Chapter Five The Man in Black #2
Though she couldn’t see his eyes, she could feel them drinking her in.
“I’m sorry to say I have no intention of getting into that bed again tonight.
” He said it like he knew it was just the thing to rile her, and he was painfully correct.
Oh, but she liked his brand of arrogance.
It was doing all kinds of things it shouldn’t to her insides. “But I would like to talk.”
“I’m flattered. But you could have just offered to buy me a drink.” She knew he’d seen her at the Bear and the Bard. “It would have saved us both some time.”
“I wanted to see who you were first.”
Stars, the heat of him. It was like standing in a forge.
“Really,” she murmured. “And?”
The look he gave her was full of promise. “I’m not disappointed.”
Reya knew she should slit his throat, search the room, and get the hell out of there. But she was, despite all good sense, unable to help herself from asking, “Who are you?”
With deliberate slowness, he tugged his hood back, revealing a face so stupidly beautiful she blinked just to make sure she hadn’t imagined it. Seeing her reaction, he smirked, a cocky, arrogant twist of the lips that completely transformed his presence.
Reya rarely blushed. There wasn’t much she hadn’t seen or heard or witnessed in the last ten years, especially from the men in her circles. But she was certain she blushed then. Thank the All-Gods he couldn’t see it in the shadows.
The stubble along his jaw told her he’d been on the road for some time, but not long enough to obscure the dimple on his chin.
The lower third of his black hair was shorn, the remaining length pulled back into a tight knot, revealing eyes of rich amber flecked with a storm of gold so stark they practically burned.
“Someone who can help you.”
He moved so quickly she countered on reflex, shoving the blade up into his gut, and cursed when it caught on the armored steel plates beneath the leather.
One minute she was standing before him, and the next, he’d seized her wrists and hooked his leg around one of hers.
She slammed into the floor hard enough that her teeth rattled.
The pain in her chest was so acute, she was certain he’d stabbed her, but it was just her ribs warning her that she was one body slam away from another week in bed.
And then he was above her, crushing her outstretched wrist into the wood until her hand splayed and her knife clattered away.
A scream rose in her throat, but she pressed her lips together to strangle it.
Reya was pretty sure she was going to have to realign her damn fingers.
He tried to do the same to her other hand, but it wasn’t damaged, and she held fast.
Sweet Mother above, he did have calluses.
The situation was not at all funny, but she laughed anyway—right in his gorgeous face.
“Something funny, thief?”
She hummed. Hoping it might throw him off guard, she answered truthfully. “If this were any other circumstance, this would absolutely be doing it for me.”
He looked taken aback by either her honesty or her nerve, and his hands tightened, almost reflexively.
She let out the smallest gasp, releasing the kind of smile she rarely doled out—one that had struck lesser men stupid.
It didn’t quite have the same effect here.
The only reaction she saw was a slight shift of color in the gold of his eyes, and she suspected that was involuntary.
This was not a man who gave up control, she could tell.
But damn if that didn’t make it more fun to try.
That burning gaze fell to the green pendant against her chest, and his lips curled back from his teeth in a snarl.
Reya saw her moment and drove her knee up into his groin.
He grunted, but his strange armor was protecting what she sought to use against him.
Every injury she had was screaming, but she refused to show him weakness.
He was strong, almost too strong, and she began to worry that she’d made an awful miscalculation.
Reya wrapped both legs around his waist, closing all distance between them, and twisted with all her weight.
His surprise faded into humor as she rolled them, and she had a sinking feeling that he’d allowed it.
Her hood fell back as she landed atop him and drove her ruby dagger straight down, but his grip on her wrists was like iron.
Why was she always straddling men with a blade in her hand?
The weapon trembled in the air between them as her hair curtained his face; meanwhile, he fought off a smile. The bastard was enjoying this.
That’s when she noticed it—a faint line of blood along his neck where he’d pressed his skin too far against her dagger. But it wasn’t red.
It was blue.
“You’re—” The answer clanged through her.
The strength, the speed, the allure. Stars above. He’d known she was following him because he’d caught her scent.
He was a Sage. And she couldn’t help the word that came out of her next.
“Seriously?”
Someone somewhere had to be screwing with her.
She hadn’t encountered even one Sage in years and yet had somehow crossed paths with two in the last week.
Reya had no idea what sort of magic was at play, but she felt the same pulsing aura now that she’d felt around Stellene, only his was different. She needed to get out of there. Now.