Tinsel In A Tangle

“Some of it is. I didn’t try to understand him.”

“You were a kid. That’s not your job.”

“I knew the bones tattoo would infuriate him. If he hadn’t choked on a sandwich in the dining hall, I’d have been a murder suspect. It was well known we didn’t get along and I virtually danced on his grave.”

She’d shaved her head completely, worn revealing clothing and goth makeup to the funeral. She’d refused to speak to anyone, not even him, and then before he could break through to her, she’d run.

“No one was surprised he disinherited me but me,” she said.

“Well, you showed him. He’d be astonished at what you did.” She shook her head. “The master thief’s daughter pulling off the heist of the century? Of course he would.”

She made a sound of surprise. “I never thought about it.”

“Oh, come on, you must’ve. It was the greatest fuck you ever.”

“I only thought about you.”

That stuffed his next words back in his throat. He turned her face so he could see her eyes. “You thought about me?” His heart did a gymnastics feat worthy of a cat burglar, flipping over and climbing up his ribcage while he waited for her to answer.

“I wanted to celebrate with you.” She lowered her eyes. “How unhinged is that?”

Not unhinged, but an open window, and through it a new view of life. “I think we should take that celebration you were talking about to bed.”

She stopped him standing, taking his face in her hands. “Are we safe here?”

“Perfectly, if you let me make the deal.”

“It’s not your deal to make. I’m not giving you Celestia.”

“Goddamn, Aria, then no, we’re not safe for more than a few more hours. They will find you as easily as I did.”

She stood and took his hand, drew him up and to the bed. “Then let’s make them count.”

He could count the ways this was like a sting gone bad, being handcuffed to a chair, beaten and left for dead. He could count her ribs, see her dedication in the sharp lines of her collarbones, and her discipline in the jut of her hips. She’d turned her body into an instrument of illusion and her rebellion into a tool of deceit, and the admiration he had for her threatened to wreck his determination to keep her safe.

The only way he could make anything count was to tumble her on the bed, mouth at her mouth, hands on her clothing, pulling it away, shrugging off his robe. He met her lips in a flurry of sadness and wonder and lust. If he’d understood then what he did now, he’d have run with her, taken her at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Even if that’d meant boosting cars and petty crime, they’d have been togethe

r and he’d have saved her from the horrors of trying to win the love of a loveless man.

He had to save her now.

Become another loveless man.

The only way to make anything count for Aria, to keep her safe, was to do the one thing he’d never done—break faith with her. Lie to her, steal from her.

Destroy any chance he had of keeping her in his life.

For the second time.

But this time it would be a deliberate choice and she’d never forgive him.

She lay on the bed with her arms raised to him, with her eyes gone soft and her mouth wet and pink. He’d known he’d loved her before they’d ever touched. Spent two years convincing himself it was just the risk of her he craved, the wild idea of her; then the months they’d had together he was so twisted up in her he was a danger to himself. He’d lose track of a safe crack sequence, stumble in a bluff, drop a tool and make a noise when he should be silent because he’d been caught out thinking of her.

He was caught out now. Hands shaking as he smoothed them up her thighs, gut tight, tense and oversensitive, intelligence reversing all the way back to an elementary action reaction state. When she gasped, he did the thing that made her make that sound again. When she arched, he pressed forward; when she bucked, he held her steady. When she chanted his name, he captured that sound so he could replay it when she was gone.

Two shuddering orgasms he coached out of her before his body gave in and the greedy man took over.

He gripped her chin. “You should’ve trusted me.”