by Gigi Moore
He sneered now at the memory of the family pictures in Aura’s house, many of the tall, dark-haired brothers, so alike in their appearances that they almost looked like twins. He had yet another reason to add to a long, growing list for hating Thayne and Cade Malloy. Even growing up without their parents, they’d had each other to turn to in times of need.
Prentice’s parents had been alive and well to raise him, but they might as well not have been for all the attention they’d paid him. In their emotional absence, who had he had to turn to? Not a brother or even a sister, no. He’d had no one. He’d had to make do and make it through the daily bullying and derogatory and snide remarks all by his lonesome. No big brother to run to for protection or sympathy, no one.
He stared down at the pictures he’d taken from the house, along with some other necessary items and souvenirs. He’d taken care not to procure any pictures that had been on obvious display or items that would be easily missed. He didn’t want to bring too much attention to the manner of Aura’s death and have the police thinking that some sort of foul play had occurred, like a burglar killing her in the commission of his crime. The fewer people that looked into her death the better.
Prentice keyed the ignition to his rental with a sense of loss. Sure he had hated being here in this quiet, sleepy town waiting and seeing the comings and goings of Aura’s concerned country-bumpkin neighbors and friends. Yet, there was a certain amount of comfort and familiarity being here, as if a part of him had come home.
Of course this was a ridiculous thought. When would he ever have the need or desire to call some place like Atoka County home?
Battling with that old woman, getting inside her head and so close to her emotions and past, had gotten to him a bit. That was a major drawback of invading and linking to another’s mind, especially a gifted person’s mind. He invariably came away from the experience owning some of his prey’s attributes and feelings, at least for a little while. He didn’t need that sort of baggage to weigh him down or interfere with his mission. He especially didn’t need any of Aura’s sentimentality echoing in his consciousness, and the old woman had had a sappy streak as wide as the Grand Canyon where her nephews were concerned. No thank you to that.
Once Prentice got on I-44 West, the drive to Oklahoma City began to clear all the cobwebs from his mind. The almost three-hour ride proved the perfect diversion, giving him something else to think about besides Aura and her love for her nephews. He didn’t want to think about her loss or theirs. Whatever any of them got, they deserved it for getting in his way.
After almost three hours on the road, Prentice prepared himself to unwind in a nice urban environment where he might find the right kind of entertainment for the night.
Though he’d been staying at the upscale Colcord Hotel that housed the New York City-style XO Lounge on the lower level, he preferred the VIP ambiance of the Skkybar Ultra Lounge just a hop and a skip away on Mickey Mantle Drive in Bricktown. He’d scoped a few young women at the latter since his arrival in Oklahoma, and he knew they scoped him. He was sure he could get with any one of them should he want to. He wanted and needed that sort of company tonight. He needed to get his mind off of Aura and her beloved nephews and get his head back in the game. Sex magick had always done the trick for him. He didn’t require a gifted female to get what he needed, though gifted would always be far better than not gifted. Just the typical energy generated during a sexual encounter would supplement and ignite his power, and Prentice wasn’t above mingling with the commonplace masses to get what he needed.
With his destination set, Prentice steered his rental through the downtown area in Bricktown, the bright lights and buzz of the city beginning to reenergize him as he pulled up to the club, got out, and turned over his keys to the valet.
“Evening, Mr. Teague.”
“Good evening.” Prentice pressed a fifty-dollar bill into the young, uniformed man’s hand and watched his face light up.
“Thank you, sir. Have a good night!”
“I plan to.” He hoped the girl he had seen his first night in the city was here tonight. A curvy, long-legged brunette, she had caught his eye right off, reminding him of the guidance counselor from his high school who had had the misfortune of rebuffing him.
He planned to see if the brunette could at all ease the distaste left behind by that bitter pill, one of several he’d had to swallow as a youth.
After surreptitiously stalking her these last few days, Prentice figured the brunette should be sufficiently softened up for him to move in for the kill.
He hadn’t had to be predatory with Ms. Pfiefer. She had come on to him, extolling all his tender virtues, ensuring him that they weren’t a weakness, that things weren’t as bad as they seemed and would only get better for him. When he’d succumbed to her older-woman charms and reciprocated her feelings, she’d backed off, his affection evidently too pure and real for her conformist, puritanical, unimaginative sensibilities.
Meeting Ms. Pfiefer had been one of the only times when Prentice had been grateful to his worthless parents for sending him to public school. She had been the only bright spot in his high school existence, a veritable shining star guiding him through the thorny teen gauntlet of harassment, peer pressure, and the vicious, clique-y mentality of his schoolmates.
In the end, however, even she had turned out to be just another fraud, pretending to care, feigning nobility she just did not have.
He had been her pet, a project to help her feel good about herself, nothing more. He’d realized this when he’d gleaned her thoughts during one of their counseling sessions and read what she really thought of him. She considered him a child, a sad little boy unworthy of her maturity and intelligence.
Prentice had showed her just like he had showed that slut tease Kaitlyn.
He’d built up his courage for a year before finally asking Kaitlyn to be his Valentine in junior high. She’d cruelly laughed in his face as if he weren’t good enough for her attention.
Kaitlyn had been something of a test project to Prentice. He had only been thirteen, after all, just coming into the powers that would make him smart and valuable enough to oversee his own company and run the company that his parents had built from the ground up. His gifts had been nowhere near at the level of what he had used on his parents, in fact just a fraction. He’d had enough power, however, to show Kaitlyn who was boss and that she shouldn’t toy with his feelings.
Her ills and injuries had been child’s play compared to what Prentice had done to Ms. Pfiefer. She had earned what his worst had been at the time, suffering beneath the power of his sixteen-year-old angst and righteous indignation. He hadn’t killed her, but he’d made it so that she never counseled or taught another student again. Traumatic brain injury was a bitch.
Prentice spent the first half hour after his arrival at the bar fending off pretty but unfit prospects. Only one girl remained on his mind, and she didn’t seem to be in sight.
Perhaps she had connected with one of the club’s many viable males in the VIP Room. It would serve him right for sitting on his urges so long and not even acquiring the woman’s name for future reference. He had specifically kept his distance and not even read her so as not to ruin the fantasy before time. The longer she maintained her mystique, the more she distinguished herself as a precious commodity to him. After he got to know her, after all, the novelty would vanish and she would just be another woman he decided to grace with his sexual prowess.
Prentice gave it an hour before his patience started to wear thin—which was a rare occurrence since he had an abundance of patience and self-control—and he was ready to call it a night. Perhaps a night in his hotel room enmeshed in more preparation and battle plans would pacify his nervous energy.
He had just finished his second drink when the brunette finally showed up, entering the club surrounded by a few other beauties, probably her friends enjoying a girls’ night out. He, however, had eyes only for her.
She r
emained as pretty as he remembered, wavy, dark hair glossy beneath the strobe lights of the club, striking blue eyes flashing with youthful exuberance.
He realized now that her resemblance to Ms. Pfiefer was superficial at best, probably just attributable to her similar coloring, shape, and size. It still remained to be seen whether she had been worth the wait at all.
Prentice watched as the four young ladies traversed the club floor, easily finding places at the crowded bar beneath the watchful eyes of several male patrons who made room for them.
A couple of the brave but impulsive of the men jumped the women as soon as they settled in, offering to buy them drinks and trying to strike up conversations to no avail.
Amateurs, Prentice thought.
He read a few of the other men who hung back, deciding there would be no competition coming from those quarters, either.
Prentice stayed where he sat at the end of the bar, resolving to make contact and grace her with his presence from a distance. He stared at her profile, enjoying the sight of her high cheekbones, the play of muscles in her throat and jaw as she laughed at something one of her friends said.
Prentice reached out to her, allowing his thoughts to leach into her mind and explore. She was older than he had first pegged her, over thirty when he had thought her in her very early twenties. Like Ms. Pfiefer, she looked good for her age. He hoped she was more intelligent than his former guidance counselor and that she could recognize a good thing when she saw it.
She frowned and turned toward him, meeting his gaze.
He smiled, holding up his fresh drink. He had no intentions of downing any of it. He had reached his limit and wanted to keep a clear head. The drink was just for show.
Prentice arched a brow as if he already knew she was taken with his looks. He was, after all, eye-catching, and he knew it. He made sure he always looked good, playing up his most prominent features with an expensive and intense dietary, grooming, and exercise regimen. He of course had a nutritionist and personal trainer. He may have been small, but his body remained taut, strong, and well delineated—aesthetically pleasing yet maximally functional.
How could any woman resist what he had to offer—confidence, looks, and money all in one package? They couldn’t, and neither could his brunette—Amy Sandowski, he’d discovered—who now separated herself from the herd to make her way over to his end of the bar.
“I’ve been seeing you in here for several nights now,” she opened.
“And you’ve been purposely depriving me of your company all that time? Tsk, tsk.” He almost slipped and said her name. The several days of surveillance must have been starting to catch up with him. Also, the act of absorbing powers from another had the added drawback of draining his own powers. It was a weird paradox to which he still found himself adapting, the price he had to pay for making the utmost use of his gifts.
“You intimidate me,” she confessed.
He lifted a brow, placing a hand on his chest. “Moi? I assure you it was never my intention to do anything of the sort.”
“Maybe not but…” She shook her head, released a breath, and gave him a bewildered, shy smile. “It’s the way you look at me.”
“And how is that?” He knew exactly how he looked at her. He had perfected the imposing, predatory expression over the years during his continuing self-improvement stage.
When one had his stature, one had to learn many offensive mechanisms to keep away the sharks.
“Like you…want to devour me.”
“That’s probably because I do.” He licked his lips in a subtle show of seduction, nothing overdone or dirty-old-man lecherous for which some men on the prowl were famous. “Every single inch of you.”
She quivered at his cultured, deep whisper.
That voice never failed.
He proffered his hand. “Dance with me.” It wasn’t a request, and she expectedly put her ringless left hand in his to follow him on the teeming dance floor.
The DJ spun a moderately paced pop song, giving Prentice the opportunity to draw her close as he rocked back and forth to the smooth beat. “Your name.”
“Amy.”
Good. She didn’t give a club name as some of these game-playing women did, and she didn’t give her last name, which suggested to him she knew the score. This wasn’t about establishing any bonds of permanence. This was just about physical pleasure, mostly his.
“And yours?”
“Prentice.”
“I’ve never met a Prentice before.”
“That’s because I’m one of a kind.”
She chuckled, but he knew that she liked his aplomb since he had caught the murmur of approval wafting to him from her brain waves.
Amy wanted him. He knew this. Even without the benefit of his talents, he could tell this by the way she tilted her body toward him, the way her eyes dilated, the way her breath caught in her chest when he touched her.
Prentice heard and saw it all and intended to take full advantage.
When the DJ segued the current song into a popular reggae cut, the crowd exploded with cheers of approval as everyone began to bump and grind their hips to the hard-driving, feral beat.
Prentice curved an arm around Amy’s waist and drew her close, not above taking advantage of the situation and giving her a sample of what she would be getting later on in his hotel room.
He was more than aroused, strategically lining up his cock with her hot slit as he rolled his hips.
She groaned and bit her bottom lip, throwing her head back as she arched her body toward his.
Prentice felt the energy inside him churn and shift but kept a tight rein on it. This wasn’t the time or the place to unleash the power of which he remained capable.
Self-control and patience had served him well thus far. There was no need to abandon either.
Amy made it difficult to stick to this approach, however, when she suggestively ground her center against his and got up on her toes to rub her breasts against his chest.
Prentice bent his head as she leaned forward.
“Let’s go somewhere,” she whispered.
He should have been put off by her aggressive forwardness, but nothing about modern women surprised him anymore. He didn’t miss a beat as he went with the flow and said, “I’m staying at the Colcord.”
“Ritzy digs,” she said, obviously impressed.
“I like my creature comforts.”
She chuckled at the understatement, and Prentice cupped her elbow. “Shall we?”
“We shall.”
Prentice watched her return to her girlfriends to inform them that she was leaving and point in his direction.
He grinned and wiggled his fingers at the three women. It didn’t matter if they remembered him or not. He had nothing to hide and didn’t plan on doing anything to their friend from which she wouldn’t recover. However, if things got out of control and anything untoward did happen to Amy, Prentice knew that he could easily handle the situation to steer any resulting investigation away from himself.
Once Amy returned from coat check with a stylish black leather jacket, Prentice escorted her toward the exit, effortlessly cutting a path through the writhing bodies on the floor and enjoying the infectious passion of the music and the people dancing to it.
They made it outside into the pleasantly cool night, and Prentice turned his ticket over to the valet, a different one from the one that had taken care of him earlier.
When the valet returned his car and keys, Prentice gave him the requisite fifty then helped Amy into the passenger seat before firmly shutting the door.
“Are you here on business?” Amy asked once he got into the car and belted himself in.
Prentice grinned, giving Amy points for being observant. “Yes, I am.”
“What type?”
She disappointed him with her inquisitiveness. He thought she knew the score.
“I’m in finance,” he said tersely and started the car.
A
my seemed to have gotten the message as he drove the short distance to the Colcord in silence, giving him an opportunity to think about what he wanted to do tonight to prepare for tomorrow.
He could have looked at this assignation as all fun, but everything he did had a higher purpose and led to his ultimate goal. Certainly, he would have fun in the bargain, but that was not his final objective.
Prentice went through the tedious rigmarole of leaving his car with the hotel’s valet service, generously tipping the gentleman before getting his ticket. He put his hand under Amy’s elbow and led her into the lavish marble and art deco lobby of the hotel, stopping at the desk to check for any messages. Getting none, he headed for the elevator.
Amy seemed to have shut down totally, and Prentice fleetingly wondered if he would have to deal with a bout of female pique once they got to the room.
He did not look forward to that, moreover would not tolerate it.
Prentice entered her mind to get a feel for her mood, picking up on her nervousness and doubts at her ability to please such a formidable and powerful man as Prentice. She harbored no anger toward him.
Good, he thought. She was exactly in the state of mind he wanted her—insecure, submissive, and soon to be at his mercy.
Prentice let Amy into the room in front of him, flicking on the overhead light as he loosened his tie and draped it over the back of one of the suite’s chairs. He took off his designer jacket, carefully folding it and placing it on the back of the chair with his tie while he watched Amy explore the room.
When she finally paused in front of the king-sized bed he smiled and asked, “Do you like what you see so far?”
“I’ve liked what I’ve seen ever since I laid eyes on you.”
He admired her frankness and her contradictions.
One minute she was retiring and uneasy, the next she was a bold, confident flirt secure in her abilities to seduce the likes of Prentice Teague.
He thought he might give this one the royal treatment instead of the brush-off after. Maybe he would let her stay behind while he took care of his business in Atoka. It would be nice to come back to his hotel room knowing she would be there, willing and able to service him.