The Devil's Favourite Obsession

Rafael said nothing. He looked at her with that same steady, unhurried attention and let the silence do the work that denial would have done less convincingly.

Five heartbeats passed.

”There are things you might not understand yet, Tatiana.” His voice was almost gentle, which made it more unsettling than if he had been cold. ”I am moving toward something. A specific something. And I wouldn’t want to pull you into it.”

Tatiana waited.

”What today confirmed,” he continued, ”is that Cassian transferred fifteen percent of Crown Capital into the name of a woman he trusted with something significant.” He chuckled dangerously and softly that didn’t quite reach his eyes. ”And the more I sit with it, the more it interests me.”

”You want those shares,” Tatiana said. It was not a question but a statement, delivered the way her mother had taught her to deliver uncomfortable truths.

She was nineteen, but she had been raised in the old way, the way women of noble houses were once educated to survive rooms full of men and women. She understood money. She understood power. She understood that the distance between the two was rarely as large as men liked to pretend.

Rafael looked at her. The smile that crossed his face was slow and genuine. He extended his hand toward her. It was an invitation with no pretence of being anything else.

”Do you want to be my partner in crime?”

Tatiana looked at his hand. Then she looked at his face. She turned the offer over quietly in her mind, examining it the way her mother had taught her to examine anything that arrived looking valuable — slowly, from every angle, before deciding whether the price was honest.

Then she met his eyes.

”I have conditions,” she said.

”I expected nothing less.”

”If you go to another woman’s bed,” she said, her voice unhurried and absolute, ”do not expect a loyal wife waiting in yours when you return. Do not expect loyalty from me either.” She held his gaze without blinking. ”And if you try to hurt me, I will hurt you back. A thousand times over. I don’t make threats I haven’t already planned.” She carefully watched his expression. ”Those terms are not negotiable. Not now, not later, not after the wedding.”

The silence that followed was not uncomfortable. It was the silence of a man recalibrating his assessment of the person standing in front of him.

Rafael’s smile spread slowly, reaching his eyes this time, carrying something that looked less like charm and more like genuine satisfaction. The kind that arrives when something exceeds expectation.

”Deal,” he said.

Tatiana took his hand.

He pulled her forward in one smooth motion, his arm finding her waist with the ease of someone who had done this before and understood the geometry of it. The kiss that followed was not tentative or polite or exploratory. It was the kind that establishes terms. That says, clearly and without words, that whatever this is, it will not be simple, and neither of them would want it to be.

*

*

*

Three floors up, Cixi was done with the evening.

She dropped her shoes at the door and didn’t care where they landed. She reached beneath her dress and unstrapped the silicone belly with the practised efficiency of someone who had been wearing a lie all day, set it on the chair without looking at it, and fell back onto the bed with both arms wide open, staring up at the ceiling.

Except the ceiling above this bed was a mirror.

She had forgotten about that. Or perhaps she had been avoiding it. Either way, it was there, and she was in it, and she looked exactly as exhausted and furious as she felt.

She stared at her own reflection and let herself be angry. At Lorian and his clean, certain verdict about who she was. At Tamara and her asylum threat delivered like something reasonable. At Ursa and her lump sum offer. At the entire dining room and its fifteen different ways of telling her she didn’t belong there.

And at Cassian. Specifically, deliberately, at Cassian.

”You,” she said to the ceiling, to the mirror, as if talking to Cassian. ”you walked away from it and left me standing in the middle of it alone among your family.”

The mirror gave her nothing back but her own face.

She exhaled slowly and let her eyes drift, unfocused, across the reflection.

And then, at the edge of the frame, something moved. And Cixi’s breath caught.

She didn’t move. She kept her eyes fixed on the mirror, telling herself it was the light perhaps, the exhaustion, the stress of the evening playing with the edges of her perception. But the shape in the reflection was not the curtain and it was not the shadow of a chair.

It was a hand. Slowly moving.

Her heart stopped reasoning and started simply beating, fast and loud, as her eyes tracked the reflection and found the outline of a figure at the far edge of the bed.

Cassian?

Is the mirror showing Cassian to her again?

What is he doing? Is he on the bed. Yes it looks like... where his hands moving to.... Is he with someone?

The thought arrived before she could stop it. It was sharp and unreasonable and accompanied by something she had no business feeling, and yet irrational flare in the chest that she immediately resented.

She turned her head. Then she looked back at the mirror.

He was closer.

The reflection showed him moving with the particular patience of a man who had all the time in the world and knew it. He was getting closer. And closer still. Until the face in the mirror was almost level with hers, and she could see the lines of it clearly, the jaw, the dark eyes watching her with an expression she couldn’t name.

She blinked.

And Cassian’s face was an inch from hers.

”You. Am I dreaming?”

”You look like you want to murder someone,” Cassian murmured against her lips, his breath stirring the fine hairs at her nape. In the mirror, his reflection materialised inch by terrifying inch - first the sharp cheekbones, then the mocking curve of his mouth, finally those hunter’s eyes that never seemed to blink enough.

”Maybe I do,” she said to his reflection, refusing to turn around. Her pulse thundered where his thumbs rubbed slow circles on her collarbones.

His chuckle was dark velvet as he pressed closer. She could feel every ridge of his belt through the thin silk of her dress. ”Let me guess - Rafael’s already sunk his fangs into your inheritance?” One hand slid downward, tracing the boning of her corset top. ”Poor little heiress. All dressed up with nowhere to go but backwards.”

The insult burned, but not half as much as the heat pooling where his palm now cupped her thigh. She meant to knee him - really did - but somehow her body betrayed her, arching into his touch instead. How was she feeling him as if he was truly there?

Seeing her confusion, Cassian took full advantage.

His mouth crashed down on hers. This was all teeth and claiming tongue, the sort of kiss designed to leave bruises on souls as well as skin. When she gasped, he swallowed the sound greedily, his fingers dug into her thigh.

”Still angry?” he breathed against her swollen lips, fingers creeping higher under ruffled skirts. The first brush of his fingertips along her stocking tops drew a traitorous shiver.

She gripped his wrist hard enough to leave marks. ”Furious.”

”Am I dreaming? Or you really here?” Cixi couldn’t help but ask.

”Ofcourse it’s a dream!” Cassian lied. ”Let me me help you calm down.”

”You are the reason I am angry!”

”Good.” His free hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back to expose the frantic flutter of her pulse. ”Because I’m going to make you forget every others tonight.” The promise hovered between them for one suspended moment before he proved it true with lips and teeth and clever fingers that knew exactly where she was most sensitive.

Somewhere downstairs, a clock struck ten.

She didn’t push him away.

She should have. She had a thorough and well-reasoned list of grievances ready. She had been rehearsing several of them to the mirror not three minutes ago. But his mouth was warm and certain and he kissed her like someone who had been thinking about it for a long time, and whatever speech she had been preparing dissolved before she could locate the first word of it.

Her hand found the fabric of his shirt without her deciding to move it.

He pulled back after a long moment. Just enough. His forehead came to rest against hers, and she could feel the warmth of his breath, slow and even, as though he were entirely unbothered by the fact that he had just appeared in her bedroom in a palace where he was supposed to be somewhere else.

His eyes were open watching her reaction.

”You did well, Cixi! I am very proud of you!”

Cixi looked into his eyes for a moment. His question confused her. How could this dream feel so real? She needed to do something she excelled at, so she slapped Cassian to see if he was truly there. But before her hand could reach his cheek, he caught her wrist.

With a sudden force, he turned her onto her belly. Now her hands were pinned beneath Cassian’s grip. He glanced at her curvy figure.

”What are you doing?” she asked.

”Checking your ass!” he replied.