Seductress Seduced (The Embassy Book 4) (2 page)

Contrary to my expectation, he didn’t look self-conscious because of my hesitation. If anything, he appeared amused as he withdrew his hand and took his former place next to mine.
Cocky bastard
.

Looking over to Emily, I caught her deadpan stare. Oh, she might be smiling pleasantly, but she couldn’t wait for us to get straight to business. He really must have been pestering her over the past few hours if she was already that strung out. Then again, maybe she was just waiting for our appointment to be over so she could get laid herself, a much more reasonable explanation for her momentary lapse of professionalism.

“And you are the guy that has everyone’s panties in a twist?” I ventured an informed guess.

His answering smile was in line with his attitude so far, way too bright for his own good.

“That bad? Took me long enough to get your attention.”

Now that deserved an explanation.

“My attention?”

He gave something between a shrug and a nod, engaging his whole upper body in the motion.

“I inquired about you the second time I came here, but Brett blew me off. Had to make a veritable nuisance of myself until someone was finally willing to involve you.”

I didn’t know whether I should be flattered or insulted.

“Is that so?” I asked him, and cocked a brow at Emily. Her bland smile gave me nothing.

“You know that we generally don’t sacrifice the young ones on your altar,” she provided when I didn’t drop the point.

“Do you mean actual altars, or is that just a figure of speech?” he interjected before I could pounce.

“Why, does that do something for you?” I questioned, but forestalled his reply with my raised hand. “No, don’t even bother answering. I’m getting a strong enough vibe from you to understand that there’s likely not much that could quell your enthusiasm.”

And that was the truth. Some of the pull I felt was, without a doubt, due to his actual physical attraction, coupled with the amount of sex he’d—admittedly—had over the last couple of days. Weeks, even, if I wasn’t completely deluded, and I seldom was. What surprised me was that the sharp note of desperation that most sex addicts carried around with themselves was lacking. In fact, I couldn’t even remember the last time I hadn’t gone for the easy, frustrated prey. Much easier to justify stealing someone’s life force when they were begging for it, far beyond caring.

“Mr. Ivers, here—“ Emily started, but he interrupted her quickly.

“Garrett, please. Considering why we’re here, I think we can do away with the formality, right?”

Emily rolled her eyes.
Oh, this one was really getting under her skin.
I wondered briefly if he’d made a pass at her before that had made her call me so quickly.

“As you wish.
Garrett
here seems to have quite the appetite, and from the looks of it, no one else seems to be able to slake it. I think that qualifies for calling in the professional.”

“Oh, you charm me.” I grunted, answering the quick, sincere flash of a grin from Emily with a similar one.

“Of course I do. Anyway, I asked him what would make him stop pestering our entire female client roster, and he professed that you are apparently the cure for that itch that won’t go away, so I figured I might as well call you. I can have the room upstairs set up within the hour, if you are up to the task.”

“Now you make pleasure sound like work,” I objected, and gave Garrett a wink that he returned immediately.

“Whatever works for you,” Emily deflected my joke easily. “What do you say?”

“I don’t even know what you want of me,” I asked Garrett, now that I could put not only a face, but also a name to the bane of the Embassy’s staff.

He considered his reply for longer than I’d come to expect from him.

“I like sex. A lot. So why not go to she who is sex personified?”

I didn’t know how that made me feel. Sure, part of me wanted to smile, but something about his reply didn’t sit entirely right with me.

“You are aware that this isn’t just like eating in a three star restaurant once before you go back to your microwave dinners? Once you go succubus, you never go back.”

He gave a noncommittal grunt, as if it was all the same to him.

“You only live once, right?”

Now that was definitely a first for me. I’d heard a lot of—mostly desperate—excuses for why men sought me out, but
YOLO
had never come up before.

“I could suck the very soul out of your body, leaving you as an empty shell. Are you aware of that?”

“I’ve been warned,” he deflected my threat.

“And that’s all the same to you? Risk your happiness for one fuck?”

“If it’s a good fuck, why not?”

I was starting to see why Emily was so tightly strung tonight. That one was trying my patience, and I wasn’t the one who had to put up with all the security measures.

“Well, who am I to protest if that’s your conviction?” I asked, smiling jovially at the woman behind the oak desk. The fact that she didn’t seem happy, but even tenser than before, made me wary of Garrett. “Or am I missing some vital detail here?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Emily offered, and when Garrett shook his head, she turned to her computer. “The usual accommodations?”

“Yes please, even if they don’t come with an altar. Unless you’ve upgraded?”

Emily allowed herself a small smile and shook her head.

“Of course we could procure one, but that would likely take another day or two.”

Casting a sidelong glance at Garrett, I shook my head.

“I think we can do without.”

Five minutes and several signatures later, Emily saw us out of her office and to the bar next door. I ordered whiskey straight—whoever came up with the abomination of pouring it over ice deserved a punch in the nuts—while Garrett went for a plain soda.

“So, sex is the only thing that you indulge in?” I asked, scanning his face intently. There had to be more to his obsession with me—and it
did
sound more like an obsession than he’d tried to play it off as—than just the obvious.

“Depends,” he replied cryptically.

“You also like playing games,” I ventured a guess.

“Not necessarily.”

“But you do now, with me, for whatever reason that I cannot think of?”

He answered me with a slight smile that curved up his sensual lips.

“I feel like you’ll lose interest in me the moment you realize just how much of a loser I am.”

I wondered if that was a joke. His voice was a tad too harsh for an offhand remark.

“What did she do to you?”

He looked alarmed for a moment, but just as quickly as he’d ditched the mask, he put it securely back into place.

“What she? I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

Oh, but he did
. Granted, for me it was easier to see, because besides the telltale signs in his body language—tightness around the eyes, shoulders hunched, voice hard—I could also see that haze of purple perfuse the air around him. Grief without loss, frustration and anger and need—unrequited love, or a love lost that he knew was impossible to regain.

“Let me guess. She betrayed you?” I went for the oldest page in the book. Men might still think they could pride themselves with being the stronger sex, after centuries of pillage and plunder, but a woman’s weapons usually cut twice as deep, leaving scars that never healed. “Who was it she made a fool of you with? Your best friend? Your boss? The self-deprecating colleague who has half your merit but somehow always ends up charming the panties off of the women you cherish?”

He considered my words, which was strange in the first place. Usually, men fell all over themselves, either in anger at me hitting the bull’s eye straight on, or being offended by my missed guess.

“Too private?” I prodded when, after a full minute, he still hadn’t replied.

“Yes, but I don’t really see the point in hiding anything from you,” he confided, his smile now sad as it resurfaced. “A little bit of all that. Only that I was the charmer and she my best friend’s fiancée.”

“Oh, naughty.”

He snorted. “Not really. And as they say, not worth the trouble that followed.”

“Why, the sweet taste of victory turned sour once you got what you desired?”

He wouldn’t have been the first man to lust after a woman just because he couldn’t have her—until he did.

Surprisingly, he shook his head.

“No, on the contrary. She was a goddess in bed, insatiable, passionate, loving. She was everything I ever wanted in a woman, and more.”

“So why isn’t she still warming your bed at night?”

From the sadness lacing his aura, I could tell that he wasn’t simply cheating on her with everything supernatural on two legs that he could find.

Garrett mulled that over as he finished his soda, then turned to fully face me.

“Because I pushed her away.”

“Deliberately?”

From someone with such an obsessive nature as he displayed toward me, that came as a surprise.

“Yes. Turns out, all the sex in the world is only so great until you walk out of the door, and realize you’ve traded in sweaty sheets and shared moments of abandonment for the only thing you’ve ever held dear.”

“Your friend.”

He nodded.

“What’s even worse about it is that he was a total sport. He accepted defeat, he didn’t throw a tantrum, and he even took her back when she came crawling, deeply wounded by my rejection. Now he has the girl, I have nothing, and I can’t shake the certainty that it simply wasn’t worth it.”

I silently agreed with him as I cherished my whiskey, the liquid slightly warm on my tongue from my hand holding the tumbler.

“And now you’re trying to fill that void by any means available?”

His gaze was steady and calm as he held mine.

“Sex already destroyed my life. Might as well get some more mileage out of it while it lasts.”

Ten minutes later, Emily approached us as we still sat in brooding silence. I thanked her, then steered Garrett over to the bank of elevators and pushed the button for the top floor. He followed me mutely down the hall to the second door on the right, and didn’t bat an eyelash when it only opened after I’d pressed my palm against the pad next to the knob. All the other doors had either slots for key cards or number pads, but this one was the entrance to my demesne.

Whoever had been responsible for decorating the room had suffered from delusions about my age, and hadn’t paid heed to historical accuracy, even for a moment. Everything looked straight out of the set of a porn version of
One Thousand and One Nights.
Lush fabrics and tassels everywhere, pillows, veils—even a water fountain in the middle of the room, the tiles as colorful as everything else. I was certain that nothing in Ancient Persia had ever looked like this—the point that I’d been born a long distance from there in the first place aside.

Garrett looked around. His eyes caught on the fountain, but he didn’t comment on it. In fact, he was very quick to turn to me and ignore everything else.

“Shall we begin?” I offered, then shrugged, using the motion to let the silk scarf I’d been wearing slide off my shoulders.

“As you wish.”

His neutral tone made me wonder if he was trying to tease me.

“What would you like to begin with?” I asked as I stepped up to him, making sure that I was close enough that he could feel me, but not yet touch me. That easy smile from before returned, but he looked disappointingly relaxed as I reached up to run one finger down the side of his face, then traced his lips gently. “Would you like me to undress you? Maybe take the edge off first so that you can better enjoy the rest later?”

Quitting my teasing, I used my other hand to cup his balls and cock through the fabric of his pants, the goods satisfactorily heavy in my grasp. I felt him harden a little, but he didn’t buck his hips, and his eyes remained centered on my face.

“How about you let me seduce you?” he suggested, but then moved away, forcing my light grip to release him.

I couldn’t help but let a smile come to my face as he walked around to my back, the first touch of his lips on my bare shoulder nice, but a long shot from anything that could kindle true lust, rather than my usual feeding instincts.

“Trust me, that takes a lot more than the games you play with the silly girls you’ve bedded so far,” I pointed out.

“It also takes more than groping my junk to get me going,” he whispered into my ear, his voice laced with good humor.

“But not much, I bet. You’re a healthy young man, after all.”

“And you’re a centuries old sex demon,” he breathed against the side of my neck then planted a soft kiss there that he quickly followed up with another. “I bet that stealing my soul is the least of what you could do to me.”

His hands stroked down to my hips, sliding lower to the top of my thighs, then on to my stomach, before they inched up to cup my breasts. Relaxing into his embrace, I let my eyes drift shut, enjoying the sensations even with my clothes still on.