Genie

by Kitty French

  ‘I might lose it.’ He stretched his forearm out a little further and turned it over, wrist side up, his eyes locked on hers. ‘I don’t want to lose it.’

  Genie clicked the pen open and stepped closer to him. She needed to be closer still. It crossed her mind that he could just as easily write it on his own arm, but then she also knew that his phone was probably fully juiced up and chances were he wouldn’t have lost a slip of paper either.

  He was flirting with her, testing out her boundaries like kids playing chicken to discern who was the leader of the pack. She knew the rules, but she was no chicken herself and she knew how to bend them. Stepping so close that she could feel his body heat, she closed her fingers around his wrist to hold his arm steady. He was warm and vital, and she could feel his steady pulse beating beneath her fingertips.

  How could he be iron hard to the touch, yet his skin felt like silk? And why did this whole thing feel so inappropriately intimate? She wasn’t even looking at him, but his breath warmed her ear as the nib started to roll gracefully across the golden expanse of his arm. They both watched as the ink marked his skin, a swirled tattoo branding him with her details.

  ‘Is now a good time to tell you it’s permanent ink?’ she said as she wrote, hyper aware that her hip had brushed his crotch.

  ‘Good,’ he breathed. ‘Is now a good time to tell you I want to fuck you tonight?’

  Genie gasped softly, glad to have finished writing because his words had just shut her brain down. She tilted her head up to look at him, and found him waiting for her with that cocky hint of a half smile on his lips again, but his dark eyes told her he wasn’t joking.

  ‘Are you always this forward?’ she asked, aware that her fingers were still curved around his wrist. She let her thumb circle slowly over his pulse. He could try to assert lazy authority with his words as much as he liked, but his quickened pulse told Genie all she needed to know. She was in charge here. And then he reached out and brushed the back of his warm fingers fleetingly across her cheekbone, and, easy as that, he was back in the driving seat.

  He tucked an errant lock of her hair behind her ear. ‘Yes.’

  Time seemed suspended, matrix style, as Genie caught her breath and stared at him. He really was outlandishly beautiful. Just like his clothes, his dark hair was the antithesis of business smart, too long and waving over his forehead and collar. The dark shadow of stubble couldn’t hide his strong jaw, and her fingers itched to feel it. Was it fresh and spiky, the kind of stubble that left its mark on the tender skin of a woman’s inner thighs? Or was it a few days old and as silken as the skin of his forearms?

  The slight indentation in his nose spoke of a bar brawl, a theory backed up by the fine hairline scar that tracked across his cheekbone. What had he fought over? A woman, maybe? Was he a man who’d fight to defend his girl’s honour? Instinct told her yes. She needed to double check that business card of his to make sure it didn’t actually say Clark Kent, because despite the lack of lycra, he was already half-way to smouldering superhero right here in the auditorium.

  Kiss me… the single thought filled her head so urgently that she wondered if he could see it running like ticker tape across her eyes.

  Put your mouth on my mouth, Abel Kingdom.

  Her eyes dropped to his lips, parted just enough to slide her tongue in and taste him. She stepped against him when his hand slid around the back of her neck, drawing her head to his. Her eyelids closed as she offered him her mouth, and a shiver of pleasure rippled down her spine as the warmth of his breath mingled with hers. An even stronger shudder of frustration ran through her body when he turned his head a fraction and let his lips linger against her cheek rather than her mouth.

  ‘Tonight,’ he murmured, stroking the back of her neck as he kissed her jaw before turning and leaving through the revolving door without glancing back.

  Genie watched him, touching her fingers against her cheek in shock. On the surface, she’d accepted his dinner invitation to find out more about his business with her uncle. But scratch that surface and another reason was now written as clearly as her number on his arm. She’d said yes because she wanted Abel Kingdom’s kiss, and a whole lot more besides.

  Abel waited until he was a decent distance from the theatre and pulled his mobile out of his pocket. He keyed the number from his arm into it as he walked, his mind on his meeting with Davey Divine.

  Much as the older guy had tried to hide his desperation, it had been abundantly clear that he needed to offload the theatre quickly. Abel wanted it. He wanted it, but not at the price that Davey Divine was asking for it.

  Listening to the man speak, it had become obvious that there was only one real fly in the ointment, and as was so often the case, it was sentiment. The theatre had been in the Divine family for generations and Davey loved the place, but more worryingly, he’d spoken of how devastated his beloved niece would be if he sold up. It was a delicate situation that demanded careful negotiation, and as Abel’s mind had scrabbled for the right tack the door had flown open and the girl in question had slammed into the office like a small hurricane. This was Divine’s niece? This slender, studious looking girl? He’d sized her up, the hint of her curves beneath her clothes, her snatched back hair, her face bare of any trace of make-up. She’d seemed somehow out of place amongst the gloss and glitz of theatre-land, too pure and real for her heart to belong there. Abel’s sharp mind had found the tack it needed. If this slip of a girl was all that stood in the way of the deal, then it was as good as signed, sealed and delivered already.

  It was only when he’d met her for a second time that he’d seen the glint of steel behind her clear green eyes, and the proud set of determination to her delicate jaw. Good. He didn’t enjoy taking candy from babies. He much preferred a challenge, the clash of swords, the blood of battle before victory, because he always, always won.

  Had he come on too strong? Probably. Had he planned on it? Hell, no. Is now a good time to tell you I want to fuck you tonight? The words should have stayed in his goddamn head, he knew better than to play his hand too early. It made her a much more formidable adversary, knowing that she could affect him like this. Almost deadly. He wanted her body and her theatre, but he feared he needed to have them in the opposite order.

  Chapter Four

  He still didn’t know who she was. It wasn’t unusual: her stage persona required so much make-up and embellishment that few people made the real life connection instantly. Genie sensed that Abel Kingdom hadn’t slotted the pieces together, and she was perfectly happy for it to stay that way, at least until she found out the precise nature of his business with her uncle.

  She’d tried unsuccessfully to winkle information from Davey earlier in the afternoon, but he’d clammed up tighter than an oyster being ransacked for its pearl. She’d made the spot decision not to tell him about her dinner meeting with Abel Kingdom, even though keeping secrets from him left her feeling shoddy and underhand. She wasn’t accustomed to there being anything but easy honesty between herself and her uncle, and she could only pray that she was doing the right thing. She uneasily squared it with herself by thinking of it as protecting him, although God knew what from. Abel Kingdom didn’t seem like a loan shark trying to extract debt by force, but there was an undeniably ruthless edge to him that had her watchful all the same.

  Is now a good time to tell you I want to fuck you tonight?

  Any man with the balls to drop that into an opening conversation with a stranger needed watching closely.

  And that was another reason to keep an eye on him. He didn’t feel like a stranger, even though she knew nothing of him aside from his name and that he felt like silk. He was different from any man she’d ever met before. It wasn’t just his physical presence, even though he stood a good head taller than she was. And it wasn’t just his beauty, or the edge of arrogance threaded through his words. It was all of that and more. He radiated danger, and for some unfathomable reason Genie found that his sexiest tra
it of all.

  She stilled for a second on the steps of the swish old hotel Abel’s text had suggested they meet at, taking a moment to prepare herself. She could do this. She could do this. Painting a faux confident smile on her face, she stepped up towards the waiting doorman and passed through the glass doors into the marble vestibule. She was a few minutes early, deliberately so in order to be there before him. If she was going to lay a honey trap, she needed to be in complete control from the moment they met.

  Abel sat at the sweeping bar, nursing a scotch between his hands. People milled around him, businessmen and lovers making the most of a quiet Sunday evening before the grind of a new week. Being back in London didn’t suit him. He missed the wide skies and open spaces of home, not to mention the warmth of both the sunshine and the people who’d welcomed him as one of their own.

  All of his memories of London were bad ones. Would tonight be more pleasurable, perhaps? It was business on one level, but then… it hadn’t been business on his mind when he’d thought of her earlier as he’d showered, and again as he’d dressed. He didn’t even know her fucking name, yet he was thinking about fucking her and making her forget it.

  He watched in the bevelled mirrors behind the bar as a woman came in, pausing in the doorway to sweep her gaze around the room.

  His body reacted before his head had time to, alerting him like an early warning system. She looked a world away from the fresh-faced girl he’d propositioned that morning. Gone were the jeans and messy hair, replaced with a midnight blue silk dress that wrapped around her body and knotted on her hip in a way that suggested one good tug on those trailing ties and the whole thing might fall off. It was almost demure, aside from the fact that it highlighted the curve of her waist and the swell of her breasts in a way that told the world that beneath that dress, the woman was pure fucking dynamite.

  He found himself breathing in sharply as her gaze finally came to rest on him, and he slid to his feet as she moved across the room. He was a man, which made him aware than every other man in the room had noticed her too with varying degrees of obviousness. This morning she’d looked like a college student. This evening she looked like a highly fuckable business executive. She was a chameleon, and it only served to make her all the more intriguing.

  ‘Abel,’ she said, and hearing his name on her lips for the first time made him want to hear her say it again when he was buried balls deep inside her.

  ‘You look incredible,’ he murmured, intoxicated by the sweet, clean scent of her as he dipped his head to brush a kiss across her cheek.

  She drew back her head a little and looked at him with those incredible clear green eyes. ‘I have a mouth. Kiss it.’

  Did she actually just fucking say what he thought she said? Shock registered first, then a bolt of lust that shot straight to his cock.

  ‘Christ all-fucking-mighty,’ he ground out, pulling her against him, one hand clamped around the nape of her neck, the other sliding over her silk-encased ass. He moulded her to him and lowered his head, noting with satisfaction the momentary flare of apprehension that registered in her eyes a second before his lips touched hers.

  Kissing someone for the first time generally involved a degree of anticipation and build up. Not this time. He took her mouth hard and heavy, licking his tongue over hers when she opened up for him. Seriously, the girl had him so hot that if he could have rucked that dress up around her hips and screwed her bent over the nearest bar stool, he would have. A low sexual sound of appreciation drifted from her mouth into his, an involuntary reaction to a kiss that came out of nowhere and melted your bones. It was the French kiss of lovers on Parisian street corners: intense, deep, and open mouthed; drenched in sexual potential. He bit down on the softness of her bottom lip when she wrapped her arms around him, her fingernails raking over the skin at the nape of his neck.

  He held her ass hard against him as he spoke to her softly, a lethal whisper, his mouth now pressed to her ear.

  ‘Say something like that to me in public again and it won’t be my tongue in your mouth. It’ll be my cock.’

  Her sharp intake of breath gratified him. She’d deliberately set out to shock him, and to give her her dues, she’d caught him off guard for a few seconds back there.

  ‘I have a mouth. Kiss it.’ Fuck, he’d have been proud of that line himself. He was already enjoying the evening even more than he’d hoped.

  Genie reeled as Abel set her back down on her feet. Hers had been a line designed to show him that she was no pushover, but his kiss and his comeback had shown her in no uncertain terms that she was playing the game with a master.

  Right. Regroup required. She smoothed her hands down her dress and then looked up at him with a sweet smile. ‘Is that the usual way to greet your date in Australia?’

  ‘Only dates with a smart mouth.’

  Abel’s gaze dropped to her lips, and she traced the tip of her tongue slowly across her top lip for his benefit. Or to be more precise, for his downfall.

  ‘You don’t like my mouth?’

  ‘I liked kissing it just fine.’ He looked at her mouth for a few long seconds, as if he were about to do it again.

  Genie nodded. ‘That’s good, Abel, because if you’re really nice to me tonight, I might let you do it again later.’ Quite how such brave words were leaving her mouth she had no clue, because inside she felt anything but brave. ‘Shall we eat?’

  Abel folded his menu and handed it to the waiter after they’d ordered. ‘So. What does the G stand for?’

  Genie had expected the question to come up.

  ‘G?’

  ‘You still haven’t told me your name. Your uncle called you G. What is it? Gina? Gayle?’ He shrugged. ‘Gert?’

  She laughed lightly, affecting nonchalance. ‘It’s Gigi, but most people just call me G.’ It wasn’t really a lie. Gigi had been her childhood nickname, even if it wasn’t technically her given name.

  ‘Gigi.’ Abel said it as if he were testing it, and his face said he wasn’t especially impressed. ‘Sounds more like a circus horse than a woman to me.’

  Genie almost spat her wine back into her glass. ‘I’m sorry?’

  If he didn’t like Gigi, he was going to be even less impressed with Genie.

  He shrugged, thoroughly unfazed by her shock. ‘No offence.’

  She placed her wine glass down on the table. ‘Do you think you could at least pretend to be polite?’

  ‘It doesn’t mean I like you any less because I don’t like your name,’ he said. ‘I’ll just think of something else to call you.’

  Genie opened her mouth to answer him and then closed it again as the waiter reappeared with their starters. She was actually quite glad of the interruption, because the idea of him inventing his own private name for her did weird things to her insides.

  The food was every bit as glamorous and grand as the hotel, and delicious enough to stall their conversation in order to appreciate it fully. She looked up as Abel reached for the chilled Sauvignon.

  ‘More wine… red?’

  She glanced at the white wine in confusion. ‘Red?’

  ‘A potential nickname. Assuming you are actually a redhead?’ He topped up her glass. ‘Actually, no. Forget it. It doesn’t suit you anyway.’

  Ouch. This guy had a lot to learn about charm.

  ‘My hair colour doesn’t suit me?’

  ‘Your hair colour suits you just fine,’ he said. ‘But the nickname doesn’t.’

  ‘I’m almost afraid to ask why not,’ she muttered. This was becoming less like a conversation and more like a verbal assault course.

  Her eyes were drawn to his hands as he picked up his wine glass. Strong, tanned and sure, the impossibly delicate crystal he held looked in dire danger.

  ‘It’s too hard. Too factual. Too… newsreader.’

  ‘I could be a newsreader if I wanted to,’ she shot back, nettled by his assumption.

  ‘No way,’ he laughed lightly. ‘You’d be too much of
a distraction.’

  It was a compliment of sorts, even if not of the usual sort.

  Their main courses arrived, stalling conversation for a second time; thick, pink lamb rump for Abel, coral bright salmon in a delicate watercress sauce for Genie.

  ‘Tell me more about what you do, Abel,’ Genie said, sipping her wine and glancing at him casually over the rim of her glass. ‘Is it just the one gym you have, or a whole chain of them?’ She needed to get him talking about his business, steer the conversation around to the nature of his interest in her uncle.

  He sliced his lamb through and looked at her across the table.

  ‘I’m not fond of the word chain, but I guess it works. Seventeen and counting.’

  Genie’s eyes widened. ‘Wow. All in Australia?’

  ‘For now… Bunny.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Bunny. As in Jessica Rabbit.’ He placed his knife and fork down as he regarded her across the table. ‘Red hair. Ivory skin. And…’ his voice trailed off and his eyes flickered briefly down her body. ‘Curves.’

  ‘Do I have a say in this?’ she said. In truth, she was a little disappointed in him. It seemed a lazy comparison, especially given her occupation, even if he wasn’t yet aware of it.

  ‘No. But don’t worry, it won’t be Jessica. I’m looking for something more… personal.’

  Glad as she was to hear that ‘Jessica’ was off the menu, Genie didn’t want to spend the evening talking about nicknames. She toyed with the stem of her wine glass.

  ‘Have you always worked for yourself?’

  ‘Pretty much.’ He shrugged unapologetically. ‘I don’t get along well with other people telling me what to do.’

  Well, that came as a surprise to no one. ‘You didn’t seem to mind back in the bar earlier.’

  Abel’s dark eyes glittered. ‘I made an exception to my rule for you.’

  ‘Thank you… I think.’

  ‘No need. The pleasure was all mine.’