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Máel looked at her, in her gilded ribbons and silken gown, her chest heaving slightly, her face flushed and smiling from the whisky she knew she ought not to have drunk, and revised his opinion of her.
She was not her father’s daughter. She was clever and compelling, carnality sheathed in silk. He felt it rise out of her in bands of invisible heat: this woman wanted to be unbound. She was straining at the seams of her noble life.
He looked her over as she bent to examine the board, hair falling in a golden river over her shoulders.
“You are a dangerous woman, Lady Cassia,” he murmured.
“Pah, you are simply frightened I shall beat you in chess,” she said lightly.
He laughed and her gaze slid up.
“You think I cannot?”
He merely smiled, which made her flush. She was so vibrant, so filled with constantly shifting colors: the pinks and purples of her silken gown; her blonde hair catching glints of firelight; her pale cheeks touched with an amber glow. It almost hurt the eye to look at her.
“And you are a dangerous man, Sir Rogue,” she added.
“That I am.”
“Of course, everyone is perilous in their own fashion,” she went on thoughtfully. “For instance,” she made her move, sliding her queen over a space, “my father is a powerful sword fighter. He has beaten everyone he has met in the ring for the past decade.”
“Not me,” Máel pointed out.
That gained him a level look. “You did not beat him. He beat himself,” she said thoughtfully. “And I have no idea why.”
He shuttered his surprise, but he felt it inside, an arrow bolt skidding down his stomach.
“And yet,” she said, “here we sit, two creatures of God, their lives compromised by him. Nay, one whose life is imperiled.”
She reached for the flask and took another small, dainty sip. He watched her mouth form a circle, watched the rim touch her lips, press against the pink flesh… Just as he wished to do.
Her throat worked as she swallowed the dainty sip and lowered the flask. He slid his gaze from her mouth to her eyes, which were fixed on him.
For the first time in a very long time, he felt a twinge in his chest. He knew what it was: an ashen, long-extinguished emotion that had existed before his heart had burned itself out in a fiery path of hate and fury.
He did not want those things rekindled.
He did not want emotion.
He wanted retribution and his father’s sword.
But he did not want this woman frightened.
And he had no idea why. He generally wanted everyone frightened.
At the perimeter of his vision were her hands, small and pale, with curving fingers. Fingers that had held his whittled lion to her cheek in delight.
He ground his jaw, then tightened it, but the words came out anyhow. “My payment depends on your safety,” he said tautly. “You are in no danger from me.” He looked up. “You've my word.”
She gave a dismissive little shrug. “But you do not have mine, Sir Rogue. I might do anything. You've no idea.”
This time there was no shuttering his surprise. He stared, then burst out laughing.
The corners of her mouth tipped up, her eyes all but sparkling at him.
The bite came again. Tugged out by some cord that seemed to connect them, a weave that was almost physical. He felt it in the air, tightening every time she smiled at him.
Lust, he assured himself, which made everything simpler.
