Page 113 of House of Crimson Hearts
Her lips twitch. “Oh, you’re jealous?” she says, her voice lowering, lust threading through her tone.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snap.
But she’s walking up to me, this dance we play over and over. One of us prowling toward the other.
I step, step, step until my back hits a wall. I shift against it as she paces closer and realise I’m not against a wall at all but a curtain. Her arm reaches up beside me and she pulls a cord, the wall vanishes, the curtains shooting into crevices.
Her office wall isn’t a wall at all, but a giant window allowing her to look down upon the club. Or the club-goers to look up at her.
She tugs her office chair around and picks up her goblet, taking a sip from it. Watching my reaction the entire time. Her chair is more like a high-backed black and red throne, ornate filigree twirling up the edges and over the seat arch.
She sits in it, reaching up and pulling me onto her lap.
“We need to figure out what the riddle means,” she says, wrapping her arms around me and lacing her fingers into mine.
I’m stiff in her arms, my palms are sweaty where I’m trying to suppress the need to dose. But she tugs at me until I relax.
“This is my favourite place to think,” she says. “There’s something mesmerising about being up here while they’re all down there. The only thing that helps clear my mind better is sex.”
I choose to ignore that statement, or the fact that it’s true for me too. I notice several platforms with poles and half-naked dancers. One woman of whom is grinding her pussy against a fellow male dancer’s thigh.
She must catch me because she says, “Remind you of anything? A certain canal bridge perhaps? Little exhibitionist that night, weren’t you?”
“Or maybe everyone on the boat was just voyeuristic.”
“A little of both, I think.”
My head is fuzzy, I’m having trouble focusing on her words, on the room.
She taps my thigh to stand me up and slips her hand back in mine, pulling me to the window so we can look down. But she narrows her eyes at me instead.
“You’re sweating, and your heart rate is elevated,” she says, a blunt fact.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why,” I lie. I don’t want to have to vocalise it, but my fingers have started to tremble, and my stomach is churning.
“You’re lying,” she breathes and lowers her mouth to my neck, kissing down towards my collarbone.
“We don’t have time for this. We only have a day and a half.”
“We won’t win if you’re in a state of full-blown withdrawal. Though I must say, I’ve never known an addiction like this. Your tolerance is so much lower than most addicts.”
“Yes. Thank you. No need to remind me I’m weak.”
“I didn’t say weak.”
“It was implied,” I say, my blood heating, fizzing through my veins.
“Not at all. I just find it curious.”
“I find it irritating,” I snap, a little harsher than I mean to. I pull a hand over my face, wiping the sweat away.
My stomach churns, stars smatter my vision, I might actually be sick.
Octavia’s fangs drop, she raises her index finger and presses it to the razor-sharp tip. I step back as a bead of blood wells on her pad.
