Masquerade: A Black Heart Prologue by Lynn Raye Harris

Author:Lynn Raye Harris [Harris, Lynn Raye]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-12-27T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Natasha’s heart thrummed at his nearness. The scent of his custom soap mingled with his own body chemistry to create something that was uniquely him. If it were pitch black without a single flicker of light anywhere, she would recognize him by smell alone. A moment of panic seized her as she wondered if he might be as attuned to her scent as she was to his, but then she relaxed when she remembered that she’d used a different soap in the shower earlier for precisely that reason.

She could never be too careful. She’d learned that in prison, and then she’d learned it again when she’d trained to be a combatant.

Never let your guard down. Never.

Constant vigilance was the price for staying alive. So was being willing to do whatever it took to survive.

Ian took the glass from her and set it on the wide balustrade. He placed his own there as well. When he reached for her mask, she took a hasty step backward, then cursed herself for showing so much emotion.

“I wasn’t going to remove it. But I would like to know if you have any hidden weapons there, Anna. A syringe in the feathers, perhaps? A small nail with a poison tip secreted somewhere?”

“I’m a banker, not an assassin.”

His grin was sardonic. “In my line of work, everyone is potentially an assassin.”

“And what if I have a knife between my breasts? Do you intend to look there too?”

“I definitely intend to look at your breasts, Anna. If you’d like to strip for me, I can get busy examining you for weapons before we move on to the main event.”

He was infuriatingly arrogant. But that wasn’t what was making her angry. No, it was the casual way he intended to fuck a woman he’d just met. He might have kissed her that night in DC, but it hadn’t meant a thing to him. He didn’t know she stood before him now. He thought Anna the banker was a hot lay just waiting to spread her legs for him like so many others must have done.

He wasn’t thinking about her—about Natasha—at all. Perhaps she should pull out one of the hat pins she’d used to secure the ties of her mask to her hair and stab him in the throat with it.

Except, no matter what he thought of her, she didn’t kill that way. She preferred shooting to stabbing in all cases. Poison worked too. But stabbing was too personal. Too messy.

“Your foreplay leaves much to be desired,” she said acidly.

“Ah, but haven’t we been engaging in foreplay from the beginning?”

A wave of heat flared inside. He wasn’t talking about every time they’d met as Ian and Natasha, but that’s what she was thinking about. And, oh my God, it had been foreplay. Every encounter, every look and every word—and that kiss beside the Tidal Basin in DC. All of those things had been foreplay.

She was suddenly, achingly, aware of her own need. Her own desire. For him. For Ian Black, the man she hated.

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