Page 41 of The Unweaver

“Aye. Technology will only make the destruction more efficient, until magic is just another resource to exploit, a tool wielded by the few against the many. Myself, I’d rather be one of the few than the many.”

“I’m sure many men will feel that way. Do you also suffer delusions of moral authority?”

The whisper of a smile curved his mouth. “Not lately. Though, people aren’t above nature’s fundamental laws. We’re only more complicated apes.”

She caught her own mouth curving. It wasn’t every day she chatted about the end of mankind with someone as jaded as herself. “Oh?” she found herself saying with a growing smile. “Pray tell.”

He glanced over, and his lips rose with hers. “Take romance, for example. Romance is an unnecessarily elaborate mating ritual. Marriage is mate-guarding behavior codified on paper, a financial transaction to ensure paternity for the inheritance of shite we don’t need to people we don’t care about.”

“I can only imagine your take on sex.”

Perhaps it was the temptation of his near-full smile, or the car’s warm intimacy, or temporary insanity that made her blurt the words. Words that lingered in the crackling silence as her face heated.

His gaze slid to hers. A sly grin tugged on his mouth. “Reproductive instinct driven by involuntary muscle spasms.”

Cora laughed. “I didn’t take you for such a romantic, Bane. You are… not what I was expecting.”

“And what’s that?”

“Honest. Maybe a bit too honest.”

“No such thing. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone just said what they fuckin’ mean.”

“Horrendous.” Another laugh escaped. “Absolutely horrendous, that’s what it would be like. Hearing the unfiltered thoughts of the dead is bad enough. To hear that from the living like Teddy does—”

Her laughter died. Sorrow slashed through her. They’d come to collect Teddy’s corpse. He wouldn’t be hearing anything again unless they somehow managed to pull this off.

They pulled up to the cemetery gates piled with snow. Turning off the car, he slung an arm over the seat back and faced her. His fingertips brushed her shoulder, and she shifted away, feeling flushed despite the cold fogging their breath. His nearness accosted her senses.

“Try it,” he said. “It’s liberating. I’ll ask you a question. You tell me the truth. The unvarnished truth.”

The corners of her mouth lifted at the absurdity. “All right.”

Gilded by the setting sun, the angles of his face were too hard to be strictly handsome, but there was a devilish allure to the curve of his mouth, the feel of his body sliding against hers in a tub of pure gold, a firm ridge pressing into her belly.

“Do you want to fuck me?”

“What?” Breath rushed out of her lungs and her heart took off at a gallop. “Wh-why are you asking?”

He gazed at her with the full intensity of his regard, as if she mystified him. “Because I’m not sure.” His eyes fell to her lips, parted on an indrawn breath. “And I want to be.”

The hypnotic pull of his gaze held hers captive, conjuring dark promises of tangled limbs and the slick heat of unrealized pleasures. Anticipation permeated the air between their swirling breaths. Silence, but for her thundering heartbeat, grew heavier.

For a moment—only a moment—Cora entertained the impossibility. What if she said yes? How would it feel to unravel the self-control of the most powerful man in London? Thetemptation that had been ignited in her veins was now aflame. An incriminating blush lit her cheeks.

Decades she’d spent fortifying her defenses, and he’d toppled them with a single question. A question that burned in his depthless eyes as he weakened her resolve, brick by brick. A question she had the urge to answer by crushing her mouth against his.

Unthinkingly, she had drifted closer. He reached out and stroked her cheek with a featherlight touch.

The memory attacked without warning.A clammy hand silenced her scream. She was pushed onto her knees, her tears soaking the stained mattress—

Cora gasped. She reared back until the door handle bit into her spine. Bane stilled, eyeing her like a skittish animal he was trying not to spook. His hand fell.

She dragged in a breath before panic took flight. She wasn’t in Felix’s squat, but in Bane’s Bugatti, with her new boss who was trying to manipulate her. As Felix had. As Mother had. He might be caressing instead of coercing, but he was prodding for weaknesses to exploit all the same. And she’d melted into a puddle at his crude question.

Cora conceded that, in that isolated moment, she’d felt attraction towards him. Irrational, foolhardy attraction. But attraction was a concession she was unwilling to make in their relationship. However irregular of a polygon that relationship might be.

The twinge in her side reminded her that a few days ago, this man had broken her ribs and labeled her avinegary spinsteras she fell apart in her brother’s empty flat.

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