Page 13 of Ballad of Nightmares

“What were you in the last one?”

Flashes of what was just four weeks prior poured through her: seducing higher soldiers and taking control of Firemoor’s greatest weapons, then turning them on Ironmyer’s great castle fortress. All while she sat safely in the forests of the Spine with a stolen computer and codes, the soldiers that had helped lying dead around her. She still remembered the murky taste of the tobacco they’d smoked and the light of the fire blazing so wild that she’d been able to see it from a hilltop clearing.

“I dabbled in home remodeling,” she told him. She noted the apprehension in his gaze as she said, “And you?”

Sam pulled a smoke from his pocket after dumping his cup into a passing recycling bin, and he lit the end of it. His cheeks pulled taut with the inhale, and she watched him curiously, wondering how that light flickering over his skull makeup had twisted her stomach with desire.

“Artist,” he replied, blowing out a plume of sweet-smelling smoke. “Charcoals and line-art mostly.”

“Oh, it all makes sense now,” she said.

“What?”

“The whole brooding, mysterious, stalker thing you have going on,” she replied, and when he smiled at the ground and back to her, she swore it nearly reached his eyes. “Do you ever have shows?”

He nodded. “Down at Rosen’s on occasion,” he said. “Last one was a couple of years ago.”

“Nothing since?”

“Nothing worth being inspired by,” he answered.

Ana glanced to the castle in the distance, the fog starting to swirl over the headstones. “I think if I were an artist, I’d be inspired by this,” she said, pausing at the fence. Her claw scratched the iron, and she caught Sam eyeing it as he stopped beside her.

“What about it?” he asked.

“I suppose to someone who has lived here their entire life, you wouldn’t see it,” she said. “But the fog here makes me think of silent thunder, how it rolls over the headstones as thunder would roll over dense air and erupt over your flesh, send your heart into a spin. I love the way the fog entwines with the moss in the mornings. And the castle… I’ve heard rumors of the roses and stained glass. I wonder if it would be worth breaking into the cemetery just to glimpse it.”

She did a double-take at the look on his face then. He was squinting at her in confusion. Different from how he’d meant to seduce her earlier during their dance. This was admiration and curiosity, and she reveled at the newness of it.

He leaned over, his hands grasping the bars on either side of her body. Instinct had her hands ready to grab the lapels of his jacket. Her fingers stretched like an invisible barrier was suspended between them. One that had her heart stumbling over itself.

“I think tomorrow I might have something new,” he said as he pushed a curl away from her cheek and rested his fingers on her jaw.

She leaned into his touch despite herself. “Calling me your muse, stalker?” she managed.

“Muse… Witch…” He stared at her with intention, his fingers delicately moving over her skin. “Siren…Temptress.” The last word was practically a hiss, and she sucked in a breath at the press of him against her, the trap of his body on hers. Iron railings dug into her skin, and she pulled her thigh up to his waist to allow him in further.

Maybe a taste.

Maybe that was all she’d give him tonight.

Maybe she could play.

He was a delightful thing, after all.

And why shouldn’t she have a little fun?

He was staring at her lips like he might kiss her at any moment, and she was inclined to let him. Her mouth opened and closed, body leaning into him, and then she bent to squeeze herself out of his grasp.

A quiet chuckle left him as she took a wide step back and bit her bottom lip, eyes dancing at him. “I think I should be getting back to my hotel,” she said with a tilt of her head. “There is such a thing as too much fun for one night, you know.” Her gaze danced over him, letting him see how attracted she was to him, the blow of her pupils, the leer in her straightened posture, and how she twirled her hair.

Sam did the same, his hands in his pockets as he took in the whole of her figure, and Ana made a point to arch slightly and chew on the end of her claw. A single drop of blood trickled from her tongue, and she swore Sam growled under his breath.

“Okay, wicked girl,” he practically purred. “So, when can I take you out?”

Ana looked him over again, memorizing the way he looked at her, his lips, his tattoos, his hair, the skull makeup… She took in the broad shoulders straining against his leather jacket, the tattooed hands she wanted to be splayed over her flesh and squeezing her whole. And her lashes lifted to his.

“When you catch me.”