Secret Worlds (226 page)

I can smell it now as she packages a slice of apple pie for a customer standing in front of the register to pay. It reminds me of a smell from my childhood; the basement of one of my high school neighbors. His father owned a crematory furnace. That one second when the body is quickly inserted into the retort and the heat ripens it before the door closes and takes the scent to the bitterness of ashes.

When she’s not close, I wonder why she’s still here. Why I allowed her to be here. Why I don’t want her to leave. When she’s close, all I can think about is devouring her.

***

Two hours later, I’m once again contemplating the young woman filling salt shakers and chatting with the two remaining customers and realize it’s been several hours since CeCe walked into my establishment and stirred the beast in me. I can’t shake the feeling this is going to be a day I will live to relish—and regret. Something is not right with this chick. But then, something is not right with me, either.

“Who are you?” Gaire asks me as he flips the open sign on the door to closed. “And how old are you?”

“Aren’t your customers going to wonder what happened to you?” I flash him a smile. “It’s not even noon.”

Gaire raises a brow. “I’m only open for breakfast. Don’t avoid my question. Who are you?”

“It’s such an open ended question. Obviously I’m a woman, and someone’s daughter, sister—I have a few friends—but I’m definitely not someone’s wife, significant other, or parolee.”

“You want to expand on that a bit? Maybe your full name, address, what the hell you’re doing here?” He flips off two switches on the wall by the door, and walks across the room toward me.

“I believe I was giving a very attractive man a hand, and I realize we haven’t had time to do the I-ask-you-ask, stuff people do when they’re interested in each other. I mean, clearly there’s chemistry going down. But jeeze, you just flipped the door sign. I’d like to take a breath, have a cup of coffee, and, oh, I don’t know, talk?”

Gaire puffs out his cheeks and blows air.

Did he just puff frustration at me? And his damn eyebrows are all bunched up over his nose. And why the hell does that make me upset? Catch and release, remember?

“Look, I’m over nineteen, legal, and where’s your sense of adventure?” CeCe’s eyelashes fan her tan cheeks.

“Are you telling me you want a date before you explain your behavior today?”

“Well, no, of course I’m not.” Yeah, right? I’m jaking for a date, one that leads to us both getting naked. Why am I having such a hard time using this body to get that point across? This is definitely going to turn out badly, but … cold rotted flesh be damned, his smile stirs something deliciously dark in
me
, the doppelganger under human flesh. “I simply walked in your diner to feed my starving body—”

Don’t want CeCe carbon-copy to start looking Night of the Living Dead-ish.

“—and found you in a bad situation. Being the girl my daddy loves, I stepped up to the plate. Pardon the pun.”

For the first time ever, I wonder if I’m going to really feel something for this guy when we touch. Crap! I didn’t sign up for emotions. In the human world, emotions always end up misplaced, trashed, or trampled on.

He opens his mouth to speak.

I toss up a hand, snort indignantly, and snap, “What’s up with the lack of help, Gaire? Did your wife get sick or a girlfriend not show up?” Did his name just dribble off my lips like slow moving honey? Why am I using his name? And was that a question about relationship commitments? Who the hell cares what they do beyond my reach? This is absolutely not me, Miss-No-Name, Miss-Who-Gives-A-crap. “Oh, and how old are
you
?” I add before I analyze myself right out the front door—so not going to happen.

I’m not acting like the body I’ve doubled up on, either. The snotty little rich bitch probably wouldn’t give this guy a second glance. Oh, cold, cruel, and blessed darkness, look at him. My heartless body melts when his smile shows me an amazing set of straight white teeth.

When have I ever cared about teeth?

“Thirty-two, never been married. I don’t stay in one place long enough to establish a relationship.” His brow furrowed an abrupt, but quickly retrieved, tell—a slight regret. “And my waitress quit, doesn’t plan on coming back.”

“Why is that? Do you kill things? Would I find you on America’s Most Wanted?”

Now that’s a hoot. My whole family kills things—human things.

Gaire laughs out loud. “Other than hunting season,” he says, waggling his brows, “I take no trophies. I move because I have a … family that, let’s just say, a family that believes I should be living with them for the rest of my life. I don’t do family well. And you still haven’t answered my main question, but you have managed to get three answers out of me. Quid-pro-quo, girl. You’re wrapped in a pretty package, CeCe, but there’s something hiding inside. Who are you?”

Under CeCe’s skin, my body-mass trembles. I want this guy, but not like the others. I really want this guy—long term. That is not a possibility, merely a desire I frequently dream about.

“Careful, Gaire. Digging too deep on a first … whatever this is, is a dating faux pas.”

“But we’re not dating. In fact, we have no physical tie what-so-ever. I’d need to see a driver’s license before that happens. I’d just like to know who the girl that worked hard for me all day really is. I at least owe you a pay check.”

Every section of my dark, smoky body crackles with electricity. He’s treating me like an employee! “No, you don’t owe me anything … um, anything monetary, anyway. But we can change that physical thing in a heartbeat. One of your heartbeats,” I say, head spinning as I move closer. The body I’m wearing is temporarily forgotten—I’m all doppelganger at the moment. “The closed sign is up. My car is the only one in the parking lot, so how about we—”

When I place my hand against his chest and touch him for the first time, it’s like being hit with a lightning bolt. We both jump back.

“Holy shit, are you plugged in?” I squeak, but underneath I’m so freaked out I can hardly speak.

Gaire recovers quicker than I do, although he says nothing. His fingers rub the spot on his chest where I’d touched him, and he immediately brings them to his nose.

His thick brows reaching for each other, eyes hooded, he drops his hand and says, “How about, for now, I cook you the breakfast you came in for?”

I watch a perfect ass tucked into tight jeans move toward the kitchen. Arms and shoulders strain his damp tee shirt, and I can’t find my voice, or CeCe’s. But inside my cold dead body, a fire ignites, and I know he’s the only one who can put it out.

Son-of-a-bitch, I can’t breathe. Who is she? Better yet, what is she? Something I have never come in contact with before, that’s for sure. I feel spelled, weak. Could it just be that indefinable, and often talked about, fatal attraction to a human? Impossible. Stuff like that doesn’t happen to my kind. Mates are selected for us, not chosen
by
us.

“You like pancakes?”

She walks up to the window on the other side of the grill, stares at me through eyes that clearly hold secrets, and licks her pink and puffy lips.

“Sounds yummy,” she says, while my damn eyes take it upon themselves to search the front of her tee for hardened nipples.

“Eggs?” The word catches in my throat.

“Sure.”

“What about meat? Do you like bacon?”

Her face goes all seductive, with sleepy eyes. Her teeth hold her bottom lip, and a slight intake of breath flares her nostrils. She holds me with that look for a few seconds. The pheromones she’s giving off make me inhale deeply, savor the scent, and try to examine it. My heartbeat accelerates as rapidly as during a hunt. What she’s giving off is nothing I’ve ever scented before. It’s intoxicating.

“You might say I’m more carnivore than omnivore.” Her smile is devilish.

I feel heat in my cheeks—wonder if she knows what I am—and pour out batter for six pancakes.

Tossing a dozen strips of bacon on the grill, I make myself busy cracking a shitload of eggs, and then I’m finally capable of saying, “Ah, a girl after my own heart.”

I certainly hope not.

Her soft, breathy chuckle sucks the air out of my lungs and holds it. I’m either going to sate my appetite with breakfast, or I’m going to sate it with the biggest mistake of my life, because I want this woman.

Outside, Gaire appears to be calm, unaffected, but like an animal around others, I sense a battle within. It seeps from his pores, a vibrating lust. He’s panting with fear contradicted by an uncomfortable hunger. And none of this gives me the rush, the cocky, heady high it usually does when a human veers out of control with desire and need. This is different. This time I know what he’s feeling. I’m right there with him. I’m on the edge of devouring him—screw the food—I need his skin against mine. Right now.

While one part of me wants to run away, shed this silly body, and never look back, the distraction and physical reaction I’m having coaxes me to hurry into whatever it is that’s happening here, head first, full throttle. His short glances, the way he sniffs the air when I move, and the way the beat of his heart resonates with each note it strikes is such a rush. I’m losing control, not thinking clearly. Judging by my host’s moist undies, I’m sure as hell not standing outside of the lust looking in.

He pulls plates onto the shelf of the grill with a clatter that shocks me out of myself and into CeCe. “Smells good,” I say, eyes locked on his.

“Yes, it does,” he answers, almost growling the words.

Actually, the smell of human food is always nauseating. The sweet scent of butter, dead chicken fetus frying in a mixture of triglyceride extracted plant matter, smoked meat, and the acidic aroma of coffee coat CeCe’s nostrils.

“Are we eating in the dining area?” I ask, while telling myself, food does keep the body looking healthy, and quench an uncomfortable urge.

“I thought maybe upstairs,” he says, his eyes intense, “in my apartment.”

And suddenly I have a freaking heartbeat hammering in my chest.

“Okay.” I cannot believe I actually squeaked that word. Well, I did use CeCe’s voice, but still.

He chuckles. “You want to grab us the last two cups of coffee in the pot and follow me up?”

Oh, hell no!

“Sure.”

“I take mine black,” he says. “The cream is in the fridge if you need some.”

I so want to come back with something all nasty-bad-girl, but inside, the doppelganger is quivering. I pour black acrid stuff into two cups that will never feel the touch of CeCe’s lips. I pick them up, my thoughts mindlessly churning, and slosh coffee over CeCe’s shaking hands.

“Crap,” I grumble, set them down, and take several deep breaths. I actually felt the need to take in air. A doppelganger doesn’t need oxygen, blood, or a human body to exist. Yet, it is sure acting like it does.

CeCe and her family will be back in a matter of weeks, and I will not be able to stay dressed in her skin to build something other than a brief sexual relationship with a human, albeit a special human, but still... And I sure as hell can’t shed the guise and show him who I really am, now can I? Talk about nightmares. Why did I ever think there could be more?

Taking her up to my apartment is butt-ass stupid even if she does seem to carry an otherworld scent, actions I can’t intuitively judge, a mind I can’t seem to understand, and an uncontrollable interest, like me.

“Watch your step,” I tell the succulent morsel behind me as we exit behind the diner and climb a stairway that leads up to my back door. “There are two nails I keep forgetting to hammer back into the wood—stair six, and the second from the top.”

In a lust induced trance, I take the steps two at a time. The tap of CeCe’s footsteps follow.

Where are you going with this, Rogaire?
My mother’s words invade my thoughts and make me think of my childhood and the reason I left the family.
We are not human,
she’d said,
and if you mount her, you’ll bite her. And if you bite her, you’ll kill her
.

I never believed my mother, until it happened. Afterward, I ran. I’ve been running from my shame and punishment ever since.

But this one is different, I tell myself. I know it. I can smell it and feel it.
If you bed her, you’ll bite her. If you bite her...

I shake my mother’s words off this time. I open the door to my apartment, step in knowing full well, like with any human, I can’t just shift and run to keep from biting her. Talk about monsters. This has gone too far.

As I walk into Gaire’s apartment all I can think is, wow! The space, with a twenty foot ceiling, is one big loft-type room creatively sectioned off by stark, dark textures. It’s amazing.

The only window is in front of me, across the room, and covers the whole storefront wall. It’s dressed in loose black cheesecloth drapes, letting in very little light at the moment. I think of dark, rainy days, and starlit nights when the moon is high and the curtains open. Those windows would bring the outside in. I long to experience that.

The ceiling is roughly cut, weathered-gray cedar with thick rafters that hang over a dark, rich, cherry-wood flooring that reminds me of blood-soaked skin. Studio lighting—long armed pole lamps—filtered by ash colored lenses, scatter the room.

All the amenities are visible from the door I stand frozen in: a bedroom, kitchen, dining room, and bath. A bed covered with a red comforter is sitting atop a wrought iron platform, accessible by ladder, to my immediate left. The two walls it’s cozied up to are black slate. The barn-wood cedar ceiling in that corner of the room is specked with bright red, giving the impression it was once painted. The bathroom is built underneath. Through the open door I take in a lot of black and silver, and a bright red shower curtain. The contrast is cold, morose, and dark. It nurtures my nature.

To my right, another open wrought iron platform is snuggled up to two mirrored walls, and workout equipment is scattered around up there. An open L-shaped kitchen is built along the two walls underneath. It’s all cherry wood and black marble with stainless steel appliances, and looks like an open wound pouring into the living area.