The Damsel and the Daggerman

.5.

Jacinda took the card from between his fingers, careful not to touch his black suede glove.

“The Queen of Hearts? Really?”

“Really.”

She held it up to the light. It was an old card, the image in sepia-tinged tones that might very well have been painted by hand. “There’s a knife slash in this card.”

“Let’s add another one.”

Her body stiffened before her mind caught up. “Exactly what are you proposing, Mr. Taresque?”

“A dare.”

She rolled her eyes. “Elucidate.”

He chuckled. “Let’s make it simple. I strap you to the target. You hold this card out, as close to or as far from your body as you wish. I’ll throw one knife. If I hit the card, you go back to wherever you came from and leave me the hell alone. If I miss . . .”

“Yes?”

“Well, if I kill you, I suppose I’m on the run again.”

She shivered but swatted him with her notebook to cover the true frisson of fear. “If you miss?”

“I’ll answer one question with complete honesty.”

“Only one?”

That grin again. “I have fifty-one more cards, if you find you like the game. Should be enough for your book.”

Jacinda turned the card over in her hands. One knife-wide slice through it. Not a drop of blood, as carefully as she looked, and the paper was old and unwaxed, so she would have noticed. Her eyes flicked to the target, where a single gash of knife-struck wood marred the black-painted figure from his throw just moments ago. The bull’s-eye still spun lazily, a constellation of scars outlining a body she could almost imagine as her own, if naked and corseted, the legs delicately spread and the arms up in what almost seemed triumph. Or surrender.

She shook her head. That was ridiculous.

“What if I walk away right now?”

“Then you’ll never know the truth.”

She walked past him in a huff, the card held in one hand, the edges of the paper cutting into her fingers.

“But I don’t think you’re going to walk away, sweetness.”

And that’s when she stopped.

“Consider it carefully. This is your last chance.”

His voice was mocking, taunting, luring. And beneath all the posturing, the cruelty, the danger, there was something else. Pleading? So low, so deep, that even he surely didn’t know it was there.

Could it be possible that he wanted to tell her the truth as much as she wanted to hear it? Even if it was a confession of guilt? But surely if Lady Letitia had seen her dying in a pool of blood in the carnival, she wouldn’t have allowed Jacinda to stay. That had to mean it was safe.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her ribs creaking against her corset as she focused her will. With a cold, slow smile, she held out the playing card between two fingers. “Then let’s play, Mr. Taresque.”

“That’s the second part of the deal. First, you have to call me Marco.”

“Where do you want me, Marco?”

A lesser man would have betrayed himself at such bold speech. Swallowed hard, gasped, at least allowed his eyes to widen the tiniest bit. But not Marco Taresque. Not the Deadly Daggerman. No, he just raised one eyebrow and grinned. “Right over the silhouette, sweetness. I’ll strap you in as gently as I can.”

That was the first time she noticed the narrow platforms at the base of each painted leg and the leather straps at each wrist. Fear trickled down her veins, starting with numbness in her hands and feet and a chill, heavy feeling that settled deep in her belly. But she wouldn’t show Marco that. He was watching her so very carefully for any sign of weakness, for the smallest betrayal of her determination. After disparaging the flibbertigibbets of the caravan, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking her a coward or a lesser woman.

After a second’s consideration, she took the card in her left hand and held out her right. “A warrior in the forests of Almanica once dared me to something similar involving a tomahawk,” she murmured, low and dulcet.

“And you took the dare?”

“I did. I got a great story out of it. And a tattoo in a very personal area.”

He ignored her baiting and took her hand to help her step up onto the platform, her skirts crushed between her stocking-clad calves and the painted wood. The abrupt change in her posture forced her chest out, knocking it into his arm. He absorbed the blow with a gratified grunt but neglected to make any comment. His fingers skimmed along her left arm and trailed over her bracelet before firmly holding her wrist against the wood and strapping it down gently. She understood then that he wasn’t a man who allowed second chances, that the die was cast, and herself along with it. And she was the kind of woman who preferred it that way, so she tested the leather and nodded her approval.

“Why do you wear no gloves?” he asked. “Do you wish to be eaten?”

“I’ve been to the far corners of the globe, and it was never the sight of my bare flesh that earned me a brush with the stewpot. It was usually ignorance.”

“Or perhaps you simply overestimate a creature’s self-control.”

He stroked the crease down the palm of her trapped hand, and she couldn’t stop herself from shivering.

“But what of the card?” Her right arm seemed oddly heavy and useless, the card suddenly flimsy in her grasp.

His fingers grazed her shoulder, indicating worn, curved prongs of wood a scant inch above her jacket. “These notches will keep you in place. Hold the card as close as you wish.”

As Marco’s hands caught the ankles of her boots, the breath rushed out of her with a whoosh, and she already felt as if she were spinning. What was she supposed to do with the card again? Did she want him to hit it—or did she want him to miss? The terms of the deal had been . . . but no. It was forgotten. No heat passed from his gloves to the thick leather of her boots, sewn thick to ward off the biting creatures of the jungle, but still the warmth crept up her legs as he fastened the leather straps with almost impersonal strength. She’d had men since Liam, sure. But none of them had left her breathless, not before or after the act. And here she was, quivering like a girl under the knife-wielding hands of a supposed murderer.

What in heaven had she gotten herself into? She was just here to write a book. It should have been safe. But, suddenly, it wasn’t.

Marco knelt at her feet, and she looked down on gleaming hair the color of oiled teak.

“What are you doing?”

He looked up, grinning, showing a handful of steel pins. “To hold down your skirts,” Marco said, his voice barely a murmur. Jacinda felt the flush travel all the way up her body, lingering in places like puddled rainwater. “Keep things decent.”

At the word “decent,” her head jerked up, and she scanned the area around the tent. She had forgotten that anyone else existed. The lizard boy was draped over his pillows nearby, but otherwise, everyone was engrossed in his or her own work. That was good. She felt silly, strapped spread-eagle to the target, and that was before he stepped back and gave her a better look at the long line of knives snaking down his body as naturally as stripes on a bludzebra.

Being pinned down was dangerous enough before she remembered the reason for it.

“Do you ever miss, Marco?”

Saying his name was like blowing a kiss, the way it made her purse her lips together. Maybe that was why she’d resisted saying it for so long. Now that she was strapped onto the round target, her boots snug against the platforms, he had to look up to meet her eyes, and what she saw there made her breathless. Amused satisfaction, complete confidence, and an indolent, languid slowness that spoke of long patience. He liked her exactly where she was. The way his gaze raked her with open admiration told her plainly that she was but an object, and the way her breath sped up told her plainly that she didn’t mind being objectified.

“Is that your question? Because you’ll have to wait until I’ve taken my shot if you want an answer.”

“That’s not my question.” The words tumbled out too fast, and she struggled to maintain her professional calm. She’d stood up to kings and shamans and shambling corpses. Why was this man disarming her so totally?

Oh, right. The knives. And the leather straps. Not to mention the curling lips. And the eyelashes. She couldn’t forget those.

He winked as if he knew exactly what she was thinking and moved behind the target. Turning her head, she found only wood. The leather creaked as she unconsciously tested her bonds, feeling vulnerable now that she couldn’t see him.

“Get ready.”

So smoothly she barely heard it, the motor started, and the bull’s-eye began to turn, her body with it. Jacinda had been hung upside down by booby traps and even suspended once by vines over a cauldron of boiling water, but she’d never felt this strange, controlled, secure, mechanical movement. It was so very oddly smooth, perfectly balanced. He’d strapped her down so carefully that as she turned fully upside down, the only real change in her person was a cascading of red curls into her eyes and the cold kiss of metal as her pocket watch fell out of her jacket. With a swift intimacy, as soon as she was right-side up again, Marco dropped it down the throat of her blouse and tightly between her chest and her corset—an intimate gesture, but a necessary one, if she wished to keep the metal from smacking her in the face with each revolution. Her breath caught at the intimacy of the touch. Not until he had finished tucking her hair behind her ear did she remember to breathe again, and by then, she was upside down.

“The card, sweetness.”

Oh. She had forgotten utterly that one arm was free, clutching the card against her chest in a white-knuckled grip. With a shaking hand, she pinched just the corner of the card, holding it against the painted wood as far from her face as she could allow without looking like a complete coward.

Marco nodded and walked to the exact place she’d found him standing earlier, marked by a muddy, trampled spot in the grass. The lazy smile had never left him, but it deepened as he regarded her, reaching his eyes with pointed heat. His hand almost caressed the knives down his side, and he didn’t look down as he drew one from its loop and weighed it in his palm, turning it this way and that. Jacinda watched, right-side up and upside down and sideways, unsure whether the spinning was all in her head or in the clockwork revolutions of the bull’s-eye.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Always.”

“Don’t move, sweetness.”

She held her breath and willed the card to stop twitching with the beating of her heart. Marco narrowed his eyes, kissed the dagger with solemn reverence, and waited until she was perfectly right-side up. Then his arm flicked forward in a blur of motion.

She closed her eyes at the heavy thunk. She didn’t feel pain or impact. But perhaps one wouldn’t feel a knife, especially if the strike were fatal? She’d never been stabbed before.

“You can look now. Cheater.”

The amusement in his voice told her she was unhurt, because surely even a man as contained and unflappable as Marco Taresque, a man who could walk away from a blood-spattered murder scene, wouldn’t stand in the open air of a public place and watch her scream after using that tone.

It took great control to unscrew her eyelids and look down.

The knife was stuck in the painted wood, right where the card had been.

The card lay on the ground, hearts up.

As she stared at the queen’s smug smile, the machine stopped, and he stepped out from behind it, suddenly very close. She was turned sideways, suspended only by the leather straps on one wrist and around her waist. Marco knelt and held the card out to show her.

“I hit the place where the card would have been. Hit it perfectly. But you, my dear, dropped the card.”

She smiled, coyly, feeling strangely free with her feet off the ground. “Oops.”

“That’s not good enough, sweetness.”

“You didn’t hit the card.”

“You made that impossible.”

“I never promised to make it easy for you.”

He twirled the card in front of her face for a moment before placing it against the wood. He let go, and she thought for sure it would flutter against her cheek. Instead, it fell barely an inch before he’d whipped out a blade and plunged it into the wood beside her eye with a heavy thunk, so close that she could count her eyelashes reflected in the shining steel. She gasped.

And while her mouth was open, he bent and covered it with his.