A Lily Among Thorns(87)

“Solomon,” she said softly. She continued to move against him, languorously, filled with a sense of well-being as the last tremors washed through her. He pressed his face into the curve of her neck then, moving faster. The edge of his shoulder was bright and haloed by the firelight, a sheen of sweat on him, and he too shuddered with release and collapsed on top of her.

“Oh God, Serena, I love you so much,” he groaned.

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. No. His weight was crushing her. She couldn’t get air into her lungs. “I—let me—” she said desperately, pushing at him with her hands until he moved off her. She rolled away from him, sitting up on her elbow and gasping for air.

“Serena, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Why do you have to make promises you can’t keep?” she asked him, hating the plaintive note in her voice. “I gave you everything without that!”

When Elijah was sure René was asleep, he cautiously got up and moved to the heavy chest of drawers against the wall. He opened the top drawer and rummaged through it. Nothing. He opened the second one. Running his fingers along the back of the drawer, he found something solid. A tiny box. He didn’t move it, just shoved aside some stockings and took off the lid. What he saw surprised him so much that he didn’t even hear René sit up in bed.

But when René’s feet hit the floor, Elijah had just enough time to return the lid and hide the box again before his wrists were seized from behind. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” René asked in a dangerous voice.

“Trying to borrow a pair of stockings.” Elijah twisted his head to look at him. “Is there something in your drawer you don’t want me to see?” He reached for the drawer again and just managed to scrabble at some folded breeches before René spun him around.

“I want to see what’s in your secret drawer,” Elijah insisted, laughing, and tried to wrestle himself back around. “Let me go!” René started to tickle him, and he wriggled, and soon enough they were back on the bed.

Serena picked her shift up off the floor and pulled it back over her head.

“You don’t have to say anything back,” Solomon said behind her, sounding as if each word were an effort. “But—it’s a promise I can keep. I didn’t know I was going to say it. But it’s true.”

She turned to glare at him. It was a mistake. He was still naked. It was unnatural and improbable, how beautiful he was. He was perfect, and she was—not. “It’s true today. But will it be true tomorrow? Will it be true in three months when you’ve seen me every day and I’ve snapped your head off half the time and you’re tired of it? You think no one’s loved me before?” She knew what love was. Love was belonging to someone else, it was letting yourself become what they wanted. And then when they were gone, because you weren’t what they needed after all, you didn’t even have yourself. All Serena had was herself.

“I’m not Daubenay,” Solomon said sharply.

“Yes,” she said wildly, “you’re exactly like Daubenay. What I have to give isn’t enough. You’ll never be satisfied until you have it all, until I’m yours and I can’t—I can’t—because after all you love me and how could I—”

“I’m yours.”

The feeling of not being able to breathe returned, like an enormous weight on her chest, the weight of a responsibility she would inevitably fail to live up to. “But I don’t want you!” she said desperately.

He closed his eyes as if in pain, and she hadn’t meant it like that, but what could she say?

Then his eyes snapped open. Serena stood stock-still, remembering how those eyes had watched her tumble headlong into orgasm. “You damn well do,” he said furiously. “And not just for this either.” He made a rude gesture toward his groin. “Last time—when you tried to seduce me—all you wanted that night was my friendship, but you were too much of a coward to ask. You’d rather pervert this into something cheap and dishonest and make this—what we have—even if it’s not love, you shouldn’t make it into a lie.” He let out a short, frustrated breath. “I’d ask you what you were afraid of if you hadn’t made it so damned obvious.”

“I’m going to get Jenny’s note and those vowels from René,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”

“Let Elijah do it.”