Page 81 of The Grandest Game
Rohan lowered the brush. “One dare down.”
“And one truth.” Savannah’s right hand lashed out, and an instant later, she’d turned over a third chip.Dare.She moved on to the card pile and drew the knife.
As the Factotum of the Devil’s Mercy, Rohan had a certain level of skill with blades.
Savannah stared at the knife on the table. Rohan felt his lips curve, and then Savannah Grayson did something most unexpected: She grabbed her hair in her fist. “Cut it.”
Rohan was not a person who was easily taken off guard. Schooling his features to remain neutral, he picked up the pearl-handled blade and gave it a light spin. “You want me to cut your hair with this knife.”
“Idare youto cut my hair with that knife.”
She’d felt something. Rohan thought about her sharp intake of breath, about the way she’d leaned into his touch. She’d wanted it—and him. And this was her response.
“I’ve done worse things with knives,” Rohan warned her, “than cut hair.”
“Then why,” she countered, “are you stalling?”
Rohan took the knife in his hand and wondered if she was punishing herself for feeling—or him for making her feel. He placed his left hand over hers, and she pulled back, leaving him with her hair fisted in his hand, right at the base of her neck.
Before either one of them could breathe even once, Rohan brought the knife to the spot just above his hand and started to cut. It was dirty work, but he was quick about it.
Whatever measurements the chips took, when Rohan pressed his thumb to the third chip, it lit up.
Savannah stood, towering over the strands of her hair that littered the floor. “Your turn.”
Vicious winter girl.Rohan flipped the next poker chip. “Truth.” He drew a white card but didn’t even look at the question on it. “Why did you dare me to cut your hair?”
That wasn’t the question he should have asked. There was no utility to asking it. And yet…
He wanted to hear her say it.
“Why not?” Savannah moved around the table, putting it between them.
Rohan placed his palms flat on the wood and leaned forward. “That’s not a real answer, Savvy. Put your thumb on the chip.”
Savannah leaned forward herself, doing no such thing. “My father liked my hair long.” Her voice was flat, but he could see tension in the muscles where her arm met her shoulder. “And now what he likes or wants or expects no longer matters.”
“Doesn’t it?” Rohan wasn’t sure why talking to Savannah Grayson always felt so much like fencing, why he couldn’t resist parrying every one of her moves. “You are playing this gamefor your father. One way or another, he matters very much.”
Rohan reached forward, took one of the hands she’d placed flat on the table, and turned it over, placing the chip on her palm. After a moment, her jaw clenched, and she placed her thumb on the chip.
“Tell me the real reason you dared me to cut your hair, Savvy—or explain exactly what you meant when you said that you are doing thisfor your father.”
In the silence that followed, one thing became clear: Savannah Grayson would have stared him into an early grave if she could have. “I dared you to cut my hair becauseyoudon’t get to make me feel like that.”
Rohan waited for the chip to light up. Nothing happened.
“That was the truth,” Savannah said. “It should have lit up.”
“Maybe the chip wants you to answer my other question. The one about your father.”
Savannah’s most glacial stare threatened to have the opposite effect on him. “You want an explanation, Rohan? Try this one: Money isn’t the only thing you get if you win the Grandest Game.”
Andthatcaused the chip to light up.
Savannah flipped another one. “Truth. Who is the mutual acquaintance that you and Jameson Hawthorne share who is so fond of French?”
“Her name is Zella,” Rohan said, settling his thumb on the chip. “She’s a duchess. One who, for whatever reason, thinks that she can take something that is mine.”
