Page 94 of You Only Love Twice
Two minuteslater she was slipping over the rooftops, a foggy London spread beneath her. Lamplight glowed in the fog, like little fuzzy will-o’-the-wisps. Gemma surveyed the roofline.
Where would he be?
A single candle lingered in the open window of a neglected tower to her right. Gemma's gaze locked on it.
Of course he would have to make her climb a bloody tower in her heeled boots and the gown she'd worn to the wedding.
Fine. Gemma withdrew the other sai from her left thigh and gripped it between her teeth. It left her free to tuck a loop of her skirts into the leather holster wrapped intimately around her thigh, revealing a healthy slice of her gossamer stockings. She hauled herself up the interlacing brickwork, her toes finding crevices between the coarse bricks and her fingers clinging in minute cracks.
Gemma gained the window ledge, and a figure loomed out of the shadows, dressed in stark, imposing black. A violent grace filled every step he made; a lethal intensity. He'd stripped to his leather waistcoat, and the broad planes of his chest and shoulders filled out his shirt, but that was the last thing she wanted to notice right now.
"Here," Obsidian murmured, offering her his hand.
Like hell.
Gemma scrambled over the ledge and plucked the sai from her teeth. "What the hell did you think you were doing, leaving a note on my bed like that? Are you trying to get yourself killed? The house iswatched, damn you. Herbert's been instructed to shoot all pale-haired intruders with a dart laced with Black Vein. Not even you could survive that."
Obsidian refused to back away, and her fury roused at the fact she had to look up to see his face. The bloody bastard had almost a foot of height on her.
"He would have to notice me."
"Herbert is a trained assassin." Somehow she managed to grind the words out between her teeth. "One of Malloryn's best."
"He's not that good. It's not the first time I've been in your room, Gemma."
Her fist curled around the sai, and she gave in to the instinctive rush of her fury and sliced the top button of his waistcoat with a flick of her wrist. It felt good. Even as he captured her wrist and forcibly took the sai from her.
It didn't matter. She had another.
The edge of violence thickened between them, and instinctively she settled into a defensive stance, prepared to take him down if he made a single move. Tension shivered through the air, as their eyes met. Then Obsidian whirled the sai in his fingers and captured the needle-sharp prong in the center, examining the balance.
He offered it to her. "This is my favorite waistcoat."
"You made me climb the damned tower in a dress."
"You didn't have to. You could have removed it." Heat curled through his dark eyes; a faint taunting smile curved his mouth.I dare you, his eyes said, and her breath caught, because there washerDmitri. "As this week has proven, you seem to enjoy flaunting yourself."
It was as though pieces of him were swimming to the surface, inch by inch.
The hardest part of the last week in captivity had been watching the man she'd once loved and not recognizing a damned thing about him.
But he was still there.
"And you seemed to enjoy pretending you weren't looking."
His lashes fluttered lower. "I was looking."
"I know."
"I couldn't help myself," he admitted, his thumb stroking her fingers as she took possession of her sai. "You have a way of twisting me into knots."
Her breath caught, leaving her feeling somewhat disconcerted. "Don't think your words can turn me up sweet. Shall we cut to the chase?"
"You hemlocked me," Obsidian stated flatly.
"You lied to me," she snapped back.
"I fail to see how."
