← Lantern's Glow

No Lantern Needed

No Lantern Needed

Look at me while you do.

He did. That was the trouble. Caitlin had been wonderfully brave while he had his face against her neck, and now Liam was looking straight at her, waiting for whatever she'd say next. His hand stayed where she'd put it. Behind him the curtains swayed where they'd knocked into the bedpost; the bookshelf stood open onto the sitting room. There was sweat shining across his chest and along his collarbones, and a red mark on his neck that she was almost positive she'd put there, and he was grinning at her, a little shy about it, and she had to shut her eyes for a second, because what the hell. What the actual hell, Caitlin.

"I mean it," she told him, and her voice came out steadier than her hands.

His thumb moved, one slow circle right over her clit, slick with how wet she already was, and she caught the sheet in her fist. There was a ridiculous carved rose in the headboard directly over his shoulder, and she fixed on it for half a breath before she made herself meet his eyes again.

He took his time, which was either very sweet or a war crime; she hadn't decided which. Her hand was still over his. She let go. He watched her do it, and the small crease between his brows eased when she put her palm against his cheek.

"You don't have to make this perfect," she said. "Actually, please don't. I have a long-standing grudge against perfect things, and I can give you the whole list later."

"Later," he said.

Later. He'd said later. She pulled him down to kiss him before she could ask what he meant by it. His shirt was somewhere beside the bed, her dress was bunched at her waist, and her hair caught under his elbow. She yelped. He lifted his weight at once; she yanked the pin free, tossed it toward the vanity, and heard it hit wood.

"I was trying to be seductive," she told him.

"You were."

"Even the part where I nearly scalped myself?"

"Especially that."

She laughed into his mouth, and he kissed her again while the laugh was still there. The bed was warm under her back. Downstairs somebody whooped at the party and a chorus of voices answered, muffled by the ordinary walls of this ordinary room. Nobody called their names. Nobody had sent them here. That was a thought she wanted to keep, and she pulled Liam down against her before it could get away.

His hand found her waist, fingers spreading over her bare ribs. She drew him closer. His cock pressed against her thigh; he shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them they'd gone almost black.

"Don't stop," she said against his lips, which was rich, coming from her, and he groaned and gripped her ribs harder.

He kissed down her neck, teeth scraping the skin, and she moaned, loudly, because at this point who was left to impress? She ran her hands over his bare back, feeling the heat pour off him. She needed him closer, so she hooked her leg around his and pulled, hard, until all of his weight came down on her.

The old springs squealed. They both laughed, and then they were kissing again, clumsy enough to knock teeth. She reached up and held his face still so she could kiss him properly.

Breathing hard, she pulled back. "Hold on. I need to say something, and if you kiss me again I'll forget every word. All night I've been telling you what I want in jokes. I don't want to do that anymore."

He nodded and waited, sweaty and flushed and patient, and she could have screamed.

She took his hand and brought it back under her skirt, and this time she said it out loud. "Here. Two fingers. Slow, and then don't be slow." She showed him. "Yes. Like that."

He slid two fingers into her, slow, exactly as ordered, and she was so wet it was embarrassing, and then he curled them and she stopped being embarrassed about anything at all.

The sound out of her mouth was one she had never made in her life. He watched her face, and she almost made a joke; instead she kept her hand on his and let him see her. Her thighs were shaking. Past his arm, on the vanity, there was a lantern.

Squat. Brass. Wavy glass. It hadn't been there when they came in; she'd have seen it, she saw everything in this inn. It was lit, a low gold in the glass, and from where she lay the two little figures on its side were running toward each other. She ought to care about that. She didn't. She truly, completely didn't, because Liam's fingers curled again, and the lantern could have whatever it wanted as long as he didn't stop. She'd read entire shelves of romances where everybody knew exactly how to look during this part. She was having to invent it as she went, with a skull sock sliding down her ankle and a loose curtain brushing her foot.

He said her name, low, and he was smiling when he said it. She took her hand away and let him go on without her, and oh God, oh fuck, he'd listened, he was doing exactly what she'd said and then a little more, his thumb circling her clit while his fingers moved in and out of her, so wet she could hear it, his other arm under her shoulders holding her up against him. The rose on the headboard went blurry. Everything she'd been carrying since the red corridor, the doors and the wrong windows and the stair that wouldn't end, came loose all at once, and she came hard around his fingers with his name in her mouth and her heel dug into the mattress and not one shred of dignity left anywhere. She was laughing by the end of it. She might have been crying a little. She honestly couldn't tell, and she didn't care.

When she could talk again, she caught his chin and drew him up to her. "My turn."

He rolled onto his back. She sat over him, bracing her hands on his shoulders. His hair was in his eyes again. She'd been wanting to push it aside since he stood under the foyer stairs with graphite on his thumb, and now she could, so she did. He held still for it.

She ground down on him through his pants. He was hard under her, and she did it again just to watch his mouth fall open. He fisted his hands in the quilt and let her set the pace, and she could see in his face exactly how much that was costing him.

She leaned down and kissed along his jaw. He shuddered. Her mouth found the place under his ear that had made him say her name before. He said it again.

He grabbed her waist. "Caitlin," he said, and that was all he said, and it was the best review she'd ever gotten.

"Good." She kissed his throat, then scraped her teeth along the tendon in his neck, and he dragged her down against him with both hands on her ass, hard enough that she gasped and then laughed.

She lifted her head to look at him. He looked dazed, lips parted, hair stuck to his forehead. It was the face he'd made when she pulled off his cravat, only now there was nothing tidy left for him to straighten.

She hooked a finger in his waistband and grinned down at him.

"Go ahead," he said, and lifted his hips to help her, grinning back.

"Good, because I had a whole speech prepared about your appalling habit of looking at me, and it's gone. It's left the building."

He smiled. "You can tell me later."

She got his pants open and pulled him out, and oh. Okay. He was thick and flushed dark at the head and already wet at the tip, and when she wrapped her hand around him he was hot and heavier than she'd expected, and he swore, the first time she'd heard him swear all night, and she was so pleased with herself she laughed out loud. She stroked him slowly, the same slow he'd given her, and watched his head go back against the pillow.

He'd said later again. She put her forehead against his and breathed with him, and her heart was still slamming from the stairs, or from him; she couldn't tell anymore. The next thing she wanted to say stuck in her throat, because it was hers and there was no joke to hide it in.

"Take your turn," she said instead. "Tell me what you want."

He lifted his head, and the grin he gave her was slow and a little shy and completely unfair.

"Go on," she said. "I'm not getting any younger."

He drew her down to meet him.

She was flushed from her hairline to her chest, and sweat shone in the hollow of her throat. Her hair had fallen around his face, and it smelled of cider and dust. One pin was on the vanity; the rest, Liam guessed, were lost somewhere in the bed. Past her shoulder he could see the open bookshelf.

"I want to see you," he said.

"You're doing a thorough job."

"Caitlin."

She held his eyes, then rose up onto her knees and worked the loosened velvet down past her hips. He helped where she let him. She kicked it off the end of the bed, and her underwear went over the footboard after it. She caught him staring and raised an eyebrow, and stayed exactly where she was.

He put his hands on her hips. Sweat shone along her ribs, and there was a pink line across her stomach where the bodice had pressed all night. He traced it with his thumb. She shivered and grinned down at him.

He eased her down beside him. The mattress shifted; the loose curtain slid off its post onto her legs, and she swore at the fabric. He gathered it up and knotted it around the post. When he looked back, she was watching his hands.

He kissed her mouth, then her collarbone, where her skin was damp and caught the light coming through the bookshelf. Her hands spread flat and firm across his chest, over his heart, which was still going hard from the stairs, and then pulled him back by the shoulders.

He drew her toward the edge of the bed and knelt on the rug. The grinning skulls on her socks faced him from the edge of the mattress. He took hold of her knees and ran his palms up to the bare skin above them. Her breath hitched. Her lips were swollen, and she kept watching him instead of hiding her face in the pillow.

"Please," she said.

He kissed the inside of her thigh. She opened wider for him. His own breath caught, and she heard it; the grin she gave him was quick and crooked.

He spread her with his thumbs and licked up the center of her, slowly, and she swore at the ceiling. She was slick and salty and hot against his mouth, so wet it was on his chin. He found her clit and circled it with his tongue, then sucked, and learned what made her hips jump and what made her laugh, and went back to the first one. Her hands fisted in the sheets; her hips came up off the bed. He kept on when she caught his hair and said his name, then slowed when she asked him to, until she pulled him closer again.

Her thighs began to shake against his shoulders. She said his name again, and her voice broke on it. He looked up. She was watching him. She didn't look away.

"Liam—fuck—I'm—" she gasped, and then she was coming, hard, her legs tightening around him. He stayed with her until she reached down and hauled him up the bed by the shoulders.

She kissed him. When he drew back, she was laughing under her breath.

"What?"

"The curtain." She pointed. "I thought we were going to get strangled by upholstery, and then you fixed it, and now I can't remember why I was laughing."

He kissed her again. She reached for his pants.

"Hold on," he said. He went out through the bookshelf to the settee, where his wallet was in his tailcoat, and came back with the condom. She was propped on one elbow, grinning at him.

"You were a Boy Scout," she said.

"Sort of."

She held out her hand. "Come here. I want you inside me."

He got out of the rest of his clothes and put the condom on. She pulled him toward her, and they had to move a pillow and kick the fallen sock out of the way before he could settle between her legs. She was smiling up at him, and he was smiling back, and neither of them could stop.

She reached down, wrapped her hand around his cock, and guided him to her, and he pressed against her, only the head, and she looked straight up at him.

"Now," she said.

He pushed in slowly. She was so wet and tight that he had to stop halfway and put his forehead to hers and breathe. She gasped, dug her nails into his shoulders, and held him there. She took one breath, then another, and rolled her hips up against his, and swore, and did it again, and he stopped waiting. They found a rhythm; she changed it with a hand at the small of his back, and he followed. He got an arm under her hips and tilted her up, and on the next stroke she grabbed the headboard with one hand and said a word she would never say at story hour. Her hair was across his wrist. The carved rose on the headboard kept catching the corner of his eye. There was no tune in the walls. He could hear her, and the old bed, and far below them someone laughing at the party. The sound of the two of them was loud in the little room, skin slapping and springs going and her breath catching every time he bottomed out. He watched sweat run down between her breasts. He was never going to be able to draw anything again without thinking about this.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he said her name, and then, "Caitlin, I can't—" and lost the rest of it.

"You can't what?" she said, grinning, and clenched around him on purpose.

He kissed her. She pulled away far enough to look at him.

"Harder," she said. "I'm not going to break, Liam. I got out of a haunted hallway tonight."

He pulled almost all the way out and drove back in, hard, and she met him with a sound that left him shaking. The headboard hit the wall. He hitched her knee up over his arm and went deeper, and she stopped laughing and started saying his name on every stroke. She pulled him back down and said yes against his mouth.

He lost the rhythm, and he didn't care. She met him every time, nails in his back, both of them slick with sweat, and the old bed was making enough noise that somebody downstairs could have heard it if the party got any quieter. She came again first, clenching hard around him with her heels dug into the backs of his thighs, and that was it for him. She put her hand against his cheek and kept it there while he came, buried in her, shaking. When he could focus again, she was grinning up at him, sweaty and wrecked, and she pulled him down to kiss her.

Afterward he eased away to deal with the condom. She reached for him when he came back, so he got under the sheet beside her. The curtain stayed tied. Through the open bookshelf he could see the sitting room and its ordinary hall door. He stayed. Every muscle in his back let go at once, all the holding he hadn't known he'd been doing since the stair, since long before the stair, and he laughed out loud at the ceiling for no reason at all. She propped her chin on his chest and grinned at him.

She settled her cheek back down and ran a finger along a line of graphite he'd missed on his wrist. The assignment was in the sitting room. His bag was still in his guest room, with the ticket in its front pocket. He didn't want to think about either of them yet.

"It's quiet," she said.

He listened. The party had thinned to a few voices. No music came from the landing, and the light through the open bookshelf was the same yellow it had been all night.

"Yeah."

"I don't mean downstairs. I mean the other thing. I kept expecting it to start again." Her finger stopped at his wrist. "Was any of this because of the lantern?"

He turned enough to see her. "I wanted you before the first door went wrong."

She studied his face for a long while. "I know. I wanted you too. I don't know why I needed to hear you say it."

He took her hand. "I'd draw all of tonight if I could," he said. "Even the stairs."

Her eyes closed for a second. When they opened, she only smiled. She shifted closer and laid his arm across her waist. They lay like that until the voices downstairs faded away altogether.

Much later, when she asked whether he had anything to sleep in, he went to his guest room and brought back his bag. The corridor was where it should be; he checked it twice anyway. He came back to find her with her legs tucked under the sheet, watching the bookshelf opening until he stepped through it. He set the bag by the vanity and got back into bed. She took his hand without saying anything.

At the window, a pale line of light reached the floorboards and then the side of his packed bag. Caitlin followed it with her eyes to the bag, and her hand tightened over his.