Banshee Seduction (Montgomery's Sin Book 1)

by Diane Saxon

  “Of course, you can’t wear those panties.”

  “I can’t?” She twisted as best she could in the body-hugging material to get a better view of her backside.

  “No, I can see the panty line. You need thongs.”

  “I don’t have—”

  Phut.

  The woman was gone. Ginny hated the whole disappearing act. You could never have a full conversation, never win an argument. Not that she wanted to argue with Roni, she’d just like the opportunity to—

  Pff.

  “Here. A white thong.” Roni removed the sales tag and handed the thong to her.

  “Where did you get them?”

  Her friend’s smile was wide and feral; her sharp white teeth gleamed. “It’s okay, Miss Honesty, I left payment for them. I just didn’t have time to wait in line.”

  “I’m sure.” Ginny glanced at the label. “Especially as the bridal shop would be closed at this time of night.”

  Her friend wafted a dismissive hand as though a visit to a closed underwear store was something she did on a regular basis. She probably did. Most shops would be closed by nightfall when Roni was available to shop. It was a little inconvenient for her to visit in the daytime when the pesky sunlight fried her alabaster skin.

  Ginny stared at Roni, wondering if the woman was going to leave the room so she could have some privacy to whip off her panties and exchange them for the new ones, because the dress was not the type to allow for discretion. She was going to have to peel it up before she could do the whole panty exchange.

  “Do you need help?”

  She smiled at Roni’s lack of patience. “Nuh-uh. I can manage if you would be so kind as to turn your back. I don’t need you seeing my hoo-hah.”

  “Hoo-hah? For the love of Satan, it’s your p—”

  “I know what it is,” Ginny interrupted hastily.

  Roni’s wild red hair flicked as she turned her back with an ungracious grumble.

  Ginny writhed to get the clingy dress far enough up to strip off her big-ass panties and haul on the thong as fast as she could before Roni lost patience and took over. Being a model meant Roni had little time for self-consciousness, and even less tolerance.

  Voice muffled as she writhed to get the tiny scrap of material over her hips, she glanced up to check Roni was still in the same place. “Where did you say we were going?”

  “I didn’t, but we’re going to the new club—Montgomery’s Sin.”

  “Oh my, I’ve heard things about that place.” The girls at work had been the previous Friday night, failing to turn up for work on Saturday—again. The club was reputed to be wild. “It’s supposed to be full of all kinds. They say it’s where the devil goes to collect the souls of the fallen, the defeated, and the damned.” She tried not to sound like some kind of innocent, but she knew terror and awe laced her voice. Nightclubs terrified her. The thunder of music, the dark, prowling people.

  “Yeah, well, there’re two things here. First, I think the devil is too important to collect his own souls—he sends out his minions to do that. Second, I don’t think you fall into any of those categories. You can consider yourself quite safe. Now, me…there’s a whole ’nother matter.”

  “Perhaps it’s an exaggeration, but I do believe it’s a den of iniquity.” Ginny stretched her dress back into place and smoothed her hands over the fine material to check for any bulges.

  Roni turned around and eyed her with a wicked grin. “Yeah. It’s precisely why we’re going.”

  •●•

  “I’m not going!”

  “Jesus, come on, Matt. You know you have to.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “You do. Your reputation is at stake if you don’t get back on the bike of life and start to ride again.”

  “I never got off it.” Matt punched the remote control to flick between the two sports channels. What to watch?

  “You haven’t been out partying since Emma left you.”

  He had to close his eyes so his friend couldn’t see them roll to the back of his eye sockets. Daniel wouldn’t be amused, especially if Matt accompanied it with a short burst of fire from his nostrils. Daniel didn’t seem too keen when he did it; the man was inflexible about that kind of thing. At least when they were in public. Still… Matt sighed. They’d been through this before, and Daniel seemed unmoved by his excuses.

  “I wanted Emma to leave. I was glad when she went.” He pushed the sound out between gritted teeth.

  “Well, we know that, but no one else does. It’s been four months, and people think you’re pining.”

  Matt jerked upright and stared at his sports agent. If there was one thing he wasn’t, it was pining. He simply wanted to be alone. “I’m not fucking pining. The woman was a witch.”

  “Matt, I don’t think you can say—”

  “Yes. Yes, I can. She was a witch. Long sharp nails, black cat, evil spells.”

  “You exaggerate.”

  He pointed the remote and waggled it at Daniel. “You should have been there when she threatened to carve out my heart with the curved black dagger.”

  Daniel closed his eyes and sighed long and loud. His agent really didn’t seem to believe him, but it was true. The woman had been wild. Matt’d had a lucky escape—after all, she could have called in her coven. The luck he’d been having lately, she might possibly have. Right now they could be sticking pins into a little doll. He ran a mental check over his body. No. No more pain than the usual sharp pangs and dull aches.

  Daniel coughed and drew his attention back to where he stood in the middle of Matt’s huge, white-carpeted living room.

  “As your agent, I am telling you, you need to get out there again. Show people you’ve matured, grown—and no, I don’t mean physically. If you grow any more, people will start to notice, Matt.”

  “I can’t help my height.” He was pretty sure he hadn’t grown any more, and as for mature, how old did he have to be to qualify?

  “No. But you can help your situation.”

  Trapped. The desire to sulk had him playing with the remote a moment longer before he heaved a sigh and met Daniel’s determined stare.

  “All right. For an hour.”

  “Two.”

  “No.” That was the trouble with agents—never satisfied, always ready to negotiate, and from the look on Daniel’s face, he wasn’t going to be moved from his opening gambit with ease.

  “Okay. An hour,” Matt repeated, but at Daniel’s sour look, he reluctantly conceded, “…and a half.” He waggled the remote at his best friend and agent and gave in to the desire to be rebellious. “But I’m not getting changed.”

  His lips twitched as mild horror spread across Daniel’s face. The man’s topaz eyes scanned Matt’s washed-out lime-green T-shirt, which read, I’M NOT RICH, I’M NOT FAMOUS, BUT THE ASS BESIDE ME IS. TALK TO HIM.

  “You could just slip on a white shirt…”

  “No.” Matt stood up, empowered by his mutiny. “Take me as I am, or I don’t go at all.”

  With a dramatic sigh, Daniel turned toward the door at the far end of the room. “Okay. Deal. Let’s go. You’re such a diva.”

  Matt almost regretted it. It had been too easy, and he really didn’t want to go out. There was a Cowboys’ game on he would far rather have stayed at home to watch. He needed to study their new quarterback’s moves.

  He flipped the remote a full circle in the air, pointed it at the TV, and paused as he heard his name.

  “Matt Dane, the New York Chameleons fullback and Peter Pan of football, shows all players what clean living can do. The guy never has a single wrinkle, bloodshot eyes, or an injury due to poor fitness levels. For a man of his age, he’s always in tip-top condition, probably because he never goes out. Just look at the game he played on Friday night. Over to you, McCoy.”

  “Yes, indeed, The Dane was up against Travis Ludwig, and I can tell you he was more than a match. There were some really nice chunk plays, and the call of toss on t
hird down, with The Dane out front, ripped off a nice gain. He was even covered on the next level and easily hammered it in there. I can only say, I’m delighted the man doesn’t have a life.”

  Click.

  Silence.

  “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Two

  “Can we please go now?” Ginny gazed around the new nightclub. Violet neon lights lined the walls and pushed back the dark to cast haunting shadows over the place.

  Roni tucked her hair behind her ear and gave her a sympathetic smile. “We’ve only been here fifteen minutes.”

  “Oh.” Was that all? She blew out an impatient breath as Roni handed her a glass of champagne from the bottle she’d just ordered. It seemed like forever already, and so much for the magic seven. The other girls had taken off immediately to gyrate all over the dance floor.

  With a quick scan of the room, Ginny believed she would do some serious damage to her insides if she attempted to move the way those women did. She’d had to suck in her stomach until it was concave just to walk into the place.

  Roni was being kind by sticking with her at the bar. Music vibrated up through the floorboards and bounced off the walls, making her heartbeat uneven and staccato. She scanned the room. She’d never seen so many peculiar-looking folk. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear some of them weren’t human. Montgomery’s Sin seemed to have attracted a clientele from all walks of life.

  She whipped her gaze away from the huge guy with the tattoo on his neck that ran riot and escaped up his face. Holy cow, it was hardly the serenity she was comfortable with in the library.

  “Your eyes look as though they’re about to pop out of your head. Have a drink, relax. Maybe when you stop looking like a rabbit in the headlights, someone will come over.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry.” There was no one there she wanted to have come over. She glanced around again. Especially not the big guy with long hair and wild smile, swamped with the other five women she and Roni had arrived with. Far too scary. A savage, he vaguely resembled a wolf. He caught her eye and gave her a feral grin, enough to bump her heart up into her throat. Fear coated her tongue and made her mouth dry.

  She took a big gulp of her champagne. The bubbles fizzed wild and uncontrolled up her nose to push her adrenaline levels even higher as she gasped for breath. She slapped the glass down on the bar and shot through to the nearby ladies’ room, smacking the stall door shut behind her just as she burst into a fireball. Her atomic elements deconstructed and reformed in the blink of an ion, leaving her feeble and listless.

  “Are you okay in there?” Roni tapped on the cubicle door, anxiety lacing her voice.

  “Yeah.” Weak beyond measure, Ginny slipped the latch and let the door swing open while she collapsed on the closed toilet seat and breathed deeply. Roni handed her the champagne glass she’d left behind, and this time she sipped as Roni eyed her from the doorway.

  “Your dress is fine.”

  “Yup.” Her heart steadied, and she took another sip of the golden nectar. “It’s okay as long as it’s quick and there isn’t a whole host of wailers.” And boy, was that quick! She’d had no idea it was about to happen. Whatever it was about the place that put her on high alert, she’d never combusted quite as fast as that before.

  She sighed and stared at her nails. In distress, she waved her fingers at Roni to show her the immaculate silver nail polish she’d spent precious time applying had gone.

  “Toast.”

  Roni leaned against the doorframe and stared at her with such concerned intensity, Ginny’s stomach churned. Guilt rolled thickly at the thought of further spoiling her best friend’s evening, and she opened her mouth to suggest she should go home. She closed it again as two women came bustling through the outer door, giggling and fanning their faces.

  Their dress was conservative, their make-up immaculate, but they acted like a pair of teenagers as they fluttered into the room, fanning themselves with their hands. Ginny tilted her head to get a better look. They easily had to be in their forties. She caught the frenetic gaze of the darker-haired woman, who needed no encouragement to speak. “They’re here. The New York Chameleons have arrived—and The Dane is with them.”

  “Wow.” Roni fluffed her wild red curls as Ginny’s heart dropped to her stomach. Her option to go had just evaporated. There was no way Roni would allow her to sneak away unless she was quick. She tried to catch her friend’s attention as Roni bestowed a vampish smile on the plump ladies before she turned to Ginny. The redhead narrowed her eyes at her. “You want me to take you home?”

  “No.” It wasn’t going to happen. If the team had arrived fifteen minutes later, she could have made her escape, but the whole reason for Roni bringing her had just entered the place en masse.

  “I’m sorry. I’m spoiling your evening.” She knew she was being pathetic, but really—it was tiring, all this bursting into flames every time something a little out of the ordinary happened. She was on Earth to be ordinary, but it didn’t seem to be working out too well lately. Certainly whatever strange atmosphere there was in Montgomery’s Sin seemed to have affected her more than ever.

  She gave Roni a weak smile and watched the other woman’s expression toughen up.

  “You’re not. But you will if you don’t come on out there and play with the boys.”

  “I don’t think I can.” She heaved in a panicked breath. She was going to burst into flames in front of everyone, and then what would happen?

  “What’s the matter with her?” One of the women poked her head around the compartment door.

  “She’s shy.” Roni tapped her talons against the doorframe.

  “Looking like that? You’re kidding.”

  Insult bubbled at the woman’s tone, and Ginny’s lips parted, ready for a reply.

  “I dressed her,” Roni confessed, a wry smile on her perfect lips, and Ginny wondered if the place had caused her to overreact.

  “Ahhh.” All three women stared at Ginny from the doorway. The older two nodded wisely as though it explained everything, and her breath came in shorter, harder hitches.

  “I can’t breathe.”

  The blonde woman leaned in, hauled her to her feet, and before she could heave in another lungful of air, the lady dragged her through the booth door into the main bathroom area.

  “I’m not surprised, honey. Your lungs must be crushed flat in that dress. You need to stand. I wish I could pour my body into something so delicious. Here…” The woman wrangled her in front of the bank of mirrors, shoved a comb into her free hand, and gave an insistent nudge of the champagne glass toward Ginny’s lips. “You need to drink up. It’ll give you Dutch courage. You’re going to need it with those boys on the rampage, especially when they get an eyeful of your skin in that slutty little dress.”

  Ginny choked on her drink, and the woman gave her a hearty slap between her shoulders. She caught the reflection of her own eyes in the mirror just as they started to glow an ethereal, icy cobalt, and wondered how long the woman had to live. She didn’t really have the power to kill anyone, but the screeching chorus she conducted in her head could sure as hell make the woman’s ears bleed. Ginny just had to concentrate on not letting the sound escape from her mouth. The whole swirling ice storm in her eyes was just a glimpse into the blizzard in her soul.

  “Wow.” The darker-haired lady stepped in close and stared hard into her face. “I love your contact lenses. Where did you get them?”

  Voices screamed inside her head, and she tried her best to contain them. She licked her lips, and a brief swell of noise emitted from her throat, making her wonder how the heck the women weren’t bleeding by now.

  The blonde gave a comforting rub between her shoulder blades. “Oh, honey, maybe you shouldn’t drink champagne. You sound like you have gas.”

  The three of them stood in front of the bank of mirrors, and Ginny pursed her lips in a tight pout while she allowed her gaze to scan them all.

  The two older women fus
sed, touching each other’s hair and smoothing one another’s clothes, full of genuine kindness and sweet concern, no different than they had shown her, and Ginny suddenly started to giggle. She’d been about to incinerate the darker-haired one for no other reason than her own fear and panic. The way she was feeling, Ginny was pretty sure she could send someone else up in a ball of flames if she concentrated hard enough. She looked them over. These sweet ladies didn’t deserve it.

  One of the women rummaged in her purse and produced a red lipstick. Ginny hoped she wasn’t about to lick her thumb and scrub it across some imagined blemish on her face like her mother used to. She smiled. There was a similar look to them that meant the two small women were possibly related to each other, but their attitude reminded her of her mother.

  “I think this is your color, sweetie. Put it on. Blot. Go get a big handsome football player. Maybe you should tug your dress down an extra inch. You don’t want the boys to get the wrong impression.”

  As she tottered out of the bathroom on her mile-high heels behind Roni, she had the distinct feeling something strange had just occurred, but the heat in her skin had cooled, and her heart rate had returned to normal.

  Ginny smoothed her hands over her dress and raised her chin. She was going to be a brave banshee.

  •●•

  The small dark-haired woman leaned closer to the mirror and patted a little powder across the top of her nose. She rubbed her lips together and gave a smile as she met the eyes of the blonde next to her.

  “Do you think she recognized us, Lorna?”

  “No, but I thought she was going to zap you hard, Ellie. Honest, her eyes got that look, just like when she was little, all icy twinkling stars.”

  “I would have zapped her back twice as hard—just like I did when she was little.”

  “Well, that would have given the game away, wouldn’t it? It’s not what we’re here for. We’re supposed to be lending a helping hand.” Lorna smoothed a finger across her arched eyebrows and then dusted her hands off as she turned from the mirror and met her sister’s gaze. “I think the vampire made us, though. Notice how she stayed in the doorway away from the mirror?”