Page 21 of You Only Love Twice
Flames and treachery.
She tried to kill you. Now you can return the favor.
A hand brushed against his chest, Gemma's head lolling to the side as she groaned. He needed to get her locked away before she could awaken completely.
Mably House had once been home to the Dukes of Vickers before the previous duke betrayed the prince consort, his entire line blighted and stripped of everything but the clothes on their back. Someone had tried to burn the manor, but it had been crafted of solid stone and though most of the house lay in ruins, the east wing had fared a little better.
Nobody came here anymore.
The gates were painted black and soldered shut.
Mably House represented the death of a Great House, and nobody dared stir the ghosts that lurked within.Any trespassers knew they invited harsh penalties, and so most tended to avoid the place.
Except for him.
"Dmitri?" Gemma whispered, in his arms.
He could just make out the pillow-shape of her lips and see the faint rise of the lush curves spilling out of her bodice. Fingertips grazed his shirt as if to test if it were really him as her dark lashes fluttered against her pale cheeks.
"Dmitri is dead," he whispered, pausing to juggle her in his arms as he drew another syringe from his belt. "You killed him, you lying little bitch. Do you remember?"
Eyes the color of a field of cornflowers tried to focus upon him, her pupils forming tiny little pinpricks. "You... shot me."
For a second he almost saw something else. Smoke curling from a pistol as Hollis's eyes widened and she tumbled backward off a bridge.
"I have no recollection of that."
Sharp nails dug into his forearm. "Well, I do."
She began to struggle, and he injected her with enough of the laudanum-hemlock injection to send her blissfully under again.
The observatory loomed ahead of him, lit by a single glass pane in the roof. Starlight gilded the slate floor in a silvery glow.
Laying her to rest on the heavy marble slab in the middle of the room, he brushed a strand of dyed black hair off her cheek, unable to help himself. Her fingers lay curled into her palms, her head splayed to the side and the faint cleft in her chin shadowed beneath her lush mouth. For a second, Obsidian's heart gave a pulsing twist in his chest, the darker half of his nature whispering through his veins, urging him to kiss her.
He reared back, his hand going to the knife at his side. He should never have brought her here. He should have simply put the blade through her black heart; and yet the second she'd slumped into his arms, he'd wanted more.
He'd wanted to look into her eyes as he asked her,"Why?"
This was madness.
But his knuckles strained white on the knife, and he turned and took two swift steps away from her, cursing his resolve under his breath. Obsidian paced the observatory, scrubbing at his mouth.
Killing her would be only too kind for what she'd done to him.
But again he saw that smoking pistol and her accusing eyes."You shot me."
A sharp stabbing pain sliced through his brain, like a pickax to the skull. He'd never remembered that before, but it felt as though her words brought a shiver of memory to the surface, like a leviathan surfacing from the depths of the ocean.
All he'd ever had of her was the sight of her laughing and fluttering her eyelashes at Sergey.
The teasing glint in her blue eyes as she played suitor against suitor, smiling mockingly at him the entire time she wove her way through the Russian court.
The kiss of flames against his skin.
The rasp of smoke in his throat.
And the taste of betrayal.
