Tinsel In A Tangle

“You’re deluded, high on your own criminal fame.” She hissed at him like a wild animal, preparing to attack. “Get away from me.”

He laughed and the sound entered her body and rearranged her cells, divided them into red for desire and white for hate. He took a step toward her and the fight began, red against white, desire against hate.

“You don’t come any closer.”

He didn’t know how dangerous she was. He didn’t know how much hate you could nurture in a decade. He moved into her space and the white cells surged. “Aria. That’s my girl. Under all that skinny, polished, perfect skin is my shaved-head, tatted hellion. I see you.”

She pulled back her fist and walloped him. He grunted in surprise as his head rocked to the side and she hit him again, opening a cut on his cheek with her onyx ring. But he didn’t step back, only put his hand to his cheek, shook his head and smiled.

It wasn’t the blood, or the violence, or the way she shocked him, delighted him. It was the smile. It arrowed into her heart, a beloved thing returned, a fatal dose of radiation, and all that was left was red.

She grabbed his shirtfront and dragged him forward. Unbalanced, his hands went to the wall behind her. “There she is.”

On her toes, she shut him up with a hard-lipped kiss that felt the same as a punch, that pushed her adrenaline spike higher and confused her heartbeat. She hated the way he gentled her lips, hated his arms around her, hated the slip of his curls in her fingers, but she kissed him like she had no other purpose for being, no other instinct for survival. She kissed him like she was disease and he was health, and that’s how it always had been between them.

She forgot to hate him, forgot to miss him, knew only the savagery of an unexpected victory. He was here. He noticed her. He held her tight, setting her body alight in ways she’d misremembered: breath shorting, eyes gluing shut, the slow wind up of a sparking spring in her belly, the need to press and rub and grip and take and take and take his scent and heat and hands and lips, his whole presence pushing her to new degrees of careless, wanton abandon.

“Do it,” she hissed, when his hands went under her skirt, when his thumb found home in her cleft and her insides curled and tensed.

“Not here.”

“Yes.”

“Not like this.”

“Only like this.” Always like this, urgent and vital and aching. Only with him, no matter how hard she tried to find this fight and win and loss from another man’s hands, only at his was it recognition and conquest, and beautiful for all the devastation.

He let her have his tongue and teeth, his thumb, then fingers; made her groan and pant and purr, then held her upright when her legs no longer wanted to play.

“God, I’ve missed you,” he said.

She focused on his face; the light, honest liar’s eyes, the

smooth deceptive mouth, the responsible con artist’s chin and the sweep of boyish hair that made him unbelievably rotten. Made him the prince of deceit. Made him dare to be in her thoughts and then use that to find her.

“Thanks for the hand job.”

In the moment of surprise that followed that insult, she got away from him. Got to the street front and hailed a cab. She needed to be gone and quickly. Not running from him, but from what he’d want. A roundabout route to a new hotel—she’d go back for the Sweet Celestia when he’d given her up. She’d go back to hating him when her body wasn’t so ready to want him again.

Chapter Six

Cleve caught the cab door and risked losing his fingers to stop Aria slamming it. He slipped in beside her and gave the cabbie her hotel address. He didn’t risk looking at her because he knew what he’d see and it would break him.

She was more beautiful, her rebellion gone deep now, not at the surface for the shock value, to make her father notice her, but under her skin, deep in her bones, where it made her truly dangerous.

She’d not forgiven.

She hated more than she ever loved.

They rode in silence; a short distance she would’ve walked if she hadn’t been trying to shake him.

“How did you find me?” Her voice was baked in old anger and new outrage.

He’d never lied to her; there was no reason to start now. “I tracked Melody. I know what you’ve done.”

Outside her hotel, he paid the cabbie, kept his eyes on her. She might bolt. She might simply wait for his guard to be down and murder him.

Inside the foyer of the hotel she would’ve balked, but he’d laid his trail well. He hailed the night manager like an old friend and waved the room keycard. He’d played a wayward husband, in trouble with his wife over a misdemeanor, desperate to make it up to her. The best bluffs had an element of truth.