Her hair was like silk. Would the rest of her feel as smooth?
“You mislead people from even the smallest truth.”
He made a grunt of agreement, then caught himself. “Truly, your imagination is getting the best of—”
“You like dogs,” she said.
Percy froze and that tantalizing curl fell from his grasp.
She nodded at his silence. “And cats and even, I daresay, fish. And youhatepotatoes,” she said. “I’d wager my life on it.”
His normal, stone-cold calm cracked with a chest full of unknown emotion that tasted like coal and sank into his gut with truth. “Don’t waste something so precious on such poor odds.”
“You’re a scoundrel.” She poked him in the chest, her finger not nearly as sharp as her tongue. “I shall expose your plot. You won’t get away with whatever scheme you’ve planned.”
Percy pushed the strange feeling away and dropped his mask, letting his easy smile turn cold. The lady didn’t know whom she threatened, and he’d been on the receiving end of a gun enough times to know when it was loaded. “I wish you’d have left your thoughts unspoken, my lady. For now, I must do something unpleasant.”
She stuck out her chin. “You won’t hurt me.”
“No?” He closed the space in an instant, catching her by the arms and pinning her to one of the stone pillars before her gasp finished. “You don’t know me, Lady Daniella. A woman as perceptive as you should know better. Corner an animal...” He nipped at her nose, tasting clove on her skin. “You’ll find we bite.”
Understanding cooled thoselovely, blazing eyes. She swallowed audibly, but her gaze didn’t stray from his.
She was bricky. He’d give her that. To accuse him of such things, in a private courtyard, no less. The last man who’d found himself in a similar position hadn’t left the yard, open or otherwise. Not in one piece, anyway.
Pulling a knife from his vest, he ignored the internal war raging inside at treating her thus. “Now, how shall I keep you quiet?”
The lady’s pulse jumped beneath his palm where it lay indecently against the bare skin at her throat—as silky as he’d imagined—but her eyes didn’t widen in panic like they should have.
An expert at deciphering body language, he took in her parted lips and dilated pupils and jolted. “You’re aroused?”
Her gaze jumped to his.
He saw the answer there, and his own body coiled into a hard spring.
He’d heard of people having particular tastes, usually revolving around dominance and submission. His friend, the Duke of Camine, had a rather unexpected taste for restraints, but Percy had never heard of a woman finding such things palatable.
Percy laid the flat of the blade against her mouth and watched, mesmerized, as her tongue flicked out to lick the metal.
His body sprung apart. He gritted his teeth and imagined cold storms and that insufferable genius, Gregori, and his less-than-desirable ideas of house cleaning, willing his arousal to deflate.
He forced his mind back to task. Any one of the Leishires’ guests could happen upon them in pursuit of their own pleasure.
Feeling the mental power back in his control, he leaned down and whispered in Lady Daniella’s ear, “That’s a dangerous secretyou’ve got there, my lady. What would your precioustonthink of such a naughty obsession?”
Shame cleared the lust from her expression.
Percy hated himself for being the cause.
No. He needed her scared, ashamed—anything to awaken the monster she’d unmasked. She was just another mark. Not a person. She couldn’t be unique or beautifully intriguing. That was how someone like him got stupidly garroted in a gentleman’s townhouse.
“Go on.” She pushed against the blade still at chin level with her jaw. “You’ve drawn it. Go ahead and use it.”
As far as bluffs went, it was magnificent. Too bad the haunted look in her eyes ruined the play.
His smile was real. “You shouldn’t say such things to a hardened killer. I won’t hesitate.”
“Then why are you shaking?”
