SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (63 page)

He turned, but watched her anyway in the reflection of the dressing room mirrors, hungry like a man at his last meal: Pale, slender body, naked. Raspberry nipples soon covered by a flesh-colored insult to women’s underwear. His gaze roamed down the long, flat flanks of her legs, which dimpled her ass as she bent over, and formed lovely, smooth planes to her knees. A swell at her calves tensed as she found what she wanted in her bag and stood. Beauty.

“Custo!” Annabella complained, though she smirked as her chest and face swept with color.
He doesn’t seem mad about this morning,
she thought.

No, he wasn’t mad. Not at her. He was looking for another opportunity.

It was a crime to cover that body with a dingy leotard, black tights, and faded sweats. She grasped some new shiny satin toe shoes and first-aid tape and took off down the hall to a studio. Inside, dancers gripped ballet barres at the walls and freestanding barres lined up in the center of the room. A woman was clapping a perfect, even rhythm to keep time for the dancers.

Custo tapped his earplug as Annabella took her position and joined in the deep squats, what the woman called pliés.

“Jens here.”

“I’m on the fifth floor. She’s doing some sort of dance class.” As an afterthought, he added, “Adam here yet?”

“No.”

Custo hoped Talia wasn’t in labor. Those babies needed a little more time before they could handle this world.

“Everyone else checked in?”

“All except for Tommy,” Jens said.

Custo cursed. “Find him. Now.”

“Shhhhhh!”

Custo brought his attention back the dancers, who were staring at him. Annabella managed to roll her eyes from a very interesting upside-down stretch.
He’s gonna get kicked out,
she thought.

“Custo out,” he mumbled to Jens.

The class resumed.

The next fifty-five minutes were a revelation. Whatever fragility he might have attributed to Annabella shattered with the acute precision with which she “warmed” her body. The teacher, a fellow dancer, led the group through a series of rigorous exercises that outmatched any martial training he’d mastered, and then some. No show of tension betrayed the difficulty of the steps, though their feet were angled into tidy, unnatural positions. Their flexibility was nothing short of gymnastic, but the transitions between their movements had an ethereal fluidity that elevated mere training to art.

Annabella might not know the first thing about defending herself, but she was far from weak. She was flexible steel, personified. Her slight body, so trim and smooth, was primed for power. Not one ounce of ease remained on her frame, yet somehow she was still soft. Vulnerable.

“Annabella!” a pretty boy called to her. He had some muscle to him and moved with a cocky swagger. “You want to run through a few things?” His junk was straining his tights, but he seemed to revel in the effect,
yeah, look all you want,
which made Custo want to knock his mocking smile right off his face.

Annabella, breathless, walked over to him, wiping her forehead with her wrist. “Yeah. Sure, Jasper. Let’s hit the lifts first.”

The pretty boy, Jasper, had the nerve to put his hand on her inner thigh, an inch from paradise, and lift her above his head. Annabella soared upward while Custo bit back a snarl. Too high, too intimate, too…much the wrong man touching her there.

Custo probed Jasper’s thoughts, but they were all focused on the movement.

Jasper suddenly shifted, near dropping Annabella into a sweeping spin against his body, her arms embracing with a love-longing that made Custo’s throat tight. He’d have looked away, but he was rooted, hands clenching, ready to tear them apart.

Jasper glanced over to gauge Custo’s reaction, his stance cocky, his mind and body asking,
What do you think of that?

“Leave him alone, Jasper,” Annabella murmured. But Custo caught her own darted gaze, eyes bright with interest.

As soon as possible, as soon as Custo got her alone, he’d show her his version of the very same movements. Perhaps not as graceful, but infinitely more gratifying.

“Let’s do the
sissonne
crosses.” Annabella peeled off her shabby excuse for a sweatshirt and threw it to the side of the room. On her leotard, perspiration winged beneath her breasts, accenting her curves, while tiny droplets trailed down her chest, combining at the cleft of her cleavage.

Custo swallowed to wet his dry throat.

Annabella and the pretty boy moved to a corner. Jasper said, “Two, three,
and,
” and she leaped, his hands high at her waist. The resulting movement was antigravity, the perfect union of strength and grace, male and female. They moved like their bodies knew each other, knew the rhythms of breath and blood without any reference to thought. Annabella didn’t even have to look, and that pretty-boy bastard was there, holding her. Hands all over her body.

Custo was shaking, silent, by the time they finished their practice.

The curve of Annabella’s lips told him she was pleased with herself. Her mind was full of possibilities for the night, with him, should the performance go as planned. Custo was in complete agreement.

“What now?” Custo said, his hands itching to touch her. He had so much to do, but all he wanted to do was shut himself in the studio with Annabella.

“Now I get ready,” Annabella answered, sweatshirt flung over her shoulder. She sashayed out of the room, hips ever so slightly swinging. He wanted to turn her to face him, fill his palms with her backside, do his own lift, and demonstrate his own flawless technique.

She strutted to her dressing room. Custo followed, biding his time.

As soon as the dressing room door closed, he had her up against the wall. His body pressed into hers, her heart pounding furiously against him as she held her breath. She was hot, sweaty, and musky with it. But her eyes sparkled up at him, waiting for what he would do next. He was close enough for her breath to brush his chin. Her upper teeth scraped her lower lip, plumping it. She wanted to be kissed.

She’d been showing off for an hour, powerful and loving every minute. She obviously wanted to revel in her high a little longer.

He didn’t kiss her. That was too easy, too expected, and they didn’t have time to finish anything the kiss would start, which she had to know. This was a tease, a flirty taunt to both tantalize him and see if she could trust him to pull back. She could, but since he wanted her so bad, there was no reason she shouldn’t want him back just as badly, just as acutely as he desired her.

Custo turned her to face the wall, trapping her in the confines of his arms. He held her tightly against him, her body just beginning to tremble, but he didn’t so much as flick the thin strap of leotard from her shoulder.

He lowered his mouth to the slightly damp column of her neck, to the spot that had set her off before and spoke against her skin. “I don’t know what the wolf did to scare you—you don’t seem nearly as scared now as you were a few hours ago.”

Her hips shifted in a feeble attempt to get away from him. Feeble for her; he knew her strength. If she really wanted to break away, he’d have let her.

“I’ll answer your questions, though,” he said.

“I didn’t ask—”

Custo tightened his hold to shut her up. “Yes, I want you. And, yes, it drives me crazy to see another man touching you and holding you.”

“He’s
gay.
”

“I don’t care. I want that privilege.” Custo exhaled a harsh breath, noting how her skin pimpled with goose bumps. He wrapped himself more fully around her to keep her “warm.” “But I won’t force you. I am not the wolf.”

She was utterly still now, hardly breathing.

“So think hard what you want when you look at me that way, when you sway those hips like that. I will take what’s offered and damn the consequences.”

Custo touched her mind and was surprised to find a very defined series of thoughts. She was scared he’d let go of her. Scared her knees would give. Scared they wouldn’t have a chance to finish what they’d started.

He was a little shaken himself, but he forced himself on to other pressing matters.

“We need to talk about tonight, review the security plan.”

Annabella was silent for a moment before answering. Finally, she shook her head. “No. I’m not going to think about that at all.” Her voice was raspy, and she gave a little cough to clear it. “I can’t, you understand?”

After seeing the mastery and grace of that dance class, he had to admit he did. Her focus had to be entirely on her performance. The rest was up to him.

Her weight shifted to her own feet, and he released her. He’d wanted to reassure her, show her that he had everything under control, to tell her that she could depend on him, but she was beyond that now. Had to be.

He attempted to follow her thought leaps. It was easier now that he was coming to know her better. She was retracing the steps of the story, and he could almost feel the veil between earth and the Shadowlands trembling.

By the time she sat at her dressing table, she was in deep concentration. He spent the next half hour checking in with his team—still no word from Adam—while Annabella transformed her girlish face into the ethereal appearance of a ghost. She pancaked her skin white. She lined her eyes black, adhering the lashes to her already thick, dark fringe. She shaded the hollow of her cheeks just so, then stood, holding her leotard over her breasts, and handed him a white-dipped sponge.

“Wipe me down, would you?” she asked his reflection in the mirror.

He didn’t know what she meant, but would do anything she asked. So he took the sponge.

“My shoulders, neck right into my hairline, and my back,” she clarified. Underneath her words was an implicit invitation. Among the complex movements of choreography filling her mind, she’d decided something.

Custo stepped close to her, their gazes locked in the glass. He couldn’t act on his desires, so he bent to his task and stroked her with the sponge. Her character was the ghost of an almost-bride, so he swept the color from her skin. He erased the pulse of life from the curves of her back and arms. He stroked the white across her shoulders to the dip below her graceful throat and the valley between her breasts.

His head was bent, mouth at her ear, arms circling her waist when she spoke, her voice thin. “My costume is on the rack.”

He could feel her heart pounding in her chest—his was, too—and forced himself to take a step backward.

She reached to take the frothy white dress from a hanger, and keeping her back to him, her face to a bland corner of the dressing room, dropped her warm-up clothes and donned the costume. Her hands molded the bodice to her frame and she backed up to him again.

“Would you?” she asked.

The back gaped open, lined with matching rows of tiny hooks and eyes, too small for his hands. He did the best he could with his clumsy fingers and when he brought his gaze back up, found Annabella utterly transformed into an otherworldly bride.

Someone knocked on the door, calling, “Ready in five,” then moved down the hall.

“I guess this is it,” she said.

“Don’t worry about anything,” Custo said. “Just dance.”

She inhaled deeply and exhaled with a shudder. “Let’s go.”

From side stage, Custo could hear the rumble of the audience and the stray, discordant notes of the orchestra. The Segue team was either already seated or were circulating until curtain.

Jens was on the opposite side of the stage. He’d simplified the Segue uniform to an all-black ensemble that might pass for stage crew. Only the jacket seemed unusual, but that couldn’t be helped. He had to hide his gun somewhere. Everyone was in place. Everyone was ready.

The orchestra went suddenly silent and the audience muted to a murmur, then a general hush. The music began, each instrument weaving an eerie thread of the story.

The other dancers, brides in death, comprised the first movement. Then the stage cleared with a bustle and Custo’s space was crammed with dancers heaving for breath, watching from the wings.

A new phrase of music began, mournful and romantic, and Annabella stepped into view, a maiden ghost, a wili. The light of the stage shifted slightly with her appearance, deepening with color, with compelling light, with magic.

Annabella.
There could be no doubt; she was born to dance.

She mingled with the other wilis, and then exited to the other side with the group while cocky, pretty-boy Jasper took the stage.

Gay,
Custo reminded himself. But he still didn’t like anyone touching her.

Custo peered across the way, trying to get a glimpse of her and caught only a bit of white tutu. Not good enough. There were at least a dozen dancers in white tutus—could be her, could be some other woman. He extended his mind to see if he could glean her well-being from her thoughts: a shoe ribbon was too tight. Her throat was dry. The shreds of thought surfaced in the cacophony of mental chatter coming from the thousands in the audience and did him no good.

He touched his earbud. “Jens, how’s Annabella?”

“She’s fine,” Jens answered. “Standing right here on her tippy toes to see over the—”

Custo’s earbud crackled. “Oh, shit,” Tommy’s voice cut in, breathing heavy, shouts in the background, cars honking, a crash. “Wraiths.”

Custo’s heart lurched. “Say again?”

“A group of them! It’s a trap!”
A
wraith screeched, high and painfully shrill in Custo’s earpiece. “He can’t hold them off for long.”

Annabella joined Jasper onstage where he grieved at her grave.

“Who? Who can’t hold them off forever?” But Custo already knew.

Onstage, the couple mirrored each other’s movements—Jasper, strong and earthy, Annabella, light and ethereal, both utterly unaware of the nightmare unfolding outside the theater.

“Adam. He’s out there alone.”

Shadow Fall: Chapter Nine

Giselle’s broken heart pulled her gaze to the dirt floor of the forest as she rose above from the freshly turned earth of her grave. She kept her hands folded on her breast, to hold the fragments of her love within her. Prince Albrecht would marry another, a royal lady, and not some peasant girl who knew nothing of the world. His betrayal killed her, yet she couldn’t help but love him still.