God's Eye (16 page)

“Yes, we are truly neck deep in an honest-to-God fraud situation.”

“Oh, shit.”

Allistair didn’t flinch, but she did. Now she was swearing, too. She didn’t swear. Or maybe she did and she just didn’t know it.
Fuck.

He pointed to a file she hadn’t even realized he was holding. Her teenage puppy dog eyes had missed a lot, it seemed. “With the access you granted to the company files yesterday, they already confirmed that the money is leaving through the payroll department. It appears that the first shuffle was about four months ago, and in that time the thief has managed to steal about seven hundred thousand dollars.”

“Crap.” This time she didn’t berate herself for swearing.

“Katharine.”

“What?” She hauled herself back from her mental calculation that someone was moving almost two hundred grand through payroll each month.

“I want to tell you that I’m sorry about last night. That it was a mistake. That I won’t bother you again.” His words played havoc with her insides. Again he had taken her completely off guard. She–who manipulated diplomats and businessmen like a true aristocratic woman, then got them to sign on the dotted line while she batted her eyelashes–was getting snowed by her own trainee. Worse was that she didn’t like what he was saying.

She opened her mouth even though she had no idea what would come out of it. But it was his voice she heard. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” God, she was so confused.

“Can’t tell you that.” He took a deep breath. “I’m not really sorry. I’m only sorry that I stopped. That I took off.”

“Oh, Lord.” Her heart turned over in her chest. Her eyes were drawn to the fullness of his lips, and her brain was drawn to the wish that he would kiss her again.

His mouth pulled into a wry grin, and the shine of it reached his eyes. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

His hand came up behind her head, cradling the weight, guiding her until her lips touched his and lightning burned through her system.

Allistair pressed his mouth to hers, already feeling his control washed completely away in the whirlpool they had created. He had other senses. He smelled the people out in the hallway, usually saw their tracers before they came in the door. He knew of the other side of the veil, of the creatures that moved freely just beyond the air. But all that disappeared into the void he created with Katharine.

For a fleeting moment, he wondered if this was what humans felt when they loved. Where he came from, emotion was always grand and simple, not this complex, consuming passion.

Katharine leaned into him, returning the kiss and wiping all other thoughts clear of his head. When she had walked in, he’d seen and smelled Zachary all over her, but now those tracers had all but disappeared, unable to cling to her in light of their mutual want.

Her hands worked the knot of his tie, gentle tugs that loosened the restraining silk. His fingers undid the tiny buttons at the front of her shirt, and he rapidly became frustrated with the barriers that kept him from her skin. When at last the material fell away, he was faced with her bra.

The lacy fabric hid little from his gaze. He wanted to touch the garment and make it melt away, yet that posed another logistical problem. It would take so little from him to do it. But as he assessed her, her eyes watched him with a wealth of trust and need. Even if she didn’t realize what had happened, she would later, when her bra was literally nowhere to be found. And his Katharine had enough unanswered questions in her life these days. He couldn’t risk her knowing what he was, or what he was capable of, until much later. So he peeled her blouse and jacket in one move and dropped them to the floor behind her desk, then pushed her gently, draping her over the arm of her chair.

His mouth found her throat, his tongue tasting the sweet pulse beneath her skin, the flutter serving as a reminder that she was human, where he was only human enough. He traced a wet path along her neck and down her chest, encouraged by way she moaned seemingly against her will. The smooth satin of her skin passed under his hands as he attempted to feel every inch of her. He dispatched with her bra, a quick flick of his wrist sending it against the wall.

A gentle tug came at his wrists, soft but insistent. In his surprise, he saw that she had his shirt undone and off, except for the cuffs clinging slightly at his hands. With a shake, he shed the last of the fabric and reached around behind her again. The frenzy in his brain led his mouth up her stomach to the soft peak of her breast. He lingered, tasting and testing, engulfed in the sweet and full fragrance of her.

Her hands searched him, feeding him her need and hot images of exactly what they were doing. Allistair felt the tide washing over him, her desire for him and her enjoyment of his touch spurring him on. Her fingers found his hair, a sweet caress against his head that became a pressure urging him to meet her mouth with his, press their naked torsos together and hold tight.

He lost even the most rudimentary of thought processes.

Their hands were frenzied, pulling and prying at each other’s remaining clothes. They wound up naked on the floor, in the cramped space behind her desk, soft carpet rubbing against their skin. When their movement brought him around on top of her, Allistair pulled his knee up between her thighs. Her legs parted, then wrapped around him, urging him to do exactly as he wanted. With an uncontrolled gasp pushed from his throat, he entered the soft, wet heat of her body.

His senses bloomed, opening to all the sounds and smells around him. His vision went to shades of gray, with great peals of color showing the emotion pouring off the woman writhing beneath him. Quickly, he buried his head in the warm curve of her neck. Her pulse teased him with the hot scent of blood and want just below the surface of her skin. He moved within her and his brain was shot through with indefinable streaks of need.

He felt everything. The carpet, rough against his bare knees and feet. Her legs, silky to the touch but iron strong around his hips, urging him deeper inside. Her arms, brushing against his ribcage as her hands stroked his back. His shoulder blades, sharpening and trying to push through the skin that defined him.

Fear pushed him to move harder against her, into her. As she moaned against his chest in response, he moved his hands along the underside of her arms, capturing and guiding her hands up and over her head. Lacing his fingers through hers, he intended to hold her somewhat captive, to keep her hands from finding the changes being wrought on his back.

Instead, he had formed a circle.

There was a reason prayer was performed with palms pressed together. The link to oneself provided an energy few people were even aware existed. He had just formed that bond with another. She had no control over the flow of her own thoughts and needs into him, or of his into her.

So he buried his face against her. He couldn’t let her see his eyes. She wouldn’t comprehend the depths in them. She’d be frightened, and rightfully so. So he kept his face averted, moving against her, within her, while she arched to meet him, her face pressed to his neck, her voice becoming stronger as she neared her peak.

At last, he cried out himself, straining against her, releasing the last of his humanity into her. She cradled him, her legs entwined with his, her fingers gripping him tightly–for or against what, he couldn’t tell. Blinking, he watched as the world slowly came back into standard color. The sharp pain across his back receded, and he could tell that his human body had righted itself.

With their hands still laced together, he pushed himself up a bit to watch her face. He could see Katharine’s world coming into focus, could see the moment she realized she was pressed against the wall, spread out on the carpet behind her desk, completely naked. He could see the moment she realized who she was with, and he was unprepared for the jolt of pain that was purely his.

She had wanted him, clawed at him, then at some point had become a writhing, needing ball of sensation. So much so that she had misplaced herself. And had been surprised that it had been with him.

Allistair fought to disengage his feelings. He needed to get off her, off the carpet, and to pull back from the pulse they had created both together and within him. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he lay down, heavy across her soft form, pinning her there. His fingers toyed with her hair, and he enjoyed the feeling of her breasts pressed against his chest while he thought about what he should do next.

•  •  •

Somehow the day had reverted to normal.

At least externally it had. Inside where no one could see, Katharine was put together backward and upside down. And she had to fight hard to maintain as normal an appearance as she could.

Allistair had eventually stood up from where they had rolled on the carpet like a couple of kids in a hayloft. Only it hadn’t been that good when she’d had clandestine sex before. Katharine had stayed seated on the floor, shaking her head when he offered her a hand up. She figured the nap of the carpet was imprinted on her back and her butt, and no one needed to see that. So she sat there and pulled on her underwear and hose, straightened her blouse and slid her arms back into it. The nude lace bra was invisible underneath, and she was still too hot to bring herself to put her suit jacket back on. Somehow she managed to refrain from fanning her face.

While Allistair watched with a glint in his eyes, she managed to get her hair back up into something of its original form. He smiled. “That looks good.”

Her eyebrows rose at his first words since … well, since. “The question is: is it good enough?”

He tilted his head, his hand coming up to catch her chin and turn her face from side to side for inspection. Her breath caught at the simple touch, and the smell of his skin warned her that whatever had brought them crashing to the floor was far from over. She still wanted him, and she wondered if she would survive everything turning inside out the way it was.

“I think so.” His words were vaguely reassuring, even though he was certainly referring to her hasty hairstyle rather than her inner turmoil.

He hadn’t said anything after that, just fetched her heels and knelt to slide them slowly onto her feet one at a time. Surely he was looking up her short, straight skirt as he did it, but he didn’t say anything or even smirk. His hands had run gently up her legs when he finished and he had crawled the two paces in between her legs to plant a kiss on her forehead before nimbly pulling himself off the carpet and returning to his desk as though nothing had happened. As though Katharine usually sat on the floor in the corner.

There had been nothing to do but follow his lead and return to her work as though her life was all just fine and dandy. When it certainly wasn’t. Hell, she almost preferred the creatures wandering through her condo at all hours of the night to dealing with this. At least she didn’t think the animals were her fault.

Katharine settled herself at her desk without looking up at Allistair, even though she desperately wanted to sneak a peek. Only her rigid upbringing held her back from blabbering about the whole thing, from asking what the hell had just happened. She managed to keep her mind on task only enough to turn out the reports her father wanted on the potential purchases. Research was, after all, her technical title, although lately she’d been spending a good chunk of her time as trainer and investigator.

When lunchtime rolled around, Katharine felt the desperate urge to flee the room, to get out and away from Allistair and the memories of the floor behind her chair. Though she was considering when and how she could be near him again, it seemed he’d gotten her entirely out of his system. He hadn’t shown so much as a hint that anything had occurred between them. Not that she could tell anyway, given that she was
not
watching him. Although she wanted so badly to leave, Katharine couldn’t bring herself to do it. She’d whiled away a good part of her morning fucking on the carpet rather than working. Add in that she was already overpaid compared to the other researchers–apparently the “heiress” qualification was worth quite a bit–and because of all that, she figured she owed Light & Geryon another working lunch.

So the only relief she would get until Allistair left was the few moments it took to wander into the employee lounge and grab one of the yogurts she kept in the fridge. She lingered on the journey, stopping first by the ladies room to kill some time, and finally began to breathe deeply. Then she made her way into the lounge and pondered the snack machine for several minutes before choosing a granola bar and slowly fishing out exact change. After she grabbed a plastic spoon from the supply bin, she headed back to her office, back to her waiting assistant with the killer smile and wicked style.

He was at his desk, busy typing away, when she entered. If he felt any of the remnants of the morning, it didn’t show. In fact, he looked up and smiled at her slightly, then looked back at his work, as though nothing were amiss. And maybe for him it wasn’t. She didn’t know his work history. Maybe he screwed all his trainers in their offices during work hours. He was certainly hot enough. Maybe he thought this was a standard Light & Geryon initiation. Maybe she was finally, truly insane.