Page 55 of A Treacherous Trade
I cleared my throat, determined not to be discomfited by his lewd language. “There are many forms of vulnerability,” I said coldly. “And if men would learn to exhibit some of them, they’d have topayfewer women for their favors.”
He infuriated me by laughing, a deep, genuine sound that transformed him completely and stripped years from his features.
The appreciation of the sight turned my mood from tart to sour. “Why is it, anyway, that a man wants to be the first to have a woman? I should think experience and skill to be much more favorable than inadequacy and hesitance.”
The fire licked shadows into the grooves and planes of his features. “There is something about a man that makes him crave to tame the untamed. To discover what has been hitherto untouched. It makes us monstrous, but there it is. To have a woman look up at him—like you are doing now, your curiosity battling your better judgment. It's a heady thing to win that battle… I imagine.”
I gulped. “You imagine?”
His mouth twisted into a wry smirk. “I’m not in the habit of deflowering virgins, though I’m offering to make an exception in your case. It’s an offer you have no obligation to take.”
Good, because I had no intention of doing so. “This isn’t a social call.” I was reminding myself just as much as him. “I’m not in a state of mind to keep up with your games.”
“What makes you think this is a game?” His movements became sharper, more precise, as he adjusted his cuff links and checked his watch impatiently. “Do you think I wouldplaywith you, after everything that has transpired?”
A glint in his eye told me to proceed with caution. It seemed to bother him in the extreme that I should draw the conclusions about him that he encouraged to everyone else.
“I think we should keep our arrangement to business,” I answered, lamenting how quaint and absurd I was.
“I find myself wondering what you’re doing at The Velvet Glove dressed like that, if pleasure is not your business?” His gaze turned wintery. “Aramis Night Horse and I agreed not to send you work out of respect. Because I am not the devil you obviously think I am.”
“I’ve never intimated that you are a monster or a devil or anything else.”At least not out loud. “I don’t understand how you could take offense at something I have not said.”
He yanked his jacket down his shoulders, discarding it to the chair with distaste. His cheeks were flushed, as if the fire had become too hot for him to bear.
And still he never left it.
“I hear what you donotsay, Fiona. Your face is a fucking open book. Even a blind man could read it. I know that even though you fear me, you think yourself above me. You blame all your sins on me, on the Syndicate, because you hide the bodies for the demons who would hurt you if you didn’t.”
“That is not my opinion, that’s thetruth.”
“A convenient truth for you. It helps you sleep at night.”
“And how do you sleep?”
“Like a child,” he snarled. “Being the monster everyone fears has its conveniences. Because, you see, you don’t have to dread what goes bump in the night if that very creature is you.”
Puzzled, I hesitated.
In one breath he claimed to be a monster; in another he claimed a thoughtful benevolence. This was not the Hammer I’d met on any previous occasion, the unfailingly suave and insouciant criminal with no room for shame or mercy. He’d always been casually cruel. Would order a death between dinner and dessert.
This city was a graveyard of his making.
Was I to understand that my good or ill opinion of him now influenced his previously imperturbable mood? Surely not.
“What do you want from me, Fiona?”
Despite myself, the question tugged at my heart. Because for the first time in two years, the Hammer looked like a human—his face drawn, the whites of his eyes faded, expression bleak.
It was as if winter had chipped away a bit of his soul.
Like mine.
Why should I feel sympathy for such a merciless man? I could think of no reason. And yet here I was.
Aramis Night Horse had said that men who were broken hurt others. No one in the world would look at the man before me and see anything but a paragon of power and privilege. A broken man would at least convey a weakness in any regard, and the Hammer had none to speak of.
None that were known.
