Read Dragonfly for Free Online

and I wanted to yank my hand away.
    I led the fat red queen, and the game was on.
    ***
     
    When Dragonfly led the last trick with the king of cups, I tossed my queen of coins on top, my fingers damp. His gaze came to rest on mine, and heat crept over my skin from somewhere below my waist. I’d been certain he held that king. We’d just won nearly eight hundred thousand sols. Most of it was Dragonfly’s, of course, since he’d made the chancy bet. But valat etiquette demanded he award a portion to me. I didn’t want his money. I didn’t want anything his bloodstained hands had touched. I averted my eyes, feigning modesty, hoping the color hadn’t reached my face.
    The cashier collected the bets and measured chips into four stacks without needing to look.
    Dragonfly flipped my tricks over, totaling the points at a glance. “Twenty-four for the lady, and another martini, if you please.”
    Before I could protest, the cashier slid nearly a quarter of Dragonfly’s chips across to me, and the waiter whisked away my glass and placed a fourth shimmering blue drink before me with a flourish. I swallowed half in a single gulp. I’d need it to spend much more time in this murdering bastard’s company without punching in his sweet choirboy face.
    The fat Espan to my right was broke and leaving the game. As the cashier collected, Dragonfly watched me, flipping a chip over his knuckles. He was left-handed, a thick platinum chain gleaming on his wrist. “A clever game, miss.”
    I smiled at him over my glass’s rim, my vision refusing to focus. Four Lvovs in twenty minutes was probably a bad idea. So he’d caught me off guard with his cute-and-harmless act, but I was wise to him now. I could handle him. “A dangerous one, if you give away too much. Do you always twirl that chip before you bluff?”
    “Only when the stakes are so enticing.” He showed me his smile for the first time, charming, confident, attractive.
    I just wanted to punch him harder. “What a pity. Your winnings must so rarely live up to your expectations.”
    “But tonight I’ve already won what I desire.”
    I eyed his pile of chips with disdain. “Eight hundred new? How dull of you.”
    “Your curiosity, miss. That’s a different game entirely.”
    His candid gaze fixed on mine, and I flushed. Damn him for being right. I ached to know what he was up to, who and where his people were, why he sat here playing tarocchi and flirting with me when the vault lay seventeen stories below us. Why a man who had everything he could ever want—money, looks, brains, lifestyle—was an insurrectionist at all.
    “You should stick to cards, then,” I said coldly. “It’s what you’re good at.” I tossed back the last of my drink. Damned if I’d listen to his bullshit any more.
    “I say, do you mind frightfully if I join you?” A smooth hand descended on my shoulder, pressing me down in my seat so I couldn’t get up.
    Dragonfly’s warm gaze frosted over at last. “Not at all. So long as the lady doesn’t object.”
    I smiled sweetly and gazed hotly up through my lashes, inwardly cursing both of them. “Of course not.”
    Malachite winked. “Smashing. I so love a good game.” He took the empty seat next to me, grinning broadly like the filthy rich idiot he was pretending to be. He waved airily at the waiter. “Another round, if you’d be so kind. Capital. I say, who’s dealing?”
    Dragonfly gathered the cards into two piles and riffled them together with his thumbs. He offered me the deck coolly, and I cut it, aware of two pairs of eyes fixed on me, one sending shivers of distaste along my spine, the other a hot caress that surely didn’t need much more help from alcohol before I’d do something stupid.
    Malachite smiled smugly, and yet another glowing blue martini appeared before me. For my own sake, as well as the mission’s, I shouldn’t drink too much more. I could already see how this night would end. We’d take Dragonfly for everything