Page 22 of Broken Blades

Smart mouth.

I almost smiled.

"We get paid to perform," I said. "You don't."

Her expression shifted. Something flickered behind her eyes—surprise, maybe. Or recognition that someone saw the weight she carried.

"No," she agreed quietly. "I don't."

The admission felt like a gift she didn't mean to give.

I stepped closer.

She turned to leave.

The movement came sudden—embarrassment or self-preservation, maybe both. Her dress caught the low branch of a sculpted hedge, fabric snagging with a soft tearing sound that made her gasp.

She twisted, reaching back to free herself. The motion pulled the material tighter, wedging it deeper into winter-brittle wood.

Small laugh escaped her throat. Nervous. Mortified.

Great. Perfect.

I stepped forward before conscious thought caught up. Instinct overriding calculation.

Her fingers fumbled at the caught fabric, making it worse. The delicate material bunched, threatened to tear completely.

Hold still.

I didn't say it aloud. Didn't trust my voice.

My hands moved to the branch instead. Careful. Deliberate. Finding where silk twisted around dead wood.

She went rigid under my proximity. Breath held. Waiting.

I worked the fabric free slowly—one thread at a time, unwinding rather than pulling. The hedge released its claim grudgingly, and the zipper giving way beneath my knuckles. Metal teeth separating. Slow glide of the pull sliding downward, friction releasing with each millimeter of exposed skin. Gravity taking over. The sound whispered between us—intimate, deliberate, impossible to mistake for anything but what it was.

Cold air rushed across her bare back. The dress gaped open from shoulder blade to lower spine. Lantern light caught smooth skin, the delicate architecture of vertebrae, the vulnerable curve where back met the fabric pooling at her waist.

She froze completely. Breath stopped. Body locked.

I saw it before she felt it—the exact moment realization dawned. The subtle shift in her shoulders. The fractional intake of breath that meant understanding just crashed through shock.

Then she felt the cold. Felt exposure. Felt my presence behind her, close enough that my breath probably ghosted across newly revealed skin.

Her spine stiffened. Shoulders drew together instinctively, trying to close what had opened.

But the damage was done.

I stood there, branch forgotten in my hand, fabric freed but not released. Staring at the unmarked expanse of her back. Twenty-one years of protection. Twenty-one years of her father's careful cultivation. Twenty-one years of innocence and trust and believing the world was safe. Undone by a hedge and gravity and my hands too close to something I had no business touching.

She made a sound—small, choked, mortified.

My chest tightened. Christ.

This wasn't the plan. Not yet. Not like this. But her zipper hung open in the winter garden, and paparazzi waited in positions I'd carefully arranged, and the opportunity I'd been waiting for just presented itself three chapters ahead of schedule.

Her hand reached back desperately, searching for the pull she couldn't reach.