Page 75 of Tempted By the Vampire Prince

I shook my head. “Anyone could use purple sealing wax. It doesn’t point to any one person. But it does open up the idea that The Devouring has a correspondent. Someone with money, or standing, or both.” I held her gaze. “A patron.”

“Mhm.” She gave me a leery glance, then marched over to the seat I’d offered her. Spine straight and chin held high.

A breath of relief left my chest. She was going to stay. However, my relief was short-lived when she began unbuttoning the first of three small buttons at her elbow.

I swallowed hard.

The first one came undone, and the energy in the room shifted. By the time she reached the third, I made myself study the tray, the empty hearth, the spines of books I had owned for two centuries.

“Hartley,” she muttered to herself as she worked. Unaware that she was disassembling my self-control by the buttonhole. “Why do I feel like if we applied the right pressure, he’d crack?”

I collected the barbed thimble and the cup from the tray and lowered myself in the chair beside her, setting both on the table between us. She peeled the fine glove down her forearm until she reached her wrist, revealing blue-green veins running beneath pale skin. Finger by finger, she tugged them off.

I had watched women disrobe and been less affected. Every part of me tightened, hunger and want twisting into a rope. Only one of those appetites had an appointment this evening, but my body didn’t seem to care. My arousal strained against my trousers, thick and heavy. I tried my best to ignore it.

“Who’s Hartley?” I asked.

She draped the glove over the chair and held out her hand. Her cheeks flushed with crimson heat. “Just some former sailor who works for Lou.”

“A sailor?” I repeated.

She nodded. “Yes. He wears a tatty old sailor’s jacket, similar to yours. But without all the tassels.” She grinned, as if to needle me, but the grin quickly faded. “He walks with a crutch. An old injury. It’s why he doesn’t sail anymore.”

“You know a great deal about him.”

A shrug. “No more than most.”

Her heart said otherwise. That much was clear. I wanted to find this Hartley very much. I wanted to examine this man in the tatty jacket whose name put a hitch in her pulse. I wanted to know what he’d done to earn residence in her heartbeat. And then, in a civilized way, I wanted to inspect his other leg.

“Then it’s agreed,” I said, as casually as I could. “Our first order of business is finding Hartley and applying pressure.”

She bit her lip again. “There’s one problem. I can’t scry for him. The Devouring medallions make them unfindable.”

“I’ll pull the fleet records. If he ever sailed under Valemer colors, I’ll have his history, next of kin, and with luck, his address.”

Excitement split across her face. “Once my magick returns, we’ll hunt him down together.”

Hunting down Hartley. Together. A grin quirked up one side of my mouth. “It’s a date then.”

Her pulse spiked. Mine would have too, had it the option.

“A plan,” I amended. “A strategy. A scheduled joint undertaking.” Trying to change the subject, I asked, “How are your fingers, by the way?”

She flexed the fingers of her other hand. “Healing. Slower than I’d like.” She let out a huff. “It turns out witches without magick mend at the speed of ordinary humans, which is very annoying.”

“May I?”

She pulled her hand back. “It’s nothing to concern yourself with.”

“And yet… I am concerned.”

Furrowing her brows, she asked, “Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?”

She leveled me with a look. “I don’t need your pity.”

The word triggered a long-buried emotional response, and my hand moved before I could stop it. I caught her chin and tipped her face up to mine. “You are not getting my pity,” I said. “This is how I am.”