Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“What game do you think she would have made me play if I had been willing or able?”
He shrugged. “Nothing you would have enjoyed. She uses her illusions to put people into difficult situations. She’s very perceptive. Her secondary magic is reading emotions between people, and then she uses what she sees there to her advantage. Generally entangling them or making them face hard truths through some kind of trickery.”
“If she can read emotions, then she would know we are not married,” Kierse guessed.
Graves arched an eyebrow. “Are we not entangled?”
Kierse swallowed at the heat in those words. “That’s a word for it.”
He bridged the distance between them. The entire world suddenly seemed to drop away in his presence. His bare hand came up to brush aside a lock of her hair. His magic breezed through the glamour as he tucked the hair behind her faintly pointed ears with a smirk on his perfect lips.
His fingers dipped down her jaw and to the pulse in her neck. His hand wrapped gently around her throat as he had done that first night they had met. When he had been testing his powers to find out her ill intentions and found silence instead. He still couldn’t discover what she was thinking with a touch of his hand, but that did not mean there were no clues.
“This heart beats for me.”
Kierse wrenched herself free. A heavy breath escaped her. She had been trapped in those stormy eyes and felt adrift at sea, his touch a lifeline in an endless ocean. But it was a ruse. This wasn’t real. Whatever he was doing was part of his games, and she didn’t want to play.
“If all she needs is a beating heart, then we’re fine.”
Graves dropped his hand. “It’s a secondary power,” he said, unperturbed. “Powerful emotions swing in either direction, and she cannot tell the difference between contrived emotions and reality. Though she is better at it with people that she knows.”
“Then I am safe,” Kierse said.
“Indeed.” Graves checked his phone for the time. “We’ll begin shortly. I would like her to believe us sufficiently out of her hair.”
“What are we going to do until then?”
Graves shot her a devious look. “We do have a bed. It would be a shame to waste it.”
“Then go to sleep,” she said.
“Not exactly what I had in mind,” he said under his breath.
“Graves, could you be serious?”
“Who said I wasn’t?”
In another life, she would have been able to read him and know what all this teasing meant. But it couldn’t be genuine. Graves was lots of things—dangerous, secretive, charming, mysterious, disarming. What he wasn’t was sincere or forthright or honest or, god help her, seductive. He’d never had to use wiles to get her to fall for him. In fact, the asshole that he was had done the trick.
They were so alike in so many ways. Both closed off and ruined from abandonment—her by her father when she was a child, him by basically every person who had ever trampled through his life. They’d had to claw their way through the dirt from their buried coffins to notoriety.
Maybe they’d been too alike, and that had been the problem.
“Let’s review the plan,” she said instead, turning her back on the rather inviting bed.
“Excellent suggestion,” Graves said. He put his back against a wall, hands in his pockets. “Break out of our luxury suite.”
“Easy enough.”
“Locate the hidden room where Estelle keeps her prized possessions.”
“One floor above us cloaked by illusion magic and warded. All of which I can absorb easily.”
He grinned. “Collect the cauldron.”
“You don’t know if there’s a vault or extra security?”
“The vault I’m not sure of, but security is handled,” he said, checking his phone again. “Almost set on that front. I assume you can handle a vault by yourself.”
“Obviously,” Kierse said. “And my exit is…”
“Through the window onto the roof.”
“And what will you be doing in all of this?” Kierse asked.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Might take a nap.”
“You’re joking.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “Since when do you joke?”
“When I know that someone is going to understand my wit.”
She scoffed. “If you say so.”
“I will be covering your exit.” He stared down at his phone once more. “Now, get ready.”
“For what?”
“George almost has the security system down.”
“George can hack security systems?” she asked with wide eyes. “Your driver?”
“Like I would choose anyone in my employ for a single skill set.”
Kierse eyed him appreciatively. He certainly hadn’t chosen her for just one talent.
“He’s good. Here we go. The cameras are going down in…” Graves held his fingers up.
Kierse cursed under her breath and rushed to the door. “How long will I have before they come back up?”
“If we’re lucky, a half hour, but could be closer to fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes,” she hissed.
“And three, two, one…go.”