“You were beautiful as you were,” I tell her.
She smirks at me in the glass. “You’re kind, but now I’m …striking.”
Charlotte giggles from the sofa. “You’re going to get any attention you want. We might need to assign a bodyguard for you,” she teases.
It might actually be necessary.
“I’ll just take one of the hundred blades from Uncle Del’s chambers.”
My eyes dart to Del as he looks up from the map and gives Nix a wink. He downplayed his devotion to these girls, his kindness, his influence in their lives. You don’t earn a familiar name like that without effort and love.
Amelia catches my attention as she saunters across the room to Emmanuel.
Leaning against the wall, my assassin watches her with rapt attention.
She stands before him, staring up into his blazing eyes.
Definitely an unforeseen weakness.
“Ask for what you want,” he says.
She takes a step closer. “Will you turn me?”
“If you make me one promise.”
She frowns up at him. “What’s the promise?”
“You can never touch me.”
Her mouth parts, and her eyes narrow. “But—”
“Never,” he says fiercely.
Amelia’s expression clouds. “I don’t understand—”
“Promise me,” he growls.
“Don’t growl your words at me, sir,” she shoots back, and I hide my grin behind my hand.
He doesn’t flinch. “It’s Emmanuel, and you will trust me.”
“I already said I do.”
“Then act like it.”
Amelia glowers at my assassin, and then her chin tilts. “Can I touch you before you turn me?”
His eyes blow wide in surprise. I wasn’t expecting that question either.
His gaze assesses Amelia, her soft brown hair brushing at her waist as she steps closer to him.
“Careful, I bite,” he says through a smirk I’ve never seen and a smolder that could bring us all to our knees.
She takes another step, her delicate body poised before one of the deadliest males I know. “That wasn’t a ‘no.’”
“It wasn’t,” he says tightly.
She reaches her fingertips to his face and draws them along his sharp jawline.
