Midnight Beauties (Grim Lovelies 2)

“Good luck. If we fail, your spell will be all that protects the near realms.” She finally managed to shed the dress and left it pooled in a puddle of feathers on the bedroom floor. She glanced in the mirror and cringed at the mess that was her hair.

Through the lattice screen, she saw him move to the window, pick up a seashell she’d left on the sill, and toy with it absently. “You don’t have to, you know.” His tone had changed.

“Don’t have to what?” She dragged a comb through her hair.

“Come back.”

She froze with the comb in her hand. She glanced toward the dressing screen. His back was turned to her so she couldn’t see his face.

“You and your friends are human now,” he continued. “You are bound to no master. You’ve gotten everything you’ve ever wanted. You could run away. Take off in the Roadster and never come back. Go to Prague. Go to Timbuktu, if you like. Leave us to our fates with the Coven. You owe me nothing. You made the terms of our marriage very clear.”

She frowned as she slid back into her old tuxedo pants and T-shirt. “I gave the Goblins my word that I’d help them retake London. They sacrificed everything to help us in Montélimar. I’m not going to walk away from my promise.” She tucked in her shirt and then pulled her hair into a ponytail. “Besides, beasties are the only things that can kill witches. You think the Coven would let us run off to Timbuktu? If we don’t stop them, they’ll come for us next. Even me. Even though I can’t cast a single whisper.”

She slid on the Faustine jacket and instantly felt better, like a lock had clicked into place. She sighed. She thrust her hands in the pockets and came around the dressing screen. Rennar’s gaze flickered over her. He didn’t seem to mind her like this, dressed in pants instead of a gown.

“Why are you saying all of this?” she asked softly.

“Because I need for it to be said. I have no hold over you anymore. None of your friends are caged or tied up with chains. We are married, but we’ve agreed that it doesn’t mean you must remain at my side.”

She leaned against the bedpost, arms folded. “I’m not going to betray you, Rennar.”

“You could. We aren’t friends.”

“Like you said, we aren’t enemies either.”

He walked toward her with a smoldering look. “What, exactly, are we?”

She was lacing her oxford shoes; she paused and looked up at him. She didn’t have any kind of answer for that question, and she told him as much.

“For the first time in my life,” he continued in a softer tone, “I have something I don’t want to lose. Someone I don’t want to lose. I’m worried for you, Anouk.”

“Rennar, it’s a sham marriage.”

“I don’t care about you because a piece of paper tells me I must.” He was close enough to her that she could smell his cologne. “Anouk, you’re . . .”

She made a show of rolling her eyes, but the truth was, his look was shaking her. “Beautiful? Charming?” she suggested.

“Unexpected.” He reached up to untangle a knot in her hair. He was close, and his head turned, and so did hers, and before she knew it, he was kissing her. How? She again got that sense this was happening to someone else. His hands gripped her waist. His fingers dug into her sides. His lips were urgent. Her pulse flared to life. This wasn’t like the kiss at the wedding. There was nothing chaste about the way his lips crushed hers now. He ran a hand up to the back of her neck, cupped her head to deepen the kiss. His other hand fumbled with her jacket for a moment and then found her hand and wove it into his own hair, as though he were silently begging her to touch him.

She pushed away, took a step back, and wiped her mouth with her hand. She was breathing hard. “Don’t do that again, Rennar.”

He stared at her. His hair was mussed from where he’d run her fingers through it. His lips were parted, and she thought he was going to do something stupid like try to kiss her again or even say that he loved her, but then his lips twisted into that arrogant smile.

“I won’t. Not until you come to me, admit that you regret the ridiculous terms you set for our marriage, and beg me to kiss you again.” For all the show of superiority, he seemed wounded by her rejection.

She gave a sharp laugh. “You’ll be waiting a long time.”

He shrugged carelessly. “I do have eternity.”

She gave him a long look and then left, closing the door firmly behind her, wishing she could lock it and barricade it and push a dresser in front of it, just to keep him from saying such things again. She paused in the elevator foyer, her legs wobbly, and sank onto a bench.

What a foolish thing it was for him to remind her of her freedom. What a foolish thing, too, for her not to take it.

Then she took a deep breath, slid on her sunglasses, and pushed the elevator button.

Chapter 28

The other beasties were waiting in the lobby, along with Viggo, whose pale face and bandaged arm said he’d given the blood they needed for the spell. His long dark hair was pulled into a ponytail. He shouldered a backpack that sagged heavily—?Cricket must have packed it with more than ample weaponry.