Such cold surged around him that my breath steamed as mist. “But I didn’t make it up!”
He wasn’t listening as he stormed on in a voice made icy by fury. “And why stop there? Maybe Drake wasn’t the first. I have to wonder about black-haired Brennan, although he doesn’t have black hair. The handsomest man alive. A very persuasive man, with his enchanting smile.”
My heart was galloping in my breast, crashing between chagrin and exasperation. “I never! Drake lied to me. You know that. Anyway, Brennan Du is the sort of man who isn’t interested in a callow young female like myself.”
He was absolutely crushing me against the wall, his body pressed against the length of mine. I had never known you could be so agitatedly abashed and yet recklessly excited at the same time. For I wasn’t scared of him. I just needed him to slow down and listen to me.
He whispered, his lips a kiss away from my mouth. “And what sort of man do you think would be interested in a callow young female like yourself??”
Frost crackled up the wall behind me. My lips had parted but I could not speak. All I could do was tip my head back and lick the corner of my mouth in a way that made him suck in a breath.
“An infatuated dupe?” he continued hoarsely.
I slid my hands up his back. I couldn’t breathe properly, much less talk.
He raged on. “Can’t think of any questions to retort with? Cat got your tongue?”
He was pressed so closely we might almost have been engaged in sexual congress.
“How many nights have I dreamed of doing this?” he murmured in the tone a man uses when contemplating the necessity of cutting into his own flesh to excise a festering wound.
He caught my face in his hands and kissed me.
And he kissed me.
And he kept kissing me.
Nothing existed outside of my body straining into his, his mouth and tongue a glorious pressure on mine. I wrapped my arms around him, explored the breadth and strength of his shoulders. One of his hands splayed along my neck while the other dropped to the curve of my hip, pressing us together. We could have moved closer only if we had taken off our clothes.
“Magnificent Jupiter with he lightning!” said a cheery male voice that sounded a cursed lot like Kofi. “Is there no rooms for that?”
Vai was planting kisses on my lips and my cheek, and my lips and my chin, and my lips and my eyes, incandescently oblivious to his friend’s arrival. Hazily, I opened my eyes, trying to recall where I was. Hadn’t we been alone in an entirely deserted stairwell? Footfalls thumped along the corridor below. An unknown number of men in wardens’ tabards had clustered up behind a big, broad-shouldered man who was blocking the lower stairwell.
Eyes still closed, Vai drew back just enough to whisper. “Wardens. Kiss me so they don’t realize we know they’re there.”
“Yes,” I murmured with my lips moving against the caress of his mouth. I could barely grope for and fasten my left hand around the ghost hilt of my sword, but I knew I had to, so I did.
“Move aside, yee lout,” said a man below. “I’s a warden and we is come to make an arrest.”
Another warden chimed in. “Oh, by Venus Lennaya! Have they no rooms for that? Curse it! My wick died.”
Kofi laughed with utterly false heartiness. “His have not yet, fortunate man. Good view, too, with that gaslight burning right above him.”
“I said to stand aside!” said the first warden. “We have arrests to make upstairs.”
“So this is where yee got to, Cousin!” Kofi stumped up the stairs making a foul echo of noise. He slammed into us. Vai stepped back so swiftly I realized he’d braced for it.
I sat down on a step, shuddering all over.
“I did not recognize yee at first, yee being so intertwined with the gal.” Kofi made a show of grabbing Vai by the back of his jacket. Surely Vai hadn’t doused the warden’s lamp on purpose; the uncontrolled surge of his emotions would, like a riptide, drag everything with it. But the false cobo hood lamp still shone, to confuse them into thinking he was no fire bane.
“Kofi,” I whispered, trying to tell him to warn the radicals. “The meeting…you know…”
“I have no mind to listen to yee, bitch,” he hissed in an undertone. Kofi supported Vai down the stairs while talking in a very loud voice to the wardens pushing up impatiently below. “Newly wedded and living with we aunt but no private room for they own selves. No wonder they took advantage of a dark stairwell. Just give them a moment. Would that not be a mercy? Don’ yee recall being newly wedded yee own self?? Or do yee lot get any pleasure? Or only pleasure from interrupting the pleasure of others?”
“What arseness! I can arrest yee as quick as I can some other lad. Get out of the way. We’s here at the order of the Council. Curse it! Cannot even get a spark!”
“Sorry to hear it, Warden,” said Kofi with a laugh. “Nothing worse for a man than no spark.”
“Let up,” muttered Vai. “I can walk…Where is Catherine?”
“There is not enough cold water in this world to cure yee of yee illness, Vai.”
Ten wardens crowded at the base of the stairs as if waiting for a signal. I smelled the steel of their unsheathed swords, and felt the exhalation of men waiting to strike.
“ All we cursed lamps went out,” said one at the rear of the group.
Kofi shouldered past them, propelling Vai forward.
“Look down there in the courtyard,” the warden went on. “That cursed gas lamp is wavering, too. Here, yee.” I could not tell if he was addressing Kofi or Vai. “Is yee a fire bane?”
I shrieked and leaped down the steps, flailing into the throng of wardens and throwing myself from side to side to knock them off balance. “Spiders! All over me! He shoved me into a web and they’re crawling all over me!”
The moaning voice of a conch shell rose from nearby, stark and powerful, as Kofi shoved Vai through the wardens toward the curtain that led to the bar.
“There is the signal,” said the first warden. “Yee four, arrest them. The rest, with me.”
Six wardens pounded up the stairs. One of the remaining four flung me to one side. I slammed into a wall, pain exploding in my shoulder. Vai jerked away from Kofi and turned. Cold fire sparked, and ballooned. When by its light he saw the wardens with drawn swords threatening me, the air changed, all heat sucked from it. I knew what he was going to do before he did.
I drew my sword. My blade sheared the dark with a flare of light so strong it momentarily blinded me. The hammer of cold hit as icy wind, but the sword protected me. I blinked as the impact slammed into me, but I did not go down. Shouts of consternation rose from the main hall, cries and calls about the lights’ going out. My blade’s glow lit the corridor. The four wardens lay prone on the floor. Behind Vai, Kofi had fallen to his knees.
Upstairs, the wardens were shouting:
“Yee’s all under arrest by order of Warden Hall!”
“Line up, there! Yee, there, don’ move!”
“What right have yee to disturb our dinner! What in the ten hells did yee do to the lights?”
“We have orders to arrest an unregistered fire bane and seditionists in league with-”
Arguments erupted from the private parlors above. A fight broke out, chairs crashing over.
“Cat!” Vai flexed a hand.
I ran forward and grabbed his arm. “You’ve given yourself away. You’ve got to get out of here. Let’s go.”
He stared at me, eyes dilated and expression wild. “I don’t know you. How many lies have you told me, Catherine?”
“What makes you think I’ve told you any lies?”
He yanked his arm out of my grip only to grab my hand and pull me past Kofi toward the curtain and the howling clamor of the main hall as people called for light, any light, please light. “We’re going to find out, aren’t we?”
“How are we going to do that?” I retorted.