Lure of the Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  As the center of her body settled over him like it knew exactly what it wanted. What she wanted.

  “Not,” he managed, “the way I’d imagined this.”

  He pulled off her coat, tossed it over his shoulder without care for the snowy white fabric. His fingers mapped her ribs, her breasts. Plunged into the neckline of the gray dress and found the same scarlet lace that she’d known he wanted to touch in the massage room.

  She’d worn it just for him tonight.

  “Your fault for assuming,” Naomi replied raggedly, even as her head fell back. A groan escaped her. His clever fingers rolled her nipples, teased them to tight peaks of nerves, and she closed her eyes in pure, leashed ecstasy. “So good.”

  “Unbelievable.” His chuckle strained from him, broke when he slid one hand under the hem of her skirt and found her bare leg. She choked on a gasp, sucked in a breath as his fingers slid across the sleek warmth of her inner thigh. “I intended to take this slower.”

  “Fuck slower,” she murmured, and jumped when his palm centered over her. It pressed hard against her clit, lace and all. She moaned, her skin going up in flames. “A-actually, no, never mind. Fuck me, Phin. Just me. Right now.”

  His eyes blazing, every muscle tensed, leashed, he laid her back on the seat. Spread her legs, his hands rough and shaking. Without warning, his fingers curled around her red lace thong, pulled it aside. Naomi grasped at the hem of her dress as he freed his erection from his slacks.

  This. This was what she craved from Phin Clarke. This part of him, raw and wanting.

  Jaw hard, he bent over her, pressed his mouth to the wild pulse at her throat. “I’m sorry,” she thought he muttered, and then couldn’t think at all as he slid inside her with one powerful thrust.

  She braced her arms above her head, slammed them into the seat to keep from colliding with it as she moaned, jagged and unrefined. He caught her mouth with his, captured her wordless encouragement as he withdrew from her desperate, yearning body and slid deeper, slick and hard and hot. It spun wild heat into nuclear fission, filled her with so much sensation, so much him.

  Her legs tightened around his waist as Naomi’s climax shattered, too fast and intense. It rolled over her, a wave of sensation so forceful it bordered on pain. Phin drank her wild cries, pumped his hips, desperate to feel every clench of her muscles, every velvet squeeze of her orgasm. Stroked her with his own body until he stiffened, toned muscles rippling in his back as he came hard, trembling with the effort to keep himself upright.

  She was laughing before their mingled sweat started to cool.

  Gasping for air, Phin lifted his face from her neck, his eyes hazed. Rueful. “That,” he said slowly, “was not the way this evening was supposed to start.”

  Naomi’s laughter flowed through her body. Made him flinch, hiss in shock and sensation as it wrapped around his still deeply seated cock and squeezed.

  “Don’t do that,” he managed, and smoothed one hand over her hip. “You’re going to kill me.”

  Naomi shifted, her heart slowing its rapid beat. She took in a deep breath, struggled to keep it from trembling. “I don’t plan on it,” she said, and hoped her tone sounded as light as the fervent prayer wasn’t. “I’ve just started with you.”

  Phin smiled. Slow, knowing, it reached from his mouth to his eyes, made them gleam with a promise Naomi didn’t know how to read as he said, “It gets better.”

  She elbowed herself up, mind spinning in a thousand directions, and flinched as the driver tapped discreetly on the dark panel of glass between the seats.

  Phin offered her a plain white handkerchief. “We’re here,” he said as the car began to slow. The bastard looked smug, satisfied.

  Used.

  A touch of smug satisfaction curled in Naomi’s chest, too. She’d made him move sooner than he’d wanted. Made him act when he wanted to wait.

  Made him come harder, faster than he’d planned. A delicious shiver curled through her. That’s exactly how this was going to be.

  Her rules.

  Her choice to walk away.

  She met his eyes, held his heated gaze as she slowly dragged the handkerchief over the still-pulsing cleft between her legs. Her muscles jerked under the rasp of soft cloth.

  Knew he noticed when his nostrils flared, cords gathering in his neck as he tensed. “You’re beautiful,” he said, voice low and intense.

  Too intense.

  Because it was the easiest response, she laughed, crumpling the cloth in one fist and throwing it at him. “You’re impossible.” He caught it out of the air, folding it delicately between his fingers.

  When he brought it to his nose, inhaled deeply, Naomi’s smile faded. She knew what he smelled; she could smell the mingled fragrance of them both, her musk and his, just on the air between them. A slow, coiling spring tightened in her belly, between her legs, and she forced herself to remain seated. To clamp her traitorous knees together and button her coat.

  She fixed her hair. Loosely upswept and tousled was such an easy fashion to mimic. “So where are we?” Naomi strove for carefree, for casual curiosity. For easy indifference.

  “You’ll see. Naomi, are you protected?”

  She didn’t laugh. She wanted to, but his expression was so serious as he tucked in his shirt. Smothering her smile, Naomi nodded. All missionaries were. It was part of the yearly physical. But he didn’t need to know that much. “I’m safe,” she said lightly.

  The look he gave her burned. “Not the word I’d ever apply to you, sweetheart.”

  A shiver ghosted over her skin. So intense.

  So . . . sweet. Shit.

  The door opened, Phin’s uniformed driver standing on the other side. She saw night and rain-hazed lights behind him. Something made of glass.

  Topside security.

  Grimacing, she ignored the driver’s proffered hand, smoothed down her dress as she stepped into the bitter cold. Her knees only wobbled a little.

  Her chest wobbled a hell of a lot as Phin unfolded from the car behind her. The man wasn’t like any agent in the Mission. She knew there was muscle under that so-expensive suit, but he hadn’t earned it fighting for his life in the lower levels of New Seattle. She doubted he’d ever been past the security checks on the city’s highway.

  He’d be useless in a fight. Useless in the streets below where the sun didn’t reach.

  So why the hell did her throat go tight and achy when he said stupidly sweet stuff? When he touched that spot low on her back?

  Phin took a black umbrella from the impassive driver, smiled at the man as if he hadn’t just been screwing his date in the backseat of the man’s car.

  If the driver knew— No, Naomi thought, shaking her head with a grim little smile. Martin knew. Phin probably paid him too well to so much as bat an eyelash.

  Phin snapped open the umbrella, raised it over her head as he gestured to the storefront at the end of the small walkway. “We’ll be stopping here for a little while, then on to dinner. Are you ready?”

  “I have no idea,” Naomi said dryly. “I don’t know where we are.” It was somewhere in the heart of the downtown district, somewhere topside where business and the elite rubbed elbows with each other. She could see that in the neat, precise blocks, in the carefully planted trees placed in exact lines down each street.

  In the cameras on every corner and slow, low-flying patrols of the sec-comps. About as safe as a low-security prison.

  Not very safe, and still a prison.

  The Cathedral of St. Dominic would be five minutes away by vehicle. The Mission had an office up here, but Naomi wasn’t sure exactly where. She didn’t come up here if she didn’t have to.

  Phin’s fingers curved around her hip. “It won’t kill you.”

  A grim slash of amusement had her shutting her mouth on the words that would only encourage him to ask questions. Questions she wasn’t prepared to field.

  After all, as a missionary, she’d gotten really good at finding thi
ngs capable of killing her. She’d also gotten better at killing them first.

  He led her up the walkway, to the glass door that didn’t have a sign or logo. Nothing to indicate what it was, where she was. Frowning, she tipped her face up, peered past the edge of the dripping umbrella. “What are we doing here, Phin?”

  “Getting ready.” His casual lack of information earned him a look she knew wasn’t friendly, but he chuckled, dipped his head to trace her lower lip with slow, lingering caress of his tongue.

  Her blood warmed, sizzling away the cold that tried so hard to curl into her coat.

  “Trust me.”

  “I really don’t,” she said, wry, brutal honesty, and he touched her cheek. His fingertips were cold, but gentle.

  His eyes held hers steadily. “I know.”

  When the door swung open, mechanically operated from somewhere inside, he guided her into the warm interior. Naomi frowned impatiently while he shook out the umbrella. The foyer was simple, decorated in stark, modern lines. She didn’t know anything about fashion, not this kind, but she guessed it was supposed to be plain, edgy.

  Without anything on the walls, it just looked empty to her.

  “Andy?” Phin’s voice echoed down the hall.

  “Come on in!”

  The voice that floated back was smooth, polished, and decidedly not a voice that belonged to an Andy. Naomi’s eyebrows rose as he gestured.

  “After you.”

  The world that Naomi stepped into unfolded as unexpectedly as the woman who reigned over it.

  The studio practically screamed stark modern edge, decorated in clear-cut lines of black and white. Everything was one or the other, every piece of furniture, every mannequin, everything down to the black-framed mirrors, the white carpet, the white veins in black marble. The lights set into the ceiling were harsh and unforgiving, as austere as the decoration that surrounded her.

  But it wasn’t the decoration that had her gasping in surprise. The real color blossomed from every corner, every wall-to-wall display of evening gowns, day suits, luxurious lingerie, every conceivable item for every part of a woman’s day.

  Knowing her jaw was hanging open, unable to stop herself from staring, Naomi spun in a slow, overwhelmed circle.

  “What kind of goddess have you brought me, Phin?”

  A short, slim platinum blond crossed the open, white-carpeted floor. Her herringbone suit was bright, blaring red, the pants cut too long in the leg and designed to fall neatly over her wickedly pointed black stiletto heels. She wore no blouse under the structured, fitted jacket, only a black lace bra showing just enough ample cleavage to catch the eye.

  Her diamond white hair had been razored straight at her chin, her bangs a long, unforgiving line swinging just over her wide, blue eyes. She was arresting, strong-featured, with cheekbones high enough to give her face an unforgettable edge, but it wasn’t her too-wide smile that set Naomi’s hackles up.

  It was the easy, familiar way she looped her arm through Phin’s.

  And the easy, too familiar way he kissed her cheek.

  “Andromeda Nikolai,” he said, turning to place the short girl directly in Naomi’s reach. Her fingers itched. “This is Naomi Ishikawa. Naomi, an old friend, Andy.”

  A little blood would make her face look less severe, Naomi decided as she took the woman’s offered hand. Andy tugged her down to kiss the air beside each cheek.

  It took effort not to crush the slender fingers in her grasp. “Nice to meet you,” she murmured.

  “Any friend of Phin’s has absolutely questionable taste,” the woman named Andy said cheerfully. “But I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Ishikawa. I understand you’re in need of a gown.”

  Naomi straightened. “Am I?”

  “Isn’t she?” Andy turned, found Phin where he’d wandered to a rack of sumptuous emerald green silk. “Phin, you didn’t tell her?”

  “No.” Naomi put a hand on her hip. “He didn’t tell her. What’s going on?”

  When Phin only pulled a gown from the rack, something draping and shimmery, Andy shook her head. She turned back to Naomi, blue eyes dryly amused, and said, “I guess that’s that. Now, I’ve got your measurements—” Naomi’s face must have betrayed her sudden, fierce resentment, because the diminutive woman laughed. “I have an eye, don’t worry. Phin didn’t measure you in your sleep.”

  “I don’t sleep around him,” Naomi muttered, and then palmed her face with one hand when Andy’s smile turned wickedly amused. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “But it will be!” she singsonged gaily. She caught Naomi’s arm in one hand, a digital readout with the other. “I have an idea of what I’d like to see you try on, but I’d like to know what your personal taste is.”

  Naomi felt like a dog towed along on a leash as she followed the woman to a small, brightly lit sitting room. “Something not gray?”

  “Oh, no.” Andy’s energy infected everything around her. Against her will, Naomi found herself liking this strange, platinum-haired whirlwind. Even just a little. “Nothing simple or plain for you. Phin?”

  “Already miles ahead.” Phin’s voice drifted out from between racks of clothes. Naomi found herself placed in a fitting room, the slatted door shut firmly on her half-formed protest.

  Staring at the glossy black wood, Naomi could only throw up her hands.

  Why not? She usually liked picking out clothes. Granted, her clothing didn’t usually cost the same as a new fucking car, but hey, she was Naomi Ishikawa. This was par for the goddamned course.

  And a great opportunity to get what she really needed. Quickly she dug through the rainbow bag and located her comm. It was the work of moments to send out a message.

  If getting a gun back in her hands meant sitting through yet another clothes fitting, she’d do it with a smile and like it all the way.

  A tap on the door had her throwing her comm back in the purse. “Yes?” She swung open the panel, came face to taffeta with a frothy concoction of midnight blue.

  “Try this,” Andy began, and then thrust the gown into her hands with an impatient sound. “You need to be quicker, goddess. Here.” Before Naomi could stop her, the woman stepped into the dressing room. Andy had quick hands, impossible nerve, and she found herself stripped to her underwear before she could do more than roll her eyes.

  “Wow.” Andy put her hands on her hips, studied her from the tips of her clear-polished toenails to the crown of her tousled hair. The red lace contrasted with her pale skin, a shade darker than Andy’s own suit. “You’re stunning.”

  “I’m—” Her mouth pursed as Naomi tried to find the perfect word.

  “Overwhelmed?” The woman pulled the dress from her hands, found the zipper Naomi hadn’t noticed, and tugged it off the silk padded hangar. “Confused? A little ticked off?” Her grin wicked, Andy spun her finger in the air. “Yes, you are certainly dating Phinneas Clarke.”

  “Naked,” Naomi corrected firmly. “I’m naked, is what I was going to say.”

  “Partially naked,” Andy said, and held the dress open for Naomi to step into. “Beautifully in disarray. If I had my camera—”

  “I’d jam it down your throat.”

  Andy’s sharp peal of laughter was all Naomi heard as she struggled into the gown. “I like her, Phin!”

  “Mine,” she heard from beyond the fitting room.

  Naomi blew out a breath, then winced when she caught a glimpse of herself in the three-paneled mirror. The material hugged her figure, its sleek lines a stark contrast to the pouf of sheer material gathered at the shoulder. The same material lined the square back, trailed down to her hips and flowed in a smooth wave to the floor.

  Luxurious. Decadent.

  Mine, he’d said. She blinked at the mirror.

  “Oh, God.” Andy looked horrified. “No, off, now.”

  Naomi complied, a flicker of amusement edging out irritation. “Is this one of yours?”

  “It’s all mine, honey, and—hey, Phin?
No pouf.”

  “I’d stay away from taffeta in general.”

  Naomi jerked her eyes to the mirror and caught Phin lounging in the black lacquer door frame. Color framed him in a sea of material, but it was his slow, smiling appraisal that sent flutters through Naomi’s stomach.

  Ridiculous, since he was talking about a dress.

  Straightening her shoulders, she stepped entirely out of the gown Andy held for her and turned slowly, spinning in a deliberate display of naked limbs, the taut, flat muscle of her belly.

  “I didn’t know you knew dresses.” Her tone was husky. Suggestive. Mocking, Naomi knew and didn’t moderate it. She glanced at Andy and asked with as much sincerity as she could, just to piss him off, “Is he gay?”

  Andy laughed her ass off. “No,” she managed. “God, no. The man just has immaculate taste. Especially about what looks killer on a woman’s body.”

  His eyes skimmed over her face. Her mouth. Touched her curves, as physical as the remembered the feel of his hands on her.

  Red lace and warmed skin.

  Naomi raised her chin and knew exactly how futile this was as she pressed a hand to the lace-covered tattoo at her abdomen. She knew how this would end.

  Blood and bullets.

  His gaze turned to fire. To wanting.

  And then he nodded at Andy. Crisp. “Absolutely no taffeta. She’ll look like a parade queen.” With that, he was gone, leaving behind a selection of gowns hanging from the slats on the door.

  Andy tossed the midnight blue gown to the floor. “Next!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Naomi Ishikawa was all woman.

  Phin hadn’t doubted it, not for a second. As she tried on dress after dress, he watched the rigid line of her back slowly ease. Watched wary irritation melt into something warmer, something much more relaxed. Much more amused.