“I would never think you do. But the thing is: I might persuade you to.”
“As we’ve already established, thralling really doesn’t work on me.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t talking about thralling. I was talking about you, and the way you react when I do certain things, and talk a certain way, and look at you like I’m looking at you now. When I make it sweet and good, when I seduce you, so you can just slip into your own magic, easy, easy, easy.”
“That only works because I let it.”
“Are you sure?”
No, she thought.Yes, she answered.
“OfcourseI’m sure. You mean nothing to me. None of this means anything to me. I see it as nothing more than a means to an end. And this will be, too. It’s just a medical matter. Practical. Businesslike. Part of our deal. I’ll go about it with all the professionalism of a doctor, lancing a wound. And that will be the case, no matter what you do,” she said, so sure sounding about it that he only hesitated a moment longer. Those dark eyes drank her in, as if looking for cracks in the facade.
Then he took the manacles she tossed to him, satisfied.
Though she imagined he wouldn’t have been, if he had seen the inside of her head. Her thoughts raced wildly, as she watched him snap one of them around his wrist. And not just because of the way it looked, once he had—like a piece of brutal jewelry, against his suddenly tender-seeming skin.
No. There was also the sudden understanding of what he would have to do here. The second manacle wasn’t just going to go around his other wrist. Of course it wasn’t. He had to thread the chain around something first. A sturdy something—like say, the obviously iron frame, at the head of his bed.
Still, though, she didn’t expect him to really do it.
She imagined a metal hoop somewhere, drilled into the wall.
Some sort of pipe that wouldn’t buckle under his strength.
Then was forced to watch him, as he laid down on the bed. As he arranged the chain and spread his bare arms above his head. Not lewdly, she told herself. Not purposefully, like something suggestive.
But the problem was, the effect was suggestive all the same.
She could see the exact perfect curve to his biceps, when he held his arms like that. How oddly thick they looked, in a way she could never see in his shirts and sweaters. And that thickness wasin him elsewhere, too. There was something almost heavy about his chest, his shoulders.
Like a man who didn’t work out.
He just did things that made him strong.
Or more possibly:haddone things. He had grown into this in Calabaraia, most likely. Shaped himself on mountains made of glass and hunts that had no horses. Everything just about how fast you could run. How high you could climb. What you could do with your bare hands.A lot, she thought, as he shifted on the bed.
And every muscle in his body moved.
They all rolled beneath his honey-pale skin, in a way that was almost hypnotic. Certainly she felt hypnotized, when she walked over to him on legs that felt half hollow. And then she was looking down at him, and the sight did nothing to strengthen her.
Because true, he still had those trousers on.
It was just that the trousers weren’t particularly modest.
They hung very low on his hips—low enough that she could see the trail of dark hair leading down, below the waistband. And the material seemed very tight and very thin. It pulled taut over his thick thighs, when he spread them—which he did, immediately. For comfort, she imagined.
But in the moment, it didn’t really feel like it.
It felt like he was doing it on purpose.
Like some part of him had taken thathatecomment as a challenge. And when she forced herself to look at his face again, the expression on it only backed that assessment up. There was something... watchful about it. Something sly. Like the person she was starting to almost like—or at least understand—was no longer in control.
Instead, there was this demon.
Eyes dark, tongue curled up to touch one tooth.
Just waiting for her to make a mistake.
