Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran

He owed her gratitude, not violence. She stared out at the free world, forced to new calculations. She had no desire to go back into custody. But Monroe owed her. She had liked him, in Hong Kong. And it seemed he had Tarbury. Without Tarbury’s help, she was good for nothing in this blasted country. “Let me up,” she said. The long body that pressed into hers felt immovable, hard as granite. “Please,” she added softly.

He made some adjustment that brought his cheek against her hair. Stubble tickled her earlobe. His skin was hot. “Give me the gun first.” With that voice, low and golden and slightly rough, some women would have counted the words poetry.
    She resented them anyway. Why could she not keep the gun? She was not his enemy, but he tackled her like a wolf on a rabbit. Maybe she could not count on him at all. Her grip slackened reluctantly. “Take it, then.”
    His weight eased off her. His left hand smoothed around her waist while his other plucked away the pistol. He pulled her up so quickly her vision sparkled at the edges. Obviously, the poison had inflicted no lasting harm; in one unbroken movement, he hauled her off the steps and set her on the ground below.
    She pushed at the arm around her waist. It banded more tightly, pinning her as easily as though she were some querulous child. “Are you otherwise armed?” His manner was pleasant; he might have been asking her to dance. Which he never had, she remembered suddenly. She had asked him.
    How ridiculous that such a trivial fact should increase her irritation. “No.”
    “Are you certain?”
    Already she knew she liked him much better as an American. “Yes!”
    His arm slipped away. As she turned, a match hissed. The flame illuminated a broad, long-fingered hand with a single ring on the fourth digit, gold, bearing some sort of symbol. The flame cut a sweeping arc through the darkness. It caught on a lamp wick. Light spread across Monroe’s face, sliding shadows beneath his cheekbones and his full lower lip; his lashes were still long as an angel’s, his jaw squarer and more inflexible than stone. His eyes met hers as he settled the lamp on the floor, and the contact made her flush. How stupid. But she had admired his eyes, in Hong Kong. Their steadiness had tempted her to trust him, despite all her reservations.
    “We meet again,” he said.
    She opened her mouth, but suddenly thought better of honesty. She had saved his life, and he’d never gotten to thank her properly for it. Surely he should sound happier to see her? Something was amiss here. If he wanted her trust, he was going to have to demonstrate that he deserved it. “Oh,” she said. “Do we know each other?”
    A strange smile quirked his lips. He straightened, the motion unusually fluid. His grace, too, had made her breath catch in Hong Kong. She decided not to admire him anew. “Perhaps not,” he said. “But we did once. Don’t you recognize me?”
    In fact, had circumstances not suggested his identity, and had she not gotten a good look into his eyes, she might not have known him. He seemed taller than she remembered, leaner, whittled down. Far more raffish, as well. Gone the clean-shaven cheeks and slicked hair; now he had a lion’s mane, waving past the stubble that darkened his square jaw. The cut suited his dark eyes and skin, if his aim was to look criminal. Certainly, he no longer appeared capable of masquerading as a financier.
    His devilish presentation also had something to do with how he held her gun. He toyed with it absently, turning it over and over in his hand as he considered her, as if a firearm merited no more caution than a child’s toy. Or…as if he sought to remind her who was armed, and who wasn’t.
    What on earth had Ridland told him of her? It seemed she would need to disarm him, in every way, if their time together was to be comfortable.
    She reached up, realizing too late that she’d bound her hair very tightly, and not a single strand was