LITMIR.BIZ

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come with me, signor, and I’ll cool you off—eventually.” She untangled her clasp from his hair, reaching down to take his hand. His fingers held hers tightly, holding her prisoner as she led him toward that small doorway she earlier emerged from.

      They climbed the narrow stairs, Nicolai ducking to avoid the rafters overhead. The quiet enclosed them again, the loud, bright world shut away, and Marguerite felt her heart thud in her chest, felt her skin grow chilled. The time was almost upon her.

      At the entrance to her little room, Nicolai suddenly reeled her close to him, spinning her lightly around to press her to the wall. Marguerite’s heartbeat quickened—had he discovered her, then? Was she caught in a trap of his own?

      He did not slit her throat, though. He merely held her there, pressed against her in the half-light, staring down at her with those otherworldly eyes as if he could see into her soul. Her sin-riddled soul.

      “Where did you come from, Bella?” he said softly. His accent was more pronounced now, the edges of his words touched with some icy Russian music.

      Marguerite smiled at him. “I told you, from the mainland. This is our most profitable time of year, but one has to be in Venice to make the coin.”

      “Have you been a whore long, then, dorogaya?”

      She laughed. “Oh, yes. Decades, it seems.”

      “Miraculous, then. For you still have your teeth, your clear eyes…” He reached down to trace the underside of her naked breast, the soft, puckered flesh. His thumb flicked lightly at the rouged nipple, making her shiver deeply. “Your smooth skin.”

      “I was born under a lucky star, signor. My father always said so,” she said, still trembling. And that was one true thing she said tonight. Her father had told her that when she was a child, holding her up on his shoulder so she could see the clear, bright stars in the Champagne sky.

      But then her star faded, and here she was in a Venetian brothel. Bound up with this beautiful puzzle of a man.

      “A lucky star on the mainland,” he said.

      “Just so. You must have been born under an auspicious sign yourself, to be so handsome.” She spoke teasingly, but it was also true. Such beauty and charm should belong to no ordinary mortal. He was blessed. Until tonight.

      This was a fateful hour for them both, then.

      “If we are both so fortunate, then, Signora Bella, why are we here?” he murmured, as if he truly could read her thoughts. “A whore and an actor, who must both sing for their supper. Can we even afford each other?”

      “I am not so expensive as all that,” Marguerite said. She went up on tiptoe and whispered in his ear, “Not for you. I think we are alike, you and I, whores and actors both in one. And we do love our homelands, though we don’t want to admit it.”

      He pulled back, staring at her as if surprised by her words, but she wouldn’t let him go. She caught him closer, kissing him with every secret passion of her heart.

      “You didn’t come from any human land,” he muttered roughly against her neck, his lips trailing a fiery ribbon of kisses along her throat, her shoulder. “You come from an enchanted fairy realm, and you’ll surely vanish back there at the dawn.”

      “‘Tis hours until then,” Marguerite gasped. “We have to make the most of the night.”

      Nicolai captured her breast in his kiss, laving the pebbled, rouged tip with his tongue until she added her hoarse moans to the others of the house. That hazy, hot passion descended on her again like a grey cloud, and she felt so weak, so warm and yet shivering. Through that fog, she felt him reach down and grasp her hem, drawing her skirt up.

      The cold draught on her bare leg brought sanity crashing down around her. Non! He could not see her dagger, or all would be lost. She pulled away, laughing. “I said we had all night, signor! We don’t have to rut against the wall.” She drew him toward the small cot tucked beneath the room’s one window. Later, when her task was done, she would escape through that portal, vanishing over the rooftops of Venice. Not to any fairy kingdom, but to a curtained gondola where “Bella” would disappear for ever.

      She lightly pushed Nicolai, unresisting, on to the sheets, standing above him for a moment, studying him in the moonlight. His golden hair spilled around him on the rumpled, dingy linen. So handsome—so unreal. He smiled wickedly up at her, a fallen angel.

      “So, we can rut on a bed like civilised beings?” he said.

      “Exactly so.” She leaned over him, tracing the muscled contours of his chest with her fingertips. The arc of his ribs, the flat, puckered discs of his nipples. So glorious, like a map of some exotic, undiscovered country. She felt the pace of his heartbeat, racing under her caress. “We can savour each moment. Each—single—touch.” She kissed his nipple, tugging its hardness between her teeth, tasting the salt of his skin.

      Nicolai shivered, and she felt the pull of his fingers in her hair, the shift of his body under hers. He was so hard against her hip, his whole body taut as a bow string. Oui, he was under the spell of desire now. She couldn’t let herself fall prey to it, too.

      “How much will this cost me?” he said tightly.

      Marguerite eased up his body until she lay prone atop him, pressed close. “Your soul,” she whispered.

      Then she acted, as she had before. As she was trained to do. She drew up her skirts and snatched the dagger, in the same smooth motion rising up from his chest and lifting the blade high. She had a quick impression of his eyes, silver in the moonlight, his body laid bare for her to claim. She had only to plunge the dagger down into that heartbeat, and an enemy of France would be gone.

      But those eyes—those inhuman, all-seeing eyes. They watched her steadily, not even startled, and she was captured by their sea-like depths.

      Only for an instant, one quicksilver flash, but it was enough to lose her the advantage. Nicolai seized her wrist in a bruising grip, tightening until her wrist bone creaked and she cried out. Her fingers opened convulsively, and the dagger clattered to the floor. He swung her beneath him, pinning her to the bed. No lazy, debauched, lustful actor now, but a swift, pitiless predator. Just as she was.

      Marguerite was well trained in swordplay and the use of daggers and bows, in courtly fencing and rough street brawling. She knew tricks and dupes to compensate for her small size and feminine weakness. Yet she also knew when she was truly defeated, and that was now. She knew what it was she saw in those eyes. It was doom.

      As she stared up at him now, she felt strangely calm, as if she was already hovering above her body, watching the scene from the rafters. Her victim became her murderer, and it was no less than she deserved for her sins. This day had been long in coming. If only she could not die un-shriven! She would never meet her mother in heaven now.

      But she did see her avenging angel, rising above her in the darkness. He scooped up her dagger, examining the blade while he held her firmly down with his other hand, his strong body. She felt the full force of that lean strength; the smooth, supple muscles that held him on a tightrope or in a backflip now held her easily in place.

      He stared at the dagger, so thin and perfectly balanced. So lethal. The small emerald embedded in the hilt gleamed. “Why me?” he said roughly. “Why try to kill a poor actor?”

      “You are not a poor actor, Monsieur Ostrovsky, and we both know it,” she said in French. “You have secrets to equal my own.”

      “What are your secrets, mademoiselle?” he answered in the same language.

      Marguerite laughed bitterly. “It hardly matters. I have failed in my task, but I take my secrets to the grave.”

      “Do you, indeed? Well, that might be a long time from now, mademoiselle. I have the feeling that fairies, like cats, have many lives. You are young; I’m sure you have some

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