Live to Venture (#0)

41 | The Pearls of Adventure

Novari split her face into the biggest grin she could manage. Vallin glanced behind him, his fingers still making whatever expensive drink he wanted that evening.

"Siren smile," he muttered to himself as he turned back around.

"It's not a Siren smile," Novari insisted, readjusting her legs underneath her.

Vallin hummed a little, shaking his head. He didn't buy that. Her regular smile—if it were genuine—was wide enough that the tips of her canines disappeared into her bottom lip. But the Siren smile, the one she did when she was concocting something, planning something, doing something suspicious, had the points on full display.

"I've been thinking," Novari said.

"There it is," he said. He picked up his drink and turned around for good. He could sit on that couch beside her—that's what he usually did—but then he'd be more susceptible to the little charm game she was about to play.

"There's this thing."

Vallin raised his eyebrows. "This thing?" he asked, taking a sip.

"It's not that big of a deal," Novari said. Her smile had wilted slightly. When she'd first thought about this, she'd been confident and excited. Now she'd grown every doubt possible.

"Then you should have no trouble telling me about it," he replied. He'd picked up his sketchbook and placed his boot on the table so he could position it on his knees. It wasn't a comfortable position when Novari did it, but he made it look so easy.

She shouldn't have a problem telling him about it. She told him everything, but it'd only been a few months of really being with him. She was jumping the gun here. Probably.

She wasn't sure why she started with this idea. Well, that wasn't exactly true. She knew the exact moment she'd begun thinking of it. Last month, in the bar on Kleo. She'd left Bardarian by the card tables to refill a drink, and when she'd gotten back, an absurdly beautiful blonde had taken the seat next to him and begun a conversation. As Novari watched, she reached over to place a hand on his forearm. He'd grinned, then shook his head and dropped her hand politely.

And? Britter had said when she'd told him about it. He didn't even let another woman touch him once. Is that not the perfect response?

Novari had pursed her lips and, after a moment of deliberation, had agreed. It was the perfect response. Perfectly perfect.

Except he'd grinned. He'd grinned like it amused him to have another woman approach him. Like it was slightly thrilling.

Novari had known she'd gone down a massive rabbit hole of irrational thinking, but she also knew that Bardarian had been a relentless womanizer for half a decade before meeting her. There was no way a man like that just dropped all his habits all at once. If some woman happened to tempt him, then he might revert, Novari would be forced to kill both of them, and that wouldn't be pretty.

Vallin glanced up at her between lines of his pencil. He was drawing her, that Siren smile. He hadn't gotten the canine right, so he twirled his pencil and went to erase it.

"I got you something," Novari was saying.

He didn't look up, only raised his eyebrows. "Usually I buy the presents."

"That's just it," Novari said, glad he had brought that up. "I have a handful of pretty things to wear when I go out that cost upward of a trillion coins."

"A little high," he noted.

"And when a man sees me, wearing my trillion-coined-necklace or whatever else, they know I not only have a man to buy me said extravagant thing, but I also like that man enough to wear it."