There was no contact between them. Still, warmth seeped from her spine into his chest, flooding him.
"No, it's just..."
Pedro tucked a stray hair over the perfect shell of her ear. "Your innately good nature recoils from your cravings?"
"I can't." Her cheeks, already flushed, turned into a brighter cherry. "It's too intimate."
"You are whetting my curiosity."
A breeze blustered through the glass panes, and she hugged herself. The need to see into her darker side dimmed. It wasn't worth making her subdued. How fast he had ranked her interests above his own. Wasn't he willing to face enfilading fire just to know her deepest desire? No matter. He had gone too far.
He had opened his mouth to relieve her of the bet when she spun, her chest brushing against him.
"I would use it..." She exhaled and closed her eyes, her brows furrowed. "I would use invisibility to touch you."
Pedro went utterly still. All he could do was stare at her flashing irises.
Heart pounding, he broke eye contact, his muscles contracting. "Cris told you? Of course, he did. And you want it just because you can't have it?" He sucked in a breath, clenching his hands. "A spoiled child denied a sweet?"
"No! Why did you force me to say it only to judge me so?" Her voice broke, and she raced to the door.
Pedro seized her arm, preventing her flight. "Why?" he snarled.
She flinched and lowered her chin to her chest. Clouds raced over their heads, dappling shadows over her slim frame, but the sunlight fought its way to her, illuminating her mouth's dejected slant, the hurt in her eyes.
Pedro rubbed his chest, her pain defeating his own anger. He caressed her cheek, searching her expression.
"Why?" he whispered so softly the words could have been lost in the breeze.
"If you ask for a logical explanation, I have none." Her voice faltered. Her face was serious, if somehow defiant.
He turned her wrist and stared at her palm. He wanted—no, hecravedher hands on his skin. To allow it would be an unplanned, irrational decision. Those led to failings every time. Yet he needed to know if the bliss of the night before, when she had touched him, had been an effect of the laudanum or if these tiny hands, so breakable, so constantly in motion, could somehow change the wiring of his skin.
Rationality be damned.
Pedro pulled the chain around his neck, removing his mother's ring. The weight was slight, but the absence of it was unbalancing. He opened his palm, the gold carrying his warmth, and displayed it to her. "This will be your Gyges ring."
"But how?" She stared at it, no doubt searching for hidden magic.
"I will close my eyes and won't open them for one minute." He touched her chin and brought her gaze to him. "Only one, understand?"
A nod, and then another. She seemed breathless, and when the pink tip of her tongue came out to lick the seam of her lips, Pedro had to look away lest he devoured her mouth. He turned her hand and traced her heart-shaped scar. "You will be invisible, and you will have your desire. But after your turn, it will be mine."
"But what will you—"
"You will have to wait."
Before she changed her mind, Pedro slid the gold band over her knuckles to the hilt of her finger. The diamond caught the sun's rays from the skylight, shattering it into colorful sparks over her skin. It fit like the well-placed note of a symphony, the rich rhyme of a sonnet, the crowning brush of a masterpiece. "It was my mother's."
"Do you miss her?"
The memories had waned over the years—caring hands, hushed lullabies, shielding arms. Pedro turned from her sympathy. Those emotions had been buried a long time ago.
On stiff legs, he pulled his chair close to the open glass panes and lowered his weight gradually as if his back would meet ice instead of sun-warmed leather. Spine straight, Pedro gripped the sides of the seat and, as agreed, closed his eyes. Darkness greeted him behind his eyelids, and he took measured breaths despite his pounding heart.
Her presence shifted the air behind him, and he locked his jaw to keep still. The brine of the sea gushed against his face. She was silent, and the screeching of gulls and the hull creaking assailed his ears.
Conscious of the vibrations of her breaths, the neroli of her scent, Pedro tapped his foot once, twice, and stopped. His father had beaten him out of the habit long ago. "Your minute is waning."
