You Only Love Twice

by Bec McMaster

  Gemma threw herself into a slide, plucking a shard of razor-sharp glass from the windowsill at the bottom. Pain slashed through her fingers and a part of her—the predator part—reared within her at the scent of blood, but she had no time to worry about it.

  "You think a piece of glass is going to stop me?" He stalked toward her.

  "My apologies," Gemma panted, raking the room for something else she could use as a weapon. "Someone very inconveniently removed all my weapons. I am reduced to this."

  Flinging the shard toward Obsidian, she bolted for the dining room in the next room, her fingers wet with blood and the craving virus itching beneath her skin as it sought to heal her.

  "Damn you, Gemma." Glass shattered against the wall. He must have smashed it aside.

  She'd never beat him on flat ground.

  Scrambling under the dining table, Gemma crawled across the floor, shoving chairs out of the way as she tried to flee.

  A chair was wrenched from the table and shattered against the wall. Gemma kicked the one in front of her out of the way, and then did an abrupt about-turn in the direction she'd come as Obsidian launched himself toward the fallen chair, trying to find her.

  Cursed skirts. Panting hard, she slipped as her knee trapped her skirt beneath her. Gemma shot forward, throwing herself into a roll as she came out from beneath the table. Lace ripped as she launched to her feet, her hem caught beneath her boot, but she sprinted back toward the foyer as a roar of rage bellowed behind her.

  "You're not going to escape!"

  "We'll see!"

  She caught a glimpse of a dusty coat stand out of the corner of her eye and lashed out, throwing it behind her as she bolted past.

  A hand locked around her arm before she'd taken three steps, and as he hauled her back toward him, Gemma spun, driving the flat of her palm up into his chin.

  Obsidian's head snapped back, and she swept low, taking his feet out from under him. She turned to flee before he'd even hit the floor, but a hand snatched at her skirts and hauled her back. Staggering over the top of him, she went down in a crush of silk, struggling to kick free.

  Curse her damned fashion sense. Why had she not worn one of her training outfits today?

  A hand slammed between her shoulder blades, pinning her flat to the floor where she got a mouthful of dust. Coughing it out of her lungs, she felt herself being hauled to her feet, an iron shackle of a grip snagging her by the bustle.

  Arms as strong as iron bands wrapped around her, hauling her up over his shoulder. Gemma kicked, but Obsidian drove her backward.

  Her back slammed against the tabletop, the breath smashing out of her. Gemma cried out, trapping her legs around his thighs, but it was too late. He pinned her right hand down, and her left ached. Moonlight flashed off the flat of his blade as he drove it toward her throat—

  And held it there.

  Gemma froze, heart racing and her chest heaving.

  The prick of the tip of the knife pressed against her carotid. Barely a whisper of a threat, but she took it seriously. She didn't dare move. Barely dared breathe.

  "Not you." The words broke from her lips.

  Not like this.

  She captured his gaze, forcing him to look her in the eye. Her chin tipped up. Obsidian's hand curled around her throat, his weight leaning forward, which dragged her skirts up between them.

  Look me in the eye and do it. She captured his hand, sliding hers over the iron grip on her throat. Holding it there. Feeling the hatred vibrating from him as the razor-sharp edge of the blade nicked her skin.

  Adrenaline hammered through her veins. A certain kind of rush that seemed destructively intimate. The rich, coppery scent of her blood flavored the air, and she knew he smelled it too, for his lashes fluttered, his gaze dipping to her throat.

  Suddenly, that restless feeling beneath her skin began to make sense. The hunger roused within her, the predator swimming to the surface. She saw the same stark need in his own eyes.

  He was not immune to her.

  Gemma squeezed his hand and arched her spine. As if drawn by a magnet, his gaze dropped lower, almost as silky as a caress as it shivered over the upthrust mounds of her breasts, his eyes bleeding to black as the hunger roused within him. Pressed as he was between her thighs, she felt the rising bulge of his cock and stilled again.

  Barely three layers of clothing separated her skin from his.

  Seven years of betrayal and pain.

  The skin between her breasts ached, as if the bullet wound there remained like an invisible wound. He'd done that to her. But in some deep, dark part of her, it didn't matter.

  Three layers of clothing. Skin on skin. Obsidian's brows drew together, as if he sensed it too. He seemed just as confused by his reaction as she was.

  A shocking thought occurred.

  She stroked his hand again, and there it was. The flinch. A faint softening of his grip.

  It took her breath.

  Because she wasn't the only one trapped by need. By the past.

  She couldn't still the rush of thoughts through her head. She couldn't outrun him. Couldn't outfight him. But maybe she didn't need to?

  Gemma's thighs locked around his narrow hips, and suddenly she could feel every inch of him pressed against her inner thigh.

  "You can't kill me," she whispered. "Can you?"

  Obsidian shoved away from her, driving the flat of his hand against his brow as if his head ached. He held the knife clenched in his fist and shot her a look of raw fury.

  Slowly, she pushed upright from the table and slipped off its surface.

  "I ought to," he said coldly. "I want to."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "You are mine," he breathed, his hair falling across his face. Every inch of his chest expanded, as if he fought to control some raging beast inside. "That's all you need to know right now."

  Sheathing the knife, he turned and strode toward her.

  Gemma backed away, tripping over the lip of the rug, but this time she knew trying to escape was pointless.

  Obsidian hauled her over his shoulder, and she didn't fight him—didn't resist—as he turned toward the staircase, and her makeshift cell.

  Because she knew she was never going to be able to escape him using force.

  But maybe she didn't have to?

  8

  Obsidian found a lantern and a hessian sack, and hauled both of them up the stairs with her. The light hurt her eyes as he set her down inside the cell, but Gemma took the chance to study his face.

  She didn't know what was going through his mind.

  This man....

  She didn't know this man.

  There was no sign of the Dmitri she'd fallen in love with, the one with his gentle hands and the heated look in his eyes when he glanced at her. Obsidian, he'd called himself, and she realized then the man she'd loved had vanished.

  Feeling bruised on the inside, Gemma forced her shoulders to square as this devilish stranger set the lantern aside and dragged the hessian sack forward with a clank. If he thought for one minute he was going to defeat her, then he really didn't know her that well. He might have taken all her knives—all her weapons—but he couldn't take her most dangerous ones.

  And she'd already proven he wasn't invulnerable to her most dangerous asset: her sexuality.

  "How did you get out?" He examined the lock before turning those dangerous eyes upon her.

  "Magic."

  Eyes narrowing, he swung the gate shut behind him. "Where is it?"

  "Where is what?"

  Hands caught her waist and spun her around. Gemma's hands slapped against the rough stone of the walls as he forced them there.

  "Don't move," he growled.

  "Or you'll what? Slam me on a table again?" Her voice grew rough. "I think if you wanted to hurt me, you'd have done it downstairs. You couldn't do it, could you? You couldn't bring yourself to harm me. No matter how cold the mask you wear, I know he's still there inside you
somewhere."

  "He?" His hands slid down the curve of her hips, and then up across her abdomen, searching for weapons, she presumed.

  "The man I fell in love with in Saint Petersburg."

  "That man never existed."

  "Liar."

  "Consider him buried, Miss Townsend."

  Gemma's heart gave a twisting clench in her chest. Seeing him alive had been a slap to the face. She'd buried him in her heart all those years ago when he'd shot her. Told herself a million times that what she'd felt for him was nothing more than a myth. He'd betrayed her. Lied to her. Pretended to be something he wasn't, which was somewhat of a mockery, for she'd been trying to do the same thing.

  Trying.

  She'd conjured something between them, only to discover it a lie, and the truth had shattered her. And then he'd died when the Winter Palace exploded, and Gemma had known true agony, for despite his betrayal, knowing he was dead tore her wretched heart out of her chest all over again.

  She couldn't resist taunting him, trying to find the truth between them. "Not buried, Dmitri. Just never real."

  His hands paused on her waist. "Obsidian."

  Fine. "Obsidian."

  Perhaps it was better this way. Dmitri and Hollis and the lie between them could die a painful death. She'd forged herself anew when it ended, taking on the mantle of Gemma Townsend.

  And Gemma, flirtatious, calculating Gemma, knew no heartbreak.

  "And you're right." Obsidian's hands began to take a leisurely path up her body, sweeping beneath her arms, his fingers brushing ever so faintly against the sides of her breasts. "None of it was real."

  She did not feel that faint twinge in her heart.

  It didn't exist.

  Gemma steeled herself as his hands began to slide lower, firm over her hips. She had the truth. He'd never loved her.

  Now she needed to escape.

  "Why sir," she protested in a mocking voice, "how dare you take such liberties when we've barely been reacquainted."

  He paused, his hand caressing the rounded curve of her bottom. "I seem to recall you had no compunctions about allowing me such liberties in the past."

  Gemma sucked in a sharp breath as his hand slid lower. Seductress or not, she hadn't been prepared for the feelings his touch awoke in her. They weren't a lie. Those leather-clad fingers stroked along the crevice of her bottom, shockingly intimate and yet strangely distant. No heat there. Not yet. Kicking her feet apart until her heeled boots were spread, he caressed his way up her body.

  "If you're searching for a weapon," she whispered, "you're looking in the wrong place. Those are my breasts."

  "Noted." A cold, imperious tone as he cupped the weight of her left breast. Then the right. Fingers patted her down, sliding along her arms, her sides, her waist.

  He even slid a leather-gloved hand through her hair, and Gemma had to contain a gasp as his fist clenched there momentarily.

  A flush of heat swept through her.

  Oh, dear.

  Don't you dare, she told herself sharply, but her nipples disobeyed the directive. And suddenly she was in the past again, on her hands and knees, with Dm— Obsidian buried to the hilt within her, his fist in her hair wrenching her head back.

  "I know you have it upon you somewhere."

  "What would you be referring to?" Her voice came out a little lower than expected.

  "Don't make me strip you naked," he threatened. "You have a lock pick."

  "I told you. It was magic."

  "Can you never utter a single word of the truth?"

  Not if I can help it.

  Because the truth hurt.

  He resumed his search, kneeling behind her. Hands slid up under her skirts, stroking the backs of her calves. His touch had been impersonal until now.

  But it slowed as he reached her thighs, a vague hint of unease evident in his hesitation.

  The combination of danger and action left her feeling a little light-headed.

  He wasn't the only one frozen.

  "Nothing between my thighs," she whispered, "but you're quite welcome to check. As I recall, you did wonderful things with those fingers."

  "Shut up."

  "Though your mouth was better," Gemma mused, and then bit her lip when his thumb dug into the back of her thigh in warning. She was getting to him. She knew it.

  His hands retreated down the back of her legs, and he yanked her off-balance as he lifted her foot.

  A swift tug on her laces, and he tugged her left boot off. Then the right.

  "Nothing in there either," Gemma pointed out, though technically that was a lie, as there was a thin wire coiled in the false heel of her boot.

  Obsidian straightened. "Are you enjoying this?"

  "Should I not be?"

  He seemed affronted by the pleasure she took in goading him.

  "It's been months since I've felt another's touch," Gemma said, with a faint shrug of her shoulders. Over a year, if she were being honest. "And never doubt I can do the job myself, but there's something to be said for having someone else's hands on your skin." She lowered her voice a little coyly, as if whispering a confession. "Rough hands. That time in the museum when you stole your first kiss? We were arguing. You shoved me against the wall and pinned me there and kissed me as if you couldn't get enough of me. I loved every minute of it."

  Harsh fingers tugged at the buttons down the spine of her gown. Gemma turned her head, but his hand was suddenly on her wrist, pushing it insistently back against the wall.

  Had she pushed him too far?

  Or could she push him further?

  "And one might add, judging by the way you pinned me to the table downstairs, you are not entirely unaffected either. That wasn't a gun pressed between my thighs, Obsidian."

  "I forgot how dangerous you were," he replied with cool aplomb, the steel of his body caging her in from behind.

  You, sir, have no idea.

  "And yes," he whispered, sweeping her hair to the side, his lips skating over the back of her neck. "I am not unaffected." Firm hands slid down her sides, parting the back of her dress.

  A tongue swept across the nubbin at the top of her spine.

  Gemma froze as prickles of arousal swept through her.

  "Do you want to know something?" His thumb slid along the laced stretch of her corset. Hooking his fingers in the bottom laces, he began to haul it tight. Gemma's breath caught as her corset squeezed. "I don't think I'm the only one not unaffected. Am I, moy sladkiy yad?"

  Sweet poison, am I? She hissed out a breath as her corset drew tighter. A damning slickness between her thighs betrayed her.

  Two could play this game.

  She'd forgotten that.

  Her lungs arrested as the corset compressed her breasts. Submit, said his touch, and Gemma found she couldn't breathe. A fuzzy light-headed sensation swept through her, danger arousing her to the point of intoxication. Teeth bit into the hard muscle tracing from her neck to her shoulder.

  A soft cry escaped her.

  And then he let her go, and her corset slackened, allowing the trapped blood in her veins to flood into blood-starved skin. The rush of sudden sensation was blinding. But the way he controlled her so deftly turned her into a puddle of mush.

  Gemma gasped, fingers curling against the stone. Dangerous, dangerous man. For he remembered what she liked, if not anything else.

  "Are you wet, Miss Townsend?" His breath ghosted along the back of her neck, his voice softly amused with her unraveled state. "If I search between your thighs again, will your wetness slick my gloves? Could I taste it, if I put those fingers to my lips?"

  Anger burned within her. He sounded so mocking. "Why don't you test your theory?"

  "What's wrong, Miss Townsend? You like to flirt. You like to talk," he said, slipping her sleeve down over her shoulder. "I remember that. You ran rings around half the Blood—"

  "Never you," she admitted, uttering a vaguely dissatisfied sound. It was the first thing that cau
ght her attention when he'd been trying to distract her from her target.

  A handsome man intercepting her on the dance floor, insisting upon a dance.

  She'd catalogued him in an instant. Tall, his shoulders straining within the well-fitted coat he wore. A full, dangerous mouth that drew her gaze for a second look. Silvery hair that cascaded to his shoulders, the color somewhat akin to moonlight on snow. Unlike the rest of the Blood Court, he'd worn no extravagant cravat, and his waistcoat was black.

  One of Sergey's many "friends" but her target had been Sergey. And handsome men came and went. There would be others.

  Except....

  Nothing she'd ever said had been able to sway him from her side. Everywhere she looked, Dmitri was simply there. Sergey's guard dog, she'd groused to Malloryn one night when he'd wanted to know why she was finding this mission so difficult. She'd flirted, she'd handed him a ringing set down, she'd argued, then tried cool distance. Dmitri took it all in his stride, his gray eyes mocking her, as if he knew exactly what she was doing.

  And Gemma had found herself distracted from her mission.

  The seductress found herself seduced.

  But she hadn't been the only one.

  "Sometimes me," Obsidian admitted quietly. "But not this time. I know what you are now."

  "Do you?"

  "And if you think I'm going to fall into your honeyed trap, then you can think again."

  He gave a little tug on her dress, nudging it to her hips and revealing every inch of her corset and chemise.

  Gemma shivered as the chill of the room bit her skin. Wait. This was not quite going the way she'd planned. "What the hell are you doing? You've searched me from top to toe. It's not as though my dress contains some secret weapon."

  "Not true," he pointed out, in a raw voice. "You are your greatest weapon." Fisting both hands in the edges of her gown, he wrenched them apart.

  Fabric tore. Gemma gasped, as he stripped the fabric from her body as if it were mere cotton. "That's my favorite dress!"

  "Was." He ripped it down her arms, stripping the sleeves over her hands. "I'm certain you have others."

  "No, you don't understand." She glanced down at the forsaken remains of her gown in a puddle on the ground around her feet. "It’s a Madame Lefoux. It cost me a fortune. The silk.... The silk is all the way from the White Court in China."