by Calista Fox
Seduce Me
Calista Fox
Book 3 in the Body Scenes series.
Drake is the mysterious, sexy British owner of the exclusive Manhattan nightclub and naughty art gallery, Body Scenes. He’s also a vampire. One who has a mad crush on—or rather, a burning need for—a human. Shana, the object of his blazing desire, is a sultry, curvaceous woman who oozes animal magnetism, though she doesn’t know it.
For Shana, who spent her youth feeling inferior to the petite and dainty women she toured with when headlining an international orchestra, body image issues are the order of the day. Every day. But then she meets the wildly charismatic and devilishly handsome Drake, along with his desirable assistant, Jane, and finds herself the star of a highly erotic three-way.
But can she overcome her insecurities and accept that Drake’s lust for her is of the eternal variety? And can a vampire really have a happily-ever-after ending with a human?
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
www.ellorascave.com
Seduce Me
ISBN 9781419938047
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Seduce Me Copyright © 2011 Calista Fox
Edited by Briana St. James
Cover art by
Electronic book publication December 2011
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Seduce Me
Calista Fox
Chapter One
“Your mad crush accepted the invitation to tonight’s viewing at the club.” Jane Van Kamp’s thick British accent held a hint of teasing.
“My ‘mad crush’?” Drake Halston muttered, his eyebrow shooting up. “Didn’t realize I had one.” He was English as well, but his intonation was much more subtle because he’d been in the States longer than Jane. By nearly two centuries, to be exact.
“Please,” his assistant scoffed good-naturedly as she left her desk, positioned against the far wall of his enormous office. “I know it typically takes more than a mental fantasy to make you hard, but the mere thought of Shana White does the trick every time. She sends your cock and your barely beating heart into a complete tizzy. In the decades I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you so hot for, or infatuated with, any other woman.”
Feigning disinterest at the mention of the woman who was supposed to be the object of his secret desire—a vampire lusting after a human was an obvious recipe for disaster, after all—he continued his work at his own desk. Though he added, “I’m always hot for you, Jane.”
She laughed softly. “Stop flirting with me, I’m still on the clock.” She picked up the iPad sitting on an end table next to the tufted, pewter-colored sectional. The device controlled the video surveillance equipment throughout Drake’s club, Body Scenes. She played with the settings as she said, “Besides, what goes on behind closed doors between the two of us isn’t rose-petals-on-the-bed, candlelight-and-music, core-shaking lovemaking. It’s just sex, so you don’t have to seduce me with flattery or feel guilty that another woman rocks your world.”
He frowned at her flippancy. Shelving the part about feeling guilty—because there was validity to that observation, since he genuinely adored Jane and didn’t want to hurt her feelings now that she knew about Shana—he said, “I’ve never seduced you. I’ve always waited for you to come to me.”
“Yes. And neither one of us has any delusions about what our sexual relationship is all about—scratching an itch. That’s all. Your attraction to Shana, however…” She wagged a brow at him. “That would be rose-petals-on-the-bed, candlelight-and-music, core-shaking lovemaking. If you ever got around to speaking to her, that is.”
He groaned. Of course he’d never spoken with her. That’d be the equivalent of throwing all the volatile ingredients for said disastrous vampire-human recipe into a bowl and whipping up a soufflé of trouble.
It was difficult enough for him to keep from repeatedly playing her recorded performances with an international orchestra or downloading her photo from the Internet and using it as a screen saver. He didn’t need to add any fuel to the already blazing fire that was his desire for Shana White.
“I know you think it’s best to admire her from afar,” Jane continued. “But you’re just torturing yourself. And, quite frankly, it’s rather painful to watch.”
Quite frankly, it was rather painful to experience. He’d been right earlier. He didn’t have a mad crush on the woman. He had a maddening one.
And it didn’t help matters that he had no outlet for his sexual frustration. Jane hadn’t approached him for after-hours activities in months. In fact, the last time they’d been together was days before he’d come across Shana’s press picture and been instantly ensnared.
Well, bloody hell.
His jaw clenched as his gaze dropped to the computer screen. His guilt mounted. So Jane had known all this time. Damn it. He didn’t want her to feel as though he’d found someone else. In the grand scheme of things, he hadn’t. Shana was strictly a private yearning. A never-to-be-realized fantasy. An unrequited desire he hoped would eventually fade.
Though he had to admit, he’d never been so enthralled before, as Jane had accurately surmised. It was a bit unnerving.
“I know better than to get involved with a human,” he said.
“But you’re falling for one anyway.”
“I haven’t even met her, Jane. I don’t know anything about her.”
“You’ve been scouring the Internet until the wee hours of the morning, learning everything you possibly can about her.”
And finding it wasn’t nearly enough to sate his curiosity or his desire for her. Letting out a long-suffering sigh, he said, “Let’s leave my infatuation out of this, shall we?”
“Impossible. She’s downstairs.”
His gaze snapped to the sixty-four-inch flat panel mounted on the wall above the black marble-trimmed fireplace. The footage currently displayed was from a security camera positioned at the entrance of his exclusive Manhattan nightclub and naughty art gallery.
Sure enough, the raven-haired beauty who’d taken up permanent residency in his mind was here in the flesh. She passed through the first red-velvet-roped entrance and approached the podium, where she handed over the invitation to the club he’d personally mailed to her last week.
Jane must have been tracking the comings and goings downstairs on her own computer, knowing Drake would want to be alerted
the moment Shana arrived.
He had several minutes to watch her, as the line for admittance into the hedonistic hotspot was a long one and the process for allowing the guests inside was slow, due to the verification procedures the doormen were required to follow. Entry into Body Scenes was granted only when the invitation in hand was confirmed to be an original and the person who possessed it was indeed the individual specifically issued the coveted summons.
All of New York society was in hot pursuit of an invitation to the club, which featured extravagant murals painted on naked flesh, the erotic joining of body parts completing the sinful scenes. The popularity of the club wasn’t strictly regional, though. Drake received dozens of requests every week from international A-listers—celebrities, dignitaries, rock stars, politicians, Forbes’ millionaires and billionaires… Everyone who was anyone wanted a peek inside Body Scenes.
The club was only open one weekend a month and there were a number of regulars for whom he ensured access. For the most part, he was adamant about not allowing reporters or photographers in, though he’d made an exception when he’d issued standing admittance to trendy blogger and freelance writer Yvette Samson. She was avant-garde and a celebrity in her own right, after all.
Tonight he was bending his rule once more for Yvette’s colleague, Shana. The former musician turned journalist had become a web sensation over the years. She’d reportedly turned down a host spot on The View as well as an offer for her own prime-time talk show on HBO. She’d made a point of staying true to her online audience and Drake found her integrity as appealing as her curvaceous body.
She stood at the entrance to the club with Yvette, both women dressed to the nines, but in contradictory styles. Cutting-edge Yvette wore a strapless mini-dress in red, complementing her blonde hair and slim figure. Sophisticated Shana looked drop-dead gorgeous in a silver satin one-shoulder gown that featured a slit all the way up her shapely right leg. A visual that made Drake’s cock even stiffer than before, when he’d merely been ruminating over the prospect of Shana accepting his invitation to the club.
“Well,” Jane said as her gaze slid from the large screen to Drake, where he still sat at his desk. “You certainly know how to pick them. She’s sensational. Even more dynamic than I’d originally thought.” She uttered this last statement with awe in her voice. She reached for the back of a chair positioned in front of the tall hearth as though to steady herself.
“My reaction to Shana as well,” he said, not at all surprised by how caught off guard Jane was by Shana’s sultry appearance. Photos didn’t do the woman justice, he decided. And he was convinced a TV monitor couldn’t fully capture the vibrancy she naturally exuded. Actually, it was more than that. “She radiates a raw sensuality that’s nearly impossible to ignore. Even in photographs.”
Drake knew from personal experience through all that research he’d done. And he’d invested an exorbitant amount of energy and effort into keeping his distance from her these past several months. It was exhausting, but he was cognizant of the boundaries he needed to maintain. Inviting her to the club was the closest he’d ever get to her. He’d stay in his office tonight, as he always did, though this particular evening it’d be hell to hide up here when she was down there.
Jane gripped the chair a little tighter. “Pure animal magnetism,” she said in a low, throaty voice. So unlike her normal, cultured tone. “This woman has it in spades. She puts Sofia Vergara to shame.” Her chest rose and fell a bit faster, drawing Drake’s attention to her small, firm breasts. A perfect handful, he knew.
He was in desperate need of easing the sexual tension coursing through him and Jane’s response to Shana only exacerbated the problem. He didn’t miss the way her nipples puckered behind the shimmery, lavender camisole she’d paired with a snug, eggplant-colored skirt. His thumbs suddenly itched to sweep over her hard peaks, pebbling them further and making her moan.
A hint of desire made her bright eyes sparkle and her glossy lips parted slightly as her breathing grew more shallow than normal.
True, a vampire didn’t need excessive amounts of oxygen to survive, but there were still vital functions necessary to sustain the undead, despite what pop culture had to say about it. Even the slow beating of a heart was crucial to maintaining a vampire’s existence. How else would the blood they drank circulate through their systems and, in Drake’s case, give him the erection he had now?
In addition to Shana eliciting a primal response from him, he found Jane’s excitement erotically stirring. So much so, he gave up on his work, stood and crossed to the fireplace.
For so long, it’d been fortuitous that he and Jane found each other physically appealing. She was five-foot-three and deceptively waifish, with straight, shoulder-length blonde hair. She had a tight body and an even tighter pussy. One finger in her narrow cunt was enough to make her come. His thick cock inside her made her scream in ecstasy. The memory of that sound echoed in his head now, giving him some very lascivious thoughts as to how this evening could play out, especially with Shana unwittingly serving as an additional sexual stimulant—obviously an unexpected one for Jane.
Yet touching Jane now that he’d been outed didn’t sit right with him. He’d be channeling his desire for Shana into his “arrangement” with Jane. And though she professed to not mind there being no more between them than hot sex, he wasn’t comfortable lusting after one woman and pleasuring another. No matter how sensible and realistic Jane was about the situation.
He tried to rein in his tumultuous emotions, but Jane’s gaze was riveted to the flat panel, causing him to say, “I didn’t know you were attracted to women.”
Unfortunately for him, that sentiment made an image flash in his mind of prim and proper Jane getting naked with sexy and sensational Shana. His cock strained behind the zipper of his Armani suit pants. Definitely not a good thing.
This new fantasy was doubly forbidden…and so very dangerous. For him to obsess over Shana was bad enough. It was twice as hazardous for Jane to do it at the same time. The two of them being so intuitively bonded together because of their decades of friendship made it more difficult to avoid the landmine lying outside the safety zone that was his office. Temptation had never been so great…or so potentially disastrous.
Jane told him, “I’m attracted to souls, not genders.”
“And you find hers appealing?”
“Very much so.”
Jane possessed a rare gift unlike any other vampire he knew. She connected with souls, but only the truly pure ones. Likely the reason she didn’t have much use for the visitors who crossed the threshold of Body Scenes. Not that she considered those with uninhibited sexual tendencies tainted—she had her own fetishes and was intrigued by human mating rituals. But most of the club’s guests were shrewd in business and lax in scruples—the secret of their overwhelming success. He knew this because he researched everyone he issued an invitation to and had found a shocking number of them stored a heap of dirty laundry in their closets. Not that he cared. Everyone had a cross to bear, including him. He didn’t pass judgment.
For Jane, however, there had to be something inherently good deep within someone—mortal or immortal—in order to catch her attention. A trait Drake admired as much as he respected Shana’s integrity, but which also provided him a small measure of comfort. Jane never would have given him the time of day in a professional or a romantic capacity if there wasn’t something buried within him that appealed to her.
Being a vampire wasn’t all rainbows and roses, that was for damn sure. And Drake had committed his fair share of sins. Yet he still believed in the greater good and humanity. A tricky conviction to maintain, given the nature of the beast and the fact he’d lived this particular lifestyle for two hundred and thirty-five years—a good deal longer than the twenty-eight years he’d been human before being turned during the American Revolutionary War in the late 1700s.
For Jane to latch onto whatever purity he possessed was a huge relief to him
, because it told him he’d retained an above-average level of civility when he’d been changed, against his will, over two centuries ago.
Jane stepped around the chair she’d been using as support, still staring up at the flat screen. She frowned as she wrung her hands.
“I sense lonesomeness within this woman,” she said of Shana.
Her green eyes drifted closed. Drake always found it captivating when she mentally or metaphysically or just plain mysteriously searched another’s soul. She didn’t always discover pleasant things, as was clearly the case this time.
“Shana has led a very solitary existence and it’s humbling to her,” Jane told him. “Actually, it saddens her, but she can’t break free of it. There’s a great deal of self-doubt within her that makes it difficult for her to express herself except through writing or music. In fact,” Jane continued, “she has no idea how to connect with other humans unless it’s through those avenues…or how to embrace her own sexuality. She pretends to be comfortable with her body, but she’s not.” She paused a moment, drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “She’s completely oblivious as to how desirable she is.”
“Then she doesn’t own a single reflective surface,” Drake said in a dour tone. “How could she not see how striking she is?”
Jane shook her head, her eyes still closed. “People see what they want to see. Or what someone else tells them to see.”
An ominous thought that lingered between them. Had someone told this woman she wasn’t attractive—and she’d believed them? The thought infuriated him, which, in turn, alarmed him even more. He couldn’t afford to take a personal interest in Shana White. Yet he was buying into everything Jane said about her and he found her revelations troubling and deeply disturbing. Fool that he was.