It was a little unnerving that I could already tell by the way she measured her steps when she approached me—maybe one day she’d have more excitement, less resistance.
“The catch, then?” I asked, voice low, bitter. Like a curse.
“Sixty days,” she said, each syllable smooth and lethal. “We have sixty days to get the answers my contact needs, which means you have five days to get yourself ready to get invited into the Vescovi family without dying.”
I turned slowly, letting her see every tick of my jaw, every clenched muscle in my fists. I wanted her to see what she'd bought.
“That’s not a catch,” I said finally. “That’s a death sentence.”
She walked past me, unfazed, and poured herself a drink. The glass clinked softly as she slid it across the counter toward me.
“Infiltrate. Be the Trojan. You’re smart. Plus, you’ve already kind of died once, what’s one more try?”
I lifted a brow. “Not the kind of Trojan I had in mind on this happy day.”
She ignored the jab. “Burn them from within.”
I exhaled a humorless laugh. “How exactly?”
“Don’t get caught. Don’t get killed.” She met my eyes. “And don’t fall in love with me. I’ll only disappoint you. I need some answers and only they have them, and if I don’t get them, well, let’s just say I’ll be exposed and if I’m exposed so will my husband. It won’t end well for either of us, and now that we’re married and blissfully in love, my family will assume my secrets are your secrets and vice versa, so you see, now you really have no choice despite said catch.”
I downed the drink in one swallow. Whiskey lit a fire on the way down, one that sat hot in my chest.
“I always loved a good ‘don’t fall for me, I’ll only hurt you’ trope,” I said, voice dry. “Those poor suckers always fall. Trauma bonding. Shared pain. Real cinematic shit. They end up calling it love when it’s really just two people bleeding together.” A mess is what it was.
I leaned in closer, letting my stare linger on her mouth.
“But not me,” I said cooly. “So don’t worry. It won’t happen. Besides…” I dragged my tongue across my lips slow and deliberate. “I’m already grossly disappointed.”
Her lips parted, slow and deliberate. “Gross, right? My mouth. My tongue…” She trailed her fingers down between the swell of her breasts, teasing. “My body.”
My jaw flexed. I looked away. I wouldn’t let her tease me, not now, not when I knew how high the stakes really were for her. To infiltrate the Vescovi family was a wild thought—nearly impossible. First, you have to be chosen, and when chosen you’re tortured and expected to say thank you.
Tempest wasn’t beautiful in a delicate way. She was violence and chaos wrapped in silk. She wanted to be seen. She wanted to be feared. Raven was a wound you tended to. Tempest was a blade you handed to your enemy just to see if they’d use it on you and in what ways they could be extra creative.
I needed to stop comparing them. One was dead to me and married to someone else, and the other was going to kill me if I wasn’t careful. Great odds, truly wonderful. I tossed back the rest of my drink. “So,” I said, shrugging, “since we’ve ruled out love… do I get laid? Or was sex not part of the contract?”
Tempest tilted her head. “Think you can handle my version of bed sport?”
“Think you can use a phrase that isn’t from the 1800s?”
“Rutting?”
I grimaced. “Please no.”
“Then I’m sticking with ‘sporting.’ Something very…”
“Sporting about it?”
“Exactly.”
“Do we get trophies?”
“Something tells me you want one.” She actually laughed. It stunned me stupid for a few seconds. It was low, seductive, it felt like long, sweaty, hot sex, her laugh.
“I wouldn’t say no to a medal. Or at least a ribbon.” I shrugged. “‘Good job, Louis. You really drove it home in the fourth quarter.’”
“Or the last inning,” she added.