A Forbidden Alchemy (The Artisan Trilogy)

by Stacey McEwan

He turned and found me one pace behind. His chest was an inch from my nose. “You’ll wait in your room for the doctor.” A different woman might have given in then, their stomach shriveling as mine did. “You planning to carry me up there?” I asked. “Throw me over your shoulder?” His eyes flashed. “You say that like it isn’t exactly what I’d like to do.” I swallowed. “It’s a lot of stairs, Patrick. You wouldn’t manage.” “Careful.” He crouched until his nose was level with mine, his lips a hairsbreadth away. “That sounded an awful lot like a challenge.” Heat washed over me, a thousand small flares sputtering beneath the skin. I narrowed my eyes. Tried to pretend like I wasn’t on fire. “You wouldn’t dare.” “But I would dare, Nina,” he breathed. “I’m just bidin’ my time. Don’t give me an excuse.” There was an instinct to close what little distance remained. I ignored it. “You’re so confident you could get me in bed just like that?” For a moment, he only watched my lips, and I was a heartbeat away from letting him have them, bravado be damned. My thighs pressed together, my stomach jolted with fresh thrill. He was going to kiss me, right there in the street. But Patrick’s eyes suddenly sharpened, and he leaned back, amusement dancing across his face. “Didn’t say anythin’ about a bed, now did I?” He left me standing there alone, my face ruddy red, the tightly spooled cord in my chest unraveling.

“Bloody hell. She’s a beauty, ain’t she? I can tell. Guess I’ve already blown me chances.” Patrick nodded, upending yet another glass of amber liquor to his lips. “Aye,” he rasped, not looking my way. “I’m afraid she is.”

But the walls held. The ceiling settled. A ways ahead, Nina looked back toward him, her face streaked in mud. If he’d had a talent for art, he’d have wished to freeze time to paint her, just the way she was. Theodore had his hand on her wrist again.

“Will you be offended if I smoke?” “Yes.” “Goddamn,” he muttered. “You might be the death of me.”

I rose my eyebrows at him. “I assumed I’d be made to stay behind.” “Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t pick the locks the second my back were turned.” I only grinned.

He heard her laughter, and he thought its sound could end a war.

And then Nina appeared, sweat slickened and breathing at a tremendous pace. She ran with her skirt scrunched in her hand, toward the landslide rather than away from it. “Nina!” Patrick shouted. Scrambling for her, through the river of scattering bodies. “NINA! STOP!” But Nina was now clear of the crush. She clambered over the fence, her dress ripping. She grounded her feet in the grass and lifted her chin, as though the wave of mud about to eclipse her was an old friend and she was there to greet it. The earth shook.

“I should warn you, though. If there isn’t anything there for me to eat I’ll take a bite straight out of you.” He clicked his tongue. “Ah, don’t make me promises like that if you can’t keep ’em.”

took a moment to stare at the underside of his jaw, the blanket of stubble razing his cheeks, the fine slope of his nose, and the peak of his chin. “Look somewhere else, Nina. I’m only so strong.” I blushed.