After The Bridge (3 page)

He made a dark, needy sound low in his throat, a sound he barely recognized as coming from himself. A sound that made Tessa’s pupils expand, her breath come quickly. “Jem,” she said, “please, Jem,” and she turned her head to the side, pillowing her cheek on her unbound hair.

He bent over her. This much they had done together, before. This much he remembered. That she liked to be kissed in a line down her throat, and that if he followed the shape of her collarbone with his mouth she would cry out and dig her hands into his back. And if he had been terrified of what came next — not knowing what to do, or how to please her — it was washed away in the rush of her responsiveness: her soft cries as he ran his hands down her legs and kissed her chest and stomach.

“My Jem,” she whispered as he kissed her. “James Carstairs. Ke Jian Ming.”

No one had called him by his birth name in over half a century. It was as intimate as a touch.

He wasn’t entirely sure how the rest of their clothes were discarded, only that somehow they were lying on the wrecked remnants of her silk dress and petticoats. Tessa was not soft and pliant under him as he had long ago imagined but responsive and demanding, lifting her face to be kissed over and over, running her hands over him, each brush of her fingers igniting sparks in nerve endings he had feared long dead.

It was so much better than he had imagined. He was surrounded by her, her smell of rosewater soap and her soft skin and her implicit trust. It was not only that she trusted him not to hurt her; it was more than that.

She trusted that his inexperience would not matter, that nothing mattered except that it was the two of them and they had always sought to make the other one happy. When he faltered and said, “Tessa, I don’t know how to —“ she whispered against his mouth and placed his hands where they should go.

A sort of lessoning, but the gentlest he had ever received, and the best. He had not quite ever imagined this, that their responses would be mirrored, that her pleasure would magnify his own. That when he slid his hands up her legs she would wrap them around his waist of her own accord. That every thought would flee from his head except for the feel of her under him and then around him as she guided him to where he needed to be.

He heard himself cry out as if from a distance as he buried himself in her. “Tessa.” He clutched at her shoulders as if he could grasp the last shreds of his control. “Tessa, oh God, Tessa, Tessa.” Coherency had left him completely. He said something else as well, not in English any more, he didn’t know what, and he felt her tighten her arms around him.

He was breathing in gasps. His eyes were closed; light blazing behind his lids. So much light. He struggled for the shreds of his control, not wanting it to be over, not yet. He heard Tessa’s voice, whispering his name; they were so close, closer than he had ever believed possible. Her hands slid down his body to grasp at his waist.

There was a thin line of concentration between her eyebrows; her cheeks were bright scarlet, and when she tried to say his name again, a ragged gasp swallowed it up. One of her hands flew to her mouth and she bit down hard on her fingers as her body tightened around him.

It was like a match to tinder. The last shred of his control evaporated. He buried his face against her neck as the light behind his eyes fractured into kaleidoscopic colors. He had carried the darkness of the Silent City with him even when he had left the Brotherhood. And now she had opened his soul and let in the light, and it was brilliant.

He had never imagined this. He had never even imagined imagining this.

When he came back to himself, he found he was still gripping her tightly, his head bowed down on her shoulder. She was breathing softly and regularly, her hand in his hair, stroking, murmuring his name.

He drew away from her reluctantly, rolling to arrange them so that they were lying face to face. Most of the daylight was gone; they looked at each other in a dim twilight that softened all harsh edges. His heart was beating hard as he reached out to swipe his thumb across her lower lip.

“Are you all right?” he said, hoarsely. “Was that —“ He broke off, realizing to his horror that the brilliance in her eyes was tears. One rolled down her cheek, unchecked.

“Tessa?” He could hear the panic in his own voice. She gave him a quick, trembling smile, but then that was Tessa. She would never show disappointment. What if it had been awful for her? He had thought it was amazing, perfect; he had thought his body would break in pieces from feeling so much bliss at once. And he had thought she had responded, but what did he know? He cursed his own inexperience, his hubris, and his pride. What had made him think he could —She sat up, leaning over the coffee table, her hands doing something he couldn’t see. Her unclothed body was outlined in the twilight, unbearably beautiful. He watched her with his heart stuttering. Any moment now she would stand up and pull on her clothes, would tell him that she loved him, loved him always but not that way.

That theirs was not a passion, but a friendship.

And he had told himself that he could bear that, before he had come to the bridge to confess himself. He had told himself that he could take her friendship and nothing else, that it was better than not being near her at all.

But now that he knew , now that they had shared their breath and bodies and souls, he could no longer step back. To be only her friend, never to touch her again, would tear him into a million pieces. It would be more agony than the heavenly fire had ever been.

“Jem?” she said. “Jem, you are a thousand miles away!” She had wrapped a folded gray throw from the couch around herself; she sat down beside him; the tears were gone and she was warm and smiling. “Honestly, if what we just did didn’t get your attention, I don’t know what would.”

He stared at her. “But you were crying,” he said, finally.

She looked at him quizzically. “Because I am happy. Because that was wonderful.”

He expelled his breath in a rush of relief. “So it was — that was all right? I could get better, we could practice —“

He realized what he’d just said, and clamped his mouth shut.

A wicked grin spread over her face. “Oh, we will practice,” she said. “As soon as you’re ready.”

“I have no other appointments this evening,” he said gravely.

She blushed. “Your body may need time to — to recover.”

“No,” he said, and this time he allowed himself a small tinge of smugness. “No, I don’t think so.”

She blushed even harder. He loved making her blush; he always had. “Well, I need five minutes, at least!” she said. “And I need you to see this. Please?”

She held out a piece of paper to him. Her expression was surprisingly grave; it wiped his smugness away, and his desire to tease her, too. Not daring to speak, he took the paper from her and unfolded it.

She cleared her throat. “I may have been joking, earlier,” she said, “when I said I owned this flat under the name of Bedelia Codfish.”

He stared down at the deed to the flat on Queen’s Gate. It was made out in Tessa’s name, or something like it. Not Tessa Gray, however, or even Tessa Herondale. It was made out in the name of Tessa Herondale Carstairs.

“When I spoke to Magnus in Idris, after the Mortal War,” she said, “he told me that he’d dreamed that you were cured. You know how Magnus is. Sometimes his dreams are true. So I allowed myself to hope for the first time in a long time. I knew it was unlikely, if not impossible. I knew it might be many years. But you asked me to marry you, once, a long time ago. And in a way, this is our wedding night. A long-delayed consummation.” She smiled at him, biting her lip, clearly nervous. He fingers worked at the blanket she held around herself. “I shouldn’t have borrowed your name, perhaps, but I have always felt in my blood that we were family.”

“Tessa Herondale Carstairs,” he whispered. “You should never worry about borrowing my name when you know that you can have it to keep.”

He let the paper slip out of his hand and reached for her. She tipped into his lap and he held her hard, against the choking sensation in his own throat.

She had never given up on him. He remembered saying to Will once that he had given him faith, when Will had none in himself. He had always hoped for better for Will, even when Will did not hope for himself. And Tessa had done that for him. He had long ago despaired of a cure, but she — she had always hoped.

“Mizpah, Tessa,” he whispered. “In truth, for surely God was looking out for us while we were parted from one another. And he has looked out for us while we both have been parted from Will and brought us back to each other.”

*

They slept, curled together, on the ruin of Tessa’s dress, and later moved to the couch. It was quite dark, and they drank cold tea and made love again, this time more gently and slowly until Tessa was clutching at Jem’s shoulders and begging him to go faster. “ Dolcissimo, not appasionato,” he said with a smile of pure tormenting amusement.

“Oh?” She reached down and did something with her hand that he was clearly not prepared for. His whole body tensed. She giggled as his hands clawed suddenly at her waist, fingers digging in. His dark hair hung in his eyes; his skin shone with sweat. Earlier, she had closed her own eyes: this time she watched him, the change in his expression as his control broke, the shape of his mouth as he gasped her name.

“Tessa —”

And this time, she forgot to bite on her hand to muffle the sounds she made. Oh, well. Damn the neighbors.

She had been quiet for nearly a century.

“Maybe that was more presto than I had intended,” he said with a laugh, when they were lying together afterward, wedged among the cushions. “But then, you cheated. You are more experienced than I am.”

“I like it.” Tessa kissed his fingers. “I am going to have a great deal of fun introducing you to everything. I can’t wait for you to hear rock and roll music, Jem Carstairs. And I want to see you use an iPhone. And a computer.

And ride the Tube. Have you been in an airplane? I want to be in an airplane with you.”

Jem was still laughing. His hair was a terrific mess, and his eyes were dark and shining in the lamplight. He looked like the boy he had been, so many years ago, but different, too: this was a Jem Tessa had only just begun to know. A young, healthy Jem, not a dying boy or a Silent Brother. A Jem who could love her with all his strength as she would love him back.

“We’ll take an airplane,” he said. “Maybe to Los Angeles.”

She smiled. She knew why they had to be there.

“We have time to do everything,” he said, tracing one of his fingers down the side of her face. “We have forever.”

Not forever, Tessa thought. They had a long, long time. A lifetime. His lifetime. And she would lose him one day, as she had lost Will, and her heart would break, as it had broken before. And she would put herself back together and go on, because the memory of having had Jem would be better than never having had him at all.

She was wise enough to know that, now.

“What you said before,” she asked. “That Jace Herondale loves Clarissa Fairchild more than anyone you’ve ever known except someone — you never finished the sentence. Who was it?”

“I was going to say you and me and Will,” he said. “But — that’s rather a strange thing to say, isn’t it?”

“Not strange at all.” She cuddled in close against his side. “Exactly right. Ever and always, exactly right.”

***