Page 16 of You Only Love Twice
Instantly Isabella's face shuttered. "As much as I enjoy their company, they're both sickeningly happy at the moment. I don't think I could stand to hear any more talk of weddings right now, and if matters go the way I suspect they will, Miss McLaren will be wearing a ring on her finger in no time."
Most likely a correct assumption. Gemma deliberately chinked her porcelain cup against Isabella's. "Just you and me then. We'll drink to broken hearts and set out to break a few of our own. Now. Brief me on the Barrons situation."
* * *
She'd taken the bait.
Obsidian strolled through the misty shadows around the Duchess of Casavian's manor, watching as the curvaceous figure moved through the windows. He'd recognize Gemma anywhere; nobody else quite managed that seductive sway, with the flirtatious lift of her shoulder and the tilt of her chin.
He could vaguely remember seeing her for the first time across the ballroom of the Winter Palace five years ago.
Blond curls had been draped elegantly over one of her pale shoulders, and her gown had been the color of blood on snow. She moved like a woman well aware of her body, all honeyed smiles and swaying hips as she rested her hand on the Duke of Malloryn's arm, surveying the ballroom before her. Elegant, graceful, and sensual. The cut of her gown hugged those rounded breasts, with a thin scrap of lace not quite hiding her cleavage. Everything about her was a tease. No man could resist. Even him.
And when their eyes met....
A breathtaking moment had shaken him, where the world had dropped away around him, his heart feeling like it stopped, quite literally, in his chest.
With the memory came the lash of pain. Obsidian sucked in a sharp breath, bracing himself for the harsh file over his nerves.
Do you still love her?Dr. Richter whispered in his ear as he connected the reconditioning machine to the steam-driven generator.
Nyet, he'd replied, his body flinching as Richter flicked the switch and the generator began to hum. He knew this pain far too well, and his muscles clenched as he began to anticipate it.
Ghosttook up the positive and negative clamps.The bitch betrayed you. She tried to burn you alive and then protested her innocence, thinking we'd fall for that. We shall burn her from your mind. By the time I'm done, you'll never willingly think of her again.
Please,he'd begged, needing to drive the ache of her from his heart.
The reconditioning had succeeded far better than he'd have ever hoped.
He couldn't think of Gemma without feeling the answering echo of pain anymore.
He could barely remember their time together.
Just the whisper of poison from her lips as she lied to him with her touch and her smile. The kiss of heat on his skin as he woke to find the bed hangings on fire and "Hollis" nowhere to be seen.
In the window before him, Gemma reached for the lantern on the stark outline of what he presumed was a chest of drawers. Second window from the end of the house, third floor.
Skoro moya yadovitaya lyubov....
Soon.
Gemma leaned forward to blow the lantern out, and light fled from the room, plunging it into merely another darkened square in the stucco brickwork.
Sensing a shadow moving on the rooftop next to Casavian manor, Obsidian faded into the overgrown hedge across the street like a wraith.
Moonlight refracted off pale hair on the rooftop. Just a brief flicker before the shadow vanished, but Obsidian knew who it was.
Caleb Byrnes, the COR agent who'd been transformed into adhampirby Zero. Though newly made, Byrnes represented a threat, because he alone could potentially match Obsidian if it came down to a fight between them.
He'd gotten her out of the COR house.
Now he had to separate her from the rest of Malloryn's agents.
* * *
The sensationof being watched was back.
Gemma gathered her skirts as she climbed the steps to the British Museum at Barrons's side, her gaze darting here and there, and the small briefcase she carried banging against the side of her leg.
