Page 7 of Twisting Beauty

A shift in the air prickled the back of my neck.

Then the scent of whiskey and smoke and that low dark orchestra of strings rose up around me.

I spun on my heel.

Lorcan leaned against the wall beside the door, arms folded, gaze fixed on me with that same hard, watchful intensity that made the room feel smaller.

I had locked the door. I knew I had. And yet he was here anyway, already inside, already watching me rifle through Rua’s things.

A cold shiver slid down my spine. How long had he been standing there?

Long enough, apparently.

“Did you enjoy your time in Romania, Rua?” he asked.

The question hit wrong enough to make me still.

Romania. Right. That was the lie they’d been feeding the outside world while Rua was really locked inside Magdalene’s.

I looked at him over the half-open drawer and forced my face into bored irritation. “You and I both know I’ve been at Magdalene.”

His jaw tightened. Then he pushed off the wall and started toward me, slow and deliberate, his eyes locked on mine with a new, sharpened certainty. “How did you escape?”

I shoved the drawer shut and straightened, pulse beating hard under the cut on my throat.

“I was discharged, asshole.” I kept my chin high, but he did not stop coming.

“Discharged, huh?”

I gave ground without meaning to, one step and then another, backing deeper into the room because there was nowhere else to go.

“That’s right.”

My back hit the wall, stopping me cold.

He closed the last of the distance and planted himself in front of me, taking up every inch of space I might have used to slip around him.

“They just let you out,” he said, “unsupervised.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and hated that it only pushed the black lace tighter across my body. “They said I had just enough brain function to deal with you.”

A smirk flashed across his face and died just as fast. Then his eyes sharpened. “You’re quick for someone who used to fumble through sentences.”

“You’re very curious for someone who supposedly doesn’t give a shite.”

I could feel him measuring every word, every look, every breath. Rua had never spoken to him like this. We both knew it.

“You seem different.”

A sharp inhale escaped me before I could stop it. I smoothed it out fast and clung to the first lie that sounded plausible. “They did some experimental therapy, okay? Side effects. Memory lapses. They said I might act different.”

I tried to slip out around him.

He planted one hand against the wall beside my head, crowding me in, his heat boxing me up against the wall, his scent turning the air thick and maddening, while his gaze dragged over my face.

My pulse slammed hard as he leaned in until his mouth hovered close enough to turn the threat of a kiss into its own kind of weapon.

“I liked you better when you didn’t speak, Rua.”