Page 52 of Bought for Blood

“You knew her?”

“I sat beside her at her second husband’s funeral. She complained the speech was too kind.” I refill her water before the attendant can move. “She’d have liked you. She kept a knife in her prayer book.”

“A butter knife?”

I smile. “Something sharper.”

She turns back around, and the smile she’s been holding off all evening gets free, quick and crooked. I sit with my wine and watch it happen.

“You’re being charming,” she says. An accusation.

“Yes.”

“Stop it.”

“No.” I set the carafe down. “Charm is something I’m good at, Serenity. You’ve had a month of the bad side of me. Let me show you the other side.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to.” Plainer than I planned. “You’re not on a schedule anymore. Nothing about your evenings is forced. Which means I have to be worth them, and I haven’t had to be worth anyone’s evening in a long time.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I find it amusing. And…you interest me.” It’s an understatement. I’ve thought of very little else since that first moment in the corridor.

Her heart trips, one beat catching the next. She covers it with another mouthful of the venison.

“How old are you?” she asks. No apology in it.

“Three hundred and six.”

Her spoon stops. “Holy shit. You were alive before—”

“Before your country. Before the language you’re swearing in ever picked up that accent. Yes.”

“Does it get boring?”

I turn my glass by the stem. “It did. For longer than you’ve been alive, it did.” I leave it there. Because telling her that the boredom ended when I walked into that compound would lead to more questions. She thinks a bored rich man heard a rumor about a drug and decided to try it. What I was actually doing inside that operation stays between me, Crowe, and the Court. Sharing it with her makes her as much a target as I am.

I change the subject. Vampire politics. Society gossip that I’ve managed to stay ahead of. She laughs, and I’m pleased, and she looks nothing like the pale creature I first saw in that compound.

Eventually, the attendants clear the last course. I send them out with a look, and when the doors close, I take the case from my pocket.

“What is that?” She frowns.

“A gift. Be still.”

I round the table behind her. Diamonds on white gold, two hundred years old. I open the clasp and bring it down against her throat. She goes rigid under it. Of course she does. My hands and her throat have one history, and her body knows it. I stay standing, my fingers at her nape, her pulse climbing under my thumb while I work the clasp. I could put my mouth on that pulse. I don’t. I do the clasp instead.

The stones settle over the exact skin I’ve been drinking from for a month.

“There.” My voice comes out lower than I planned. I step around where she can see me. “It survived a revolution and an empress. It’s never looked better.”

She puts two fingers on the stones and works through it. “This isn’t what I expected, Bastien. I don’t know what to do,” she says quietly.

“Neither do I. We can be confused together.”

“Okay.” She nods. “Okay… Do you play cards?”