BlindHeat (9 page)

“Nice people?” Lila touched her face again. “Sweetie, you
are nice people. Whatever nonsense got spouted at you growing up…forget it.
Wanting sex doesn’t mean you’re depraved or a slut. The rules are whatever you
want them to be, whatever you need them to be. If a guy has a problem with
that, it’s his problem and you find another guy. Got it?”

Allie smiled.

Lila tweaked a curl at Allie’s nape. “Now I’m going to worry
about you all night.”

“I should forget all this, go home and curl up with my
contract.” Go home and pack was what she was thinking.

“No. Really, Allie, you need to get out and have some fun.
Get past this. You let Eddie keep you from that and you might as well just go
back to that cage he raised you in.”

It was like a cage. More so than Allie was willing to admit
to Lila. She’d spent most of her life in the apartment above the club, not
allowed out onto the street, not even allowed school beyond a few alcoholic
tutors he’d scraped up on occasion—and those only after he decided her quick
mind and eagerness to please were valuable assets to some of his business
enterprises.

Lila was right. Eddie still controlled her. It was time to
break free. She’d meet Marcus and take a night of pleasure for herself. Hey,
maybe she’d really change things up and try having sex indoors, in a bed.

But there were cages that didn’t require bars or locked
doors. There were cages constructed by experience, connections, intimacy. Those
cages were the kind that could trap a person forever. Would getting involved
with Marcus be the exchange of one cage for another?

Chapter Four

He was waiting just inside the restaurant door when she
appeared—twenty minutes late. Completely out of character for her. She seemed
edgy, frustrated.

She looked about her, but not directly at him. There was
another gentleman in the foyer, a couple of inches shorter than Marcus, at
least twenty pounds heavier. Surely, she must be able to tell them apart. He
frowned and went forward to greet her. As soon as he moved toward her, she
looked directly at him. Only when he smiled did she send a relieved, but
cautious, smile back at him. He’d learned a lot from his research that
afternoon and now he recognized that aloofness as the tool Allie relied on most
when she was unsure of identity.

“Hey,” she said. Not using his name he noted. She might as
well have asked,
Is that you? Are you my date?
They’d spent half an hour
staring directly at each other’s faces over lunch. They’d been nose to nose
that morning—though that encounter had included a few distractions.

“Hey,” he said back. Now her smile broadened and warmed.

He held out a hand and she put hers in his. “Allie, what is
it? You’re ice cold. Trembling.” The coat she was wearing looked warm enough
for the chill of a March evening.

“Nothing. I got lost. No big deal.” She shrugged.

He led her into the candlelit restaurant. “Our table is
ready. You should have asked for directions when we were on the phone this
afternoon if you didn’t know the way.”

He led her on through to a table that looked out on a small
lamp-lit garden. The restaurant wasn’t busy. The subtly romantic atmosphere and
quiet conversation around them were perfect for weaving the seductive spell he
had in mind.

“I might have asked for directions,” she was saying, “if I
had been the one to take the call.”

He was helping her out of her coat when she made that little
revelation. She was wearing a dress, simply cut to reveal a hint of cleavage,
enough creamy skin set against the dusky-rose color to make his mouth water,
sexy in a delicate way rather than a come-and-get-it way. Shy and alluring at
once. It suited her perfectly. He knew the entire contents of her wardrobe—not
enough to fill up a suitcase. This wasn’t hers. He doubted she’d gone shopping
for a date with him, hadn’t had time between work and now.

Her hair was gathered to the back of her neck where it fell
in a tumble of loose waves to cover bare neck and shoulders. He breathed a
delicate perfume that made him want to press his nose to her neck and follow the
trail down that sweet curve of her back and lower to discover where else she
had dabbed scent.

A waiter took their coats. Marcus was trying to remember
what he said on the phone as they followed the hostess to a table. Not
something meant for any ears but hers, but the details remained vague. At the
table he held a chair for Allie and she seemed startled by that small gesture,
hesitating a moment before slipping into place. He lingered a moment just above
and behind her, enjoying the view.

“So if that wasn’t you on the phone, who was I talking to?”
he asked.

Allie fingered a delicate chain with a pearl drop pendant.
“My fairy godmother.” Her head dipped and she was looking down at herself as if
she were looking at someone else. “She’s got one heck of a magic wand.”

Marcus leaned in, stroked the pearl, his knuckles grazing
her breasts. “I see the same Allison I’ve always seen. The Allison you work
hard at hiding. The only magic is your friend’s ability to reveal you.”

One of those long curls had fallen over her shoulder, a coil
of dark silk drawing his eyes to the contrast of luminous skin and taking them
on a journey to the swell of her breasts. He allowed himself the pleasure of
sliding his finger inside the soft silken tunnel, his mind going to a vision of
her under him, legs around his waist and him sliding inside her. He’d barely
been in her presence five minutes and already his control was slipping away. He
dropped into the chair across from Allie and tried to think of something to say
that wouldn’t reveal where his thoughts had wandered. The waiter returned and
for a few minutes they were distracted by the business of ordering.

When the waiter left them, Allie’s confidence abandoned her.
She looked everywhere but at him. She fiddled with her dinner napkin, draped it
over her lap and from the movement of her shoulders he could tell she was
strangling it. He tried to ease the tension with humor.

“I won’t molest you until after dessert. I promise.”

She froze. Her gaze snapped up and locked with his. Her eyes
were a deep green that penetrated to a degree that startled him, reminding him
of Hella.

It had been at the edge of his awareness from the beginning,
a sense that there was more to Allie than just an advanced human level of
intuition and perception. That she could be more like him than he knew. But,
just to start, those green eyes of hers, rare in humans, didn’t exist among
Pantherians of any tribe or subspecies.

And if she were Pantherian she wouldn’t be living here on
her own. It had been a couple of centuries since Pantherian females were last
allowed to mingle freely with humans. Longer than that since they were
permitted to go about unescorted. There weren’t enough Pantherian females left
to risk short visits to human regions. No female had been formally allowed off
the island of Pantheria in half a dozen years.

But even though Allie couldn’t be a shifter, she was not
your ordinary human. His instincts were firm on that point. What did that
leave? Psychic gifts? Mesmeric talents? There were layers to Allie he was going
to have to explore.

“So you learned all about me at lunch,” he said. “Tell me
about yourself. Where did you grow up?”

“I grew up in your average, urban-bighted corner of a city,”
she said with a shrug. “You?”

“In a forest in Siberia,” he said.

“Ah, I thought I detected a hint of an accent. I couldn’t
place it. So you were raised by monks?” She took a sip of water, watching him
over the rim of the crystal goblet. A spark of laughter glinted in her eyes.
Good. She didn’t believe a word he was saying.

“By wild tigers actually. You?”

Her answer was as flippant as his. “I grew up in what you
might politely call a brothel. My father was a high-end pimp. I didn’t know my
mother, but my guess is that she was a high-end hooker. What were your parents
like?”

“Overprotective.”

They sparred back and forth with their fantastical tales,
only his side of it was truth, however unbelievable. He knew she was making her
side up, but she delivered the story without hesitation and in unwavering
deadpan. He gave up trying to get the truth and ventured into safer
conversational ground—the weather and global warming.

He tried sneaking in personal questions. She sidestepped
every one with a fantastical fabrication and turned the questions back on him.
Blocked at every new angle, he fell back on a trick that had served him well
across the centuries—mesmerism.

He dipped his hand into his jacket pocket and plucked out
the prop he needed—a smooth white rock, oval and flat, with a faint tinge of
blue in the center to add to its sense of mystery.

“Give me your hand.”

Allie hesitated, then acquiesced. He could feel the faint
tremor move from the back of her fingers into his palm when he turned her hand
palm up. With one hand under hers, his other covering it, he called her attention
to the sound of the fountain just behind her, commenting on how soothing the
sound of the water was. He watched for the expected drop in her shoulders,
softening of the muscles around her full lips. When her gaze met his, her
pupils were wider, more receptive.

“This is a moonstone.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “From the moon?”

He used his attention to lead hers, glancing at the floating
candle that flickered in a bowl of water and flowers at the table center.

Marcus pressed the stone into her palm. Tapped its center
gently three times while he spoke in soothing tones.

“No, not from the moon, from the ocean. But I found it
soaking up moonbeams on a black sand beach.”

She nodded as if that were a perfectly acceptable reason to
call it a moonstone. He smiled, pleased with her willingness to play along.

Her eyes followed his break in gaze the first two times,
done slowly while he was talking. The third time her attention stayed with the
flowers and light. A soft half-smile curved her lips. Her hand stopped trembling.

“I found it on a tropical island, a beautiful, safe place.”
He emphasized the word safe. “It has been rocked in the ocean, kissed by the
wind and bathed in moonlight on the other side of the world.” A shiver passed
through her, an expanding awareness that felt like a tug on his attention.
Briefly the image of a shabby red blanket decorated with images of white
kittens flashed in his mind. A security blanket from her childhood possibly. A
reasonable projection when he was trying to create a security attachment to his
gift.

Marcus resisted the temptation to follow that image and
discover what Allie’s past could tell him. Prying unnecessarily into someone’s
thoughts went against his sense of honor. Creating a trusting dialogue that
would encourage her to reveal what he needed to know was his preference. He had
a particular destination in mind—Hella—and this time Allie wasn’t going to lead
him off track. “Close your eyes and open your senses to the moonstone’s magic.”

Allie closed her eyes. The tension in her fingers relaxed
the tiniest bit, and then more as the stored vibrations from the ocean passed
from the stone into her palm.

Then she looked at him, green eyes clear, unguarded. Just
where he wanted her.

“What do you hate, Allie?”

The answer was quick, unfiltered. “Pretending.”

Her shoulders hunched forward, as if she could deflect the
obvious next question, or braced for its pounce. When her eyes opened, wariness
looked out at him. He didn’t ask the question he believed she expected. He gave
her a crooked bad-boy grin, an invitation to mischief.

“Is there anything you like to pretend? A particular fantasy
you like to lose yourself in?”

Her face relaxed, took on a soft glow. Sparks danced in her
eyes.

“One or two.”

Marcus put his hand over hers, squeezing her fingers tight
around the rock he’d tucked into her hand. “Hold that thought. Don’t let it
go.”

Dinner with him was like sticking her finger in an electric
socket and discovering she had a fondness for electric shocks. The air around
them vibrated with possibility. It snapped and popped with restrained tension
every time his arm brushed hers.

He was a toucher.

She hated touchers. But in the park that morning she’d
begged for more. It wasn’t the case now with his hands cupping hers. Marcus
knew how to touch, more a rubbing of skin to skin than a confining grasp. She
barely heard the lines he used to try to charm her. Her attention locked on
scarlet blossoms in a crystal bowl, a candle glowing in the center. Vibrations
and air currents moved all the centerpiece elements in a slow swirl, catching
light and shadow to paint and repaint the water’s surface.

At a pause in his speech she nodded, barely curious about
what he’d said, the stillness taking hold was such a blessed escape from the
usual self-critical chatter at the back of her mind that she hardly dared to
breathe for fear it might slip away.

When she finally did look up into his eyes, she wasn’t the
Allison Lila had made up for dinner, the one with hair curled and makeup
carefully applied. She wasn’t even Allie the ad writer in her shapeless
business suits. She was that wild and elemental soul he’d called up in the
woods that morning.

He knew it too. It was there in his eyes, recognition, as if
he shared the same vision. His pupils had narrowed, his breath caught and he
broke off mid-sentence, lips still parted. He’d closed her fingers around the
stone. The stone was hot, hot enough to burn. She held tight.

“Tell me all about pretending,” he said. His tone had a
lazy, dreamlike quality, like the hum of a bumble bee on a summer afternoon.
Dreams. “Tell me your favorite fantasy.”

She decided to start with something safer than the fantasy
she’d had that afternoon.

“When I was small I liked to pretend I was a kitten. I even
dreamed I was a kitten who could squeeze under doors and hide under furniture,
disappear and reappear anywhere I wanted.” She laughed. “I was an exceptionally
talented dreamer. The places I dreamed I went looked exactly the way I imagined
when I was finally allowed to go there.”

“Tell me about those places.”

“Eddie’s club? It was all you’d imagine that sort of place
to be. Tacky décor in pink and black. Exotic rooms where men paid women to be
their fantasy.”

“You weren’t making that story about the bordello up? Your
father took you into his club? Sold you to his customers?”

She frowned, confused. “No. He didn’t sell me. He took me
downstairs when he went to work, more to bring an end to the sleepwalking than
anything else. He tried everything to keep me in my bedroom at night—locking
the door, putting a guard on it. But I always found a way out. Someone would
find me sleepwalking and call him to collect me. Having me tucked in his office
wasn’t as dangerous as having a naked toddler roaming the club.”

Marcus scooted his chair around the table until he was knee
to knee, elbow to elbow with her. It was easier to talk with him beside her
instead of across from her.

“Naked?” he asked.

She shook her head, as puzzled by that part as everyone else
had been by that aspect of her nighttime adventures. “I don’t know what the
nudity was about. Kids, right? For some reason, the first thing I did when I
got out of bed at night was abandon my clothes.”