Page 54 of The Bargain

I obey.

Am I fucking up? Is this the plan working, or is this me walking into a trap I set myself?

When I reach her, in the red lights of Montgomery’s house, under the flickering of all those candles, of all this silverware and crystal, with the smell of alcohol and candy apples and caramel and sweat and perfume in the air, I feel like I’ve been caught in some sort of spell. I curl an arm around Desdemona’s shoulders and she plasters her body into mine, thighs pressing right against me, where there’s no chance she can’t feel the hard bulge she’s causing.

“You’re late,” she whispers into my ear.

Her breath is hot and smells like blackberries and aniseed. I grin beneath my mask. I don’t think she’s putting this on, but maybe she is—and the not-knowing is sort of a game.

And because I also don’t know if I’m putting this on, and since my life is a fucked up mess anyway, a cosmic joke with my existence as the grand punchline—why not play?

“Impatient girls don’t get rewards.”

Her friends are all around us: I even spot the hulking, beastly form of Dimitri Kavinski nearby. They’re all looking, and the Inquisitor, whoever he is, is no doubt nearby, too.

This is all for them, right?

Desdemona’s fingers dig into my arms: the sleeves of my T-shirt are short enough that her fingernails make contact with the skin over my biceps. I’m not big and thick, like her cousin Dimitri, and I don’t have washboard abs like the rest of the Spearcrest boy-dolls.

But I’m strong because I’ve had no choice but to be, and there’s not a lot of fat to me. My body’s always been in the midst of an emergency, and so there’s nothing for her to grasp except muscle and skin.

“I don’t want to be patient,” she says into my ear. And, like she can’t help herself, “What rewards?”

“Be a good girl, love, and you might find out.”

Her body still pressed into mine, she pulls slightly away, staring into my face, but there’s only a plastic mask for her to see, and the eye slits are too narrow for her to make out my eyes clearly, especially in the dim bloodied light.

I, on the other hand, get a good look at her face: she’s wearing no make-up except for the lines of black and silver framing her pretty brown eyes. Her mouth is soft and fleshy, there’s the low flush of alcohol in her cheeks, messy enough to be wholly authentic. She’s a little drunk, and a little restless, and—yes, impatient.

Have you been thinking of me, love?

When I spread Desdemona’s pretty legs open on her fancy little desk, and when I slid my fingers inside her and worked her with a patient, steady thumb, I had a vague idea in my mind that this might be enough to throw her off balance, to let her taste something she’s never tasted before.

Like placing a sweet candy on my enemy’s tongue for her to suck, poisoning her before she could even know she’d been poisoned.

Instead of saying something biting or mean, she leans forward to speak right against the shell of my ear.

“What do you want me to do?”

There’s a flash of panic in my chest, and I have to force myself to get a grip.

This is all part of the plan, isn’t it? Even if it doesn’t feel like it is.

Especially because it doesn’t feel like it is.

“Let’s do what we do best, love.” My husky whisper doesn’t give away the sudden flutter of fear in my belly. “Let’s blur the lines.”

20

Nightmarish Vision

Desdemona

I realise just how tipsy I am when Elias pushes back his stupid plastic mask halfway up his face to kiss me open-mouthed in the middle of Benjamin Montgomery’s gallery, and instead of pushing him away, I kiss him right back.

It’s not my kind of kissing—wet and sloppy and a little dirty—but then this isn’t my kind of party, and Elias isn’t my kind of person, and I’m kind of not myself. And I’ve been thinking about Elias’s mouth ever since the last time I saw him, no matter how hard I’ve tried to think of just about anything else.

Maybe it’s because he didn’t kiss me back then, but surely, kissing him like this, kissing him now with my arms around his neck and my body pressed to his and his tongue gliding hotly against mine—surely this is going to scratch the itch, give my brain the closure it’s been waiting for.