Page 80 of To Catch A Rogue

"And you don't think this seems suspicious? You just happened to join this mission?"

"I came here for Charlie," she snapped, turning on him. "I knew what this world was like and he doesn't! I couldn't just let him walk in here blindly. I don't care about your duke. I don't care about Balfour. I just want to make sure Charlie survives. And he askedme. I'd never heard of any of you before this."

"That explains why you speak Russian so well."

"Please." She captured his sleeve. "Please don't tell anyone."

"Gemma has to know."

She gave a faint nod. "I also speak the sign language of the Brotherhood of the Silent. They're everywhere. They might know more than we do."

He looked at her as if he still wasn't entirely certain whether he trusted her or not.

Lark reached out hesitantly, pushing his sleeve further up his arm. "Do you have these tattoos on your back?"

He shook his head. "Only scars. I was burned in a fire five years ago, and some of the wounds didn't heal properly."

Lark's shoulders slumped a little. "If you were a Grigoriev, then your back would show the Grigorievmarque. These symbols all welded together in a gorgeous emblem. Without them...."

Obsidian flexed his fist, making the muscle in his arm flex. "Without them, I cannot be a Grigoriev. I know."

She saw the flicker of emotion cross his face, as if he hadn't realized how badly he'd wanted it until that moment.

"Without them, you cannot be a Grigoriev," she repeated, a secret little hope she hadn't known she'd felt, dying a sudden death inside her.

* * *

The doorto Charlie's bedchambers opened and a figure slipped inside.

Instantly, his hand curled around the knife beneath his pillow, but other than that, he didn't move. Just lay there, flat on his stomach, listening intently. Gemma and the others hadn't had need of him that night, so he'd returned to the diplomat's house and was trying to catch up on the sleep he'd missed during the day.

Soft footsteps whispered over the parquetry floors and his muscles tensed.

Any second now....

"Charlie?" Lark whispered.

His eyes blinked open.

What the hell was she doing in here?

"Jesus Christ," he said, letting go of the knife and rolling onto his hip. "Are you trying to give me a heart seizure? We're in Russia! It's the middle of the night! I thought you were an assassin...."

His tirade paused as he took in her ravaged expression. "What's wrong?"

Lark bit her lip. "I can't sleep. Can I...?"

She gestured to the covers of his bed.

Apparently it waslet's torture Charlienight. He almost groaned.

But there was something achingly vulnerable in her eyes. She'd never have let him see it if she wasn't desperately in need of company. Lark always kept her emotions in check. Sometimes she was like a bloody vault, but he'd known her for so long, it was as though only he held the code to get in.

Charlie dragged the edge of the covers up and gestured for her to join him.

You can do this.

He wore his nightshirt—small restraint that was against the opportunistic surge of blood through his groin—and she was wearing her nightgown. He tried not to notice how thin it was, and how the moonlight spilled through the crack in the curtains. They'd done this a thousand times in the past, whispering secrets in each other's ears, or staging pillow fights. Lark had a mean elbow on her, and he'd scored more than one black eye from their playful tussles.