Page 568 of Flirting with Darkness

She shrugged, her violet eyes indifferent.

“Are you a bastard, too, Serafina?” he asked politely. “Or is your pedigree more charmed?”

“Legitimate, I’m afraid,” she said apologetically, batting her dark eyelashes. “Yet, like all of my half and full siblings, my mother is mysteriously dead at too young an age. It seems to be a common affliction with our father’s chosen pets… whether he marries them or not.”

Ghost couldn’t help but grit his teeth at that.

“Your name means serpent, does it not?” he asked next. “Should I take that meaning to heart? You don’t intend to offer me apples, do you?”

“It also means ‘alive in fire,’” she rejoined, seemingly unperturbed. “If you insist on taking the meanings of names to heart, dear brother, you must includeallof those meanings.”

“And what meaning should I ascribe to either interpretation?” he asked. “In regard to my own situation here? As you escort me back to the lion’s den?”

She smiled that wry smile, sipping her own glass of wine.

“That description is more apropos than you know, dear brother,” she said. “But you forget we are of the lions, too. Perhaps you will find comfort there?”

At Ghost’s flat look, she merely shrugged.

“As to my name, I would advise ascribing no meaning at all, if I were you. After all, only a narcissist would assume a newly-met person’s name had anything to do with their fate in meeting them.”

She raised that dark eyebrow at him coyly.

“At least I do not call myself a name that is not a name, but is acompletelydead person, brother. Or were you insinuating I should find some purpose in your chosen name, as well?”

Ghost didn’t answer that at first.

Truthfully, he was rethinking the wine.

The carriage had begun to lurch forward at some point during their back and forth, and now jostled under his rear and legs. The cushions struck him as less excessive now that he could feel some hint of the quality of the road.

Perhaps getting drunk and lounging on cushions was the only way to tolerate such a journey.

While he thought these few things, his sister stood up.

Moving with an uncanny grace, she crossed the space of the carriage and slid into the seat next to him, positioning herself uncomfortably close.

“You don’t mind me getting a better look at you?” she queried, staring up at his face.

His own eyebrow lifted as he returned her look.

“Any better, dear sister, and you would be observing me from my lap.”

“You say that like it would be unpleasant.”

She quipped the words at him in the same flat, slightly ironic tone, and he frowned. She laid a small but surprisingly strong hand on his thigh. After feeling deliberately over the length of his muscle there, she gave the thickest part of that muscle a squeeze.

“Very much not of the soft variety of nobleman,” she murmured. “You seem quite… well endowed, my brother. Physically, that is.”

Something in the sheer sensuality of her touch managed to irritate him.

“I can see why you are popular back home,” she added with a smile. She continued to massage his leg. “You see, I hear rumors too, dear brother. Those are alternately condemning and flattering when it comes to you… often from the very same woman. Or group of women. Or the occasional young man. All of them wax eloquent regarding your… talents.”

His irritation deepened.

Using the cane rather than his fingers, he removed her hand from his leg.

He did it in one quick gliding motion, but she must have felt the sweeping contact of ivory and polished wood.

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