Chapter Text
Very few people knew that Pansy Parkinson was raised by her Aunt Juno, but then again, very few people knew anything at all about Pansy Parkinson.
They might know inconsequential details about her — that she was petite, only an inch or two over five feet, which meant that she wore high heels almost religiously. They might know that she wore her dark hair short, and had charmed her lips the same exact shade of taupe for the last ten years. They might have bought her delicate jewellery, borne from her imagination and crafted with wand and metal and flame. Their eyes might have watered at the price tag when they parted with their galleons.
They might know that her drink of choice was an old-fashioned and that she was perpetually late to everything, but also that her lack of punctuality was the deliberate act of one for whom people would always wait.
They probably knew her father was a Death Eater. Everyone knew that. A Death Eater who had been eaten by death in the form of a snake on the first of May, 1998. Killed before the final battle because he got cold feet.
People might whisper things they thought they knew. Pansy had few friends, and fewer lovers. Pansy wore a sparkling ring for a time, and removed it too. That one’s a bitch, cold and hard, they said, and if she’d heard it, she might have smiled, for her armor was without chinks.
Less people knew that Pansy walked. She took off her heels, and apparated to nowhere – walking over hills, through glens and around lochs. They didn’t know that she wrote in a journal and had since she was ten years-old. They didn’t know that she had three brothers who didn’t speak to her, and a mother who couldn’t.
The one thing that Pansy sincerely hoped people knew about her was that she didn’t give a single fuck about the opinions of others.
Well. Most others. She was rather fond of her Aunt Juno, an impeccably stylish witch who would not tolerate the factual addition of ‘great’ to aunt, though she was over seventy and up to ninety – she’d never tell, and scold anyone who asked. Aunt Juno was also Pansy’s sometimes employer, and she had raised her young niece in what she termed ‘the family business’.
Presently, Pansy was visiting Juno in verdant Northumberland, in the huge white stone house she lived in from when she was five years old until she moved to London at twenty. The house always looked its best, as if a spontaneous ball might happen at any minute, and elf magic ensured that the lavender that surrounded the hall bloomed all year round, despite the March weather hovering only just above freezing.
Juno’s elf Rollo fixed Pansy an old-fashioned with a bright curl of orange rind, and poured Juno a large measure of port. They sat by a roaring fire in Juno’s mint-green study, and Thompson the gordon setter lay stretched out as close as he could to the flames without actually jumping in. He had been singed before.
Juno was traditional, and wore the finest high-necked dress robes, black with black French lace trims. Pansy too wore black, a skin tight, long-sleeved dress in softest wool.
Visits to Juno were never business or pleasure, they were always both, and it was all but guaranteed Juno would say three things:
The first: “Pansy, my sweet, you are much too skinny. You cannot subsist on a diet of cigarettes and martini olives.”
The second: “Fancy leaving a fine wizard like that over a mere indiscretion.”
And finally: “I love you very much, my sweet, never forget it.”
Juno was nothing if not contradictory. Pansy had inherited the trait.
“I have a job for you my sweet.”
And there it was. Juno had a client, and they wanted something. The clients Juno worked with had enough galleons to ensure that when they wanted something, they got it. Which was where Pansy came in. Yes, she occasionally made fine jewellery and sold it in boutiques when the mood struck, but truthfully she was in the business of acquiring things.
Pansy held her hand out for the folded linen note paper that Juno handed her. Rings glinted on her aunt's every finger, including a twining platinum creation of Pansy’s, studded with tiny moonstones.
Pansy’s golden eyes scanned over the note and she pursed her lips. “I think this one might be more Theo’s flavour.”
“Theodore is on paternity leave.”
This struck absolutely no chord with Pansy. At least when she was around Juno no comment would be made about her lack of enthusiasm for pregnancy, babies, and Theo’s extremely strange taste in women. Pansy didn’t like very many people, but she did enjoy Theo’s company sometimes… enough that she tolerated Luna. Outwardly this looked like ignoring her completely, but tolerance on Pansy’s part meant being in the same space with someone without attaching barbs to every word she said. Pansy was practically fucking magnanimous when she attended a baby shower, and gifted the fetus nothing, instead presenting Luna with a certificate for ten sessions with a very exclusive private healer who specialised in the pelvic floor. Pansy had heard pants-wettingly awful things, and it seemed practical. Very few people credited Pansy as practical, but she was. And thoughtful, if she did say so herself.
When Luna said they were considering the name ‘Spoon’ for the child, Pansy almost bit off a portion of her tongue.
“Paternity leave,” she repeated, when what her aunt had said sunk in.
“Yes.” Juno took a dignified sip of port.
“I wasn’t aware you offered employee benefits.” What they did — well, it wasn’t exactly sanctioned by the Department of Magical Business and Employment.
“A father should spend time with his children.”
On that point Pansy did not, and could not, comment. She had very few memories of her father. Funnily enough, Death Eaters were not offered paternity leave.
“Putting that aside,” Pansy said airily. “Your target is a Pureblood witch. Even if she is Sapphic in her leanings, it's not going to work.”
As a general rule, witches didn't like Pansy. Daphne did, but she lived in Argentina with Damián the broom maker and his rich, rolling accent, and didn't come home to the miserable British weather more than once a year. Pansy missed her quite a lot and was furious that she'd done something as common as falling in love, but she wouldn't be admitting to that any time soon.
“You are quite right my sweet. You couldn’t charm a witch even if you had four arms and five wands. This one is for Finnigan.”
Pansy was wondering when Juno would lose her marbles. Hm. Sooner than she'd thought.
“Finnigan.”
“Yes.”
“Finnigan is only good for pickpocketing criminals and finishing duels with his fists like the savage he is. You cannot send that man to a Pureblood–” Pansy consulted the piece of paper again and infused her tone with the appropriate disdain. “Merlin, a wedding?”
“I can, and I am,” her Aunt insisted. “And you're going to help him.”
“I unequivocally will not.”
“Pansy.”
“No.”
Here it comes. The look. The sigh.
“I ask little of you, my sweet, and give much.”
It was true too, damn her. Continuing to argue would result only in the dry reiteration of this point over and over, with compelling examples, and Pansy would give in, because her aunt could be a nightmare but she was also the first person who ever showed Pansy proper love and care.
“A necklace then? Is it like the one from that auction in Tallinn?”
That necklace allowed the wearer to physically be in three places at the same time. It found its way into a muggle auction, Pansy bought it, and Juno sold it again for enough galleons to buy a castle and the village around it.
“Oh no, nothing like that. Just a string of pearls that grants the wearer an extended life and an ageless face.”
Pansy sat back in her chair and took an impressed sip of whisky and aromatics. A necklace like that could buy several castles, perhaps a medium-sized town.
“I'm listening.”
*
It was the most ridiculous assignment Juno had ever given her, and that included the time she raided the tomb of a muggle king while dressed as a muggle cruise ship passenger. She’d never worn more synthetic fibre in her life. The sweat. The static. The squeaking sound. Disgusting.
Pansy's job was to prepare the smug, ne'er do well Seamus Finnigan to attend a Pureblood destination wedding and charm one Lady Verity out of one very powerful heirloom.
In this line of work, there were many definitions of the word charm. Theo could charm almost anyone out of anything with a wink and word. Pansy only had to glance sideways at most wizards and they were ready to name her in their last will and testament. With a kiss on the cheek she could make them crawl on their hands and knees for her.
As for Seamus, the third ‘contractor’ providing services for Juno… well, much was said about the charms of the Irish, and in Pansy’s correct opinion Seamus had exactly none of the charm and all of the unearned swagger.
Juno had handed her the same kind of crisp, cream envelope she always did containing all the information that would be needed. This time, the envelope also contained two wedding invitations. One for her, in her name, and another one for a Seamus O’Reagan. Finnigan, of course, was his muggle father's last name.
The wedding was in three days. The wedding was also approximately 18,000km away, in New Zealand. More accurately, in a place called Paradise.
It would surprise approximately no one to learn that Pansy despised weddings, even when they were in Paradise.
Their Portkey would leave from London to Auckland, in two days. From there it was a simple matter of apparition, and out they would pop at the other end to immerse themselves in all the pomp, preening and prevaricating that came hand-in-hand with pureblood matrimony.
First things first though - Finnigan.
Pansy stood in front of the little blue shop front, on the tiny wizarding high street tucked away between the sickeningly picturesque muggle streets of Galway, Ireland. Gold lettering across the windows read:
Finnigan and Son, Restorations.
Pansy took a breath of cool air that carried the tang of salt from the nearby sea, and practically stomped towards the door. A bell tinkled as she wrenched it open.
The shop was small, and painted the same dark blue as its outside. It appeared to be more workshop than retail, and was dominated by a beautifully carved walnut counter. There was a jumble of magical items of every kind, shelved, hanging or stacked on the floor. Clocks, mirrors, furniture. Behind the counter, a large window framed a view of a nearly identical store front on the other side; the shop’s twin, catering to muggle clientele.
Wood oil, and the deep nutmeg smell of restoration draught dominated her senses. It had been a while.
A voice called. “Be right with you.”
After a moment, there he was.
“I’m thinkin’ you must be lost there darlin’,” Seamus said in his rich, musical voice.
“We have business, Finnigan,” she replied crisply.
The bell tinkled behind her, and a motherly looking witch stepped into the shop.
“Right you are, I'll just see to herself over here and you can tell me all about it.”
And Seamus proceeded to talk to the witch, who giggled no less than five times—Pansy counted—before she was sent on her way with a wink and a newly repaired jewellery box.
His eyes, blue like the Galway sea, flicked back to hers. Seamus always seemed to be grinning, and if he wasn't it was because he'd just finished or was just about to. The overall effect of this lent him a sort of lightness of being that clashed horribly with Pansy’s sharp edges.
“Where were we?” he said.
Pansy didn't respond with words, she simply slid the envelope across the counter and hoped he'd get the message.
Before he could—the bell rang again.
And again.
After the fourth middle-aged witch tottered out of the store having dropped off a cauldron that didn't even seem to be broken, Pansy was fed up.
She turned the sign on the door decisively to closed and jabbed the lock with her wand. It was supposed to click, but it melted. Which served the same purpose.
“We’re not closed until five.”
“I don't care. Open the envelope.”
He took his time, but did it all the same, and Pansy had the opportunity to look at Seamus for the first time in months. Looking at Seamus, she had found, was a lot more interesting than it used to be. So much so, that Pansy couldn't remember what he looked like before he looked like that.
Masculine, powerful, with a body built by working with his hands and not just his wand. His straight brows and full, curving mouth were juxtaposed around his bright eyes. He had grown a short beard though, and despite it being well-groomed, she hated it on sight. Why was it ginger?
“O'Reagan is spelt wrong—the Ó Riagáns are all pissheads.”
“You'll fit right in then.”
“I think ye’ll be wanting Theo for this one darlin’ – sorry to disappoint.”
Theo inexplicably loved Seamus. He giggled almost every time Seamus said his name, dropping the h and calling him ‘Teo’. He loved stories of Seamus at Hogwarts, and said that he wished they’d been friends back then.
“Theodore has decided he would like to spend time with a squalling infant and he has Aunt Juno's blessing.”
At this pronouncement, Seamus lit up like a candelabra. “Luna had the baby?”
Pansy nodded stiffly and her indifference met his delight.
“Girl? Boy? Does the babe have a name?”
She had none of these details, and she supposed these were the things one asked when one received the news of a friend’s successful procreation.
“Couldn't say,” she responded coolly. “Though last I heard the front runner was ‘Vessel’.”
It was an odd thing, to make him laugh, even though she was telling the truth. He laughed with his whole being and strings seemed to pull at her painted lips, coaxing her to join him.
“Ah well, that means she’s moved on from ‘Current’. I’m sure she said somethin’ about ‘Loveheart’. Surely Theo won't allow anythin’ too mental.”
“Theo is disgustingly in love. If Luna wanted to name the infant Grindylow McDiagonAlley he'd be all for it.”
This time she'd actually made a joke and he'd laughed again and the string on her lip was hard to ignore.
“So, Juno's reckons we're to go to a weddin’?”
“Separately,” Pansy qualified. That part was important.
“‘Course, hard to sidle up to titled witches with a date already on your arm.” He winked. “I'd be willin’ to give it me best though.”
He may as well have winked at the wall. “That won't be necessary. For my part, I'm to prepare you for the wedding. That will be a rundown of the customs and then—” She looked him up and down with practised disdain. “We can do something about all that.”
“You wound me darlin’. I’ve been to Pureblood weddings. I have sixteen cousins on me mam’s side.”
She drummed her nails on the counter. “Irish Purebloods don't count.”
It was the kind of cutting thing Pansy said often lest anyone get any impressions that she was cute or kind or any of the other words people associated with short women. The last man who called her cute found himself covered in scratches and left high and dry, with no happy ending.
Seamus took it in stride, scratching his jaw. “It's to be a lecture and my finest dress robes then, sure.”
“Something like that. Make sure you read the materials, and meet me tomorrow.”
“Where?”
“Read the materials, and you’ll know where.”
She turned without a farewell, her heeled boots clicked across the floor. On her way out, after a quick lock-unmelting, she heard another deep voice under the tinkle of the bell.
“Who was that there Seamus?”
There was a pause before Seamus replied, but Pansy caught it all the same.
“No one da’, I think she was lost.”
*
Seamus was late. It was unacceptable. Pansy didn’t wait, people waited for Pansy.
For simplicity, Pansy had invited Seamus to her Soho apartment, and in a brief note had told him to use the floo and remove his shoes as soon as he stepped out of her fireplace.
She’d also specified he should come at five o’clock sharp.
It was a quarter to six.
What did people do when they were waiting for someone? Pansy filed her nails with her wand, subconsciously drawing out the almond shape into a sharp point. She added a ballet slipper pink, and then poured herself another measure of whisky in a crystal tumbler. Through the angled skylight that dominated the roof in her living area, Pansy watched the path of a muggle aeroplane descending into Heathrow. The soft grey sky matched her soft grey walls.
She would kill him. Juno could just find another well-connected Irish rogue. Pansy was done.
The white fireplace flared emerald green, and Seamus sauntered out of the flames. He wore a chambray shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. He did not remove his brown boots.
Pansy did not get up. She sat cross-legged on her white sofa, and looked at him over her whisky glass.
Seamus looked around. “Your place?” He seemed surprised.
Pansy neither confirmed nor denied it. “You’re late.”
“Yeah, I had to close the shop.”
This was not a valid excuse.
“Take off your shoes.” She was rather forceful as she said this, and Seamus’ eyes glinted, but he acquiesced and put his shoes neatly next to the icy white hearth.
There was a second glass of whisky poured on the bench. Poured because Pansy had manners, but not offered when it became clear that Seamus did not. He walked over to it, and picked it up anyway. Where did his confidence stem from, she wondered. Perhaps from having a wide group of friends and family, and the security of being loved by both parents to fall back on. Perhaps it was the good looks that snuck up on most people, that he certainly didn't grow up with. Could be an Irish thing.
Or maybe he had a big dick. In Pansy’s experience this tended to inspire wizards to behave like they were the masters of the elder wand.
Hm.
Pansy’s apartment was clean in its lines and its furnishings. Confident or not, Seamus stuck out with that inner-light of his, organic next to metal and stone.
“Do you live alone?” he asked.
She did. “That’s none of your concern.”
Seamus sighed. “Is that how this is gonna go then darlin’?”
He walked over to where she was sitting, pulled his wand out of his pocket and—the nerve of him—summoned a boxy black armchair to sit directly opposite her. He took a seat, at ease, with one arm slung over the back, and his legs held too wide, like he was waiting for someone to sit between them.
“Could you name the problem you seem to have wit’ me?” he asked plainly. “Is it the Irish thing? Me da’ maybe, bein’ a muggle ‘n all? Or maybe we’re still playin’ out the tired old Slytherin Gryffindor routine?”
“You’re late,” Pansy said simply, resenting any suggestion that she shared her father’s prejudice. These days, Pansy was mostly egalitarian in her dislike for others – and she certainly had evolved past an embarrassing predilection for trying to impress boys by getting on board with their bigotry.
Seamus barked a laugh. “The last time we worked together you were at least an hour late to everythin’, includin’ the job itself.”
But they’d got the painting, a moving version of da Vinci’s Virtruvian Man, considered to be definitive proof that the artist had magical blood in his veins. The pay day had been handsome, to say the least.
Pansy again, didn’t reply.
“I see how it is. One rule for the Princess, and another rule for us paupers, is that so?”
Well, yes.
“I’m prepared to forgive you, in order to move this along,” she sniffed.
“Generous of you. Accio whisky.”
He caught the bottle, and she allowed him to top her up. “You really should go for an Irish drop next time, goes down smoother.” He grinned at her, his tongue behind his teeth.
Was he trying to disarm her? Good luck to him, she thought, then sipped, making a show of savouring the peaty taste on her lips. “I prefer something full-bodied.”
“I can see that. I’m sorry to disappoint, but I can't be distracted. I was summoned here for a lecture from Professor Parkinson.”
Hm. She tucked away that she quite enjoyed being called Professor just now, and launched into a very long explanation of Pureblood wedding custom.
The gist: a ceremony takes place at dawn or dusk, this particular wedding would take place on the equinox (autumn, not spring, due to destination), there would be a reading before, then the hand-fastening, a blessing and a confirmation from the guests, and the couple would wear gold.
The subtext: an excuse for Purebloods to merge families and fortunes, splash around galleons and rub each others’ faces in successes and failures. Much would be swept under rugs. Skeletons would pop out of closets. Etcetera.
Seamus drank, and listened attentively. Pansy was not at all diverted by the way he was rhythmically rolling his glass around on his muscular thigh.
When she seemed to be finished and he had no questions, he stretched up tall. “Now that what you’ve just described there darlin’, is an Irish Pureblood wedding.”
As he grinned, she scowled.
“Don’t worry yourself, it was a lovely story all the same. What’s next?”
Pansy pointed a long nail at Seamus and swept it up and down.
He looked down at himself, as if surprised by his own body. Fair enough, it did sneak up on her sometimes. “Right. Well, you’re goin’ to need to take me to dinner first.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. What’s good around here?”
Maybe because he’d kept her glass topped up throughout their conversation-cum-lecture, they ended up across the road at a small muggle restaurant that served tapas and a rather delicious cava sangria. The interior was all dark wood and glowing gold lights, and music swelled around them.
“So what’s your plan with Lady Verity?” The mark.
Seamus finished a mouthful of chargrilled octopus and shrugged. “Ask her to dance.”
Pansy waited for the rest, and when it didn’t come she said, “That’s it?”
Seamus shrugged again.
“What if she says no?”
“She won’t.”
“Then you’ll make the switch?” Juno had provided an excellent copy of the necklace in question, that would replicate the pearls’ effects for at least month before the enchantments wore off, by which time Pansy and Seamus would be safely back on their respective sides of the Irish Sea, and unlikely to be on the suspect list.
He nodded and sipped his sangria.
Cocky.
“You’ll take it right off her neck without her noticing?”
“Yeah. Haven’t you heard? I’ve very light fingers.” He wiggled his digits as though to demonstrate. She didn’t know about light… to her eyes, his fingers were long and strong.
“Care to demonstrate?”
“Doesn’t work while you’re watchin’ darlin’.”
Two more plates came. Patatas bravas and burrata with fresh glossy tomato and bright basil.
“I suppose if Lady Verity was a Lord you’d just hold out your hand and he’d give the necklace to you,” Seamus commented after the waitress had left.
Pansy acknowledged this with her own version of a shrug, which amounted to a tiny toss of her head.
“Wouldn’t work on me I’m afraid,” he said smoothly.
Pansy tucked this dismissal away for later.
At the door on the way out, Seamus stopped Pansy as she was slipping on her coat. His hand was warm on her bare wrist. Before she could reprimand him for daring to touch her, he lowered his voice and spoke, like he was sharing a dark secret.
“You dropped this darlin’.”
He opened his palm and a gold earring lay there. A plain hoop. Her earring. She resisted the urge to reach up to her earlobe and looked up into mischievous blue eyes. Her heels brought her eye line to the level of his self-satisfied grin.
“Oh, and this.” He rolled something over the fingers that touched her arm, and the hoop’s twin lay in his other palm.
She took them and let her nails run along his palm.
“Wait, one more thing.” He said thing like ‘ting’ like he was ringing her bell—a bell. The bell.
He reached into his pocket, and withdrew two more hoops, this time placing them into her palm.
Somehow, at some point over the course of a not-entirely-unpleasant dinner, Seamus Finnigan had removed all four of Pansy’s earrings, and she hadn’t felt a thing.
*
“Did you use magic?” Pansy finally asked, as Seamus watched her summon colourful vials and bottles out of her bathroom cabinet.
“Half a muggle, remember? Magic o’ course, but a different kind of magic. Always works because they never think it will.”
Blind spots and misdirection. Unexpectedly clever.
“Hm.”
Pansy’s bathroom was cavernous, stark and black and white. Geometric tiles covered the walls and the floor, and the main feature was a huge white bathtub.
Pansy pointed her wand and a spindly black chair appeared with a clunk on the middle of the bathroom floor.
“Sit,” she said in a tone that brokered no argument.
Seamus grinned, and sat.
“Haircut. And we’re getting rid of that ridiculous thing on your chin.”
“How you wound me Pansy darlin’. All the witches in the shop do love a bit of facial hair.”
Pansy approached Seamus with a stylist’s eye, walked around him, and then sifted her hand through his sandy hair, which was quite shaggy at present. It was also, she discovered, rather soft between her fingers. After the second time she carded through, considering, she noticed something interesting… Seamus’ eyelids fluttered as her nails ran lightly over his scalp.
Very interesting.
Pansy swapped her wand into her left hand, and summoned shining silver scissors into her right. She got to work. A snip here, creating texture there…
“You smell good,” Seamus murmured. She almost hadn’t heard him.
Pansy brewed her own scent, sweet and woody, layered with unexpected hints of black pepper and balsamic vinegar. She loved this compliment and how it validated the month-long, brewing process – full moon to full moon. But as usual, she didn’t let it show.
“Done,” she announced. And the whisky or perhaps an unrecognised latent scientific mind had her running fingers through Seamus’ short hair again. Done, yet undone. With angles around the edges and texture on top, it would emphasise the shape of his jaw. Or it would once she got rid of the beard.
Seamus examined himself in the mirror ahead, but she could’ve sworn he looked more at her in her sheer navy blouse than his new, streamlined look.
Pansy vanished the scissors, and clicked on an enchanted razor. She stood back and supervised its progress, lazily vanishing the hair that fell. From underneath the ginger beard, Seamus’ jaw emerged and Pansy was appalled that he’d hidden it.
The razor obediently set itself back on the vanity, and Pansy scrutinised her work.
“I think you might be blushin’ darlin’.”
Any heat that was in her cheeks was entirely to do with alcohol and the charms that kept her flat at a comfortable, consistent eighteen degrees all year round.
He fancied himself as immune to her particular charms.
Okay.
If he wanted to play, she could play.
And he was about to lose.
Pansy moved closer. Put her legs on either side of one of his knees and ran the back of her finger over his jaw. There was still the lightest scrape of stubble against her skin.
“Hm. I think we need to get closer.” She repeated her stroke on the other side of his jaw.
For once, he wasn’t grinning, but the ghost of it was there, and his eyes were on fire.
Pansy returned to the vanity, and set the components of her plan floating around Seamus in the chair. Planets orbiting his sun. She pocketed her wand, and returned to him holding a cool metal promise in her fingers and with anticipation zipping over her skin.
“Ever had a shave with a straight razor?” she flicked open the flawless blade, and in the light it shone like a patronus charm.
Seamus shook his head, eyes on the honed edge. “Can’t say I have, no.”
“I can do it with magic, but I find…” Pansy plucked a small brush out of a wooden bowl, and leaned in close. The practised voice she used was coated with sugar. “It’s better by hand.”
“I’m afraid you’re goin’ to have to demonstrate.”
“You only had to ask.”
She got to work.
When she gently smoothed a softening oil all over his jaw, she was rewarded with a slight catch of breath. Her thumb worked over the lines next to his mouth that told the story of a million grins. Beneath flesh and blood, her fingers learned the shape and the truth of him.
Next, she coated his jaw with a cool layer of snowy shaving soap, and the smell of vanilla and rosemary wafted through the air. Another of her creations. The brush went back in the bowl, and then the blade was in her hand. She tilted her head in close, and with precision she skimmed the blade across Seamus’ cheek. The trust wasn’t lost on her, nor was the heady rush of power inherent in holding a blade to a man’s throat.
Another stroke, and another, blade held tight and angled just-so.
Awareness of his eyes on her was with her the entire time, for Pansy always knew when a man was devouring her in his mind. Her fingers were on his lips as she used small, precise movements to work on the area between his straight nose and his cupid’s bow. It was a beautiful shape, she noticed, no longer hidden under coarse ginger hair.
Her mistake was meeting his gaze.
The task vanished from her mind, and there she was, nothing more than a woman with a blade to a man's throat. The razor was pressed dangerously against his Adam’s apple, and she was frozen.
This he noticed.
“How’s it lookin’?” he asked, his voice was tight under the pressure and threat of the blade.
Her work was complete, but she hadn’t truly hammered in her point. Her nails caressed his cheek, and then she changed direction and felt his smooth skin with her sensitive fingertips. The contact hollowed her out, reminded her of the empty truth beneath her pretty myths.
“Perfect,” she whispered.
It only took a slight adjustment to put her leg on the other side of his and to lower herself into his lap. Quick off the mark, he caught on, and his hands slid easily around her, holding her hips with the sort of strength that suggested he could lift her, throw her, pin her—if she wasn’t holding his life in her hands.
“Gonna kill me, darlin’?” His words were barely more than breath.
“Maybe.” Yet she turned the blade away so it was flat, less threatening.
“There are worse ways to go.” Daring, he pulled her closer. Released a hip so he could cup the back of her neck. Her hammering pulse was not part of the game, nor was allowing him to pull her closer to his curving lips.
It was impossible to tell if they were touching, or not touching—crackling electricity, or maybe pure magic bridged that last infinitesimal gap between them.
She took sips of his breath and rolled her body forward into his. Hard, soft, alive. Yes. Please.
…No. Thanks.
Before she realised—reminded herself that she wanted to win. Winning was the most important thing. If she kissed him, he would win. She didn’t know why, but those were the rules.
He’d said it. Laid down the challenge, without knowing it. Wouldn’t work on me, I’m afraid.
Thus, she whispered directly onto his lips.
“I think it works on you after all.”
And she withdrew from the intoxicating embrace she’d poured herself into. Her back stayed turned while she tidied up, so she didn’t have to look at the peril of his face.