Page 55 of The Winner's Crime
Arin’s eyes were narrow, inspecting her. His hand slid along the railing as he came close. He reached for the collar of the sailor’s coat. He drew it away from her neck.
The world went luscious, and slow, and still.
He bowed his head. Stitches scratched against her cheek. Arin buried his face in the hollow between her neck and the coat collar and breathed in. Warmth flooded her.
Kestrel imagined: his mouth parting against her skin. The teeth of his smile. And she imagined more, she saw what she would do, how she would forget herself, how everything would slip and unloop, like rich ribbon off its spool. The dream of this held her. She couldn’t move.
She felt him feel how she didn’t move. Arin hesitated. He lifted his head and looked down at her. The blacks of his eyes were huge.
He released her. “You smell like a man.” He put some distance between them. “Where’d you get that coat?”
Kestrel’s voice wasn’t quite as shaky as the rest of her. “I won it.”
“Who was your victim this time?”
“A sailor. At cards. I was cold.”
“Flustered, Kestrel?”
“Not at all.” She firmed up her voice. “To tell the truth, he gave it to me.”
“Quite an evening you’re having. Sneaking out. Taking coats off sailors. Why do I feel, though, that that’s not the whole of it?”
She shrugged. “I enjoy a good card game. Courtiers provide few.”
“What were the stakes of your late-night gamble?”
“I told you. The coat.”
“You said he gave it to you. You also said that you won. What did you win, then, at cards?”
“Nothing. It was merely for fun.”
“A game against you with nothing at stake? Never.”
“I don’t see why. I once played against you for matches.”
“Yes, you did.” He briefly closed his eyes. Kestrel saw the thin, almost vertical red line that marked his left lid. It scratched at her heart.
He looked at her. His gray eyes hunted her face. She fell prey to them as she always did. Arin smiled. It wasn’t a real smile, and it dragged at the left side of his face. “I challenge you to a game of Bite and Sting, Kestrel. Will you play?”
She turned back to the river. “You should leave the capital.”
“A stormy journey across the sea with no one to keep me company? How tempting.”
She said nothing.
“I don’t want to leave,” Arin said. “I want to play with you. One game.”
There was temptation, and there was the smart thing, but it was becoming increasingly hard for Kestrel to make the right choice. “When?” she managed.
“The next available opportunity.”
There was hardly a Bite and Sting set lying at their feet. Kestrel would have time to prepare … though she had no real notion of what such preparation could be.
Wasn’t it just a game? Just one? “Very well,” she heard herself say.
“Winner take all,” said Arin.
