“No one will punish you for speaking ill of him,” she said, “least of all I.” Everyone knew of her humiliation—she’d worn her heart on her sleeve during her involvement with Arav. “The lady’s fort is being painted bloodred and she wants answers.” Mahiya didn’t mourn Eris or Arav, and Audrey had made her own bed, but Shabnam had been an innocent. “Did Arav cause insult?”
It was clear the servant was torn between obeying the dictates of the archangel who was his liege and self-protective distance. The former won. “He was heard speaking to one who is loyal to Rhys, offering the man a position he did not yet have the ability to provide on the condition the other switch loyalties.”
“When I am consort . . .”
“How was he overheard?” Arav wouldn’t have broached the subject of such treachery in public.
Lashes coming down, head bowed, the servant backed away into the dark. At first, she thought he was refusing to answer, then she realized it was his answer. No, Arav hadn’t been stupid, but he’d been arrogant, an angel of nine hundred who considered weaker beings beneath his notice. “I see,” she said as the servant reappeared from the shadows. “Was Rhys aware of Arav’s attempts to subvert his people?”
Another falling of shutters. “I do not know.”
Yes, Rhys knew. He knows everything that happens in this fort.
“But,” she said to Jason when he returned much later, “Rhys has always been far more elegant in eliminating his enemies.” Stepping out onto her half of the balcony where Jason waited, she handed him the cognac she’d poured from the bottle kept for guests.
“I think I’m beyond tea tonight.”
The words had felt inexplicably intimate.
“I eliminated Rhys as a suspect before I knew this piece of information, but even with it, I still do not believe him to be the killer.” He sipped at the dark amber liquid, his throat muscles working. “The way Shabnam was exposed—Rhys, I think, is not capable of such a thing.”
“Yes. He’d never treat a woman with such disrespect, even in death.”
Taking another sip, Jason reached back to put the glass on the window ledge behind them, before turning to lean his bare forearms on the balcony railing. He’d showered and changed, too, wore a plain black T-shirt and jeans, his feet bare. Behind him, his wings fell gracefully to the floor, shadows kin to the night. She’d never seen him this . . . relaxed, as if he’d taken off part of his armor.
Her eyes went to the tie at his nape, the brown skin beneath colorless in the night, and she remembered the brush of his thumb across her lower lip.
“I think, you must decide something tonight.”
Her womb clenched. She hadn’t trusted her body to a man in an eternity, and Jason . . . he had never lied to her.
“May I undo the tie on your hair?”
He went motionless at her soft request, until he could have been the most beautiful gargoyle ever created, his wings of jet. Heart thudding in her throat, she waited . . . until at last he inclined his head in a small nod.
Her fingers trembled as she reached out. Taking care not to touch his nape, not to assume a deeper intimacy, she undid the tie and slid it away. A silken black waterfall spilled across his shoulders, the strands cool but no longer damp, the night air just warm enough to have sucked the moisture away. Unable to resist, she ran her fingertips lightly over the strands before dropping her hand to her side.
“How far would you go?”
Startled at the murmured question, she jumped. “What?”
“As you said, I am your only way out—so, how far would you go?”
Her skin flushed hot then cold. “I was baiting you,” she admitted. “Even to attain my freedom, I would never barter away the one thing that has always been mine.” Her body, her desire.
“Good. You’ve made your decision?”
“Yes.” Breath tight in her chest, she raised her hand, hesitated.
“Touch me, Mahiya.”
It was all she needed. Giving in to the need, she ran her fingers through his hair. It felt akin to petting a tiger that had, for quixotic reasons of his own, decided not to bite her hand off. She made no mistake that this showed a crack in the obsidian shields around Jason’s heart, indulged in no daydreams of a deeper relationship.
Still . . . it felt good to be close to a man who had never once treated her as disposable. Even at the very start, he’d given her a formal kind of respect. Now, she saw true respect in those eyes of dark, luxuriant brown. It saddened her deep within that the fragile bond between them would break when this task was done.
Jason, she knew without asking, wasn’t a man who allowed anyone as close as a familiar lover would become. Her chest ached at the knowledge of the hurt that must have shaped him to such endless aloneness, but she also knew she must be so, so careful not to fall for him, not to seek more than the dark sexuality that swirled between them, hot and beautifully violent as a desert storm.
* * *
Jason knew he was walking a dangerous edge with Mahiya, but he also knew he craved her touch too much to turn back. Clenching his jaw to control his shudder as her fingers touched his scalp, stroked down, he forced himself to remain motionless when all he wanted to do was turn, pin her to the wall, and thrust into the lush heat of her body.
He heard the bones in his jaw grind against one another as she stroked again, and suddenly, her touch was gone. “I’m distressing you. I’m sorry.” An edge of horror in her tone. “I would’ve never—”