Page 91 of Prince of Masks

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“I won’t,” I say and hug it to my chest.

He runs me over with his gaze for a beat.

Then, “Don’t ruin it.”

I wrangle the book around my back.

Dray’s watchful stare doesn’t waver.

I stuff the book into my waistband, then tug the hem of my turtleneck sweater over it.

I need to find a way to transfer it into the deep pockets of my coat downstairs before I join the party on the terrace, or else this book will pop out of place and, knowing my luck, fall to the floor right at Father’s boots.

Dray drags his ice-stare over me. “Is there a reason you’re hiding it?”

I load the rest of the books onto one arm. “It’s taboo.”

Not a lie.

Turning my back on him, I push the pile of books onto the shelf before I close the hutch doors.

“I can’t just carry it out in the open,” I add as I face him. “Not around Mr Vasile or the Barlows.”

Dray nods, slow and faint. His eyes pierce into me with the obvious suspicion burning in his bright irises.

“If I were to mention that book,” he starts and slips off the corner of the reading desk, “say, to your father, for instance,” he takes a step closer to me, and my neck arches to look up at him, “that would be acceptable to you?”

My teeth clamp down on the insides of my cheeks.

Then my eyes narrow. “What do you want?”

He takes another step closer, a wandering one, as though he isn’t a predator prowling towards me. “In exchange for my silence?”

Instinct has me retreating.

My back connects with the glass doors of the hutch. The moment my spine stiffens against the glass, I am suddenly,sharplyaware that I am trapped at the back of the library—with Dray Sinclair.

He advances on me.

The thick blackness of his long lashes should darken his eyes, but the blues glare brighter than diamonds in the sun.

“That deal depends on the importance of the secret,” he says, smooth. “It depends on how far you are willing to go to keep said secret.”

My spine digs into the brass handles. The bite of pain is enough to clench my shoulders, but I still slink back into it.

The distance shrinks between us until I can smell the earth on him, the stormy rain, the faint aroma of his sweat and a cologne that’s crisp like the outside air.

His hand comes down on the cabinet, and he leans over me. “How imperative is it to you that your father doesn’t learn what you have tucked in your waistband?”

An ache is quick to bloom on my scalp. I arch my neck to look up at him, our noses almost touching, and I fear that if I look away, take my eyes off him for a mere second, if I blink, I’ll be swept back to the school I escaped—and that Dray will throw me into manure again, or chuck me out the window for his own pleasure.

My throat bobs.

His gaze drops to the swallow for a beat, then lifts to my mouth. “Two dances,” he says, soft, his voice almost a whisper, but the threatening sort, nothing kind or sweet about it.

Takes a moment for my mind to churn and catch up.

Dances.