by Bec McMaster
"How did you get out?" He examined the lock before turning those dangerous eyes upon her.
"Magic."
Eyes narrowing, he swung the gate shut behind him. "Where is it?"
"Where is what?"
Hands caught her waist and spun her around. Gemma's hands slapped against the rough stone of the walls as he forced them there.
"Don't move," he growled.
"Or you'll what? Slam me on a table again?" Her voice grew rough. "I think if you wanted to hurt me, you'd have done it downstairs. You couldn't do it, could you? You couldn't bring yourself to harm me. No matter how cold the mask you wear, I know he's still there inside you somewhere."
"He?" His hands slid down the curve of her hips, and then up across her abdomen, searching for weapons, she presumed.
"The man I fell in love with in Saint Petersburg."
"That man never existed."
"Liar."
"Consider him buried, Miss Townsend."
Gemma's heart gave a twisting clench in her chest. Seeing him alive had been a slap to the face. She'd buried him in her heart all those years ago when he'd shot her. Told herself a million times that what she'd felt for him was nothing more than a myth. He'd betrayed her. Lied to her. Pretended to be something he wasn't, which was somewhat of a mockery, for she'd been trying to do the same thing.
Trying.
She'd conjured something between them, only to discover it a lie, and the truth had shattered her.
And then he'd died when the Winter Palace exploded, and Gemma had known true agony, for despite his betrayal, knowing he was dead tore her wretched heart out of her chest all over again.
"Not buried, Dmitri. Just never real."
His hands paused on her waist. "Obsidian."
Fine. "Obsidian."
Perhaps it was better this way. Dmitri and Hollis and the lie between them could die a painful death. She'd forged herself anew when it ended, taking on the mantle of Gemma Townsend.
And Gemma, flirtatious, calculating Gemma, knew no heartbreak.
"And you're right." Obsidian's hands began to take a leisurely path up her body, sweeping beneath her arms, his fingers brushing ever so faintly against the sides of her breasts. "None of it was real."
She did not feel that faint twinge in her heart.
It didn't exist.
Gemma steeled herself as his hands began to slide lower, firm over her hips. She had the truth. He'd never loved her.
Now she needed to escape.
"Why sir," she protested in a mocking voice, "how dare you take such liberties when we've barely been reacquainted."
He paused, his hand caressing the rounded curve of her bottom. "I seem to recall you had no compunctions about allowing me such liberties in the past."
Gemma sucked in a sharp breath as his hand slid lower. Seductress or not, she hadn't been prepared for the feelings his touch awoke in her. They weren't a lie. Those leather-clad fingers stroked along the crevice of her bottom, shockingly intimate and yet strangely distant. No heat there. Not yet. Kicking her feet apart until her heeled boots were spread, he caressed his way up her body.
"If you're searching for a weapon," she whispered, "you're looking in the wrong place. Those are my breasts."
"Noted." Fingers patted her down, sliding along her arms, her sides, her waist.
He even slid a leather-gloved hand through her hair, and Gemma had to contain a gasp as his fist clenched there momentarily.
A flush of heat swept through her.
Oh, dear.
Don't you dare, she told herself sharply, but her nipples disobeyed the directive. And suddenly she was in the past again, on her hands and knees, with Dm— Obsidian buried to the hilt within her, his fist in her hair wrenching her head back.
"I know you have it upon you somewhere."
"What would you be referring to?" Her voice came out a little lower than expected.
"Don't make me strip you naked," he threatened. "You have a lock pick."
"I told you. It was magic."
"Can you never utter a single word of the truth?"
Not if I can help it.
Because the truth hurt.
He resumed his search, kneeling behind her. Hands slid up under her skirts, stroking the backs of her calves. His touch had been impersonal until now.
But it slowed as he reached her thighs, a vague hint of unease evident in his hesitation.
The combination of danger and action left her feeling a little light-headed.
He wasn't the only one frozen.
"Nothing between my thighs," she whispered, "but you're quite welcome to check. As I recall, you did wonderful things with those fingers."
"Shut up."
"Though your mouth was better," Gemma mused, and then bit her lip when his thumb dug into the back of her thigh in warning. She was getting to him. She knew it.
His hands retreated down the back of her legs, and he yanked her off-balance as he lifted her foot.
A swift tug on her laces, and he tugged her left boot off. Then the right.
"Nothing in there either," Gemma pointed out.
Obsidian straightened. "Are you enjoying this?"
"Should I not be?"
He seemed affronted by the pleasure she took in goading him.
"It's been months since I've felt another's touch," Gemma said, with a faint shrug of her shoulders. Over a year, if she were being honest. "And never doubt I can do the job myself, but there's something to be said for having someone else's hands on your skin." She lowered her voice a little coyly, as if whispering a confession. "Rough hands. That time in the museum when you stole your first kiss? We were arguing. You shoved me against the wall and pinned me there and kissed me as if you couldn't get enough of me. I loved every minute of it."
Harsh fingers tugged at the buttons down the spine of her gown. Gemma turned her head, but his hand was suddenly on her wrist, pushing it insistently back against the wall.
Had she pushed him too far?
Or could she push him further?
"And one might add, judging by the way you pinned me to the table downstairs, you are not entirely unaffected either. That wasn't a gun pressed between my thighs, Obsidian."
"I forgot how dangerous you are," he replied, the steel of his body caging her in from behind.
You, sir, have no idea.
"And yes," he whispered, sweeping her hair to the side, his lips skating over the back of her neck. "I am not unaffected." Firm hands slid down her sides, parting the back of her dress.
A tongue swept across the nubbin at the top of her spine.
Gemma froze as prickles of arousal swept through her.
"Do you want to know something?" His thumb slid along the laced stretch of her corset. Hooking his fingers in the bottom laces, he began to haul it tight. Gemma's breath caught as her corset squeezed. "I don't think I'm the only one not unaffected. Am I, moy sladkiy yad?"
Sweet poison, am I? She hissed out a breath as her corset drew tighter. A damning slickness between her thighs betrayed her.
Two could play this game.
She'd forgotten that.
Her lungs arrested as the corset compressed her breasts. Submit, said his touch, and Gemma found she couldn't breathe. A fuzzy light-headed sensation swept through her, danger arousing her to the point of intoxication. Teeth bit into the hard muscle tracing from her neck to her shoulder.
A soft cry escaped her.
And then he let her go, and her corset slackened, allowing the trapped blood in her veins to flood into blood-starved skin. The rush of sudden sensation was blinding. But the way he controlled her so deftly turned her into a puddle of mush.
Gemma gasped, fingers curling against the stone. Dangerous, dangerous man. For he remembered what she liked, if nothing else.
"Are you wet, Miss Townsend?" His breath ghosted along the back of her neck, his voice softly amused with her unraveled state. "If I search between your thighs again, will your wetness
slick my gloves? Could I taste it, if I put those fingers to my lips?"
Anger burned within her. He sounded so mocking. "Why don't you test your theory?"
"What's wrong, Miss Townsend? You like to flirt. You like to talk," he said, slipping her sleeve down over her shoulder. "I remember that. You ran rings around half the Blood—"
"Never you," she admitted. It was the first thing that caught her attention when he'd been trying to distract her from her target all those years ago.
A handsome man intercepting her on the dance floor, insisting upon a dance.
She'd catalogued him in an instant. Tall, his shoulders straining within the well-fitted coat he wore. A full, dangerous mouth that drew her gaze for a second look. Silvery hair that cascaded to his shoulders, the color somewhat akin to moonlight on snow. Unlike the rest of the Blood Court, he'd worn no extravagant cravat, and his waistcoat was black.
One of Sergey's many "friends" but her target had been Sergey. And handsome men came and went. There would be others.
Except....
Nothing she'd ever said had been able to sway him from her side. Everywhere she looked, Dmitri was simply there. Sergey's guard dog, she'd groused to Malloryn one night when he'd wanted to know why she was finding this mission so difficult. She'd flirted, she'd handed him a ringing set down, she'd argued, then tried cool distance. Dmitri took it all in his stride, his gray eyes mocking her, as if he knew exactly what she was doing.
And Gemma had found herself distracted from her mission.
The seductress found herself seduced.
But she hadn't been the only one.
"Sometimes me," Obsidian admitted quietly. "But not this time. I know what you are now."
"Do you?"
"And if you think I'm going to fall into your honeyed trap, then you can think again."
He gave a little tug on her dress, nudging it to her hips and revealing every inch of her corset and chemise.
Gemma shivered as the chill of the room bit her skin. Wait. This was not quite going the way she'd planned. "What the hell are you doing? You've searched me from top to toe. It's not as though my dress contains some secret weapon."
"Not true," he pointed out, in a raw voice. "You are your greatest weapon." Fisting both hands in the edges of her gown, he wrenched them apart.
Fabric tore. Gemma gasped, as he stripped the fabric from her body as if it were mere cotton. "That's my favorite dress!"
"Was." He ripped it down her arms, stripping the sleeves over her hands. "I'm certain you have others."
"No, you don't understand." She glanced down at the forsaken remains of her gown in a puddle on the ground around her feet. "It’s a Madame Lefoux. It cost me a fortune. The silk.... The silk is all the way from the White Court in China."
"Then buy another one."
Am I going to have the chance?
"Just what are you intending to do?" she asked suspiciously. Flirtation or not, she refused to give this bastard a single piece of her. "Because the answer is no."
"Nothing."
He stepped back, allowing her to turn and face him.
"Did you really think it was going to be so easy? That I would soften for your pretty words, for the soft gasp on your lips?"
She'd thought he'd been falling into the smoky lure of her trap, but as he wrenched the dress out from under her, she realized she'd been mistaken. One look at the hard planes of his face told her the truth; she alone had felt the flush of heat through her veins as a need long dormant rose within her.
Obsidian's cold eyes met hers.
He curved his hand around her throat, a faint, threatening caress. "Every word from your lying little mouth only confirms my suspicions. You're manipulative from the top of your head to your toes. Sex is merely a weapon to you. Every word you utter is a lie. Thank you. For reminding me exactly who you are."
She clutched his hand.
They glared at each other, his thumb stroking her throat, and God damn her but she felt it all the way within.
"I'm not the only liar," Gemma spat, feeling like he'd stripped the ground out from under her feet.
For a second her body had betrayed her, desperately wanting his hands on her naked flesh, but it was more than that. Somewhere within the scarred ashes of what remained of her heart, she'd felt something stir.
You're happy he's alive.
And he hates you.
It was more than she could bear in that moment.
His cheek tensed, then he looked away and let her go.
"You won't be going very far without your gown or boots." He hauled the hessian sack toward him, and Gemma's gaze shot to it as something within it clanked.
"What are you doing?"
He withdrew a long chain with a manacle on either end. "You've already proved a simple cell cannot hold you."
Gemma tried to dart to the side, but his arm locked around her waist and he hauled her back against his chest, her stockinged feet kicking helplessly.
He took her down, pinning her to the marble slab in the center of the room. There were a dozen ways she could have gotten away—a thumb to his eye, two sharp fingers stabbed into his throat—but some part of her softened.
To escape right now meant she'd have to seriously injure him, and she wasn't certain she had it in her, especially not after his recent revelations.
Besides. Obsidian was dhampir; she wasn't convinced she could actually flee without somehow killing him.
Better to wait.
He thought stripping her down to her corset made her vulnerable. Ha. More fool him.
"Damn you." She kicked out at him, making a convincing act of protest. It wouldn't do to give in too early. He might grow suspicious.
Capturing her foot, he locked the manacle around her ankle and set the other end through an iron ring at the base of the marble slab.
By the time he pushed to his feet, both of them were panting.
Gemma flinched at the cold marble beneath her and wrapped her shivering arms around herself. "It's freezing in here without my gown."
"You'll survive." He bent to snatch her dress from the floor, balling it into his gloved fists before he threw it into the hallway, far away from the bars.
"You were never cruel."
Anger flushed his face. "That was before you drugged me and set my fucking bed on fire."
"What?" Gemma drew back. "No, I didn't."
"The last night we lay together, I was drugged, and you were the one who gave me the glass of wine. Someone conveniently set my room on fire. I barely managed to escape with my life, but there was no sign of you."
Gemma's mind raced. "Of course, there wasn't." Her breath caught. "I couldn't stay the night. My supposed reputation would have been ruined. But I never.... I didn't drug you. And I certainly didn't set a fire."
I loved you.
Scraping her hands through her hair, she tried to think. It had been five years ago. Was that why he'd come after her the next day?
Was that why he'd shot her?
"We've already established you're not above lying. Sleep well, Miss Townsend. Perhaps this will keep you warm." Tossing the fur cloak toward her, he turned and strode toward the barred gate.
"You say I tried to burn you alive?" she yelled. "You're the one who shot me."
Obsidian froze in the doorway, one hand on the gate. His head half turned toward her, but she couldn't see his face.
Only sense the sudden tension within him.
"That's not the way I remember it."
"Isn't it?" Sudden fury rose up to choke her. She cast his cloak aside. "Well, unlike others, I have proof, damn you."
Tugging open the laces of her shift, she jerked her corset lower, until the flush of her nipples strained to break free. There was none of that delicious heat warming her veins this time, however. Gemma felt cold all the way through, as she cupped her breasts to the sides and showed him the scar between them.
"I was still human when you shot me right through the
left lung. The only reason I survived is because I plunged into a frozen river, and it slowed the bleeding and my heart rate enough to give Malloryn a chance to get his blood into me. So call me a liar if you will. Tell me I betrayed you. But you're a hypocrite."
Somehow Obsidian staggered up the stairs toward the small turret tower where his nest of blankets lay.
He'd lost time at some stage, remembering only the clang of the door as he slammed it shut and fled from the woman in the makeshift cell below.
Her words kept hammering at the inside of his head, leaving him near blind in one eye. "You're the one who shot me."
"No," he whispered.
She was an enemy spy.
"She was an enemy spy," he breathed, sinking his fingers into his hair and tugging to ease the sudden sharp pain in his head.
She deliberately seduced you, seeking to use you.
"She deliberately seduced me, seeking to use me."
She tried to kill you.
"She...."
He saw the scar between her breasts.
Heard again the violent ricochet of a weapon firing. His vision sharpened along the barrel of a smoking pistol, and Hollis came into focus instead.
Red bloomed in the middle of her chest like the painted dot on a target. Hollis jerked back in surprise, her body backlit by the lights in the distance as her arms flung wide, a word on her painted red lips.
"Dmitri—"
Shock painted itself across her face, rippling through her.
She was falling backward. Vanishing right before his eyes. He lowered the smoking weapon, sound rushing back into the world as he blinked out of the semitrance he'd found himself in and realized she was gone.
Sprinting toward the edge of the canal, he gasped as time seemed to slam back into being. Ice slicked the surface of the river, covered in a faint layer of snow, except for the ragged hole right below him. Dark waters churned through the ice, but there was no sign of Hollis. His hand shook, the scent of gunpowder leaving an acrid scent in his nose.
I killed her.
His hands shook.
I shot her.
The pistol fell from nerveless hands, and then the world around him vanished as a harsh voice intruded.
Pain sheared through his knees. Obsidian blinked, and found himself on the floor in the turret room, blood dripping from his nose. What the hell was that? He'd never remembered that before.
