Something menacing flashes in his eyes. “I’ll catch you.”
My mouth goes dry, but I refuse to break our eye contact.
He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Can we just have a truce? Can we be allies? We don’t have to be anything else. I know you don’t trust me in general. I know you didn’t plan on getting married again and I am just an obstacle in your path, but can you at least trust that it’s in my best interest to keep you alive?”
I cross my arms.
He licks his lips. “Why are you being extra prickly about this? It seems like you could use a good fuck.”
I scoff. “Doubtful I’ll find one here.”
He closes the distance between us and pushes me back against the wall, his hand resting against my neck. His dark blue eyes burn into me like he can see right through me and knows why I’m uncomfortable.
“No, that’s not it.” He lets out a low laugh. “You almost let me fuck you the night we met. This is something else. Tell me.”
I look away, searching for anything to focus on but the intensity of his gaze. I hate this. I hate that I have to let him see this. I don’t want to lose the upper hand.
His thumb strokes my jaw. “Allies, Harlow?”
I have to give him something. I’ve pushed enough that he’ll feel like I’m compromising.
“Allies.” I swallow down my dignity and blurt out the truth. “I’ve never had an orgasm with someone else.”
He smirks until he sees that I’m not messing with him. “How is that possible? You don’t seem like the type to settle for someone who doesn’tknow what they’re doing. Is it an emotional thing—like, you need to be in love?”
I scoff, brushing his hand away and crossing the room to stare out the window instead of meeting his gaze. I can’t look at him for this.
“Love has nothing to do with it.” I sigh and drop my head back. “It’s impossible to relax when I’m with someone because no matter how much they remind themselves that they can’t kiss me, it’s a reflex of affection for other people. I have never been able to lose myself enough with someone else to get over the edge because I was too worried about keeping them alive.”
When I turn, he still looks wide-eyed. “So you’ve never?—”
I blow out an exasperated sigh. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I know how to get myself off. I’ve done it in front of other people, just never had someone else doing it for me.”
The recognition dawns on him, and I feel too exposed. “You can’t control your poison?”
I brush my fingers over my lips. “Not here. Every person I’ve ever kissed on the mouth has died.”
He stares at me, slack-jawed, and the admission is almost worth seeing him look so stupefied.
Then his mouth tilts into a smirk, and I hate him. “So I was your first real kiss?”
It would be so satisfying to slap that smile off his face. “You hardly seem the sentimental type.”
He shifts and plays with the stitching on the book cover. “So you can’t control it in your lips, but you can with any other touch. You can summon it or banish it at will from your hands like you did with my wine at our engagement dinner.”
I chew my lip. It makes me nervous that he knows this secret. Not even my parents know, though that’s mostly out of spite. Aidia doesn’t even know because I didn’t want to give her something she had to hide from them.
In my early days as the Poison Vixen, I did have to kiss my victims. The magic in my hands was untested. It’s hard to practice without victims to practice on, and it was easier to kiss them. I learned about new poisonous plants and their effects, the speed with which they could kill avictim, and how painful the death was. There had never been such an opportunity for creativity.
Over time, I became more comfortable using my hands first and my lips as a backup. I also got to experiment with using different types of poison.
That secret created a near-constant conflict when I was with Bea. She hated that I was kissing strangers, even if it was to kill them. I liked that it made her jealous—liked that I could get a reaction out of someone so steady.
It was the one secret that was just for me. Until now.
I hope it wasn’t a mistake to surrender this so quickly.
“Keep that to yourself,” I say. “I prefer to be underestimated. You learn a lot from people by how they treat someone they think is weaker.”
