Page 11 of Ice Cold Christmas
“The cut suits you, of course. Everything always suits you.” He turned fully toward her. His gaze raked over her body. “You’ve lost weight. That I don’t love.”
“I don’t care.” Why in the world was he criticizing her appearance? She’d taken special care with her damn appearance before coming to the Mage Mansion. She’d found designer jeans at a secondhand shop. A soft, white sweater. She looked wealthy enough, didn’t she? Her boots were a bit scuffed, but she’d done her best to polish them.
“You’re at least ten pounds lighter, and you didn’t have the weight to lose in the first place.” He stalked toward her. Yep, stalking again. His stare rose over her, inch by slow inch, until he was carefully assessing her face. “Sharper.”
What was sharper?
“Could be from the weight loss.” His head tilted. “But something else is…slightly different.”
Yes, something else was slightly different. Her left cheek bone had been fractured. Her nose broken. The doctors had patched her up, and she thought they’d done a very good job. When she looked at the pictures, she truly did look like Melody Mage. Almost an exact match.
Victor stopped right in front of her and ignored the knife that she still gripped. He reached toward her face.
Automatically, she lifted the knife, as if bracing for an attack.
“Have fun with that,” he told her, voice flippant and mocking. “My heart has already been carved out once by you. By all means, feel free to do it again.” Instead of touching her face, his hand dropped, quickly, and his fingers curled around her wrist. He hauled her hand up and forced the tip of the blade against his shirt-front, right over his heart. “Want me to help?”
Her breath heaved out. “Let me go.” Was he crazy?
“No. I’m never fucking doing that again. You’ll be lucky if I don’t chain you to my side. Handcuff you. Wherever you go, I go. You will never get away again.”
He was pushing her hand against him too hard. If he wasn’t careful, she’d cut him with the blade. “Stop.”
He didn’t.
“Stop, or you’ll be bleeding! I-I don’t want to hurt you.”
“How the fuck do you think I felt when you left me before?”
Her eyes widened at the savage pain that suddenly flashed on his face.
“Oh, sorry.” A mocking smile curled his lips. That smile never reached the darkness of his eyes. “Am I cursing too fucking much for you? Since when did you become such a prude?”
“I—” She stopped. She was playing this scene wrong. Melody Mage wasn’t a prude. Far from it. There were even rumors that a sex tape of Melody had once been about to leak, only for the tape to vanish.
Just like I vanished?
“You look different. You act different.” His hold on her wrist sent heat streaking though her. “What else is different about you? After the year from hell, what else is different? I am dying to know.”
Everything. She wanted to say that. To admit that everything was different and that it would never, ever be the same again. That she would never be the same.
“Let’s find out what’s different,” Victor growled. Then his head lowered and his mouth crashed down onto hers.
Chapter Three
She had a knife pressed over his heart. Fair enough. His heart belonged to her, so if she wanted to cut it out while it still freaking beat, that was her prerogative.
Melody is back. Melody is back. He couldn’t believe it. Was half convinced that she truly was a ghost. Or maybe he’d just lost the last bit of his sanity, and he was imagining her. He’d finally gone that far off the deep end.
But, no, he wasn’t lost to madness. She was real. He could feel her. He could also feel the edge of her blade as it cut through his shirt and pushed into his skin.
Melody is back.
She’d rang the doorbell at the mansion. Walked inside the den with snowflakes still visible in the darkness of her hair. Her much shorter hair. Hair that used to tumble halfway down her back but now skimmed her jawline. Her heart-shaped face was thinner, her cheekbones seeming sharper. As crazy as it seemed, even higher. The shorter hair made her green eyes appear bigger. Deeper. And there was just something…different. Off.
But his body didn’t care about something being off. He responded to her. Melody. His Melody. Back. A heavy, aching arousal flooded through him, and, who cared if she had a knife pressed to his chest? He was going to kiss her. He was going to taste her. He was going to have his Melody back in his arms again, and if this whole night turned out to be some twisted hallucination, then so be it.
So the fuck be it.
