Don't Bet Your Life

He grabbed her shoulders a bit too roughly, and she winced at the pain that lanced through her bones. She glared up at him as he scowled down at her, shaking his hands from her shoulders. “You shouldn’t trust me, you know,” he warned. His voice sounded a little too cold, even to his own ears. Something about this woman had rattled him, but he couldn’t quite tell what.

“I shouldn’t, no.” Her gaze pierced straight through him, and her words rang with a clarity that seemed to surprise even her. “But you should know you can’t lie to me.”

He raised an eyebrow at that and couldn’t help the grin that tugged at the corners of his mouth. “And yet I lie to everyone. What makes you so different?”

She grabbed his collar, and he was left staring at her in surprise as she pulled him down to within inches of her face. “I can see through your smoke and mirrors, your grandstanding… all of it. You owe me this much…” He shivered when her lips brushed against his. Why did he feel he was forgetting something? “Swear you’ll tell me the truth, always?” He wondered at the way she asked it, as though she couldn’t quite command him. 

“On my life,” he whispered without thinking, but she froze in shock, eyes wide.

“Not on that—never on that,” she replied. “There may come a day when you have to lie to me, whether you want to or not.”

“Though I’ll probably want to,” he interjected.

“Yes, well…” she scrunched her nose at him, “I’d rather it didn’t cost you your life should the need arise.”

“You make it sound like this is—” she cut him off with a kiss, the jolt of magic that coursed through him rattling his bones.

She pulled away and winked at him. “Binding? You’d be correct in that assumption.”

“And here I thought I was the one who was the trickster,” he remarked sarcastically.

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