The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(79)

“Is he?”

“You’ve never heard of Adrian Caine?” asked Tristan. Libby shook her head, and Tristan’s smirk cracked slightly. “I’m joking. I didn’t expect you to run in London’s seedy underbelly.”

“Is he like the Godfather?” asked Libby.

“A bit,” said Tristan. “Only less paternal.” He took the bottle from her hand, not bothering to wait for her to release it before he took a long swig. “He’d love you,” he added after swallowing, shaking himself like a dog from the burn.

Libby glanced sideways at him, waiting to see if that was supposed to be an insult. Tristan met her glance, arching a brow in expectancy.

It didn’t seem to be.

“And I, of course, am a whore,” remarked Parisa, as Libby choked on her swallow once again. “I’m sure there’s a better word for it, but at present I can’t be bothered to think of any.”

“An escort, perhaps?” asked Tristan.

“No, nothing so professional. More like an exceptionally talented philanderess,” Parisa said. “It started shortly after I finished school in Paris. No,” she amended, recounting it in her head, “I believe technically it began while I was in school, though it was only a hobby then. You know, like how the Olympics only celebrates the achievements of amateurs.”

Libby left the follow-up questions to Tristan. “It started with a professor, I presume?”

“Yes, naturally. The academics are the most brutally deprived, or so they remain convinced. Really they’re all equally obscene, only they live in such a slender fragment of reality they’d never come out of their offices to see who else was fucking.”

“Fucking you, you mean, or fucking in general?”

“In general,” Parisa confirmed, “though also me.”

Tristan chuckled. “And from there?”

“A French senator.”

“Quite a leap, isn’t it?”

“Not really. Politicians are the least discerning and the first to expire. But it’s always important to have one and get it out of one’s system.”

“Was it enjoyable, at least?”

“Not in the slightest. My briefest affair, and the one of which I am least fond.”

“Ah. And after the senator…?”

“An heir. Then his father. Then his sister. But I never liked the family holidays much.”

“Understandable. Did you have a favorite among them?”

“Of course,” said Parisa. “I just adored their little dog.”

Libby glanced between the two of them, slightly dumbfounded. She was uncertain how they could speak so openly and so… flippantly about Parisa’s sexual exploits.

“Oh, it comforts him, really, not that he’ll ever admit it. Knowing the truth of my sordid nature only confirms Tristan’s deepest suspicions about humanity,” Parisa replied to Libby’s inner thoughts, catching her sidelong glance. “I’m confident Tristan could be stabbed mid-climax and still find the strength to groan out ‘I was right’ before succumbing to the cavernous embrace of death.”

“You’re not wrong, though from here on I’ll be checking for knives,” said Tristan ambivalently, which should have been confirmation of his involvement with Parisa, but instead it only bewildered Libby further.

Were they something or weren’t they?

“We aren’t,” said Parisa, “and anyway, he likes you, Rhodes. Don’t you, Tristan?” she asked, turning to him.

Tristan held Parisa’s eye for a moment as Libby’s intestines twisted with silent discomfort, the rest of her unsure how to react. It was a joke, of course. True, Parisa could read minds, but it wasn’t that. It was obviously just teasing.

Wasn’t it?

“I like Rhodes well enough, I suppose,” was Tristan’s underwhelming response, as Libby briskly determined that now would be a marvelous time for an immediate change in subject.

“So the Forum tried to… blackmail you?” Libby asked them, clearing her throat. “Extort you or something?”

“Something like that,” Parisa confirmed with a roll of her eyes. “I’d have considered it, too, only it was so very unpleasant the way they went about it. So brusque and outright.” She shuddered, disapproving. “I’ve had torrid affairs with less indecency.”

“You actually considered it?” Libby spluttered through her swallow, somewhat unable to differentiate between the burn in her stomach and the one in her chest at the thought. “Seriously?” Her voice, much to her dismay, had gone shrill with disbelief. “But what if it’s—”

“A trap? I doubt it,” said Parisa. “That doesn’t seem the Society’s style.”

“But the installation—”

“Was them placing us out as sitting ducks,” Tristan supplied, “but not technically a trap.”

Libby supposed he was right, though she frowned to recall Parisa’s original point.

“Still. You considered taking the Forum’s offer?”

“Oh, of course,” Parisa confirmed, taking the bottle from Libby’s hand and pausing its path in front of Tristan. They exchanged a glance; Tristan’s brow arched. Then he tilted his head back, permitting Parisa to pour a little absinthe down his throat, and licked the excess moisture from his lips, choking up a laugh as she spilled it down his chin. “Oops,” she said, smoothing it away with the pad of her thumb, and then drew the bottle to her lips. “Anyway,” she said, taking a swallow and handing it back to Libby, “it’s not as if I have any reason to be loyal to the Society yet. I’m not initiated, am I?”