Page 31 of The Bargain

“Stop worrying so much about what I’m trying to do,” I tell her. “And worry about yourself. It’s not me your friends aren’t buying, it’s you, because you’re acting restless and cranky and mean. So what’s making you restless and cranky and mean?”

“I’m not. My friends know you’re lying, you know that, right?”

“Your friends are wondering if I’m lying, because despite everything I’m telling them, you’re acting like you can’t stand me.”

“No, I’m not,” Desdemona says, and this time, we both know she’s lying.

“No?” I let out a sharp laugh. “That’s how you act when you fancy someone?”

“I—”

She cuts herself off. One moment, she’s glaring up at me.

And then, all of a sudden, she drops her gaze, turning away, hands rolled into fists. I watch the back of her neck, that delicate arc. Reaching over, I take her face in my hand, tilting it gently back to me.

“You don’t actually know, do you?” I ask.

My voice comes out low and rough—my heartbeat’s picked up, my breath grows short from the sudden, electrifying thrill of discovering something absolutely crucial.

“Don’t patronise me,” she hisses out. “I’m not some shy little virgin.”

“What’s the point of fucking”—I tilt my head—“if you don’t actually want the person who’s fucking you?”

Her cheeks go dark, the flush uneven across her skin. She hesitates, lips trembling, and for a second, I wonder if this is something she’s only just realising, too, if⁠—

“It’s not going to be you.”

She whispers the words, deadly soft, with stone-cold cruelty.

Maybe I could find it in me to laugh, if my own pulse wasn’t hammering a hectic beat in my throat, crushing each breath into a hiss.

“No?” I whisper thickly.

She shakes her head. She makes no attempt to free herself from my grip. Her eyes stay on mine, a knowing look in them.

“You’re so damn arrogant,” she says. “You think it’s going to be you—that you’re going to teach me things I never knew, that you’ll make me feel emotions I’ve never felt. Guess you’re not that different from all the others, after all.” The corners of her mouth curve. “They all thought the same thing.”

She’d be so easy to hate, I realise, if she wasn’t so goddamn proud.

Her pride doesn’t make me want to hate her, or even hurt her. It only makes me want to humble her. Prove to her that she’s just as vulnerable to weakness and pain as all the rest of us mere mortals.

I slide my thumb up towards her mouth, tugging lightly at her bottom lip.

“I don’t need to make you want me,” I tell her. “I just need you to know how to pretend you do.”

I release her. My thumb is wet from her lip, a pink smear on my skin where I’ve rubbed off some of her lip gloss.

“I fully intend to keep my end of the bargain when the time comes, love,” I tell her with a shrug. “You’re the one who’s not holding up your end. You’re a clever girl, and I know you don’t like being patronised, so I don’t need to remind you what you have to lose. I suspect you’re already all too aware of it. If our deal falls through, though, you know it won’t be on me.”

And with that, I turn and walk away, leaving her alone on the writhing, watching dance floor.

It takes Desdemona almost half an hour to swallow her pride and return to the booth. I’m sitting with Blaise and Dimitri and the rest of the Brotherhood: Emerald’s arch-enemy and bitterest rival, Benjamin Montgomery, rugby captain Jamie Vale, and pale, stony Mikhail Rurik, rumoured political exile of some bleak little European country. They’re making bets—who’s going to get laid tonight.

I suppress a smirk. How fun can sex be for any of them? Sex is only ever fun when it’s messy and dirty and a little bit humiliating. They’re all too self-aware and self-possessed to let loose. Talking of which⁠—

Desdemona reappears after our confrontation looking utterly, rigidly perfect. She’s sobered up a little, and she’s rearranged her hair, and her dress seems somehow even more creaseless and impeccable than before.

With her spine poker straight, she crosses the dance floor, striding with measured, gliding steps where I’m standing with her feral, drunken friends.