also to explore other ways he might make her feel. Her robe and chemise suddenly felt like useless, flimsy things. She could feel every brush of his hands and gasped as shadows wound around her robe, sliding it down her bare shoulders and to her waist as Death crushed her closer.

He paused when she made no move to stop him, skimming his thumb along one hip. “Is this okay?”

The question broke Signa from her trance. She’d been too spellbound, too full of wanting, to even think through what all this meant. She hadn’t debuted yet, and already she was this close to breaking the biggest societal rule there was for a woman—destroying her virtue. The rules in her etiquette book were limitless on this subject, and yet here she was, and with Death, no less. She understood him better now, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous—though the danger made little difference to the ache of her body. She’d seen enough people seek out relations to know that the physical connection with a man was something she’d like to experience for herself, and by every indication of her body, she wanted to.

Besides, no one but she could even see Death—how would they ever know?

“H-how would that even work? With your shadows, I mean?” Signa asked. Rather than answer her aloud, Signa’s skin burned as one of Death’s shadows slipped beneath her nightgown and brushed against her inner thigh.

“Care to find out?”