Again, he chuckled. “What makes you think that?”
“You always seem to be anywhere I am.”
He didn’t answer my question, instead asking one of his own, “Do I make you nervous?”
I looked at him, took in the way his dark eyes twinkled in the sun, how the sunlight made his dark skin warmer. He wore tight black jeans, paired with a shirt that looked like it had paint splatters on it. And, of course, couldn’t forget that golden chain around his neck. He couldn’t have been that old; I’d put him near thirty. Older than me, certainly, but what was that old adage? Age was just a number.
Try telling that to Cade Cunningham.
“No,” I said, wondering how Cade was doing. My dragon man, the man I owed my newfound hormones to. Without him, I doubted I’d be where I was today.
“You sure? You took a while to answer.” He chuckled again. “It’s okay if I do. I mean, I’d be a liar if I said you didn’t make me nervous.” I had to glare at him at that, and he lifted a finger, pointing at me. “That’s what I mean. You might have a pretty face, but you got some darkness in you, and you ain’t afraid to let it out.”
I decided not to address the whole nervous thing, instead asking, “Why are you here?”
“I heard about your engagement to that Moretti boy.” Damian didn’t sound too thrilled, and I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t thrilled, either. “The world is losing one of its prettiest bachelorettes.” Whatever he hoped to gain from his flattery, he’d be sorely disappointed. “Let’s see the ring.”
I had no idea how he’d heard about the engagement, if my father had started to tell the Black Hand and the others about it. Whatever game my father was playing, I still didn’t quite get it, but it didn’t matter. I was, in fact, wearing the damned ring and not my gloves, so I moved my left hand toward him, showing him.
Damian then did something I wasn’t expecting: he took my hand in his to study it. The moment his fingers brushed mine, the moment I felt his hand curling around mine, I sucked in a breath, hoping he didn’t hear.
His hand was rough. Rough and warm. Warm perhaps from the sun, and rough from being a man of action, a man who did a lot of the work himself. I could respect that.
I wanted to yank my hand out of his, but I didn’t. I resisted my immediate impulse, letting him hold onto my hand as he examined the ring. He’d leaned forward in his chair, his other hand curled around the box on his lap.
He took his time in studying the ring, too. Or maybe he just wanted an excuse to touch me.
“It’s just a ring,” I muttered, unable to hide the unhappiness from my voice.
Damian glanced up at me, and his stare was so intense I lost all train of thought. “Just a ring. That bitch is huge. You don’t sound happy about it. I don’t know any girl that would hate a ring like this.” He leaned back in his seat, but his hand was sluggish in letting mine go, almost like he didn’t want to.
I dropped my stare to the ring, letting the diamond—which was huge, yes—catch the sunlight. The gem sparkled in the light, refracting and reflecting so much it was almost blinding. “I don’t want to get married.”
“Then why say yes?”
My lips pursed, the hand with the ring curling into a fist. “I had no choice,” I muttered. “My father arranged it. The curse of being born a girl into a family like mine.”
Damian shook his head. “That ain’t right. You should do what you want to do. No one should force you to do anythin’ you don’t want to.” He was quiet for a few moments, and then he asked, “What is it you want, then, baby girl?”
There was that baby girl again. He just couldn’t seem to let it die.
“That’s the problem. I don’t know. All my life, I’ve done whatever my father wanted me to do. It’s only recently that I’ve started to find out who I am.” The hand with the ring unflexed, and I stared down at my hands, images of them covered in red entering my mind. Father Charlie’s blood, and then the Serpents’. “I don’t know if I even like who I am,” I whispered after a minute.
Damian didn’t say anything. He simply stared at me as if he was trying to figure me out. If he did, I hoped he would tell me what he saw, because I had no idea. The face I saw in the mirror was that of a pretty girl, a girl who was one moment broken, and in the next ready to kill. Which was the truth? Could a person be both?
In the end, Damian offered me the box. “Here. I got this for you.”
I took it from him, setting it on my lap. I ran a finger along the soft ribbon, meeting his dark eyes once again. “What is it?” It was heavier than I thought it would be, which told me absolutely nothing about what was inside the box.
“Open it and see.”
With a sigh, I tugged at the ribbon, undoing it. I didn’t know why he got me something. Hell, I didn’t know why he was even here. This was weird, wasn’t it? Or maybe I was reading too much into it. Once the ribbon was undone, I was able to lift the lid and see what lay inside. And what I saw I couldn’t say I was expecting.
“This is…” I couldn’t find the words to say.
“I saw it, and it reminded me of you,” Damian explained. “Unique in color, but deadly as hell. You always gotta be packing in a city like this, and I figured…” He shrugged. “Pick it up and see how it feels.”
I did just that. I picked up the object, feeling its weight in my hands. It was… well, it was fucking gorgeous was what it was. White was so not my color, and yet I couldn’t fight the way this particular item felt. Right. It felt right in my hand. It was heavier than it looked, maybe because it wasn’t normal.