Thief With No Shadow by Emily Gee Page A

Bastian’s anger smoldered back to life. Endal should be at his heels, should be with him and not guarding that verminous wraith. His face twisted into a scowl. A young lad, a farmer’s son by his garb, shied away from him.
    But anger was impossible to maintain when Silvia’s bakery was around the next corner. His hands unclenched. Three more steps, and then down the cobbled alley that led to the back. The buildings were made of gray stone, rough to touch, with steep slate roofs. Silvia’s back door was open, the stone step scoured white. The open door and the shutters at the windows were painted blue, the color of the sky on a hot summer’s day.
    Bastian leaned against the doorframe and inhaled the scents of sugar and baking bread and stewing fruit. One of Silvia’s shopgirls kneaded dough, the sleeves of her blouse rolled up and her hair tied back in a scarf. Voices came from the front of the shop, a woman’s laughter.
    The girl glanced up. Her face was freckled and alert. “Mistress Silvia,” she called, not pausing in her kneading.
    Bastian watched the girl’s strong hands pull and twist the dough. Sweet dough, white and soft, to be filled with cinnamon and fruit and sprinkled with sugar crystals when it came out of the oven.
    “Bastian.”
    Silvia stood in the arch that led through to the shop. Her apron was smudged with flour, her long hair hidden beneath a lavender blue scarf.
    Bastian straightened away from the doorframe. She was beautiful, and he was hungry for her. Hungry for the warmth and softness of a woman, for uncomplicated physical pleasure, for the ecstasy-pain of release.
    Her mouth curved slightly. She wanted him too. He saw it in her eyes, in the tiny smile, in the way her hand rested lightly on the wall.
    “Come upstairs,” she said. “Elsa, you’re in charge.”
    The kneading girl nodded. Her gaze flicked from Silvia to Bastian and he thought he caught something in her eyes. Not contempt or disdain, not condemnation, nothing like that. He crossed the kitchen and glanced back at the girl, puzzled. She was watching them. Watching him.
    Silvia’s hand was on his arm, warm. “Come, Bastian,” she said, her voice low.
    Color rose in the girl’s cheeks and she looked down at the dough.
    He caught a glimpse of the shop—polished counter, a stout townsman handing coins to another of Silvia’s employees in an apron and headscarf—as she pulled him into the corridor and towards the staircase. She was laughing softly.
    “What?”
    “My girls like you.”
    Bastian realized what he’d seen so fleetingly in the shopgirl’s eyes: envy. Blood rose in his face.
    Silvia laughed again. She paused on the second step, her eyes level with his. “That handsome face,” she said. “Those eyelashes.” She touched a light fingertip to the corner of his eye.
    He followed her up the stairs to her bedroom, hot with embarrassment, hot with desire.
    They undressed swiftly, pulling at clothes and discarding them on the floor. Silvia’s mouth was as hungry as his was, kissing deeply. She was so soft and ripe and willing, sprawled on the bed, the lush, pale curves of her body so tempting that he couldn’t take it slowly. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice harsh with need. “I can’t—” And then he was inside the heat and softness of her. He shuddered and groaned and thrust deeply, and anger and fear were swallowed by passion, raw and urgent, and the pleasure built until he was bursting with it, and then it came, that high, sharp moment of release when nothing else mattered and everything was all right.
    “I’m sorry,” he said again, afterwards, with his face pressed into her hair and his arm around her waist. The sheets were creased beneath him and his skin was hot and damp with sweat. A square of sunlight warmed his back.
    “For what?”
    “Too rough. Too fast.”
    “I liked it,” Silvia said.
    Bastian turned his head and opened his eyes. “You did?”
    “It made me feel young again.”