Everything inside me contracts.
Of course she knew.
She spun me in circles, day after day, obscuring her secrets in plain sight, using confusion and that New Age fog to slow me down while she calculated her next move.
I should be furious. The revelation of her playing me like this should drive me to put my fist through a wall.
But this wave surging inside me is nothing like anger.
Instead, respect burns through my muscles.
Respect for the woman who matched me and never gave up the game. For the metal under her skin, her razor-sharp mind, and her will to outlast anything I threw at her.
On the surface, she’s slick, shiny silk. Underneath, she’s steel, burnished and honed to a blade’s edge.
I shuffle to the bed, sit on the edge, and gape.
When she glances back up, she’s someone else. She’s no longer the woman who talked to her used, battered laptop or the vague, wayward believer who dealt in her crystals and smoke.
Now she’s someone new and alive. Someone dangerous.
Our eyes meet.
She doesn’t blink. “Hello.”
With one word, my old impressions dissolve into ash as the truth punches me.
For the first time, I’m experiencing a greeting from the real Jordan.
She manipulated me. She won. And she survived.
I slide my hand to her neck, reel her in, and kiss her.
Not with demanding hunger. Not to own.
Just to know her.
To learn what her mouth tastes like when she’s not pretending, when it’s just her and no lies between us. My hand follows the line of her throat, where her pulse beats steady.
She’s not prey… She’s my equal.
Desire floods through me. I don’t want to take her. I mean, Ido, but not now.
No, this desire is more than that.
I want to truly—fully—make hermine.
But that will have to wait.
When we part, I lean back, my mind spinning. “So, where is it?”
“At my mother’s home.” She utters the answer like a curse. “Her estate. A prison.”
Of course. The safe is with Jordan’s mother.
I have so many questions running through my head.
No time to dive into them now, though.
