“You know you can’t shoot me? You can’t get out of the residence anyway without the king’s sigil,” Ryke informed her in a measured voice.
Gio tilted the gun and one eyebrow, then her mouth. “You sure?”
Though her hair was damp and tangled, the overhead lights reflected hints of gold. She was a purely erotic sight to Ryke – her perfectly pink areolas pointing the way to her breasts. The surge of hips, the cuteness of her navel, and the flush on her belly and face from sex. Debauched bitch.
Reluctantly, he tore away his gaze. Her question?
He shrugged. “Mostly.”
“I’d cut off your hand.”
He snorted. “Neat solution. There’s still my brother who’d kill you, and the rest of the Underdeck, and our favorite enemy up above.”
“Yes.” Her whole body seemed to slump into despair before she recovered. “Badh would kill me?”
“He’d send you back up. He’s actually not keen on killing. Of course Judge Omrad would get you, or the king’s advisor, Gyle, or some other faction.”
“Any of them nicer than you?”
“When annoyed? Worse. This is why we need to talk.”
“Oh? You really think that? I had thought...”
He’d rattled her. He was getting somewhere.
“I do think that. You did well, getting the gun.”
“This?” She screwed up her mouth and examined the weapon from a few angles. Then she aimed it to the side and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, of course. Gio sighed. “You were too calm for someone like you with a gun aimed at them by someone like me.”
That was a fast deduction. A lot faster than he’d expected. Admiration crept in. “Someone like me?”
“A sadistic asshole.” After waggling the gun, she sat on the floor, cross-legged, with the weapon in her lap. It was a position guaranteed to make most males stare at a naked woman.
“I am that. And happy to be.”
“That sigil mark recognition is also in the grip?”
He folded his arms, deciding she had enough information. Besides, she might get the idea that lopping off his hand would let her also fire the gun.
“Fine. Don’t say.”
“I wanted to talk and thought you’d feel...safer, with that in your hand.”
The stare she sent said she’d never feel safe in his presence, and he smirked. He was happy with that too.
“I know you can lie, Ryke, and that you’re perfectly at ease hurting me or anyone, if it helps you do your job. If we talk, how can I trust your answers?”
It was a point he’d not solved yet. “I don’t know. Let’s keep talking. We might surprise ourselves.”
“Why do you even want to? You hold all the cards; all the power is in your hands. What possible advantage can you get from this?” The swallow this time was slow and obvious. “This is a trick, isn’t it? Just to get me off balance.”
“It’s not.” Move by incremental move, so as not to scare her, Ryke sat on the bed then shifted until his back was against the headboard. “I have problems. So do you. I’m fairly sure I don’t even know all my problems.” He rubbed his face. Fuck, that was the truth.
Ormrad and Gyle. Ormrad...Gyle. The king. He lost himself wondering, the room blurring. What had happened?
He began again. “What I want from you...is for you to help me without reservation, to find out how we can make new portals. So, I’ll be nicer and you help me. Simple.”
“And you think I’ll help you better if you’re nice? Give me a gun I can’t shoot? Yet you know I won’t give this up if it hurts humans, and...and what you just did to me was supposed to be an example of nicer? Jesus, man. Why are you really offering this?”
“What?” He looked to her again. She was refusing after saying she wanted to talk? The machinations of her arguments would do his brain in. He couldn’t tell her he wanted this because he wanted her to love him enough to hand over the info.
He was beginning to feel he’d stepped feet first into a quagmire that was rising above his head. Could he fool her or fake this love thing well enough?
“So you’re saying if you find a mage, you won’t tell me? Then why are you talking?”
“Because.” She shook her head. “This is like a merry-go-round. Maybe I prefer nice to being...played with. But you won’t believe that, will you?”
He might. Ryke smiled.
“Fact. We both want to find a new portal mage.” Gio put down the gun and slid it halfway to him, across the ivory floor. “Too small a gun for me anyway.”
He popped his eyebrows upward.
“I need a bigger one if I’m to kill you.”
He had to bite back a guffaw. What bravery the girl had, to joke, now. He actually didn’t care about her reasons. Anything to get her off the edge and thinking he wasn’t her enemy. Enemies... Hmmm.
“You want a portal mage to help your people, and me for mine.”
“Yes. You know that.” He folded his hands together, rotated his thumbs around each other. “I was thinking we both have the same enemies now. If we call it a truce down here, we can then work efficiently toward figuring out if there’s a chance to find this...mage. So again, I will promise to treat you better, if you help me to the best of your abilities. We sort out what we do with this information when we find it.”
“Yes.”
He frowned, waited for elaboration on that yes. “What do you mean?”
“I agree.”
Well then. He sighted between his big feet, his toes, at the woman framed by them. “Then let’s sort out the details.”
He had a feeling neither of them was being truthful and he had a headache from all the thought flip-flopping. He never got those.
“No sex either.” Her mouth firmed.
His smile must have looked evil but she deserved it. “I have limits. I’m not going to –”
“None.”
Something about the impertinent assumption that he’d even go near this clause amused him immensely. And the implied challenge that she could or would say no if he wanted to fuck her.
The one thing he was excellent at was reading psychology – reading what people really meant deep down in their heads. All this other crap and the politics going on upstairs, maybe not quite his best talent. But this, yes.
“Be thankful I’m not sticking you on a fuckspear in the middle of the farm and making you scream with the accuator up you. I will go this far. No fucking. Anything else, touching you, is my territory, my prerogative.”
Her paleness was not imagined. He could and would make her get down on her knees and beg to be fucked, again. In his own time. It would be sweeter to do this than merely to force her physically. He made meals of challenges.
“Fucking is penetration. With anything.” She stared, unblinking, obviously trying not to show any emotions.
“Mmm. It is. Deal?” He sneaked up a brow, watched as her focus snapped to that eyebrow. Guess his general expression was intimidating to a little piece of prey like she was. Little sweet victim.
He could go slow with this. He could do courtship. It was that, wasn’t it? He’d never quite figured out that ritual, but she’d be eating out of his hand and purring soon.
“To be honest,” she said slowly. “I think you have bigger problems coming than whether you have portals to my world.”
Where was this heading? “What? Why?”
“I’m unsure if I’m right. It’s more a gut feeling than anything.”
“You have some fact you’re withholding and I don’t like that. I’m beginning to think you’re as good at torturing as I am.”
“I told you, I’m unsure. When I am, I will say. You know... I see that you care about your people deeply and that is the one thing that makes me believe there is some good in you.”
“Good? Good never gets you what you want.”