“Do not touch me.” The words were crisp, yet the breath that carried them trembled.
Victor’s eyes held hers as he replaced the strand against the smooth coil at the nape of her neck. He had not meant to touch her again, but he did.
His fingertips traced the line where hair gave way to skin—a small, deliberate sweep. Gooseflesh rose in their wake, and she drew in a sharp breath.
“There,” he said. “Better.”
He should have stopped.
He did not.
His hand rose of its own accord, learning the shape of her face through the veil of night and her mask.
He touched the shell of her ear. He touched the line of her jaw. His thumb skimmed the corner of her mouth, just enough to map it.
She had a stubborn mouth. He liked stubborn mouths. They learned quickly.
“You will forget what you saw,” he said, almost conversationally.
“And if I don’t?”
He rested the pad of his thumb on her lower lip and pressed gently, as one might test a ripe fruit. “There will be consequences.”
“Consequences,” she echoed breathily.
Victor’s blood answered with a slow, dark heat that he kept under a tight leash. He did not intimidate women. He did not coerce them. And yet he wanted to witness something here.
Not submission. Not even a kiss. He wanted the calm to break. He wanted the mask to slip to see the honest expression beneath.
Her lashes fluttered. A flush crept up her neck, faint as dawn along a pale horizon.
Satisfaction unfurled within him.
There it is.
“Stop,” she demanded, the slightest strain beneath the smoothness.
“You should not play with fire,” he purred. “You do not yet know where it burns.”
“And you,” she retorted, “have yet to find out who I am.”
“Then show me.”
He leaned in, enough to feel the thread between them pull until it vibrated. His thumb still rested on her lower lip. The pulse in his wrist quickened. The scent of orange blossom permeated the cold air.
She lifted her chin as if she meant to escape him by a hair. He followed that hair.
“What would you have of me?” he asked softly. “Silence? A vow? A promise written in my own hand? Tell me the shape of the assurance that will satisfy you.”
“The simplest one,” she answered.
“Which is?”
“That you will cease to pester me.”
He laughed, quiet and genuine. “You are very certain of the word.”
“It is the only one that fits.”
