The Devil's Favourite Obsession

Cixi was mad at Cassian.

Now that she sat across from him with her ankles crossed and her dress drawn down over her knees and the dark mark of a rose at the side of her neck refusing to come off — now that she had spent the last twelve hours of her life turning his face and his hand and his voice over in her mind without any of his careful answers reaching the part of her chest that wanted to be told the truth — she could see, with the cool, dry clarity of an anger that had risen above the tender corner of her chest that had been hoping for kindness, that Cassian Crown had not, in any of the conversations they had ever had, answered a single one of her questions clearly.

And now this.

A tattoo. Sex was one thing. The careful arranging of two adult bodies in a shared bath was one thing. The marking of one body, on a permanent piece of its skin, by a man who had not asked first, was another thing entirely.

She folded her arms across her chest and waited for the answer.

A knock came at the door of the suite.

A man entered the room.

Cixi’s eyes almost fell from her sockets. The palace butler, in black trousers, a white shirt, a dark tie, the long, careful tray of a household servant in his hands, was walking into Cassian’s living area carrying breakfast.

”What the hell —” She had meant to say it in her head. It came out aloud.

She looked at Cassian. She looked at the butler. She could not, for the long, uneven second the butler crossed the floor to the low table, say another word. The careful organising portion of her brain, which had spent the last several hours processing roses and fangs and bathwater and the arrangement of clothes she did not remember packing, had decided to register no further information without first sitting down with a cup of tea.

The butler bowed to Cassian. ”As you always like, Master. The brunch I prepared exactly like that.”

Cassian nodded.

The butler bowed once more and left the suite.

When Cassian’s attention returned to Cixi, her mouth was still open.

She looked at him. She could not utter a word. The confusion was written across her face.

Did he know, she wondered, how much confusion he had introduced into her life? Since Cassian Crown had walked into her existence four months ago, she had ended up questioning the basic facts of every other room she had stood in.

”The butler works for me,” he said, in answer to the question on her face.

”He treated me not so nicely.”

She remembered him, vaguely, from one of the earlier mornings she had spent in a room belonging to the Crown family. The memory carried an uncomfortable warmth of having been spoken to without warmth.

”He needs to keep up his performance,” Cassian said. ”And do not mind his behaviour. He did not mean any disrespect.”

He gestured toward the low table where the butler had arranged the food.

”He especially cooked it himself, as an apology.”

Cixi looked at the colourful breakfast with suspicion. A row of pale eggs. A long, flat fish. A bowl of sliced fruit in three colours. A steaming pot beside a single white cup. Each item had been arranged on the porcelain with care.

”Are you sure it is not poisoned?”

”It is not. I trust him.”

”I don’t. And let us get back to my original question. About the tattoo on my neck.”

She lifted her finger and pointed to the side of her throat. Cassian’s eyes followed her finger. He smirked.

”The tattoo appeared because you wanted it.”

He said it in the same mysterious manner he had been using since the previous evening.

”You are doing this again. Explaining in cryptic ways.”

She looked at the thin clock on the wall above the doorway. The hands had moved past one in the afternoon. She had been due at the cafe at noon.

”I am already late. I do not know what my manager will say. And here you are playing puzzles with me. And drawing tattoos on me.”

”Your manager has already been informed you are taking the day off today.”

Cixi turned her face to him.

”She was? When?”

”This morning. Early.”

”I do not like that you are taking decisions on my behalf. I feel it is crossing the boundaries.” She had not allowed anyone else, in twenty-three years, to make decisions about her time without telling her first, and she said it now with vehemence. ”Just because I love you, you cannot take advantage of me. I will not let you.”

Cassian grinned.

He grinned slowly. He had been waiting some time to hear a particular sentence, and he had now heard it. The grin did not, by any account of the careful neutral face he had been holding through the conversation up to this point, belong to a man who had been remotely surprised by what she had just said.

”I like how you think everything in your life is in your control.”

Cixi gave him a pointed look.

She did not, by any honest accounting of her own situation, have her life in any kind of control. She did not, however, have to admit it in front of Cassian.

”I would appreciate it if you asked me next time. And now. About the tattoo. Tell me!”

She started to stomp her foot against the floor at the steady, irritated rhythm of a woman who had been refused an answer too many times in a row. Why was it so hard to make this man talk?

Cassian, watching her, found his amusement increasing by another degree. The childish stomp of her foot was new to him. Most of the women he had ever stood across from in a room had not, by his private estimate, lasted long enough into a difficult conversation to begin stomping their feet at him.

He wondered if she would hit him if he poked her further.

That would be entertaining.

He wondered, in the same moment, what she would do next, how angry she might become, and whether — if she ended up moving toward him to deliver her anger directly — he could catch her wrist on the way past and have her on his lap before she had finished the sentence.