Page 32 of 13 Nights

"Yes. It does. The historical record is the only court that's still in session."

He looks at me, and the flatness gives way to something sharper, something searching. "You hide behind professional purpose like other people hide behind locked doors. You'll fight for the truth of what Fritz did to me. You'll fight for the evidentiary record. You'll fight for the investigation. When are you going to stop building a case and admit that what's happening between us isn't journalism?"

The question cuts through every defense I've built since the first night I opened this door. He's right. I know he's right.

"It's both," I say. "The investigation is real. What I feel is also real. I'm capable of holding two things at once."

"Eliza loved me." His voice drops. "The Gate took her."

"And you think stopping now will change what I already feel?"

His hand closes around my neck. "No. I think every time I touch you, I care less about what the Gate wants."

"Then stop pretending this is protection."

His thumb presses over my pulse. "Not in here."

He lifts me before I can react. One arm under my knees, the other behind my back, and I'm cradled against his chest like I weigh nothing. The strength in it is new. On Night Four he couldn't have done this. Tonight his arms are solid and sure, and the authority in the gesture isn't a request.

He carries me down the hallway to the bedroom. My mother's bed, my mother's cottage, and the man my mother fled from is carrying me toward the only room in this house that doesn't belong to the investigation.

He sets me on the edge of the bed and stands in front of me, watching. Waiting.

"I'm choosing this," I tell him.

"I know you are."

I cross the distance myself. I put my hands flat against his chest and find silence where a heartbeat should be. The hollow of it reminds me what he is, even as the heat of his hands makes it hard to remember anything.

Then I drop to my knees.

The stillness that hits him is absolute. His hands freeze at his sides. He looks down at me with an expression I've never seen on his face, and for the first time since I've known him, Severin von Brandt has no idea what to do with a woman.

"What are you doing?" His voice is rough.

"Something you haven't experienced in 250 years." I unbuckle his belt, unbutton his trousers, and push them down far enough to free him. He's already hard. "Possibly longer."

"Ashley."

"Are you telling me to stop?"

A beat. Then: "No."

I wrap my hand around him first, and his breath leaves his body like I've punched it out of him. Then I take him in my mouth, and the sound he makes is so raw and so unprepared that it changes the temperature of the room. His hand finds the back of my head, not guiding, not controlling, just holding on. His fingers curl into my hair and his breathing fractures.

He's harder than Night Four. Thicker. The heat of him against my tongue is new, and I take my time learning the shape of it, the weight, the way he swells when I press my tongue flat against the underside and drag it slowly from base to tip. I take him deeper and his entire body goes rigid.

His thighs tighten against my shoulders. His grip in my hair tightens until it stings. When I hollow my cheeks and suck, the sound that leaves him is guttural, raw, the sound of a man who has spent centuries in command of himself being unmade by a woman on her knees. His hips push forward once, driving himself deeper into my mouth than I expected, and he catches himself immediately, fingers loosening in my hair as if he's afraid of what his body will do next.

"Stop." The command comes out strained. "Stop or this ends before I decide it does."

I look up at him with my hand still wrapped around him. He looks wrecked and furious and more dangerous than I've ever seen him.

"I didn't give you permission to do that," he says.

"I didn't ask."

He pulls me to my feet by the back of my neck. His mouth doesn't meet mine. Instead he walks me backward until my legs hit the edge of the bed, and a single push against my sternum puts me flat on my back.