by Diana Seere
“You heard me.” He leaned in and looked around. Lilah had the creeping suspicion he was looking for Eva. “Grounds for termination. Immediate dismissal.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And even worse...” He frowned and looked down at her feet. “They make you leave the shoes.”
Gavin took a seat in one of the sub lounges at the far back of the club. Special half-wall pods, shaped like a large, padded egg, filled the room. This was part of the club’s allure. In the middle of a party, you could come into a pod, plug in a headset, and conduct business.
He shoved earbuds into his rushing ears and turned on a stupid sports talk radio channel. But endless hand-wringing about football was the last thing he needed right now. He grunted derisively and changed stations. Soccer, that sounded much better.
With shaking hands and a mouth that tasted like Lilah, Gavin needed to tune out the world. In the elevator, he’d begun to shift. To a human, the change was so subtle. To him, it was enormous. His joints had loosened, the familiar gooseflesh on his back a sign of the fur beginning to come in. Chest hair thickened. His voice dissembled. His sense of smell became acute. Ten more seconds and he would have gone past the point of no return.
She stripped him of every shred of self-control.
He inhaled deeply and nearly choked on his own desire. Looking around wildly, he found the source of the scent.
His fingers.
Raking his hands through his hair, he sat forward, elbows on knees. Jesus. What had he been thinking, lunging at her like that in the elevator? The sheer need to touch her was too strong. The magnetic pull was too intense.
She was too damn beautiful.
“Gooooooooaaaaaaal!” the announcer screamed in his ear. He ripped the earbuds out and flung the phone on the floor.
Those brown doe eyes, shocked and then greedy for his touch. The full swell of her hips and ass made his hands itch to claim her. The line of her jaw as it moved while they kissed.
And that moan as he brought her ecstasy.
Three more seconds and his belt would have been undone, pants open, and he’d pump into her against that elevator wall, her hands above her head, her mouth smothered by his lust as he drove her to climax, calling his name.
He could see it.
The scene that did not happen was burned into his brain.
“Gavin,” said a low, sophisticated voice. He looked up, feeling raw and exposed. It was Eva.
“Eva,” he said, clearing his throat, his body betraying him more and more.
“You and Ms. Murphy seemed to be making your acquaintance in the elevator,” she said evenly, but the hair on his arms and neck began a slow creep upward. Eva was part of the bloodline, from one of the four shifter families. They were distant relatives, third or fourth cousins. He’d known her his entire life.
“We were discussing...” He fumbled. “Um, the Patriots game. The team’s loss. She likes football,” he lied. He hoped it was true, though. The last woman he’d slept with more than once had hated football. That relationship ended when the preseason games began at Gillette Stadium.
She interrupted him, one of the few people bold enough to do so. “It was clear what you were doing.” Eva bent down primly, her knees poking out from under her skirt, body limber and flexible. “And while I have no objection to the men at this club taking what’s freely offered, I prefer that it’s done in private.”
“It’s not what you think.”
She smiled and laughed through her nose, eyes calculated and combing over him. “You sound like an errant schoolboy, Gavin.” She widened her eyes with amusement. “It suits you. How cute.”
Agony ripped through him. Not because she was wrong.
But because she was right.
“She’s... different.”
Eva’s eyes flashed, predatory. “So I have heard. The One? A human. Tsk, tsk, tsk. I thought Stantons didn’t choose humans. Isn’t that one of Asher’s rules for his herd of unruly little siblings?”
Gavin could handle being corrected.
He would not tolerate being mocked.
“You know the legends, Eva. You’re old enough to have invented them. I’m not doing this for folly. You know how this works. Until I mate with the One, I can’t control... whatever this is.”
“Until you mate? Is that how the legend goes? I’m so old and feeble my memory isn’t what it used to be,” she said dryly. The jab at his earlier comment made him sigh.
“Touché.”
“I’ve heard every excuse, from presidents to Super Bowl stars, and I’ll say this one last time: keep it in your pants, and keep it in private. The club’s reputation needs to remain pristine.”
“I would never act in a way that would jeopardize the club.” His voice was flat and cold, a sharp contrast to the fire and heat that roiled inside his body.
Eva stood slowly and looked down at him.
“Gavin, my dear,” she said with a faint smile. “You just did.”
After watching her glide away with that timeless grace that was typical of the women from that branch of the family, he counted to ten slowly under his breath and then got out from behind the table.
He needed to be alone. His business clients didn’t matter; one of his people would make sure it went smoothly. Because of his unusual genetic makeup, he used figureheads as much as possible with the media and casual business contacts. Even Brazilian plastic surgery couldn’t explain how he’d looked thirty since the turn of the millennium. But he was always there, always directly controlling what was said and what went on.
Just not today.
Nothing to do with the Beat or the One or any of that mystical bullshit. He’d almost gotten a poor woman fired before she’d even started her first shift.
And he’d impelled Eva to reprimand him as if he were a child. Or worse—as if he were Derry.
Two white-haired men he’d promised to talk to waved at him from the bar, but he pretended not to see them. Instinct drove him to head underground, into the cold, dark quiet. The Novo Club downstairs would be perfect, but he didn’t want to risk seeing one of his mocking, critical, insufferable siblings or any one of a dozen cousins. They’d smell Lilah on him. And his need.
That wouldn’t do. He’d end up killing his own kin. In the mood he was in, he might kill all of them.
So he strode across the club, using every scrap of his willpower not to chase Lilah down and carry her out with him over his shoulder, through the back entrance to the service elevator. He got inside, inhaling the scent of her that remained, and took it down into the second oldest, deepest corner of the original building.
The wine cellar.
His decision was already calming him. No longer unsteady with inappropriate lust, he felt his brain clear and his pulse steady. When the doors opened into the cold, brick-lined hallway, he marched into the darkness with his equilibrium renewed.
This was who he was: calm, logical, in control.
He’d stay here until all danger of being otherwise had passed.
Chapter 6
Lilah’s head would not stop throbbing.
The work itself was a breeze, and Carl was fabulous to work with. By the end of their first hour working together, they were a well-oiled machine. He picked up on her pace and she knew how to keep him organized. As the lounge filled with a crowd estimated at three hundred people, Lilah was busy.
And her shoes stayed comfortable.
Her stomach ached with anxiety at Carl’s warning. What if someone had seen her kissing Gavin? She couldn’t afford to lose her job over a grope and a tongue dance in the elevator.
You know that’s not all it is, she berated herself silently.
That’s all it is to him, some other voice replied.
Speaking of him, Gavin Stanton had disappeared. This was his party, according to Eva and Carl. Party-boy had made out with her in the elevator and made himself scarce. Typical. Turns out billionaire Brits were just like the average American man.
She served a vodka and soda with a lime to a woman she recognized as a local weather forecaster for Channel 5. Without acknowledging Lilah’s existence, the woman animatedly continued her conversation with a man who looked suspiciously like the governor of Massachusetts.
Slipping away, she headed toward Bloody Mary. Carl had pointed to a variety of people in the crowd and given them nicknames based on their favorite drinks. Cosmo was the head coach for one of the New York NFL teams. White Cosmo was his wife. Sex on the Beach was a reality television celebrity known for her recent nude cover shot for Vanity Fair.
Wallbanger was a guy who looked at her as if he was dreaming about banging her. Webb, his real name was. Wallbanger Webb. Although he insisted on a weird version of the drink: instead of orange juice, he demanded Tang. Ugh.
She swung back to the bar, moving slowly as taught by Eva. (“We never rush. Ever, Lilah. The hallmark of the Platinum Club is that it is a haven for the busiest of the busy. Important people don’t need to be surrounded by people in a frantic hurry.”) Carl caught her eye.
“Lilah! We’re out of our wine selection. I need you to go to the wine cellar and get three bottles of red.” He recited a bunch of French words that made her head fill with gibberish.
“Wait! Slow down,” she said as calmly as possible. “You’re speaking in Klingon.”
He flashed her a devilish grin and grabbed a pen out of his pocket, then a cocktail coaster. A few scribbles later, and he handed her a list.
“Take that downstairs. The red wine is more popular than usual, and our wine runner got caught in traffic. He’ll be here any minute, but in the meantime, you’re it.”
Lilah paused and looked around. All her drinks had been delivered. The atmosphere was all business but serene. Low light, the scent of polished leather and burning beeswax mingled with perfume and cologne. It all oozed money.
If you sniffed hard enough, you might smell that too.
“OK. Will do. All my customers—”
“Members,” Carl corrected her.
“My members are in good shape. Where’s the wine cellar?”
He gave her the floor number and a series of directions. Lilah had never been in a wine cellar before, and as she waited for the elevator, she wondered what it would be like. A minute ticked by. Two minutes. Three.
And in those three minutes, she’d earned enough to buy herself a latte tomorrow. Already tonight, she’d made more in a handful of hours than she’d netted in a week at the mortgage company.
The elevator doors opened, and Lilah felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. This was the same elevator she’d ridden in with him.
Him.
The scar on her forehead had been twitching since she’d seen Gavin, and she reached up to rub it. No relief. Nervous, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other as the elevator descended below the lobby, two floors down, opening to a floor where the carpet was gone.
In its place were cobblestones.
This is weird, she thought, but stepped out, heading left, then right, then finding a door labeled TPC.
The Platinum Club. Carl had given her the code, and she punched the four numbers in.
With a pneumatic release, the door popped open an inch and she walked into the cool room, her head absolutely pounding now.
As she turned around to close the door (“The room must remain temperature controlled at all times,” Carl had warned her), the skin at the nape of her neck began to tingle. She turned to look at the room. A wide square, the walls were covered floor to ceiling with wine bottles on their sides, necks facing her. Nothing was labeled.
How would she find the wines Carl mentioned?
Peering in the dim light, she browsed the wall like a library shelf. As her vision adjusted, she saw there was an organization system. Australia, California, Chile, Argentina, and ah—France.
The French wine took an entire wall that turned out of the room. Another hallway? Just how big was this wine cellar? Lilah continued to the end of the room, finding her hunch was right. Another hallway that led to what appeared to be a second room.
God, her head was killing her. Leaning against a thick oak table, the kind of distressed wood that was popular in home decorating magazines and big enough to seat sixteen people, Lilah took a few deep breaths. This job was so out of her realm of understanding. This was a world of human beings that she didn’t know existed. Wealth on top of power, all in a single club that didn’t exist. The very real paycheck was proof it did, though.
The tingling spread to her shoulders, her arms, down to her fingertips and the backs of her knees as she opened her eyes.
She was not alone.
“Hello?” she called out.
Movement. Someone was in here with her. But they said nothing back.
And then Gavin Stanton appeared at the opening to the second room, his blue eyes glowing in the dim light.
“Lilah,” he said.
“Oh no,” Lilah answered, her body throbbing like her head. “Mr. Stanton, we really shouldn’t be in here alone—”
“I know we shouldn’t,” he said softly. He was so tall, with broad shoulders and a rhythm to the way he walked, shoulders and hips moving so gracefully and with power. Like a big game lion.
Before she could open her mouth to protest, he was an arm’s length away, heat radiating off him like a sauna. She was warm. Oh, so warm.
And wet.
All Lilah could hear was the sound of their breath, joining in the air, off beat and full of anticipation. Her heels made her nearly the same height, their eyes evenly matched.
“I...I’m not supposed to do this with members,” she said dumbly. Her body screamed for his touch, head and clit throbbing in unison, every cell of her skin crying out to be caressed, stroked, laved and released.
“I’ll resign my membership immediately,” he said, and then he kissed her like he had every right to do so.
Lilah inhaled sharply with surprise, the pleasure of his lips on her, his hands sinking into her hair and pulling at the clip at the base of her neck. His touch mixed with the scent of stone and man. Gavin’s mouth was greedy, tongue sweeping through her, teeth nipping at her lips, her own kiss back lost in the waves of desire he poured out through his fevered attention.
Arms like steel bands wrapped around her waist and shoulders, pulling her tight against him, his heat burning her. Passion flared like a roaring fire between them, her own hands seeking refuge in the thick cloth of his suit jacket, digging underneath to find his shirt, pulling it out of his waistline to touch him. Feel him. Connect her palm with his tanned skin.
His hand grasped her breast, thumb teasing the nipple, making her groan without control. What was she doing? She could lose her job! She’d already lost her mind; she couldn’t afford to lose anything else.
Lilah knew she should stop him. She knew this was against the rules. The people-pleaser in her, the good little do-bee, fought with the part of her that wanted Gavin inside her, shoved up against the stone wall, his mouth everywhere at once, cock pounding her to match the throb in her head.
That good little do-bee Lilah was long done as Gavin ripped open the sash of her wrap dress and she stood before him wearing nothing but the blood-red corset, garters, a red thong, and heels.
Cold air struck the wave of exposed, flushed flesh, and she shivered, less from the chill and more from the look in Gavin’s eyes.
She’d never seen a man so hungry for her.
So wild.
Like an animal.
All restraint disappeared when she looked at those eyes, full of need for her. Only her. Words that shouldn’t be in her head filled her thoughts as his hands worshipped her skin, mouth suckling a spot in the hollow of her throat, his hips pressing against her thigh as he bent to taste her.
“You are so luscious,” he whispered, the words stripping layer after layer from her rational mind.
Mine, the voice inside her said. You’re mine, Lilah. It was Gavin�
�s voice, and as she opened her mouth to ask why she could hear him without sound, his lips touched hers and ended the impulse to ask.
Her hands reached for his belt buckle, opening the leather band with such skill it felt unnatural, as if she were drawing on some unknown force within that guided her. His pants pooled at their feet and she reached up for his shirt, the buttons opening as if she willed it. Still kissing her, he stripped out of his own clothes, the thick hardness of his erection nudging her belly, making her blossom inside. She wasn’t just wet and eager to have him enter her.
She would die if he didn’t.
He yanked at the laces of her corset; Lilah heard a dim popping sound and vaguely wondered if she shouldn’t ask him to be more careful, but the rough pull of the fabric separating, leaving her naked from the waist up, made the question pointless.
“My God,” he said in a quiet voice that rumbled through the room with such deep vibration she marveled that the wine bottles didn’t rattle against each other. “You’re more stunning than I’d dreamed.” His hands roamed the curves of her body like he was memorizing them.
“You’ve dreamed of me?” Lilah asked, finding her voice. Or had she? Was her mouth moving?
“For longer than you could possibly imagine,” he said as his body descended on hers.
The scent of her embedded itself in each neuron in his brain, in every pore of his skin, in all the bones in his body. Lilah tasted like sugar and beeswax, her nipples pliant and tender, like licking a rose petal with the morning dew clinging in the sunshine.
He knew this woman. Her mind communicated with his on some primal level, her voice in his head as her thigh was clenched in his palm, his knee helping to spread her legs. As he caressed her hip he tore the thong away, her little bleating sound of surprise making his cock stand up higher. Harder.
More.
She was timeless, a goddess in the flesh before him, the dim light obscuring her divinity. Gavin smelled the fear and the want in her, the hesitation dissipating like a dandelion gone to seed, and as he suckled one breast he pulled back and blew gently on the tender skin.