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“You want to speak truths,” he says hotly, “here’s one for you: this isn’t about the dog, this is about us.”

“Will you stop calling Eli that?” I say.

The Bargainer releases my face and squints down at me. “You defend him even now?”

“He still means something to me.” And I hurt him. Deeply.

A muscle in Des’s cheek feathers.

The Bargainer steps in close, his lips curling up in a sardonic smile. “You have over three hundred favors to repay me. By the time we’re done, you will realize that Eli and all those other men were just a dissatisfying dream. That this,and only this, is real.”

Chapter 11

January, seven years ago

I lay backon my bed and play with my bracelet. “Do all your clients get bracelets?” ask the Bargainer. I smirk at the thought of some criminal with his dainty string of black beads.

Leaning his back against the foot of my bed, Des flips through theMagic & Sciencemagazine he picked up from my bedside table.

“Nope.”

I hold my wrist up to the light, twisting it this way and that, trying to get my overhead light to reflect against the polished beads; it seems instead like the beads absorb the light deep into them.

“What do your other clients get?” I ask.

Des flips another page. “Tats.”

I sit up. “Tats? They gettats?” Absently my eyes move to the two Venetian masks hanging on my wall that Des and I picked out in Venice—one with the beaked bill of a plague doctor and the other with the painted face of a harlequin.

“Why didn’t I get a tattoo?” I ask. The bracelet that a moment ago I thought was so cool now seems like a lame substitute.

The Bargainer closes the magazine and set it aside. “Do you want a tattoo instead?”

“Of course,” I say absently, missing the warning note in his voice.

A tattoo would be so much edgier than a flimsy bead.

Des turns himself so that he’s facing me at the foot of my bed.

And then he climbs onto it.

The Bargainer is prowling up my bed—and up me while he’s at it.

I can’t breathe. I legit don’t think I can breathe.

The dangerous look in his eyes shuts down all coherent thought. This might be the moment when our relationship goes from a strange sort of friendship to something more.

I’m so frightened of that possibility. I’m so eager for it.

He straddles my waist, his powerful, leather-clad thighs trapping me between him. Leaning down, he takes my hand, the one that isn’t wearing the bracelet.

My heart’s going to escape my chest. It’s galloping away like crazy. I’ve never been this close to Des. And now I’m pretty sure I’m never going to be satisfied until it’s natural to be this close with him.

My skin begins to glow, and Des is kind enough to ignore the fact that I’m pretty much turned way the hell on.

He runs a palm along my wrist and my forearm. Beneath his touch, inked tally marks appear on my skin, rows and rows of them. “You would rather have this than beads?” he asks.

I drag my attention away from Des to get a better look at the markings.