“Well.” Mr. Blackwood clapped his hands. “I will let you get acquainted. I am most eager to relay the good news to our patrons.” Then he scurried away.
Felicity exhaled harshly. “As it seems I am stuck with you, Mr. Drake, where should we begin?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Wherever you wish.”
Her eyelid twitched. Watching her struggle was terribly entertaining. He found he wanted to see her angry and flushed with passion.
Perhaps in his bed.
He almost choked on his own saliva. How had he come to think of her sexually? He’d indulged himself with dozens of willing human women since Marguerite’s departure, but those had all been mature, working-class women, not stuffy assistant curators. Still, as he followed Felicity to the conservatory and watched her chew her bottom lip, he couldn’t help wondering what it would feel like to have those lips clasped around his cock.
He squashed those thoughts. She was not a conquest. Getting involved with a hunter would be the most idiotic thing he had ever done. She was an obstacle in his path and a member of a family that had spilled the blood of his kind for centuries. Making her suffer required him to earn her trust, which might involve flirting, but would go no further.
He would certainly never kiss her.
“What do you think about the room?” she asked.
He was so distracted that it took several seconds to realize she had asked him a question. They were in a glass-enclosed conservatory looking out onto a garden behind the building. He tilted his head up. The sloped ceiling consisted of several glass panels that would have been easy enough to cut through or displace.
“I think your employer has made an enormous mistake.”
Her brow furrowed. “By giving me more space?”
She thought he was disparaging her work. It was not at all what he’d intended, but he could not resist the opportunity to further irritate her. “Yes. Do you really expect anyone to be interested in…” He walked to a nearby table and picked up one of the items that had already been relocated from the closet, acarved, wooden figure of a man with bat wings and protruding fangs. “Is this supposed to be a vampire?”
She snatched the item out of his grasp. “Don’t touch that.”
So, she didn’t want him handling her precious artifacts. He grabbed a smooth, ebony staff. “You realize that if you proceed with this exhibit, you will be ridiculed.”
“Be careful!” she cried. “That is an eighteenth-century divining rod. If you break it—”
He lifted the staff out of her reach and twirled it. “What will you do?” He winked. “Emasculate me?”
Her cheeks reddened. “Do you intend to continue irritating me?”
He placed the rod back on the table. “It’s not myonlyintention.” Then, before she throttled him and discerned his nature through the coldness of his skin, he pointed to the French doors that opened onto the garden. “That is the route I’d take.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. His ability to remain in her orbit depended upon her being wary, but he’d offer a few suggestions to demonstrate his commitment to protecting the museum.
The codex would be his after he convinced Felicity to let down her guard.
She narrowed her eyes. “Precisely how much of areformedthief are you?”
“You accuse me of deception,” he said, being sure to keep his tone flat, even bored. “How terribly original. Now, where is this ancient text that’s been targeted by our thief?”
She huffed, then glanced at an open crate in the corner.
“Aha.” He pushed past her, ignored her sputtering protests, then lifted the illustrated manuscript. “Here it is.”
A precious item that might hold a cure for the illness that plagued him, and she’d left it in a dusty box. He resisted the urge to run. It would take less than a second for him to escape the museum.
But where was the challenge in that?
If all he’d wanted was the manuscript, he would have taken it when he’d placed the threatening note. As keen as he was to be free of the affliction, his desire to make her suffer was stronger.
She wrenched the book out of his hands. “Keep your hands off my artifacts!”
He let her take the item and hopped onto the nearest table and swung his legs. “That’s it?”
She clutched the book to her chest. “It might not seem valuable to theuneducated, but that does not mean it is not of tremendous historical importance.”
