Read The Cursed (League of the Black Swan) for Free Online Page A

green shimmering in their dark amber depths.
    “Luke, are you—and I ask this in the nicest way possible—are you nuts?”
    She fidgeted with the end of her braid, and he was suddenly entranced with the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist. In the golden light from the lamps, he could just make out the faint blue tracings of her veins, beautifully curved as if drawn with gentle strokes by a master calligrapher.
    Or maybe he
was
fucking nuts.
    He stood up so fast that the room swirled around him in a spiraling haze of gilt-edged shadow, and it all clicked as he remembered. Again.
    “The venom,” he said. “It must be messing with my short-term memory, too, because I keep forgetting it’s affecting me.”
    Her shoulders relaxed a little. “Oh. Of course. You should probably rest, but I need to tell you something first. Why I’m here.”
    She shifted her legs and then winced, raising her foot, and he remembered that she was injured.
    “First, I’ll get you some ice for that ankle and make coffee,” he said, heading for the tiny kitchen off the back of the office space.
    He walked straight to the sink, ducked his head under the faucet, and ran icy water on his head and face for a half minute or so, until the almost drunken disorientation from the venom faded a little. He toweled off, started the coffee, and then put ice in a clean towel and returned to face the woman who’d danced through his dreams on more than one occasion.
    He could do this. He’d faced down a Grendel.
    But when he walked back into the office, Rio looked up at him and smiled, and the entire world shifted underneath his feet.
    Worse—he didn’t think he could blame it on the venom this time.
    “Luke? Ah, is that for me?” She bit her lip and he stared, fascinated, at her mouth.
    Her wicked, sensual mouth.
    “I want to kiss you,” he blurted out.
    She blinked and froze, like a startled woodland creature, and he did the only thing possible.
    He smacked himself in the forehead with the towel full of ice.
    “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he gritted out. “I don’t know why this damn venom is having such an effect on me. Poisons usually race out of my system in seconds. The longest I’ve ever been affected is a few minutes, and I . . . Oh.”
    He shoved the ice at Rio, spun around and went for the silver dagger he kept in plain sight out on his desk. His clients thought it was a letter opener.
    Only Luke knew it was a crucible.
    With barely the slightest trace of hesitation, he forced himself to reach out and take it, closing his fingers rapidly around the sleek surface of the silver handle.
    Which didn’t burn him.
    Not even a little.
    He exhaled a long, slow breath, and Rio cleared her throat.
    “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
    He shook his head. “No. Not now. Later, maybe. Your turn to talk. Tell me more about the child.”
    He shook his head to clear it and then turned to face her. She was still holding the ice in her hand, her brows drawn together as she stared at him. He dragged the beat-up red leather ottoman over to her chair and sat on it, gently lifting her injured leg into his lap.
    As he took the bundle of ice out of her hands, he tried a smile, since she was looking at him like he was a deranged and possibly dangerous criminal.
    “This works better if you actually put it on the hurting part.”
    She flinched a little when he moved her pants leg up and put the ice next to the swollen side of her ankle, trying not to let his fingers linger on the silken smoothness of her skin. Since she was in pain, he forced himself to ignore the fact that his pants suddenly felt too tight, just from her calf resting on his thigh.
    He was pathetic. Pathetic and aroused. Bad combination.
    And still a little woozy, probably, because he leaned forward and tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. She caught her breath when his hand touched her cheek, and he almost thought she trembled, but when his gaze flew to hers, she