Page 45 of Hazard a Guest
She felt her own eyes close, felt her lungs fill with perfection, and they just stood like that for a time, entwined, holding one another, connected.
“I want you,” she confessed to him, “so very, very much.”
He released a little burst of air through his nose, almost like disbelief, almost like he couldn’t believe his luck. His eyes opened a little, still hooded, still soft, as though he just wanted to see her again, to confirm to himself that it was really Ember who had said those words.
“More than I’ve ever wanted any man,” she continued, both for emphasis and because it was true. “And that scares the absolute soul out of me.”
“Does it?” he said, lifting his head, searching her eyes. “Why?”
She felt herself starting to smile, a fondness growing in her chest that defied definition. “You are a man, aren’t you? Perhaps a perfect one, but still a man.”
He just raised his brows, clearly without a response to such a statement.
It made her laugh. It made her pull him closer. “You could destroy me, Joseph Cresson. You could break me into a thousand pieces and I’d never be able to find wholeness again. Do you understand that?”
He paused. He considered it. Helistened.
And then he nodded. Like he did understand. Like he had heard her.
“People have hurt you,” he said, almost whispering. “I won’t hurt you.”
She forgot to breathe for a moment. She felt it welling up in her like oxygen, but hot and threatening, like she might sob instead. She felt herself trembling a little, felt the desire once again to flee, and shook her head at him. “You can’t promise that.”
“I can,” he said immediately, firm but without any force, without a single thread of harshness or presumption. “Iampromising that.”
How could she respond? How could a woman who knew better answer such horrible sincerity?
He didn’t seem to expect words from her. Not a return of that promise, not an acceptance of it, not a validation that she’d heard it. He leaned down again and kissed her, gentle and sweet, in a way she absolutely did not deserve.
“Come sit down,” he suggested, leading her back to the table. “Just take a breath, Ember. It’s all right. Everything is well right now. Everything is safe. Everything is perfect.”
It was true, she realized, letting him return her to the seat she’d fled.
She was safe.
She was well.
And everything was perfect.
CHAPTER 16
Sleep was a thing Joe only suspected he once knew.
The return to the tables had been faster than he’d expected, much more immediate. There hadn’t been a slow trickle of recovering guests that gradually built night to night, but the crack of the doors for a bunch of hungry dice and card hounds who’d been tending an ache for their compulsions alongside their sour stomachs, rather than in place of.
It was a little bit horrifying, he thought. And unfortunately for Freddy, more than a little bit familiar.
“I was like that too,” he said quietly to Joe that first night back. “Iamlike that.”
And then he’d turned his back when it was Joe’s turn at the hazard table.
Those ivory dice of his were heavier than the ones Ember had brought to the room. The grooves on each side had been filled with little clumps of gold which flashed prettily in the candlelight when they were rolled.
He did as he’d been taught, and always bet on seven. He won once, but lost three times, and he knew it wasn’t important. Ember had explained the numbers to him, the patterns, and the expectations. The dangerous hazard players were the ones who stood to the side of the felt. They were the ones who won.
Ember had said she would be cheating at the card tables, but from Joe’s estimation, she was also losing as often as she won. He must have been missing something about her strategy, however, because twice, when she’d caught his eye across the room, she’d given him a little wink.
He wanted nothing more than to take her away from these rooms and keep her all to himself. He wanted many things, if he was being honest with himself, many things that were not precisely benevolent.
