“A date,” he clarifies, and she nods. “What else should I call it?”
She thinks it over, her gaze still pinging between the trees. “An arrangement.”
“That’s an ugly word.”
Her eyes snap to his and stay there. “We’re doing an ugly thing.”
“Do you really think so?”
She nods again. So close to her, he can see the blood fluttering in the curve of her neck. The back of his throat prickles. Sometimes, he thinks there are two of him. The boy and the hunger. He draws nearer to her as his two selves battle for control.
“That hurts my feelings,” he tells her.
“You’ll get over it.”
It comes out contentious, the way it always does—like she’s primed for a fight. Maybe that’s why he likes her so much. He knows what it’s like to move through life with his fists up.
She’s still in uniform, same as the first day she came to Mercy Lodge. Plain brown coat. Hideous pleated skirt. Her stockings ripped. He lifts her tie and lets it ribbon through his fingers. A thrill shoots through him when she shivers.
“I thought I told you not to come here in Hornbeam colors.”
He hears her heart kick into a trot. “I left in a hurry.”
She’s nervous. He can smell it on her, pheromone thick. Her gaze has drifted back to the trees. He closes her tie in his fist and gives it a single firm tug. Caught off-balance, she teeters a step toward him.
“You’re distracted,” he accuses her.
“I’m cold. It’s freezing out here.”
He clocks the lie instantly. She’s prettiest when she’s lying. All her tells come screaming to the surface. Her toes twist in. She worries at her fingers. Sometimes—if it’s a particularly terrible lie—the tips of her ears turn pink. It’s so perfectly human of her it makes his whole chest hurt. Makes him think about carving open a vein and drinking the color from her cheeks.
“Invite me inside,” she says. “You’re being rude.”
He can’t help grinning. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
She’s an eternal paradox, her heart thundering even as she doles out orders. Pushing him so he’ll push back. Provoking him the way he provokes her.
They’ve been doing this dance for months.
Knowing it’ll infuriate her, he makes a deliberate show of offering her his arm, like they’re members of the English ton. Dallying in the gardens. Flirting with scandal. Tempting fate. All he does is tempt fate whenever she’s around.
“Would you do me the honor of accompanying me indoors?”
“Is that supposed to be a British accent?”
“There’s no pleasing you,” he says, dropping the affect. “Come inside. There’s dancing.”
She makes a face. “I can’t picture you dancing.”
He likes that—the idea that she pictures him. Back home in Little Hill. Under a broad yellow sun. Dragging thoughts of him around like her own personal thundercloud.
“You should,” he says. “I’m very good at it.”
A quietsnapdraws his attention away. The sound came from the woods. He listens, and there it is again—not the quiet pad of a wolf, nor the heavy snuff of a bear, but the crack of a twig giving way beneath a boot.
There’s someone else out there.
