Strangers of the Night

by Megan Hart

  “You can always learn something new,” Vadim says calmly with barely a glance at her brother. He’s got her in his sights. She wonders what he sees.

  Persephone thinks that might be what is agitating Phoenix so much—that Vadim is paying more attention to her. And there’s not a sexy vibe from it, either. They’ve dealt with that, living on the streets for the past few years. She’s done her share of using sex as currency. Phoenix has done his, too. But she’s definitely not getting that feeling from Vadim right now, not for either of them. Whatever he wants from her, it’s not her body, and that’s why she trusts him but her brother does not.

  “What if we still say no?” Phoenix challenges.

  Vadim shrugs and gestures at the sparsely furnished motel room where he found them. “You walk out of here.”

  “And if we change our minds?” Persephone asks.

  “Then you contact us.”

  “We won’t change our minds,” Phoenix says and grabs her by the hand. “Come on, Persephone. Let’s get out of here.”

  She’s the one who looks over her shoulder as they leave. Vadim is staring. He mouths something at her just before the door closes off the sight of him.

  “You will be safe.”

  Chapter 4

  The Slaughtered Lamb had been sold and bought several times over the past ten years, each owner adding or taking away something to add their individual touch to the place. The pub had suffered for it. Kane could recall when the dark atmosphere had been kitschy, not merely worn-out, and when the drinks had been cheap and the food good. Now he sat beneath a set of flickering sconces made to look like gaslights and a portrait that from one direction showed a beautiful young woman in a historical gown, but from the other showed a werewolf.

  He should call it a night. He hadn’t been planning on hooking up with anyone when he got in here, but funny how a beer or two could get a man thinking about it. Especially when faced with a tiny-waisted brunette with curves that wouldn’t quit. She’d been eye-fucking him from across the bar since she arrived about twenty minutes ago and slipped into the spot he’d been heading for. He’d considered sending her a drink, but that would mean he’d have to have a conversation with her, and unless he really wanted to take her home...

  Shit. She’d seen him staring and now she was getting up to cross the room. He hadn’t meant to make eye contact, and why? Because he was stupidly hung up on someone who clearly thought he was a douchecanoe. Kane looked up at the brunette, who’d tossed the fall of her heavy dark hair over her shoulder and was giving him a slow, easy smile.

  “Hey,” she said with that subtle twist of her body that emphasized her hips and breasts, that trick women did when they wanted you to not just look but also touch. “I’m Jena.”

  “Kane,” he said. “Hi.”

  “So look, Kane,” she said as she leaned closer so he could hear her without problem over the noise from the rest of the pub, “here’s the thing. I’m about ready to head out for the night, but I was wondering if you’d like to come along with me? Or better yet, I could go home with you.”

  It was not the most blatant offer he’d ever had, but it ranked right up there. The funny part of it was, it was exactly what he needed in this moment. A no-frills, no-effort-needed, straight-up hookup. If she’d played at seduction, he’d have sent her on her way.

  Instead, he gave her a thorough up and down perusal, making sure she knew he was checking out every bit of her before he fixed his gaze on hers. Smiled. Stood. “Sure. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Persephone had spent longer than usual on what she thought of as “the glamour.” It was not truly physical, because her body never actually changed. It was all illusion, a short-range manipulation of whatever parts of the brain controlled vision, smell, touch. Everyone else in this place would see her for what she really was, but Kane, the man upon whom she’d set her ravenous, manipulative sights, would be enthralled so long as she kept up the effort of the illusion.

  She’d considered asking him to take her to a hotel, but she knew he didn’t have money to toss away on something decent enough not to give her the shudders. Besides, in the morning when she slipped out of his bed, it would take only a few minutes to get back to her place, where she could get between her own sheets and hopefully drift off to sleep with a body worn out from a few rounds of amazing sex. She’d done it before.

  When he led her into the building’s lobby and toward the elevator that broke down more often than it worked, however, she hesitated. Fucking in an elevator was one thing, especially if it was the kind lined with mirrors so you could watch yourself reflected into infinity. This elevator didn’t have any mirrors, it smelled vaguely and constantly of cat pee, and the last thing in the world she wanted was to get trapped inside it with Kane while she wore a fake face. They’d have to wait for hours before someone could get them out, and that person was most likely to be her, and that would quickly become a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

  “Um...” she said, holding back. “How about the stairs?”

  She jerked at thumb toward the small hallway next to the mailboxes set into the wall. Kane gave her a curious look she couldn’t interpret, but nodded. He glanced over his shoulder as he led the way, holding open the heavy steel fire door so she could go first.

  “What a gentleman,” Persephone, a.k.a. Jena, murmured with an extra swing of her hips as she started up the stairs. Let him admire the badonk in her donkadonk, she thought with a small smile that faded when she got to the landing and looked over her shoulder, intending to give Kane a sexy, come-hither look.

  He was frowning.

  “Something wrong?” Persephone hesitated, a hand on the railing, to study him.

  “Have we met before?”

  She started back up the stairs. “I don’t think so.”

  He followed her through the metal door at the top of the stairs, but she held back to let him lead the way to his apartment. Once inside, she also held back to let him make the first move. Sure, she’d put on this face, this body, this hair, all designed to get Kane’s hormones roaring. And sure, she’d gone after him in the bar the way a wolf would take down a deer with a broken leg.

  That didn’t mean she didn’t like to be pursued.

  She didn’t have to wait long. In a few long strides, Kane had her in his arms. His mouth slanted along her own in a perfect, sensual pleasure that always made her wonder how he knew exactly how to touch her, every single time.

  He broke the kiss to brush her lips with the tip of his tongue, his eyes searching hers as she shivered. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Maria.” Shit. Shit. No, she’d said—

  “I thought you said it was Jena.”

  Persephone straightened her shoulders and gave him a tipped, coy smile and a flutter of her lashes designed to send a man straight to his knees, which was the perfect position for him to get between her thighs with his mouth. Kane didn’t kneel, but his gaze did go heavy lidded. Dreamy. His eyes lost their usual sharp, fierce focus.

  This was glamour of a different sort.

  “Maybe you meet so many girls whose names you don’t ask that you got me confused with someone else,” she said with a practiced pout. She put herself into his arms, offered her mouth, pushed her hips forward to rub her belly against his hard crotch.

  It worked, of course. There was a reason cats butt your hand to get them to pet you. Persephone’s pussy knew how to do the same thing.

  She knew where his bedroom was. Even if she hadn’t been here a dozen times in the past year, it mirrored her own, immediately below. She waited for him to take her there, though, letting him grip her by the upper arms and turn her. Still kissing, they moved across the L-shaped living room and through the small arched alcove between the kitchen and hallway, then a few steps more and into the bedroom.<
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  Persephone breathed in the familiar, strongly male scent of the space where Kane slept and dreamed. She wanted to bury herself in his pillow but settled for letting him push her gently onto the bed, where he climbed up her body and fit himself between her legs. One hand hooked beneath her knee to tug it upward; she hooked her foot behind his calf.

  The kisses deepened. His mouth moved over her chin, down her throat, along the sloping curves of her high, big breasts spilling out of the tank top. As always, the strange juxtaposition between the flesh he appeared to be stroking and his touch upon her actual, real body was jarring and arousing and strange and exciting. Sometimes, when she allowed herself to dwell too long on the fact that she only fucked men when she looked like any other woman but herself, it was melancholy.

  Not tonight. She wouldn’t allow herself to feel anything now but rising desire, slightly violent. Consuming her. Filling her. She needed him to strip her bare and wear her out. She needed him.

  She needed him...

  Persephone sat up hard, backing out of Kane’s embrace before she could stop herself. Her head knocked the painted concrete wall. No headboard. It didn’t hurt, but the noise was loud enough that she gave a startled “oh!”

  “You okay?” Kane had pushed onto his knees, head tilted as he stared at her.

  She arched her back, shaking off the sudden rush of unwanted emotions trying to flood her. “Oh, yeah, baby. Just...eager.”

  She kicked off one high heel and let her naked toes run up over his belly to press his chest. Men went wild when she did that. She could never figure out why. Something about the push and pull between them dominating her and yet somehow submitting at the same time. Some kind of illusion of power and control. All of this was illusion, she thought as she watched him look over the lithe, curving body she’d presented to him.

  For a terrible moment she thought he’d changed his mind about her. There’d been two times with Kane that had ended up with them back here in the morning’s wee hours but not engaged in sex. Both times, he’d started off strong and eager, but something had changed his mind and he’d asked her to leave before they fucked. She’d never been able to figure out what had tipped him the other way, but tonight looked as though it might be heading that direction.

  No, no, she couldn’t let it. It was too late to go out trolling for another hookup, but more than that, Persephone didn’t want to. The sex with anyone else, no matter how adequate, could never compare to the nights she spent with Kane, and it had been too long since the last time with him. She needed this right now—for more reasons than she cared to admit.

  She pushed outward with the small and curling tendrils of her will to shape herself in his gaze. “Kiss me.”

  He did, for a second or so. Kane hissed in a gasp when her fingers slid beneath the edge of his shirt and against his bare skin. She put a hand behind his neck, fingers curling, nails digging a little deep. They worked quickly after that, stripping down at the same time until she lay back on the bed with him kneeling over her. He wasn’t fully erect yet, but she let her hungry gaze linger on him before she looked up at his eyes. She’d meant to say something sexy, alluring, seductive, but at the sight of his look Persephone’s words clipped themselves short against the backs of her teeth.

  Again, she wondered with some alarm if he meant to tell her she had to leave. Again, she eased the tickling swirls of her senses to shadow and shape his. It should’ve been freaky for him to see the long dark lengths of the hair she’d conjured getting shorter, to hit her just above her shoulders, or to see her breasts becoming smaller, her ass more rounded, yet because all of this was hallucination, all Kane would see was her becoming his ideal. He wouldn’t even know she didn’t look the same as she had earlier in the night. And in the morning, when he woke to an empty spot in the bed beside him, he would have only the vaguest memory of what she had looked like at all.

  “Kiss me,” Persephone whispered again with a crook of her finger to get him to lean down and take her mouth with his. She meant to say more after that, but the taste of him chased away her words again so that all she found was silence and sighs.

  When he ran his hands up her sides to cup her breasts, she arched into the touch. Her knees fell apart of their own accord so her body could open to him. He surprised her again when he slid his mouth down her throat and over her breasts, to her belly, to her hip and then oh, yes, fuck, right there. Right to her core, and he fastened his tongue and lips on her clit and began to lick and suck in a steady but delicate rhythm that had her lifting her hips to meet every stroke within moments.

  He’d never gone down on her before. She’d had his cock deep in her throat, and they’d fucked in every position either of them had ever thought to try, but he had never had his mouth on her pussy. Persephone had never asked him for it—she never asked any man for it, though she never turned it down if were offered. She gladly gave herself up to it now, letting pleasure fill her up and wash over her until she was muttering his name from between clenched jaws, unwilling to completely give him everything inside her.

  He hummed, sounding delighted. The thrum of it sent another slow, rolling wave of desire coursing through her. Her clit pulsed on his tongue. His hands slipped beneath her ass to lift her closer to his kisses. He murmured again, wordless noises of approval and desire that pushed her closer and closer to the edge.

  He blew a soft gust of breath across her as he replaced his tongue for a moment with his fingers. A different pressure, but the same pace. She wasn’t going to hold out much longer and didn’t want to. The idea of asking him to hold off so she could come with him inside her crossed her mind, but greedily, Persephone didn’t manage to keep herself from taking just...a little...more.

  As always, her orgasm teased her for what felt like forever before finally she could no longer crest. She had to fall. Plummeting, she writhed and shook and shuddered. Again, she cried out his name. She also looked down at him to find him looking up at her.

  She expected an arrogant smile, pride in the way he’d just gotten her off, but confusion blurred his gaze. His mouth was open and wet, and the sight of it continued to arouse her. At least until he blinked rapidly and pushed himself up onto his knees to look down at her.

  Before Persephone had learned the extent of her talents in manipulating the way others perceived her, she’d often stuttered in holding on to the glamour. There’d been times when she’d altered her appearance based on whatever she sensed the other person desired, but she hadn’t lost the ability to hold on to the illusion. Not in years.

  Now, panicked, she reached to touch the soft, red-gold feathers of hair above her ears that had been dark brown and to her shoulders moments ago. Her breasts had shrunk yet again, filling her palms with a familiar weight. How long had she been looking more like herself than an image? It took her only seconds to return to the projection, and by the way Kane was frowning she was relieved to see that her change could’ve been no longer than that. Long enough for him to notice and be shocked, but not long enough for him to have truly seen her.

  Not her real self, not Persephone. Never that. It would be her downfall.

  “I thought... I must be drunker than I thought.” He shook his head and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His cock, despite his consternation, had gone thick and hard. Ready for her.

  “Not too drunk to fuck, baby,” Persephone purred, putting on her persona even as her heart thumped unsteadily and she had to take a few seconds to center herself. “Come here.”

  Kane shook his head. “Listen, you’re sexy as fuck, and any other time I would be already deep inside you, but...”

  She sat, closing her legs self-consciously. Her pussy still throbbed with aftershocks, and when she shifted, she could feel slickness on the insides of her thighs. With a shiver, she covered her breasts with her arms.

  “But you want me to get out?” sh
e asked.

  Kane ran a hand over his dark hair, rumpling it. “I think it would be best. I can call a car for you, or...”

  “No. It’s all good.” Persephone got out of the bed and began to search for her clothes. Very aware of Kane’s eyes on her ass as she bent over, she considered putting a little shimmy in it to tempt him, but didn’t. It was awkward enough that he was kicking her out. The last thing she wanted was to try to seduce him only to be utterly rejected.

  He walked her to the door and kissed her there, but on the corner of the mouth. Almost the cheek. Bemused, Persephone patted his arm and kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t going to offer to see him again, for sure, but she did wonder what on earth had changed his mind about fucking her. She glanced over her shoulder as she headed for the stairs to find him watching her with a narrowed, focused gaze.

  Oh, shit.

  Chapter 5

  Kane had gone for a run before work. Using his muscles, pushing his endurance. He’d spent the rest of the day on paperwork and following leads. Funny how television and the movies showed detectives almost always in the street chasing down the bad guys. They never showed all the work it took to find them first.

  Now he was at home with a takeout carton of Chinese and a six-pack of beer, his laptop open on the kitchen table in front of him. He had more work to do. He’d already done a search for his hookup from the other night, but nobody matching the name she’d given him or the description had popped up. There was no reason for him to think she was any kind of criminal or anything, but something about her had set off an alarm bell in his head.

  Going down on her had been incredible. She’d tasted like the sweetest honey. Her body had softened and bloomed under his tongue and lips. When she came, he’d been able to feel every tremor, every flutter. Kane loved cunnilingus, but he rarely opened with it—that wasn’t something for a first encounter, and he hadn’t had more than a first encounter with anyone in close to two years. He wasn’t sure what had prompted him to get his mouth between her legs, only that everything about the evening had been a little off, a little strange...a little extraordinary.