“Don’t be so dramatic, Price.” There was a wobble in her voice, hardly perceptible to anyone who hadn’t spent a lifetime pretending not to know her. She capped the lipstick with meticulous care. “I looked at the dress you brought over. This one is perfectly comparable.”
Surely, there were words—real, cognizant, intelligent words—he could say here. All he could think of was that maddening slide of velvet over bone. He was seconds away from breaking out in hives. Stalking up behind her, he dumped her coat on the floor and braced his hands against the rail on either side of her hips. Boxing her in against the glass.
Her eyes flew to his reflection. “Excuseyou.”
The emergency tone sounded. He didn’t move. “Tell me why you’re so angry with me.”
“I’m not angry.”
“But you are. You can’t even look at me.” He swallowed hard. “Is it because I’ve told you too much or because I haven’t told you enough?”
“It’s because you’re unknowable.” Her breath fanned red over the glass. “And I can’t understand why you won’t let me see you without a mask.”
His chest ached. Slowly, he ran the backs of his knuckles up her sleeve. Her breath caught. The sound slammed through him as his fingertips skated over the pale protrusion of her collarbone. Closed around her throat. Her chin arched upward at his coaxing.
“Look at me,” he said. “There’s no mask.”
Cypress eyes met his in the mirror. Her stare was dark with invitation. God, he wanted to take her up on it. Against the looking glass. Velvet crushed around her waist. A crowd of people waiting just outside. The dead closing in.
Instead, he said, “I know you brought it with you.”
Her focus didn’t waver. “Brought what?”
“Don’t play with me. I asked you to keep it somewhere safe.”
Her eyes were big and round as she asked, “Where’s safer than with me?”
Understanding turned his insides to smoke. “Where is it? In your dress?”
“My tights,” she admitted. “My dress didn’t have pockets.”
“Christ.” The word choked out of him, like he was drowning in reverse. “Take it out.”
“Why? Does it bother you?”
“Yes,” he ground out. “It’s making me crazy. Take it out.”
She didn’t. Instead, she held his gaze, heavy-lidded and lovely in the blood-red light. “It was you in the water that day at Walden Pond.” She was a dog with a bone, her determination inviolable. “I know it was. I just don’t know why you won’t admit it.”
“Delaney—”
“Admit it.”
His blood thundered in his ears. He couldn’t deny her the truth if he tried. “It was me in the water.”
“I knew it,” she whispered, triumphant. “Iknew it.”
His only answer was to bend down and press his mouth to the place where her neck met her shoulder. Whatever else she might have said to him melted at her lips in a gasp. They moved together with an illicit slowness, neither of them meaning to do it, the stolen moment spooling away from them like thread.
“Delaney.” Her skin pebbled beneath his breath. “Take it out.”
“Why?”
“I can’t stand it.”
“You get it, then,” she said.
Her words were an order. His heart was a jackhammer. Obedient, he rucked the velvet crush of fabric around her waist. The tone sounded again, flat and low, as he dragged his palm over the hard ridge of her hip. He was achingly aware, as ever, of the slipping time. It moved too fast for him to chase. He could feel it sharpening inside him—the understanding that this was the closest he’d ever been to her. The knowledge that it would never be enough.
