Firelight (Darkest London, #1)

by Kristen Callihan

“You’re collecting pieces of me, aren’t you?” His voice turned thick as warm toffee, rolling over her skin, heating it. “A bit here. A bit there. Soon you’ll set me out on the table, try to fit me back together.” Ignoring the flurries plaguing her belly, she affected blandness. “I’ve only got the corners. But it is a start.” A warm breath touched her neck. “I believe you have the centerpiece as well.”

“Logic compels you to deduce,” he said roughly, “that it was I who singled your father out and ruined him, because it was I who wanted more than anything in life to marry you.”

“Why bring me here, make me care, if you didn’t want me?” “Not want you?” He lifted his head off the pillow. “Not want you?” His eyes flared in the firelight. “Christ, Miri, murder and knife-wielding assassins aside, you are the greatest adventure of my life.”

“You see, when I met you in the vestry that day, I too thought this is a man who is fearless. Who won’t run away from things…” She bit her lip. “Who won’t leave you,” he finished for her. Stiffly, she nodded, unable to look him in the eye for fear that she would fall upon him and tell him how very much he was coming to mean to her. Her emotions felt too raw, and her pride too tender, for such needy protestations. For a moment, he seemed almost afraid, then his body steeled as if in defiance, toward her or someone else, she couldn’t know. His eyes burned into her. “Then I will not.”