“Dance, girl.”
“What?”
Seeing the startled look on my face, he smiled and revealed a set of elongated canines. Halloween was long past, and something told me I was seeing the real thing behind all the pomp. A nervous laugh escaped me as he ran his tongue along his upper set and lingered at each fang to caress the tip. The sight of it gave new meaning to the words oral and masturbation.
“Like what you see?” His nose twitched as he sniffed the air. As quickly as his expression lit up, it dimmed as he tasted the molecules traveling through the membranes of his nose, like a dog picking up a scent, overcome by its own powerful instinct to hold on to it no matter what.
I stepped backward into the crushing bodies when his face contracted. As his provocative stare turned into a predatory lock, his irises glowed like candy apples and a pink wave flushed over his fair skin.
“Something different about you,” he said.
“Yeah, so I’ve been told.”
I was relieved when I turned around and saw him standing in the middle of the floor, watching but not following me.
When I emerged from the dance floor, Greer and the blonde were gone. Someone else was sitting in the middle of the sofa. Leda’s stool was empty, too. The only familiar face in the room was Thomas, who kept his eye on me while he served drinks.
The man sprawled across the sofa was looking at me, too. He lounged with his legs spread wide and his arms leisurely flanked across the back of the sofa. His hair was the color of onyx and it blended seamlessly with the rest of him. Even sitting down, I could tell that his black pants were at least one size too small, endangering his reproductive viability. His black shirt was just as tight, showing off his lean muscles telegraphing through the thin, silky fabric.
Black on black on black. He was absent of any color.
The term metrosexual immediately came to mind. He reeked of testosterone, but there was something distinctly feminine about the way he held himself—open and uninhibited—and the way his limbs draped with the fluidity of a cat. He was unclassifiable.
“Um…” I couldn’t think of anything to say. I tried to ignore him, but he was too compelling to look away. The man sitting on the sofa was both fascinating and wrong at the same time.
“Hmm,” he said as he got a good look at me. “Now I see what all the fuss is about.”
I glanced around to see what fuss he was referring to.
“Come closer,” he said.
I moved involuntarily but stopped before I ended up on the sofa next to him.
His left brow went up. “Closer.”
“Why?”
“Don’t be foolish, Alex.”
“Foolish? How do you know my name?”
He smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “A challenge? I like a good challenge, but not today, Alex. Don’t make me come get you.”
I approached him with caution, wary of his ability to compel me like a moth to a flame.
“You haven’t answered my question,” I said.
“Oh…I know all about you, Alex. Information is my business.” He leaned forward and whispered, “I know everything.”
“Really,” I said. “Well, if you know everything, you can tell me where Greer is.”
“Why does it matter now that I am here?” My mention of Greer seemed to annoy him. He brushed an invisible piece of lint from his shirt and then focused his eyes back on mine with an even deeper intent.
His arrogance was indisputable and his flamboyance straight out of a Shakespearean play. I think what ruffled him most was my refusal to fawn over his good looks, because I had no doubt he was used to being fawned over.
“Why don’t you have some manners and tell me who you are?” I was the one annoyed now.
“Sit next to me and I’ll tell you,” he said as his eyes darted to the spot on his right.
I was sitting next to him before I knew it, with my thighs touching the fabric encasing his leg. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?” he said. My head moved from side to side in a non-verbal acknowledgment of the ease at which he manipulated me. His heat was almost as intense as Greer’s, but it was just another manipulation, his flame licking a pilot light deep inside my core. He ran his hand over my hair from the top of my crown down to the tip of my ponytail. When he turned to look at me, I felt like a stick of softened butter folding under the pressure of a knife, spreadable at his whim.
I shook my head to clear the thoughts running through my mind. “You were telling me your name?”
“I am known as Constantine. But you, Alex,” his eyes walked around my face, “may address me as Con.”
My senses began to clear. “Where’s Greer?”
As I looked at his eyes, they shifted through a range of shades from gray to black. The mention of Greer’s name turned them the darkest shade of the spectrum.
It took a moment to realize that the heat wrapped around my shoulder cuff was his hand pulling me closer. He was pulling me into the nook of his side without me knowing it.
“Why do you need him when you have me?” His arrogance was astounding. “Matters of lust and sex are my specialty.”
“Just so you know, I’m not looking for either.”
I was about to bolt off the sofa when Greer showed up. “Well, look what slithered in under the door crack,” he said.
“Good to see you, too, my friend,” Constantine replied.
“Since when are we friends, satyr?”
Constantine lowered his eyes and glanced at our connected hips. “Since I have your woman glued to my side. Only a friend would share something so precious.”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Uninterested in fueling the feud between them, I catapulting myself off the sofa.
Constantine stretched his long arms to wrap them around the back of his head. “So, tell me about this female trouble you’re having.”
“Now why would I want to do that?” Greer said.
“Because you need my help. As I’ve already informed Alex, matters of lust and sex are my specialty.” Constantine smiled with the cheerfulness of a hyena. “And you know it.”
You could hear a feather drop as silence fell over the club. The music stopped and all eyes turned on the impending dogfight brewing in the middle of the room. Obviously, I was the only person in the place who wasn’t privy to the well-known joke.
A collective gasp rolled through the air, directing my attention to the spot where all eyes were now focused. I turned slowly toward the sofa, not entirely sure I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. My eyes immediately went to the top of Constantine’s shiny onyx head where a set of large horns began to sprout through his hair, curling into spirals on either side of his head. He sprang to his feet to accommodate the next set of unnatural appendages breaking through his clothing. The fabric of his pants began to bulge at his thighs and quickly tore along the inner seams in the direction of his crouch. The outer seams popped next, followed by the emergence of thick, black fur.
I took a step backward and gaped at Constantine with his newly sprouted horns and the flanks of a large animal. His shoes split into scraps of fine leather as his feet became hooves.
“Damn it, Greer. I liked those shoes.”
I backed my way toward the bar, intending to get a little drunk after what I’d just witnessed. Thomas was waiting for me.
“Drink?”
“You bet.” A good bartender knows what a customer needs, and right now Thomas was my therapist.
“Wine?”
“Humph,” I snorted. “Whiskey.”
Thomas returned with a double. “Forty-year-old Glenfiddich. Enjoy.”
“Greer’s going to kill you.”
“Probably. He can afford it.”
“I take it those two don’t get along?”
“That’s one way of putting it. Bad blood between the two.”
“Bad enough to make them kill each other?” I’d gotten familiar with the different shades of Greer, and this one said h
e was out for blood. The look he gave Constantine was lethal.
“Nah. One of them would have been dead a long time ago if they really wanted to kill each other. Can’t stand each other, though.”
He wiped down the counter and grabbed the bottle of whiskey from the wall. “Might as well keep this handy. We’re going to need it.”
“We?” I asked. He poured himself a glass and me a second one. “Greer lets his bartenders drink on the job?”
“Aye, he does this one.” He tossed the prized liquid down his throat with a hard swallow that sent a twitch along the scar on his upper jaw.
I glanced over my shoulder to see if the pissing contest was over. The wall of people surrounding the couch suggested it was still going strong.
“What happened to Leda?”
He gestured toward the mob. “She caught wind of that one getting past the front door and thought it might be in everyone’s best interest to leave.”
“They’re fighting over Leda?”
Thomas shook his head and downed another shot. “You’re going to have to ask Greer about that. I’ve already said enough to get my mouth shoved up my ass.”
Now this was interesting. I polished off a couple more shots and got ready to call it a night.
“Where’d everyone go?” The crowd dispersed, and so did Greer and Constantine.
“Broke up a while ago.”
I assumed Greer would come to collect me when it was over, so I hadn’t bothered to monitor the pissing contest. So much for threats.
“All bluff, aren’t you, boss man?” I muttered. “Thanks for the hospitality, Thomas. If Greer comes looking for me, tell him I went to bed.”
“You can tell him yourself.” Thomas nodded behind me.
I swiveled around on the stool and almost kneed Greer in the groin. “That’s what you get for standing so close.”
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?”
“To bed.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Well, I do.”
He was serious. He really thought I’d just climb in bed with him. “I guess all that male bonding with the goat got your testosterone level up.” The booze made me brave. “Sorry, I’m not your girl tonight. Isn’t that blonde around here somewhere?”
“You know what they say, Alex. We can do this the easy way or…”
I stood up to add a foot of advantage on my side. It didn’t help. Greer wasn’t going anywhere.
“Fine, but I’m not sleeping in the same bed with you.”
Thomas coughed. Greer shifted this eyes and watched Thomas polish off the glass of Glenfiddich.
“The forty?” he asked.
“Oh yeah.”
Greer moved his attention back to me with a barely discernible grin on his face.
“You know, Greer, if you weren’t such a Neanderthal I might actually want to sleep with you. Let’s get this over with. The sooner morning gets here, the better.”
I glanced at Thomas—traitor.
He winked as Greer took my arm and steered me toward the stairs.
“You know,” Greer said as his lips brushed the fine hair around my ear, “I’m not asking you to have sex with me.”
The blood rushed down my spine and settled below my belly, as his breath warmed my skin.
“I’ll even let you keep your PJs on.”
ELEVEN
The morning light streamed through the bedroom window and hit Greer’s sleeping body. I rolled over to the edge of the bed and studied his exposed backside. My eyes moved north of his well-curved behind and stopped on the massive tattoo covering his back. The ink symbols ran from his shoulders down to the tight muscles of his waist, and I wondered how many hours of pain it took to put them there.
When we got back to my room the night before, he asked if he could take a shower.
“It’s your place,” I said. “Do as you like.”
“Ladies first.”
“No way.”
He sneered at my misinterpretation of the gesture and headed for the bathroom. Ten minutes later he emerged with a towel wrapped around his waist. He fuddled around practically naked, and then arranged a set of sheets on the floor.
“A little much, don’t you think.”
“Modesty,” he mumbled—as if it were a bad thing.
When I asked him if he intended to sleep like that, he reminded me that he didn’t have a spare set of pajamas tucked in his pocket and had no intention of sleeping in a suit. At least he had the decency to sleep on the floor.
I pulled my eyes from his sleeping body and slipped into the bathroom to take a shower. Greer was putting his pants on when I came back into the room, and my breath caught at the sight of his naked body. A brief smile flashed across his face as he read my expression.
“Don’t you have a home?” I muttered.
He pulled his shirt over his shoulders and left it hanging open when he stopped to look at me. He was killing me, standing there all perfect and pretty. Nothing was sexier that a partially dressed man with an unbuttoned shirt framing his pecs. The only thing missing was damp hair from a shower and the afterglow from a night of good sex.
“Why?” he asked. “Would you like to see it?”
I shrugged, embarrassed at the comment that wasn’t really a question. “I wouldn’t mind seeing your place. A home reveals a lot about a person, and I bet there’s a lot that hasn’t been revealed about you, Greer.”
He didn’t respond, compounding my embarrassment at the assumption that a man like Greer would invite someone like me into his home. I bet Leda knew every inch of his house intimately. I bet a lot of women were familiar with the smell of Greer Sinclair’s sheets and the color of his walls—maybe even that vapid blonde.
Greer watched me as he pushed the hair out of his eyes. He was thinking, or maybe he was reading my mind again. I was the first to break the awkward quiet by reaching for my suitcase to find something to wear. There was nothing more to say. Maybe he’d just leave and lock the door from the outside again. That would be the kindest thing to do.
“You need to get out of here,” he finally said.
I picked through my clothes without looking up. “I realize that, but you’re the one keeping me here.” I fought the ridiculous urge to cry, not because I was hurt or angry, but because it was becoming impossible to hold back the stress equivalent of the Hoover Dam swelling behind my eyes. The past few weeks had aged me twenty years, clogging me with psychic poison. A good purge was what I needed. A good cry would get rid of everything. But God, I didn’t want to cry in front of him. “Leave the door unlocked when you go. I’ll be gone by noon.” I felt like a guest checking out of a hotel.
“What?” Greer stopped buttoning his shirt and dropped his hands to his sides. The look on his face suggested he’d just been handed a citation for indecency. “That’s not what I meant, Alex.” He took a step closer and then stopped. “I’m not asking you to leave.”
“Usually when someone tells you to get out, it means leave.” My voice was shaky as I fought back tears.
“I meant you need to get out of this place for the evening. There are people you need to meet.”
I stopped pawing at my clothes and tried to transition smoothly into the next question without looking like the awkward girl being asked to the prom by a boy out of her league. Never let them see how bad you want it, because that gives them the power.
“When?”
He reached for his Rolex on the nightstand.
“Tonight.” He offered no opportunity to decline. “Be ready at seven.”
“What should I wear?”
“Whatever you like. You’ll be among friends. Leda will be there.”
I was relieved that Leda would be joining us for the evening. She’d become the perfect buffer and knew how and when to intervene if things got dicey between Greer and me. I didn’t know many people in New York, so Greer’s reference to “friends” made me a little nervous. More reason to wan
t her there.
“Are you going to lock me in here all day?” I asked with a trace of sarcasm.
“No, but I expect you to stay inside the club.” He hesitated as he reached for the door, but then he crossed the room and took my chin in his hand. “If you leave these walls, I’ll see to it that your whereabouts are never in question again. Do we have an understanding?” His eyes rolled over mine, searching for acquiescence.
“Got it,” I said.
His eyes lingered on mine as he added mortar to the threat.
I met Greer downstairs at seven o’clock on the dot. If the man was anything, he was punctual. Leda came by earlier that afternoon and gave me the thumbs up on a simple pair of jeans with a white blouse. “We save our monkey suits for business,” she said. When I asked her what Greer had planned for the evening, all I got out of her was that we would be having dinner at his place. “You’ll meet them when you meet them,” was all she offered when I asked about the others.
“Ready?” he asked.
I was more than ready. Weeks of being cooped up had me jonesing for a night out. I was about to see where the master lived, and what better way to get to know my host than to see the sort of knickknacks that lined his shelves? I couldn’t imagine Greer with trinkets, but the man had to have something in his home that would hint at who he really was.
I eyed the jeans hugging his perfect ass. We looked like we called each other up to coordinate our outfits. His jeans were a little more faded than mine, and he wore a white button up shirt that could have just as easily been paired with one of his expensive suits. He could don casual all he wanted, but there was nothing less than expensive and meticulous about him. I wondered if his home would reflect the same. The only difference between our look was the charcoal gray jacket he wore—and my heels. His dark brown hair fell in waves around his classic face, softening his strong features. It was the one thing about him that wasn’t so damn orderly.
“Don’t we look cute,” I said.
He barely contained a grin as his eyes moved up and down my outfit. “Come on.” He took my hand and led me toward the front door. Crusades didn’t open for business until eight, so the place was empty except for staff. It must have been Thomas’ night off, because he wasn’t behind the bar.
The Amulet Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 1) Page 10
