What a tease. She loathed the mockery he wore like a pin on his lapel. Though he uttered no words, his wily, saccharine smile was wide enough to reach his ears. She knew fully well that he intended to watch her struggle, perhaps subject herself to a humiliating bout of a performance.

"Stop giving me that look," she remarked loftily, letting the pin fall from her thin fingers. It struck the surface of the table with a faint thud, almost inaudible even in the thick, humid silence.

"I was merely suggesting that I offer you some assistance." Always the gentleman, the courteous bystander. His innocent look was one that was skillfully executed by a veteran actor. It was almost ironic.

"I do not require aid keeping my hair in check." she laced her fingers together with the eloquence of a dancer, and leaned back in her chair languidly. The hot weather did nothing to lighten her mood, and it was getting darker by the second. And her evident failure to keep her locks out of her face was infuriating. She was a woman, for Heaven's sake! A lady could probably be acknowledged as the one specimen on the planet whose self hygiene was deemed immaculate. Not her. She was the black sheep among its peers. An unblemished apple that was shunned because of the fear of what could be decaying within.

He proceeded to watch her quietly, his eyes scrutinizing her every detail. His sharp, penetrating gaze never fail to instil a little agitation in her own grey ones. It probably gave him some satisfaction.

"Perhaps, if I should send for a maid..." he began slowly, enunciating his words clearly as if speaking to a child. He observed her pale knuckles draining of whatever remaining color as she clenched them into suffocating fists. Yet there was an amazing measure of calm etched upon her face like a mask; her anger in her hands did not reach her eyes.

She felt the anger and frustration smothering her, burning her from within, snapping her thin, remaining lines of patience. Biting her lip to quell the brewing storm, she gripped the desk to steady herself. It was a grip, in her futile efforts to cling onto reality, before the past came to drown her again. She felt the familiar stinging sensation as tears moistened her eyes. Incensed by her exhibition of weakness, she made a move to wipe them away, only to have her own hands drawn away from her face.

He sighed with a smile that has ensnared countless victims, yet his voice still carried its jeering edge.

"To weep is only natural." He wiped away her tears with a tender hand. "Your life has been nothing but an untouched apple, it's fragrant flesh singing a song of temptation."

His hands encircled her waist, wandering up to her bare neck, and entwining themselves in her loose, cascading curls. He leaned in close, his sweet breath of honey and mint emanating her senses as his lips met her ear. His smouldering eyes, imbued with unsaid ardor and famine, an implied confession.

"Enticing enough for me to take a bite."