Lead Demon

Soft And Smooth

“Will you let me love you, Stephanie?” Seven said, sweeping away my anxiety with that simple, courteous question.

“I will,” I whispered. He knelt and carefully untied the ribbons that held up my stockings. They were blue, which Catrine said was the color of fidelity. Seven rolled the hose down my legs, a press of lips on knees and ankles marking their passage. He removed his own hose so quickly that I never had an opportunity to note the color of his garters.

Seven lifted me slightly so that my toes were barely gripping the floor and he could fit himself into the notch between my legs.

“We may not make it to the bed,” I said, grabbing onto his shoulders. I wanted him inside me, quickly.

Once there, my body welcomed him into the moon of my thighs while my arms reached to draw him down to me. Even so I gasped in surprise when our two bodies became one—warm and cold, light and dark, female and male, witch and vampire, a conjunction of opposites.

Seven’s expression went from reverential to wondering when he began to move within me, and it became intent after he angled his body and I reacted with a pleased cry. He slipped his arm under the small of my back and lifted me into his hips while my hands gripped his shoulders.

We fell into the rhythm unique to lovers, pleasing each other with soft touches of mouth and hands as we rocked together, together until all we had left to give were our hearts and souls. Looking deep into each other’s eyes, we exchanged our final vows with flesh and spirit until we were as soft and trembling as newborns.

“Let me love you forever,” Seven murmured against my damp forehead, his lips trailing a cold path across my brow as we lay twined together.

“I will,” I promised once more, tucking my body even closer against him.

"I like being married,” I said drowsily. Since surviving the day-after feast and the receiving of gifts last week—most of them mooing or clucking— we’d done nothing but make love, talk, sleep, and read. Occasionally Chef sent up a tray of food and drink to sustain us. Otherwise we were left alone. Not even Michael interrupted our time together.

“You seem to be taking to it well,” Seven said, nuzzling the tip of his cold nose behind my ear. I was lying, facedown and legs sprawled, in a room used to store spare weaponry above the smithy. Seven was on top of me, shielding me from the draft coming through the gaps in the wooden door. Though I was unsure of how much of my own body would be exposed if someone walked in, Seven’s posterior and bare legs were certainly on view. He moved against me suggestively.

“You can’t possibly want to do that again.” I laughed happily when he repeated the movement. I wondered if this s****l stamina was a vampire thing or a Seven thing.

“Are you criticizing my creativity already?” He turned me over and settled between my thighs. “Besides, I was thinking of this instead.” He lowered his mouth to mine and slid gently inside me.

“We came out here to work on my shooting,” I said sometime later. “Is this what you meant by target practice?”

Seven rumbled with laughter. “There are hundreds of Auvergnat euphemisms for making love, but I don’t believe that’s one of them. I’ll ask Chef if he’s familiar with it.”

“You will not.”

“Are you being prim, Dr. Bishop?” he asked with mock surprise, picking a piece of straw from the hair tangled at the small of my back. “Don’t bother. No one is under any illusions about how we’re spending our time.”

“I see your point,” I said, pulling the hose that were formerly his over my knees. “Now that you’ve lured me here, you might as well try to figure out what I’m doing wrong.”

“You’re a novice and can’t expect to hit the mark every time,” he said, getting to his feet and rummaging for his own hose. One leg was still attached to his breeches, which were lying close by, but the other was nowhere to be seen. I reached underneath my shoulder and handed him the wadded-up ball they’d become.

“With good coaching I could become an expert.” I’d now seen Seven shoot, and he was a born archer with his long arms and fine, strong fingers. I picked up the curved bow, a burnished crescent of horn and wood propped up against a nearby pile of hay. The twisted leather bowstring swung free.

“Then you should be spending time with Michael, not with me. His handling of the bow is legendary.”

“Your father told me Ysabeau is a better shot.” I was using her bow, but so far her skills had not rubbed off on me.

“That’s because Maman is the only creature who has ever landed an arrow in his side.” He beckoned at the bow. “Let me string it for you.”

There was already a pink stripe across my cheek from the first time I’d tried to attach the bowstring to its ring. It required enormous strength and dexterity to bend back the upper and lower limbs of the bow into proper alignment. Seven braced the lower limb against his thigh, bent the upper limb back with one hand, and used the other to tie off the bowstring. “You make that look easy.” It had looked easy when he’d twisted the cork from a bottle of champagne back in modern Oxford, too. “It is—if you’re a vampire and have had roughly a thousand years of practice.” Seven handed me the bow with a smile. “Remember, keep your shoulders in a straight line, don’t think too long about the shot, and make the release soft and smooth.”