Bitter Spirits (Roaring Twenties #1)(16)

“And I didn’t know I’d be visiting a deviant!”

“One man’s deviance is another man’s lunch break.”

“Pervert.”

His mouth was against her ear, his words spoken through her hair. “Are you referring to me or yourself? You’ve been staring at that for quite a long time.”

Her face flamed. She never blushed. Never! “It’s . . . depraved.”

“How so?” His thumb ran along the edge of the postcard. “Is the artist depraved for rendering a fantasy, or is the woman in the painting depraved for enjoying it?”

“You’re the one who’s depraved for owning it.” She shoved her shoulders back against him, grunting. “Let go.”

He didn’t grip her tighter, nor impede her from ducking out of his hold, but instead distracted her with words. “Look closer,” he said, pointing to the woman in the illustration. “There’s a trust between them. She enjoys him watching her. Oh, and would you look at that? She’s got freckles just like you. How interesting.”

Aida’s eyes flicked to the bulky arms flanking her shoulders. She twisted inside his trap, defiantly faced him, and shoved at his chest. A useless act against someone built like a mountain; he didn’t budge.

She drew back. He leaned forward, erasing the distance. Their combined weight pressing against the lamp table caused it to slide a few centimeters. A frightening, almost unbearable intensity darkened his eyes. She could no longer tell which pupil was bigger, because both were enlarged beneath languid, drooping eyelids.

“Do you like people watching you onstage, Aida?”

The question was, at best, rude, and paired with the postcard, the insinuation behind it was downright vulgar. But it was her name on his lips that unexpectedly triggered lust to uncoil low in her belly. It sounded so startlingly intimate, and he was so close. So close, so big . . . so intimidating. She was overawed and overexcited, all at once.

His gaze dropped. Hers followed, only to find the hands that had shoved at his chest were now grasping his necktie, either in an attempt to choke him or pull him closer.

Maybe both.

“Christ alive,” he whispered thickly.

Her thoughts exactly—what on earth did she think she was doing? Rattled by her own lack of restraint, she released the necktie and ducked under his arm, then took several quick steps to put some distance between them.

“Sorry,” she mumbled with her back to him. “I’m not sure what came over me.”

He didn’t answer. God, she’d rattled him. Probably a first. And now that her foggy brain was clearing, she was uncertain about his intentions. Do you like people watching you onstage, Aida? Maybe she’d misread this completely. Perhaps he’d only been trying to intimidate her after she’d rudely plowed through his personal things, and she’d only been hoping he didn’t mind the freckles. Maybe she’d just been fooling herself because she wanted him to want her as much as she wanted him.

But wants and needs aren’t interchangeable, and what she needed right now was to cool down and gather her wits. She exhaled heavily, and the breath that rushed out of her mouth was a chilly white cloud.

SIX

IT TOOK SEVERAL MOMENTS FOR WINTER TO COMPOSE HIMSELF enough to turn around. He was uncomfortably hard, aching and straining against the front of his pants. The fact that she provoked such an immediate response in him wasn’t a surprise—he had, after all, spent the last few nights conjuring images of her while he stroked himself to sleep. Thank God she hadn’t flipped one more page in his postcard collection, or she’d have seen the program he’d taken from Gris-Gris, folded inside out with her photograph bared.

But really, could he be blamed for that? She was beautiful, vivacious, and carefree. Of course he wanted her. It was her response that had him thrown for a loop. Because unless the blood now pulsing inside his cock had emptied his brain and made him daft, he suspected she wanted him, too. How was that possible?

The only women who showed him any interest these days were gold diggers who lusted after his money and the perceived excitement it could provide, or fallen socialites who’d become accustomed to a lifestyle that was slipping from their grasp. Women who once knew him before the accident now looked at him with pity. Strangers acted uncomfortable when they saw his scars.

So why was Aida flirting with him?

And the more he thought about it, the more he was certain she really was flirting, despite it having been years since anyone had shown interest in him without an agenda. She had no reason to need anything from him. She was independent, earning her own money, and successful enough at it. Hundreds of people lined up every night to see her show. She seemed comfortable with her life. Satisfied. Self-confident. She didn’t have the stench of desperation that he could usually spot miles away.

But she did have every reason to hold up two crossed fingers or throw holy water on him. At Velma’s he’d collapsed like an injured horse, sick and naked and half mad with the poison polluting his veins. She should’ve been fainting in horror at the sight of him, running for the hills.

Yet here she was.

And now he’d forever have an image stamped in his depraved mind of the moment her lovely face tilted up to his . . . her eyes big and brown beneath the slender brim of her hat, lips parted, freckles peeking through faded oxblood red lipstick. One particular freckle near the right corner of her mouth was larger than the others, straddling the blush of her lip and the lighter skin of her face. Dear God, how he desperately wanted to swipe his tongue across that freckle.