“Is this a joke?”
“It’s a kindness.”
She shrugged and ran a black-tipped finger around the rim of her glass. “I thought you wanted me to work behind the bar. Isn’t that what you told your brother?”
“Thatwas a joke. Putting a poisons expert in charge of serving drinks to New York’s supernatural elite? Not exactly good business sense.”
“That’s too bad, because I’ve gotzeroexperience with curses and no clue about Duchanes.”
“Thatistoo bad. Choosing death, are we?”
She folded her arms across her chest, assessing. “Death bywhat, exactly?”
“Exsanguination.”Devil’s balls, how he loved the way that word rolled off the tongue.
“I see. And who’s doing the drinking?” Her smile was lighter now. Teasing. Bordering on flirtatious. “You, I presume?”
He grinned and spread his arms.Welcome to the party, witch.
She stood from the chair and set down her glass, the tatters of her blouse lifting to reveal the expanse of skin across her lower abdomen, smooth and unmarred. Kissable.
Gabriel’s cock stirred.
Then, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin, his bold little witch huffed out a breath and said, “Fine. Do it. Make it quick, though—I hate melodramatic endings.”
She was still smiling. Still teasing.
The woman hadnoidea who she was playing with.
And that’s all it was. Games and spells, smoke and mirrors. Gabriel and his cock would do well to remember it.
He set down the empty bottle. The glass.
Gave her one last look, dark and deadly.
He was on her in a flash, one hand gripping her hip, the other fisting her hair and yanking it to the side, exposing her neck.
She gasped at the roughness of his handling but didn’t draw back. Didn’t flinch. Not even when he pressed his mouth to her soft flesh, that tantalizing spot just below the jaw.
Jacinda trembled in his arms.
Fear? Lust? Shock? Gabriel didn’t give a fuck.
A steady pulse throbbed beneath his lips. His tongue darted out to taste.
Everything about her drove him mad.
The salt of her sweat. Soft wisps of hair tickling his nose. That forbidden, dark-earth scent. The heat of her, warm and throbbing and full of life, like the very heartbeat of existence.
Blood rushed beneath her skin, darkening her neck. Singing to him once again. Begging.
His fangs barely broke through, sharp points grazing her tender flesh, and—
“Wait!” she gasped, adrenaline spiking once again. “Please… please stop.”
It was nothing more than a whisper, but a concession nevertheless.
“Fear makes honest fools of us all,” Gabriel said.
