“Tell me about it.” Ashley threw back another shot. “You can’t marry a guy who’s a bad lay. Unless he’s really, really rich. Beau isn’t really, really rich, is he? Not like Bill Gates.”
“No. Not really, really.” But close. And Beau would get there someday. He had that kind of drive.
Harmony felt a slight pang as she further maligned her ex in order to justify her panicked flight. The sex had been pretty bad at the end. And mostly the bad sex was his fault for being a Neanderthal about women. Mostly, but not entirely. Partly the problem came from her actually seeing into his head and knowing what was really there. Women always said they wanted to know what men really thought about, but in her experience, knowing wasn’t any comfort. The male psyche was murky, with base impulses that women were better off not knowing about. However, confronted with the reality of Beau’s belief system, she had eventually given up trying to improve things between them. The mountain wouldn’t move. He couldn’t help most of what he was, at least not physically. Retrograde attitudes aside, he was a colossal perspirer who insisted on always being on top, where he dripped on her right through the silk pajamas he persisted in wearing even when they were being intimate—possibly because he was self-conscious about sweating, though that seemed like giving him a great deal of credit for sensitivity he probably lacked. Whatever the reason, at the end it had been like having sex with a smelly comforter with sharp knees and elbows.
He also always seemed to be trying to set some landspeed record at foreplay, only to interrupt things so he could make a last call to check on the Asian markets before closing. And that was on a good night. On a bad night, sex with Beau had been like having a plastic bag tied over her head while being jackhammered from below. She had tried to clue him in, but nothing worked. He just refused to listen. About anything. He nodded and said yes to everything she asked for, but she could tell that at his core he was as unchanging as concrete.
It was crazy, but as the weeks had passed and he had become more insistent about seeing her daily, she had found herself developing full-blown claustrophobia every time she passed the bedroom. And then there finally came a similar sort of phobia every time Beau got near her. It was his growing attitude of possessiveness. He felt that he owned her. And after that, sex had become something overwhelming, like being ravaged by a Viking horde. Except worse, because the horde just wanted your body and Beau wanted what he sensed she was holding back.
He’d begun with a campaign to meet her friends. She’d managed to duck that by claiming they were all in Indiana, and saying they would go back for one of her high school reunions. A month into the relationship, Beau had begun questioning her specifically about old boyfriends. He’d told her about his first failed marriage, encouraging her to greater intimacy by sharing his supposedly shameful secret. Only, she knew that he wasn’t ashamed, because he didn’t believe the failure was his; it was just a ploy to gain her trust. He’d waited patiently for days for her to reciprocate with tales of her past relationships, but she couldn’t. Something told her that the patience wasn’t there from love. It was the vigilance of the cat outside the gopher hole. She had laughed when he pressed her again for the name of her last lover, and said she had never been married, had no alimony payments and no kids and nothing else mattered.
He’d changed tactics then, asking to see photo albums or school yearbooks—hard to produce since she had never lived in Indiana. He continued to push her for details of her past, and she continued to evade. It was a sort of game, but it was growing less playful. She’d begun to worry that he’d call in a private investigator to follow her.
In the beginning she was reticent because she had been spying on him and didn’t want to leave him any clues that he might follow up on later if she had to out him for being an environmental foe. And after she had found out he wasn’t just another sentient slime-ball in a good suit, but actually very smart and ambitious and his company had surprisingly good ecological policies, and after they had become lovers…well, then it was too late. Whatever had held her back from being truthful after they were intimate, the natural time for her to confess her unusual hobby-job came and went without confession. She never found the way to tell the ultimate corporate warrior that she didn’t just write little articles for the local newspaper about recycling, that she was actually what some people called an eco-terrorist. Or that she was wanted by the police in several cities and probably by some of the federal authorities as well. That he had probably even read about her in the papers.
It wasn’t that she feared Beau would turn her in. No, Beau would protect what he felt he owned, however flawed it might be. But he would put an end to her career, and she couldn’t endure the feeling that he was spinning a web around her, making it tighter every day so that he could eventually consume her mind and soul and remake her in some new image.
That a part of her wanted to be made over was frightening, a flaw she wasn’t pleased to discover.
Hope began to die. She had started drinking then to dull the pain of his visits and the knowledge that she was probably going to have to end their relationship. First it was just a cocktail before dinner…and then wine with dinner. And then more wine after dinner. She never got drunk, but she drank just enough to mute the inner voice that was telling her that no matter how much Beau said he loved her and how exciting he was, the relationship was doomed to fail. He could endow her with all his worldly goods, but it would never be sufficient compensation for living a lie. She would become nothing but a shadow.
Yet even knowing this was true, she still hadn’t left him. This part baffled her still. All she could imagine was that she had grown so lonely since her parents died that she had lost her reason.
Finally, in desperation to relieve the pressure, she had confessed to Beau that she was trying to write a book—a novel. That had surprised him, but it seemed a satisfactory explanation for her mental distance. Beau laughed at the idea of doing anything that frivolous but said it was perfect for her—was it one of those romance things? She had been annoyed by his patronizing tone, and had had to work to keep the thumbtacks and barbed wire out of her answers that night. Not that it would have mattered if she had yelled at him. Beau had a really thick hide when it came to her. He tolerated her foibles with what he thought was remarkable forbearance. In anyone else, it would have set her teeth to grinding—in fact, it did set her teeth grinding. Still, she found that she couldn’t bring herself to write him off completely. People sometimes changed, she told herself. Things might still work, if Beau eased off a bit.
Harmony could see now that it was mainly guilt over toying with Beau’s affections as she tried on the role of domestic partner that had kept her there, but it was also partly because Beau’s attention was flattering. This powerful man could have had anyone, and he had chosen her. Never before had she been wanted this way. The men in her life had always been committed to larger causes, had other priorities and assumed that she did too. Marriage was out of the question for them. The difference between the life Beau offered and the one she had chosen had led her to question what she really wanted, kept her sitting on the fence long after she should have moved on.
Then one day she had discovered a jewelry box with a big fat engagement ring in it sitting on her nightstand. When she had touched it, she had had a flash of Beau’s plans for her—the house and the kids and everything—and she had panicked. She had actually had a hallucination that a pack of murderous crows had come swooping down on her and tried to carry her away.
Harmony wasn’t proud of herself, but she’d bolted. No longer unclear about what she did or did not want, she’d scribbled a Dear John note saying she needed to go to New York to be a writer, dropped off her ailing ficus with a neighbor, and alerted Anthony that The Spider was ready to work again and she would need a new job when she got back from Mexico. The Beau episode was over. There would be no marriage for her.
Anthony was elated. He had been terribly worried that he’d lose his great
est asset to another man.
Her clothes and portable computer that held her novel she took with her. There weren’t all that many outfits in her closet anyway. Sometimes the lack of possessions and the roots they implied made her feel lost and a bit sad, but that day she was grateful for traveling light; she was able to close that chapter of her life in a matter of hours.
And that was how she had ended up in Mexico with Ashley, waiting to join a group of her conservationist friends of friends who were giving tours of the ecologically challenged lakes. Field work for the office girl. She would finally get to see the thing she had been fighting for—mosquitoes, leeches, and all. It was amazing what bad relationships could drive a fastidious young woman to do. Men!
And now she faced going back to work, a prospect about as alluring as a form letter from a credit-card company. Working undercover had been exciting at first, but eventually all the jobs and offices began to blur. Corporations are designed to be impersonal, and since she had to keep a low profile, making friends who might notice her activities was out of the question. And even if it hadn’t been obliged to be distant, she didn’t want to make friends only to move on a couple weeks or months later. So she had played the role of a corporate veal, staying in her six-by-six cubicle and growing anemic with the rest of the fodder. Not even the satisfaction of catching the bad guys was enough for her anymore.
Writing her novel was the first thing that had excited her in months. She hoped it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
Looking around the tavern, Harmony now thought that perhaps she had overreacted to the situation with Beau. She stared at the smoky air and tables kept at something less than the highest standards of hygiene, and thought now that maybe it hadn’t been necessary to leave the country to escape an engagement. Surely Beau would be so insulted by her leaving that he wouldn’t follow. He was possessive but not obsessive. Wasn’t he?
But the fact that there was any question in her mind was the best argument for playing it safe. Not just for herself, but for The Spider and what she and all the others in the movement were working for.
The man with the dark eyes and hair tilted his head, as though hearing her thoughts and weighing them for truth. Long fingers slowly turned the beer bottle he wasn’t drinking from. When he tilted his head she caught a flash of gold at one earlobe. He looked like a pirate.
Harmony shivered.
He had beautiful hands—strong. Hands she suddenly thought that she might like on her body. He swept his long black hair to the side, showing more of his face. The candlelight was deceptive, but his skin seemed white, almost radiant, though his features were not Anglo. His hair was also thick and luxuriant, something that came from a mink. She found him superhumanly attractive.
Which was a strong clue that she should stop doing tequila shots before enough of them were able to unite and overthrow her brain’s few remaining moral barriers. Or worse, demand their freedom from her weakening stomach. The booze was cheap down here, but throwing it up would be a waste and she was on a limited budget. She hadn’t taken the time to fully invest in her emergency escape fund, and this trip was proving to be rather more costly than imagined, even with the price break she got for being in the trade, so to speak.
Besides, stopping now might mitigate the hangover that was surely coming her way. There would be enough to regret about the day ahead without that. Hiking through nature, staring at rare fish and endangered patches of grass in a crowd of earnest people—what had she been thinking? She could have just gone to visit her uncle in Iowa and saved six hundred bucks.
“I’ve lost my mind,” Harmony muttered, still staring at tall, dark, and handsome.
“It’s allowed after a breakup,” Ashley assured her, but she was finally getting bored with the topic and her eyes had begun to wander over the men at the bar. There was a nice selection of new arrivals if you weren’t fussy.
The shadow man smiled at Harmony. At least she thought he did, but it might have been a trick of the candlelight. There was something about him that grabbed her fancy—his face especially, though the body she could see under the table was long, strong, and lean. He obviously wasn’t local, standing—or sitting—a good foot taller than the other men in the room. It was hard to identify where the exoticism came from. Not his chin; that was just a chin. His nose was just a nose. His mouth…well, the mouth was unusual. Full lips but slightly curled at the corners, as if everything amused him.
Yes, the mouth. And those eyes. She’d never seen anything like them. They were so dark that they seemed to have no pupils. Under their unblinking gaze, she felt her mind emptying of all wariness and common sense. With shock, Harmony realized that she was squirming in her chair, squeezing and releasing her legs in a subtle form of self-pleasure. She was completely turned on for the first time in almost a year.
“Oh no. No. No. No. I just escaped a man. And I’m a wanted woman. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
“What?” Ashley turned to stare at the stranger. “Oh, he’s yummy—like Johnny Depp. I could just eat him up.”
“Not me. I’m on a diet.” Shaken, Harmony reached out and poured herself another shot of tequila, keeping her eyes averted from other temptations. Better the devil you know, she told herself.
She was the one. The psychic tickle said so. Here was his reason for being in Mexico. Her body was small, but her power was great.
Alex cocked his head, tuning out the babble of voices around him so he could hear what was being said at the table by the room’s one narrow window. His hearing was acute, but he was also listening with his mind. It was hard to tune out the other mental babble of the crowd, but he could if he concentrated hard enough. A few things about her he knew already. She was seeking succor in alcohol from a relationship gone wrong, but any balm she found there would be short-lived. This wasn’t a woman who harmonized with an imperfect world. And she found the world imperfect, though she was far less discontented with it than her nymphomaniac traveling companion.
“I’m just the opposite of you. I had to give up celibacy, I really did,” the one called Ashley insisted. Her voice and thoughts were easier to make out. Her aura was a topaz color that he associated with sexual irresponsibility. “Without sex, all I did was eat ice cream until I was the size of the mother ship from Mars. The only thing that keeps me on a diet is vanity and wanting to impress a new boyfriend. Or two. I do better with at least two, especially on these nature jaunts. There’s just something about camping in the outdoors that turns me on. At least, I think it does. I haven’t actually tried this Mexico thing before…They’ll have bathrooms out there, won’t they? I mean someplace where I can shower. Maybe I better try for three. I hear that they have some really cute guys on these trips, and we won’t have pay-per-view, I’m pretty sure.”
Alex allowed himself to grin. Forestalling weight gain was the most ingenious reason he had ever heard for being promiscuous, but he wasn’t going to quarrel with it. In his own youth, he had been romantically impetuous, not just involved in love triangles but love pentagrams. He and this female had this much in common. However, it wasn’t this bleached blonde of easy virtue that intrigued him. It was her companion—less blond, less bold, worlds smarter. Her aura was a beautiful aurora crystal shot through with streaks of green. He could smell her too. She had an understated musk with a hint of fresh vanilla bean.
Her name was Harmony, and her nearly feline gaze was confident and shrewd—amused without being actively scornful of those she observed. Or it had been, before she and the blonde started making inroads on the bottle of tequila. Even after that, she had no trouble holding his own stare on the occasion their lines of sight collided, a rare feat because his unveiled eyes usually disturbed people. Not her, though. The mental connection between them was already strong and growing more so by the minute. He had had the feeling a moment before that she had mentally unzipped him and given him the once-over with psychic fingers. He thought that he liked this, but was also inclined to be a b
it wary of instant attraction. Something told him that this meeting wasn’t going to end as some casual sexual pickup. Fate wouldn’t have dragged him to Mexico just to get laid. Fate was a bitch who always had big plans.
Harmony carried herself well, too, her posture belonging more to the nineteenth century than the twenty-first, though she was neither rigid nor corseted. She looked somewhat expensive, but not fat from pampering. She was lean, muscled, capable, and educated. This wasn’t a sweet kitten who but a full-grown huntress could care for herself if push came to shove. He wondered about her pedigree and how many generations of strong women it had taken to breed a female this sure of herself. They were rare creatures. He’d only known two before her—Thomasina and George Sand.
Alex leaned closer, observing openly. She used silence well. From his years in the theater, he understood that silence is its own language, and few spoke it well because they could not endure the quiet. But she was fluent in the long pause filled only with a half smile or an ironical gaze. This was wasted on her companion.
Given her nature, he couldn’t help but wonder what on earth she was doing with this blond bimbo in the wilds of Mexico. It couldn’t actually be because of a boyfriend—not entirely. Not in this day and age. And why did she refer to herself as a wanted woman? Did she mean she was a criminal? How intriguing that would be. This kind of woman would only be involved in complicated, possibly political crime. He wanted to know more.
The waiter came by, bringing a plate of pulled pork marinated in tequila. The fork and knife were dirty, but Alex didn’t complain. The old waiter, surrounded by a cloud of roiling gray, was like an apple-head doll that was rotting, caving in, and slumping forward on its stick body as bacteria did its work. It looked a bit as if the ancient creature had started to exhale and forgotten to stop. In another day, he would have been completely curled in upon himself. This place had a way of sucking the air out of your lungs and moisture out of your skin. One could drink fluids all day long, but over time, the inner tissues went dry. If you stayed in the desert long enough, you became a desiccated shell, a living mummy. But that wasn’t what ailed this man. The smell of death was certainly on him, a scent Alex vaguely recognized, at least in its broadest outlines. It wasn’t the desert that was draining him, though. It was something else. A parasite. Probably a vampire, though Alex didn’t recognize this particular tang of evil.
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