“Shut up,” he growled, though it was so half-hearted that neither of them stopped giggling. Daisy had the gall to snort.
Aurelie, however, was still standing in front of him with her eyes closed, waiting for him to finish his ministrations, and it took all his self-control not to kiss the tip of her nose when he’d finished.
“How are you feeling about everything?” he asked her as they walked to the cottage to make tea—they were all going to need the extra energy tonight, and Daisy had complained of a headache due to lack of sugar consumption. What he really wanted to ask was,Howare you feeling about me?But he’d never have dared.
“I don’t know. I still have runes left to translate, and if we don’t get this right...”
“We’ll get it right,” he said, ignoring the stab of guilt in his gut at the thought of going behind her back, of any of this going wrong.
“I hope so.”
He worded his next question carefully, hoping to appeal to herscientific mind without arousing suspicion. “Have you ever tried to trap any of your demons, rather than kill them?”
“Other than Mephisto?” She shook her head. “No. Which isn’t to say I haven’t wanted to. I’ve collected as much data as possible about them, but I could never take the risk of keeping one alive. Even if they weren’t hell-bent on eating me, it would put Uncle Leo in danger.”
“You mean from the Iron Guard?”
She nodded.
“And what about you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose I was overconfident in my abilities to kill the demons I created. None were faster or stronger than me. Not until the last one. It appeared so quickly.” She considered for a moment. “Perhaps because the veilisthinning.”
Inside the cottage, none of the gas lamps had been lit, but Aurelie knew the house well. Seemingly without thinking, she took Des’s hand and guided him, and there was something in the gesture that made his chest ache.
“But if you were to trap one, how would you go about it?”
“Now this I have given some thought to,” she admitted. “I suppose it would need to be composed of metal, though not pure iron necessarily. Perhaps an alloy metal with a high iron content to weaken the demon without killing it. It would need to be camouflaged in some way, most likely. And you’d need a lure.”
“A lure?”
“Meat. Still alive, if possible. A small animal?” She shuddered. “Honestly, I would never be able to get past that part. I’d be more inclined to use myself as a lure than some hapless creature.”
Of course she would. The thought was equal parts endearing and maddening.
When they reached the kitchen, he waited on the threshold while she lit a gas lamp and made a fire for the kettle. Her apron was untied in the back, revealing her slim waist and the flare of her hips, which he suddenly had the overwhelming desire to hold.
She squeaked when he came up behind her and began to tie the apron strings, which seemed less presumptuous than the other things he had in mind.
“What is it with you and the kitchen?” she asked, turning in his arms.
“I’ll take any room I can get, so long as it’s just the two of us.”
She smirked up at him. “I’ve heard men are very simple creatures, but I didn’t realize how true it was until now.”
“Simple, huh?” He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “For what it’s worth, there’s nothing simple about my feelings for you.”
“Now that I can believe,” she said with a sigh. “This is far more complicated than I could have imagined.”
“Really? I knew from the moment you shouted at me that this was going to be complicated.” A lie, but a small one. He’d known from the moment he saved her from the runaway carriage. When the thought of harm befalling her was more frightening than any demon encounter.
“You liked me even then?” she whispered.
“Especially then,” he said, leaning down to kiss her forehead. It was a deliberately chaste kiss. She was anxious tonight, her bodytense. As badly as he wanted to lose himself in kissing her, he wasn’t going to make any demands on her already limited time.
But when she pressed her hand to his check and tilted her mouth to meet his, he was so grateful he could have fallen to his knees.
Still, he tried to restrain himself, to kiss her slowly and deeply, not the frenzied rush of their first kiss, where he’d been as eager as a schoolboy. The kettle began to whistle, but Aurelie somehow managed to remove it from the flame without breaking away from him. It was such a deft move he pulled away himself.