Page 104 of A Vicious Love

I took another whiskey from the tray and looked back toward the entrance because my attention had gone there without permission again.

The car door opened below.

Emmie stepped out first. Dark green silk. Gold earrings. Marcel’s wife looked expensive in a way Harlan women tried to imitate and never quite managed. She turned back toward the car and held out her hand.

Sienna stepped down.

Fuck.

The thought hit before I could stop it.

I had known she was beautiful. Some men needed a woman half-naked to realize it. I wasn’t stupid. Sienna had always been beautiful. Even at eighteen, when she stood beside me in soft dresses and called me Jamjam to make me less of a nightmare.

But this was different.

She was twenty now.

And she looked it.

The dress clung to her body with enough precision to make half the deck forget what conversation they were in. It fitted through her waist and hips, smooth as poured champagne, then slipped down her legs with a slit high enough to show flashes of thigh when she moved.

Her black hair was loose, over one shoulder.

Dark against all that gold. The contrast was a fucking problem.

The whole deck noticed.

Men looked.

Women noticed men looking.

Sienna didn’t seem to understand she had changed the room by arriving in it. She smiled at something Emmie.

I took a drink.

Harrison drifted up beside me, because apparently the night had decided I deserved punishment in layers.

I didn’t look at him. “Walk away.”

“Can’t. I’m invested now.” He smiled.

Of all my brothers, Harrison had the most fragile survival instinct. He had been born with the ability to find a bruise and press on it until someone broke his nose. Usually me.

“Say one more thing.”

“One more thing.”

I stared.

He laughed under his breath. “She’s gorgeous, Jamie.”

I looked back at Sienna.

She was coming up the steps with Emmie and one hand lightly on the rail, careful in those deadly gold heels. The wind moved through her black hair, lifting pieces around her face.

Gorgeous was too small.

That was the problem.