Page 53 of Bought for Blood

“Cards?” I frown.

“Yes. You look like a gambling man.”

I chuckle. “Serenity Sangrey, you have no idea.”

I send for a deck, and we play at the small table by the fire, close enough that her knee is a hand’s width from mine.

Poker. Five-card and she plays it hard, folds early without regret, bluffs with a dead-level face, takes my money in buttons. And it feels good. Because she could have chosen to go to her room early, and she chose to stay here instead.

“Where did you learn this?” I ask after she’s beaten me yet again.

“My grandmother. Sundays, after the stew.” She rakes in the buttons with a flourish that says she’s enjoying this. “She said cards show you who a man is when he thinks it’s only a game.”

“And who am I?”

“Losing,” she says.

I laugh again. I am not accustomed to laughing. “Is that so?”

I win the next two hands. In the third, I fold a pair I should have played—half out of kindness—and she stops with her cards in the air.

“Don’t you dare.” Her eyes come up, hard. “Don’t you dare let me win. Play me for real, or we don’t play.”

“For real, then.”

I beat her twice more, honestly. She scowls at the buttons and demands another hand, and wins it clean, then takes everything on the table. She sits back with the firelight on the diamonds, one fist raised an inch off the table.

I can’t remember when I enjoyed poker so much.

I walk her up at midnight, past the family in their oil frames, and at the door she stops and turns. Her chin lifts. Her hands settle at her sides. Her head tips, just barely, the throat offered above the diamonds.

“Good night, Serenity.”

She blinks. “You haven’t—” Her hand rises to the stones. “Don’t you…?” She trails off.

“No.” I take her hand out of the air. I bend and press my mouth to her knuckles, and hold there, her pulse tapping under my lips, her scent rising off the inside of her wrist, my fangs aching down their full length in their sockets. I pause there a moment too long. Then I straighten and give her hand back. “If I ever do again, it will be because you offer.”

She stares at me. “Because I— Why?”

“Because too much has already been taken without your consent.” I step back. “And because I don’t want anything you don’t hand me. Good night. The house is yours till dusk. Sleep past noon. Terrorize my kitchen.”

I’m four steps down the gallery when her voice comes after me.

“The stew has to be her recipe. I’ll write it down.”

I don’t turn around, because my face is doing something I haven’t authorized. “Sunday,” I say, and keep walking.

The study fire is banked. I pour a brandy I won’t drink and stand at the hearth.

Her throat is safer tonight than it’s been in a year. It’s also entirely out of my reach. Unless the thirst takes over.

But it won’t.

I’ll make sure of it.

Chapter 20

Serenity