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“Why did you offer me that bargain?”
He stilled, his face a stony mask. “You have to work that out yourself.”
I scoffed. “Funny. I didn’t peg you as a coward.”
The dark aura around him shimmered, his tattoos moving in such a blur that I couldn’t make out a single one. “Coward?” He stepped closer. “Well, then. Since you asked me so nicely,” he seethed, “I will give you one more clue.”
His hand shot out to grip my chin. It wasn’t rough. It didn’t hurt. No, his touch was featherlight. Despite everything I knew about Lachlan, this revealed something more to me. He knew his strength. He controlled it, just like he controlled everything else about himself—except for those telling tattoos. He knew he didn’t need to use force to get my attention. Not when he looked at me the way he was looking at me now.
“I am not a man who shows his entire hand, nor am I one who acts without purpose,” he said. “So trust me, princess, when I tell you that I have my reasons and that I know exactly what you have to offer me.”
His gaze dropped, sliding along my lips, and suddenly, I didn’t care if every soul downstairs had been eye-fucking me like he claimed. Not when he was looking at me like I might very well be the center of his fucking universe. Not when I wanted to be.
I didn’t dare move. I didn’t dare try to pull free of his grasp. Not when I could feel the bargain stretched taut between us. Not when he had given me the answer to every question I’d asked myself about him. “Please…”
His eyes flared, and for a breath, his grip on my jaw tightened. Did he see how much I wanted him to kiss me? Would he do it?
He drew in a deep breath, and his hand fell, releasing me. “Go to bed, Cate.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he simply repeated himself without raising his voice. “Go to bed. Please.”
I told myself that it was the sudden show of manners that had me fleeing down the hall, but I knew I was running from something else.
I was running from what I’d seen etched in those green eyes.
Chapter Twenty-One
The next morning, a jackhammer woke me.
In my brain.
I groaned, dragging a pillow over my head. It would have been a good idea to draw the curtains last night. Then again, last night, as far as I recalled, consisted only of bad ideas. Super bad ideas. Monumentally bad ideas.
Through the cloud of duck feathers protecting my throbbing head, I heard a faint knock on the door.
Lach.
No. Lachlan. Boundaries!
My stomach, already mostly liquid thanks to last night’s said bad decisions, lurched as I recalled what had passed between us. At what I’d said. Apparently, ambrosia didn’t erase the memories of the previous evening. In fact, it seemed to sharpen them.
I groaned. Now seemed like a pretty good time to pretend I couldn’t hear him knocking…or possibly fake my own death. The knock became more insistent, and I decided that faking my death would be easier.
Before I could construct what I was certain needed to be an elaborate plan, the door opened. Apparently, I had forgotten not only to draw the curtains but to lock my door. Not that a lock meant much, considering everyone here could nip into my room at their pleasure, but it might have bought me enough time to come up with a faked-death plot. As it was, the best I had was to lie very still and hope no one checked to see if I was still breathing.
But a cheery voice called out to me, “Rise and shine, princess.”
I screamed into the mattress, which thankfully muffled it. Lachlan’s little nickname was spreading faster than a contagious disease, and now even Ciara was using it. I hadn’t seen Ciara after Bain’s painful speech, but judging from the fact that she did not sound like death warmed up in a microwave, she had not been guzzling ambrosia like water.
The mattress sank beside me, and despite my harrowing condition, I rolled over and peeked out from under my pillow. Ciara grinned back at me, hair done, face made up, looking the picture of fae delicacy, but her eyes were red-rimmed. “Still up for shopping?”
A week had taught me a lot about Ciara, and “shopping” in her language translated to “retail therapy.” I pressed a finger to my pounding head to see if I could make it stop long enough to fulfill her request for moral support.
“I was thinking we could hit Canal Place.” She started on which designers had released their winter lines.
I wanted to say yes, but the thought of being out in New Orleans made last night’s bad decisions slosh in my stomach. There would be lights and noise and other dangerous stimuli that would remind me at every turn that I had gotten colossally, epically wasted last night.
I whimpered. “I can’t. I’m dying.”