Page 88 of Edge of Darkness (Night Prowler 4)
A look that transformed whenever he saw her.
She was beginning to get used to it—to look forward to it, the way his eyes lit up when they rested on her. She thought more than once that just the memory of the heat and tenderness in his eyes would be enough to sustain her through whatever darkness the future might hold.
She wasn’t spending too much time thinking about the future, however. She was taking this whole mess one day at a time.
On their walks, they talked of books, music, and family, of food they hated, of movies they loved. He told her about his brother, Leander, and sister, Daria, and the place where he grew up in England, a place he said was not so unlike this little slice of heaven in the woods. She told him of the sprawling adobe pueblo in the middle of Taos that was built a thousand years ago, and the palomino horse she’d had when she was ten, and how she and her parents would go up to the roof of the old La Fonda hotel and watch the electrical storms far off in the distant hills while they ate albondigas soup and homemade tortillas slathered in mole sauce. How the color of the sky there was the bluest blue she’d ever seen.
And how much she missed it.
She also told him about Dr. Flores, and his eyes grew so soft they shone. He was glad she was talking to someone, glad Asher had forced her to go.
There were only two things they never discussed. The accidents, and what was going to happen after he found what he was looking for in the woods.
And somehow, though they talked about almost everything, they’d become physically shy around each another. It was as if by being in such close proximity, an invisible wall had been erected that they both felt but were pointedly trying to ignore. Or maybe not a wall, exactly, but an electrical fence. Because all the crackling, dangerous energy was still there, the tension and awareness of heat and intensity and how easy it would be to simply slip into his bed in the middle of the night, or he into hers.
But neither one did. They barely even touched. He gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead each night before walking away from her bedroom door to his own room, far at the other end of the mansion.
She wondered if, in the few hours he had to sleep, he stared up at the ceiling just as she did, wretched with longing.
It was actually worse than mere longing. It was an ache, a vast, pounding emptiness, a hole that grew larger and harder to fill every day they were so close, yet so far apart.
As she watched him stride off through the rose garden now, nude and breathtaking in the moonlight, the ache grew just that much stronger. He melted into the trees, disappearing as quickly as a stone dropped into dark water, and Ember sighed, not realizing she’d been holding her breath.
He’d probably be gone until morning. Her stomach growled; she decided to go downstairs to the kitchen and forage for food.
Corbin had his own quarters on the ground floor, as did the housekeeper, the groundskeeper, and the cook, but they were far off in another wing and it was half past one, so she doubted very much she’d run into anyone. Only Corbin had given Christian an odd look when he’d been informed Ember would be staying with them; the others didn’t seem to have an opinion either way.
They were human, Christian had explained. Hired help who came with the house.
It had been rented, but the astonishing collection of books in the library were his own. He said he’d had most of it shipped over on a whim when he’d first arrived, when the thought of sitting alone in the house with nothing to read became so depressing he couldn’t stand it.
Before he’d met her, and forgotten about books altogether.
It brought a faint smile to her face, remembering the way he’d said that. The way he’d looked at her when he said it, a sideways, penetrating glance from beneath sooty lashes as he walked beside her on the stone path in the garden, his hands clasped behind his back. She’d bitten her lip and looked away, and he’d changed the subject.
Ember padded down the curved staircase from the second floor and reached the foyer landing. Passing the drawing room on the right, she came upon that lovely library and paused at the entrance, looking around.
It was truly magnificent. Not only the glass cases with row after row of leather-bound books, but the marble fireplace, the huge potted palms, and the grand piano. All was quiet and cool, the outlines of the room sketched in pale moonlight.
She stood arrested for a moment, staring at the enormous Steinway. She didn’t know how to play the piano—her lessons had always only been cello—but it had been so long since she’d even touched a musical instrument that just looking at it struck a chord of yearning somewhere deep inside her.
She crossed the room, sat down on the glossy black bench, flipped open the cover, and lightly set her hands on the keys. Unexpected anguish rose up in her throat, and she yanked her hands away and curled them to fists in her lap.
She closed the cover and leaned over, resting her head on her arms on the dark wood. She was suddenly tired, so tired, and she closed her eyes for a moment, allowing her heartbeat to slow and her breathing to follow. She drifted into sleep.
And when she opened her eyes again sometime later, she wasn’t alone.
She felt him first. He was a dark presence behind her, a tangible, burning heat. She sat upright with a gasp and whirled around, her hand at her throat.
Christian stood over her, staring down at her face with eyes incandescent as stars.
“What are you doing?” His voice was low and throaty, a whiskey-deep growl, as if he’d been swallowing rocks.
“I’m-I-I couldn’t sleep—I was hungry—I was—”
“Are you all right?” His gaze raked over her, hungry and hot, and she noticed he was breathing deeply, his nostrils flared, his hands just slightly trembling by his sides. He looked to be barely holding himself in check.
He wore a half-buttoned white cotton shirt rolled up to the elbows and a pair of faded jeans. His feet were bare. His hair was mussed. There was a vein throbbing at the base of his throat.
