Page 5 of A City of Smoke and Demons
The smile slipped from her friend’s face. ‘Briefly.’
‘What did they want?’
Lira shrugged. ‘Oh, the usual. After their bribes, and enjoying themselves tormenting me. Be nice if something stopped that from happening,’ she mumbled under her breath, then swiped the empty glass from Analise’s hands, replacing it with another.
The Devil’s Credges was the sort of place to disappear, or be disappeared. Dark and gloomy even in the middle of the day, the streets were filled with a human sea of drab brown, faded blacks, and greying whites. It was common for people to carry steel, and anything from swords to dinner forks were acceptable weaponry. Analise had seen the damage a well-placed piece of cutlery could do, and learnt that violence didn’t care how it was done, only that it was. The Credges were rough, but it was that roughness that protected them, and they looked after their own.
Only last week, fighting erupted in the streets and Analise and Morgan had three bodies to deal with. One of the dead had been in Maddog Pierce’s employ. The unofficial King of the Credges had come himself to collect his man from the morgue.
Despite being over six feet tall with an intimidating glare, he didn’t frighten Analise. Maddog had given her an unreadable look from under his dark brows, his claimed dead already whisked away.
‘Tell Lira to keep her head down,’ he’d said before he left.
Analise never passed the message on, and had no idea how Maddog knew about her friendship with Lira.
Maddog’s club was notorious: violence, bare-knuckled boxing, gambling, and a rather not-so-secret black market. For the right amount of coin, you could find anything in his back rooms. Maddog’s people were the type to end up on Analise’s slab—cut-throats and assassins for hire, thieves, and those desperate enough to fall into Maddog’s waiting hands.
Lira left to deal with an argument between the gamblers in the corner of the room. A man dropped onto the stool beside Analise. She studied him from the corner of her eye as she sipped her drink. Tall, broad shoulders, lean torso, strong legs. Shaven jaw so sharp it could cut glass. His white-blond hair was swept back. Not the usual type of man she encountered—he didn’t have a bleak air of depression hanging over him. He was tidy and neat, his clothes clean.
He turned to her, and she let him look while Lira placed another drink on the bar, her eyes flickering between Analise and the stranger. Several times he opened his mouth then closed it again. Analise downed her drink, and when she set the empty glass down purposefully and gestured for another, he did the same.
The stranger’s knee bumped against hers as he shifted on the stool, the contact warming her blood. She nudged him back, felt rather than saw his lips twitch. He angled his body towards hers, enough to be casual; close enough to be an invitation of something more.
Could she? Should she? He was handsome enough, definitely tempting. His hand rested close to hers on the bar. She stretched out her little finger and touched him. So gentle it was featherlight, his finger stroked hers.
That decided it.
When she left, he followed. She didn’t look at him as they walked, and they didn’t speak when she led him along the back-alley path to her lodging house, startling some street dogs who bared their teeth at them. He ignored the garbage and stepped over the open sewer that ran down the middle of the street. He followed her up the grimy stairs, standing patiently behind her as she unlocked the door. He inspected her home with the same scrutiny he’d given her face, but he still didn’t say a word. His fingers were clenched by his sides, stance wide, measured. Controlled.
Kingsguard?she wondered. He was alert. Ready to flee, or fight. It should have worried her, but she was too drunk to care.
Analise stumbled into the kitchen, fumbling with the tap. She cupped her hands beneath it, gulping water that tasted of soot and ash. When she straightened, the man was there. He pinned her between his body and the bench and slowly tipped her face up to his.
She tried not to look. She never looked at them too closely, not wanting to remember their faces in the morning, not wanting to pass them in the street and know who they were. But tonight, she was compelled to look.
His eyes reminded her of an oncoming storm—blue collided with grey and green. Heat radiated from his body, and she could smell the smoky essence of him. Her breath caught as he reached over and undid the knot of her hair, letting it fall over her shoulders. His hand slid into her hair, the other curling around the flesh of her hip. She licked her lips when his gaze fell to her mouth.
Analise pushed her body close to his. ‘You don’t finish until I do, understand?’
‘Won’t be a problem.’ His voice was low, soft, melodious.
‘Sure of that, are you?’
‘That I can get you to come before I do? Absolutely.’ His breath brushed her mouth. ‘Have we met? I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before. What’s your name?’
‘You don’t talk either.’ She inched closer to him, to those lips. ‘I don’t like talk.’
‘No talk—got it,’ he murmured. His lips brushed hers, so lightly she wasn’t sure he’d kissed her at all. Analise’s fingers crept up his torso, dancing over the sharp line of his collarbones. His thigh edged its way between her legs as she stroked the nape of his neck, unable to help it, unable to help pressing herself closer.
‘And you’re gone before morning,’ she managed.
He nodded, then kissed her properly. His tongue swept the inside of her mouth, making her groan and slide her fingers into his hair. He kissed her until she felt like she was floating, and she wasn’t sure anyone had ever kissed her like that. Whoever he was, he knew how to kiss, and part of her would be happy to let him kiss her all night, but it wouldn’t be enough. Without breaking the kiss, she undid the buttons on his shirt. He lifted her against him, walking towards her unmade bed where, once he let her down, she practically tore his clothes off.
There was a tattoo on his arm; it snaked around his elbow and forearm, but she couldn't figure out what it was meant to be and didn’t have a chance to think about it any further. They were a tangle of limbs and lips, his mouth on hers, the weight of his body covering her.
When Analise woke to another dreary day, she was alone.
Rolling fog swallowed the docks and dug its way into Ezra’s bones. He was early.
