Primal Call (2 page)

What?
James asked.

You were naked in front of other women!

I frequently am.

Not anymore, you aren’t!

The amber-eyed queen blinked. The fire in her thoughts went out. She was suddenly blushing. Her shields buttoned up tight and she was a stranger to him at this moment.

He was aware that she was nervous about meeting a movie star, she was aware of him as a woman, but he sensed this on a normal, just from looking at her non-psychic level.

She had no memory of their telepathic exchange. No awareness that she had any psychic talent. No awareness of him as anyone but a famous stranger at the moment.

Her hand was small in his, warm and soft. She also shook slightly. Desire shot through them at the point where their flesh touched.

He kept his mind on the knowledge that he couldn’t draw her into his arms and a kiss this instant. Not in this crowded room. Not with cameras pointed through the window from the outside. He was tempted. Very tempted.

James thanked years of acting training when he managed to calmly say, “Hi.”

He waited for someone to introduce them, because he was an old-fashioned, polite Prime. But since none of the Yanks seated at the table remembered their manners, after a few moments, he said, “Your name is Athena, isn’t it? Athena Blaise.”

“How did you know?” she asked.

“It just came to me.”

###

Thena basked in the man’s smile and his deep voice with its lilting Irish accent for a moment, thinking she might drown in them. Then she got her sense, and her voice, back. “You Googled me.”

“And we’re both wondering about that
half
.”

“The plane was landing, so I had to turn off my laptop halfway through the
Under Everest
download.”

“I had to put aside
Checkpoint
to read new script pages.”

It was like she’d known him forever, or they were reading each other’s minds. Thena didn’t know what it was, but this was the oddest and, at the same time, the most normal conversation she had ever had....

...which probably sounded totally banal to the other three people at the table.

“We should be seated,” James Wilde said, like he’d just remembered the other people were there, too. He moved to pull out her chair for her, and stumbled over the spilled contents of her purse.

They bumped their heads when they reached for the purse at the same time. He grabbed her shoulders to steady her. Her hands ended up on his waist. They were laughing when their gazes met.

###

He glared around the restaurant, and there were indeed some camera phones aimed their way. He expected better of the patrons of such a hard-to-get-into establishment.

James needed privacy with this woman. Nothing less than complete concentration on each other would do. No time for that now. No place for it, either. Best to get this lunch over with, then he and Athena Blaise—he loved that name!—could go somewhere to be alone.

“Thanks,” he said to Marki.

He reluctantly let go of Thena, who quickly sat down again. Then he reached down and gathered up the spilled items. Among them he found a small red velvet bag. He couldn’t resist a look inside.

“Knitting?” He looked up at Thena. “You knit?”

###

Good Lord,
Thena thought.
Now he knows what a boring, old-fashioned, stay at home, dull spinster I really am.

And why shouldn’t he know that? And why should I care?
the sensible part of her added. Just because simply being in the man’s presence made for flights of erotic fancy didn’t change the reality of who she was. Thank goodness, she’d be going home tomorrow. Being in Lotus Land wasn’t good for someone like her, who lived inside her own vivid imagination.

“I knit,” she said, and wished the words hadn’t come out so stiffly.

“All my relatives knit,” James Wilde said.

She wondered what he meant by that, but didn’t ask. She tried for a polite smile, but knew that came out stiff, too. One of the men at the table asked Wilde a question, thus eliminating her need to say any more.

He put her purse down by her chair and took his seat as he answered the man. The lunch then proceeded to small talk, mostly between the Hollywood people. They talked about movie production, people Thena had never heard of, fashion, and a lavish children’s birthday party an actor threw for a five year old that had turned into a disaster involving accidently calling in the city’s SWAT team. This gossip was the talk of the town, apparently. Thena laughed, nodded, and made interested noises when all these things were expected. She had no idea what she ate, if anything.

She did have some vague memory of his saying, “I’ll see you,” or “I’ll call you,” before he walked away from the table, but she doubted he’d been talking to her.

###

Thena actually hummed
I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair
while she showered. It amused her. But the steamy water pouring over her and the smooth slide of soap over her skin did nothing to alleviate the awareness of her own body James Wilde had triggered.

Not James Wilde personally, she told herself. All right, his hands had touched her, a little—simple, social touches of her hand, on her shoulders. Seeing him nude on screen had been hard enough, knowing she would meet him later. Actually meeting him was devastating enough to knock the image of him naked right out of her head. That image came back with knee-shaking force as her fingers glided sensuously over her bare skin.

All she was doing was rubbing herself with soap, but her senses—

Were a bit too heated, thank you very much.

Really, Athena Sophia Blaise, what is the matter with you? You are a woman of adult years, who knits for a hobby, cleans up after barnyard animals, and sings
old
Broadway songs in the shower. Oh, and you lie for a living. Other than that you are dreadfully ordinary. Oh, and you live on an Ionian island part of the year. Which is nice, but nothing so exotic as, say, a woman who can jump on her private jet and whisk her hot Irish lover off to Bora Bora at the drop of a false eyelash. You don’t even own any false eyelashes, and wouldn’t know how to put them on if you did.

But I suppose I could hire a makeup artist. And a trainer. And a body double for the sex scenes.

“Oh, stop it, you silly woman. He’s James Wilde.”

James Wilde was—he was James Wilde, that’s who he was. He’d probably forgotten about her even before he walked out the door and into the camera-wielding crowd waiting for him. And there was no reason he shouldn’t. She was an obligation fulfilled for the publicity department of the movie he was working on. Just another part of the job.

And truth be told, meeting him was an obligation of hers as well. One she’d fulfilled for the publicity department of her publishing house. It was all just business, even if it did leave her all hot and bothered for the moment.

Tomorrow she’d head home to the reality of her land, to the stress of working on a manuscript that was due in three months, to her large, loud, nosy family. Tomorrow everything would be back to normal.

Or, a girl could get out of the shower before the water turned her into a prune and get on with dinner and a good night’s sleep. She had an early flight to St. Louis in the morning, followed by a long ride home after that.

She called room service, then got into pajamas and dried her hair and did all her other pre-bedtime rituals while waiting for the food to arrive. She sat on the bed and brushed her hair with thoughts of James Wilde running through her mind, and her body.

This has to stop,
she thought.

It’s only beginning for us,
she thought she heard James Wilde answer.

She dropped the brush. It thudded onto the thick carpet just as a knock came on the door. Thena jumped to her feet. Her heart raced. For a crazed moment she thought James had come to her.

“Oh, for—!”

It was room service, of course.

Thena took the tray from the young man at the door, tipped him, and set her dinner down on the room’s desk. She was aware the whole time she did these simple, ordinary things that she was shaking. Her strong reaction to her own imagination scared her.

Maybe it’s not your imagination.

All right! That did it!

There were candles decorating the room, and Thena had an aunt who’d taught her how to use them for meditation. Her aunt was a psychic medium, the sort who worked with the police, solving crimes with her visions. She had ways of keeping those visions at bay when she didn’t need them. Thena had had the occasional run of nightmares when she was a kid, and seen and heard
things
that didn’t make any sense to a kid. Aunt Maria had taught her how to block the weird thoughts and feelings. As an adult, Thena used her imagination to earn a living, but knew right now she needed to use Aunt Maria’s training to get her imagination under control.

Thena gathered a trio of candles on the desk, sat down before them, lit them, and cleared her mind.

She concentrated on the flames. She concentrated on building a wall of fire around herself. She concentrated on building a wall of crystal around the flame wall. She concentrated on—

###

“No! Don’t do that!” James shouted, both inside and outside his head.

A hand landed on his shoulder as the words came out of his mouth. The awareness that it was another Prime touching him completely broke his concentration on Athena for the moment.

He bounded to his feet, ready for combat, before he remembered where he was, and recognized the other vampire male standing in front of him.

He was in the VIP lounge of a popular club. The other Prime’s bulk blocked anyone else seeing James’s claws and fangs. But it was very much a Bad Thing to show his true self in public. Especially in front of the bondmate of the Matri of the Los Angeles Territory. The Shagal Clan ran the area, as an outsider he lived in their city on Shagal sufferance. It was his duty to be circumspect.

And polite.

He had to put everything and everyone but Barak Shagal out of his mind right now. He’d get back to Athena as quickly as he could. He adjusted his features into mortal form as quickly as he’d changed. And gave a deep, respectful bow of his head.

“Elder Barak,” he said. “The Moon Lady’s blessings on you, sir.”

“The Desert Lord’s protection on you,” Barak answered.

The Shagal Clan’s history went back to ancient Egypt, and they kept their connection to the jackal-headed god Anubis. James’s Family didn’t claim anything so fancy in their background.

Around them a great deal of modern nonsense was going on—dancing, fooling around, drinking, the ingesting of controlled substances. Who among the mortals here would guess such old-fashioned, ritualistic conversation was going on at Jimmy Wilde’s reserved table?

He gestured for Barak to take a seat. Gennie and Mimi greeted the elder Prime, then made themselves scarce. A vampire’s mortal daughter and a werewolf wisely stayed out of an Elder’s business.

James ached to get back the connection with Thena Blaise. “What can I do for you?” he asked Barak.

Barak was a big male, stern at the best of times. His frown didn’t lessen any when he put a smartphone on the table in front of James. He turned it to show James a photo on the screen.

“Your eyes are showing,” he told James.

James looked at the picture of himself. In the restaurant. A few hours ago. Holding Thena’s shoulders. “My eyes are glowing.” That was not good.