Rapture's Edge Read Online Free Page B

the oil painting still laid flat on his desk.
    He leaned over and grabbed her hands. She lifted her gaze to his, all cold fury and steel, and he met her steely look with one of his own.
    “Nay, girl, I’ll not have you walkin’ out on me in such a snit.”
    Whenever he was really emotional, his speech always reverted to the cadence of his childhood, rolling
r
’s anddropped
g
’s and the slow, musical lilt of a native Scotsman. Because he lived in France where everyone looked down on him because of his country accent, even the housemaids, he’d improved with years of practice but couldn’t be bothered to concentrate on the properness of his speech at times like these.
    “If it’s guns you’re needin’ it’s guns you’ll have, but I’m tellin’ you I don’t like it, and if you get into trouble I need you to promise me you’ll let me know so I can help.”
    She recoiled against his grip with a sinewy strength that surprised him for one that looked so delicate, but he pulled back and refused to let her go until she relented. “Promise me, princess,” he insisted, his voice very low in his throat.
    Finally, after long moments of staring at him in livid, unblinking silence, she quietly said, “I like you, Gregor. I always have. But if you don’t take your hands off me in the next five seconds, you’re going to see a very ugly side of me. A side I can’t guarantee you’ll survive seeing.”
    Then she murmured something in Latin, which he understood, because the Catholic mass his mother dragged him to every Sunday when he was a child had always been in Latin.
    “
Nec mala te amicum. Placered non faciunt me
.”
    Translated: “I don’t want to hurt you, old friend. Please don’t make me.”
    She lowered her head a fraction of an inch, and he imagined her eyes silvered against the light, like a cat’s. A tingle of fear—something Gregor had not felt in many, many years—raised the hair on the back of his neck. Before he could form a reply, there came a loud knock on his closed office door. He and Eliana broke apart as the door swungopen to reveal his girlfriend, Céline, clasping her teacup Yorkie to her ample chest.
    As it always did when it caught sight of Eliana, the dog began first to growl, then to tremble violently in Céline’s arms. She shushed it and sashayed toward them, weaving across the rug in a slinky red Dior dress she looked sewn into and a pair of Louboutin sandals he knew had cost him an arm and a leg. The monthly bill for her black American Express card was more than the GDP of some small countries.
    “Daddy, I want to go out!” she implored him in pouty French. She gave Eliana a quick, sour once-over, which Eliana wholeheartedly returned, and then turned her attention back to him and tossed her long, platinum blonde extensions over one shoulder with a practiced flick of her wrist. “How much longer are you going to be?”
    “We’re actually done here,” said Eliana flatly, her face drained of emotion. She turned and moved to the door, abandoning the painting on his desk.
    “Eliana,” Gregor entreated.
    He wanted so badly to say, “Don’t go,” or “Please stay,” or some version thereof, but under the shrewd, watchful eye of Céline, he didn’t dare. He might have been the gangster in the room, but between these two goddamn women he was as helpless as a newborn kitten. Each of them had one of his testicles gripped firmly in a delicate, ruthless hand.
    At the door Eliana paused. She looked back at him over her shoulder, and something in her face softened. She glanced down at the painting she’d left on his desk, and he realized she’d done it on purpose, as an offering. If she’d taken it with her, he’d never have seen her again.
    “Gregor,” she said.
    His heart leapt at the unexpected softness in her voice, and he held his breath, waiting. She smiled, and Gregor thought he’d never seen anything quite so sad in his entire life.
    “I’ll send the courier by for