As if on cue, Charming descended the stairs, looking unruffled and polished as ever.
“I didn’t mean to cause a commotion,” I said, drawing away her stare. “This is a lovely event, one of the best I’ve ever attended. And your gown is just stunning. I bet that beading was all hand sewn.”
She straightened under the compliments and was about to reply when Charming arrived at my side. “Madam,” he said ultra smoothly. “Please allow me to pay for the broken glass.”
“That isn’t necessary. Accidents happen.”
He grinned, showing off his perfect white teeth. “Well, then allow me to make a second donation this evening. Would you care to lead the way?”
He held out his arm and she all but tripped, wrapping her wrist and arm around him. They began to walk away toward the donation table when he glanced over his shoulder. “Sister, dear,” he said, his voice sickeningly sweet. “Don’t go anywhere just yet.”
And that was my cue to leave.
I dug my coat check ticket out of my clutch and turned it in, wondering after several minutes if the guy decided to go to the store and buy me a new one because it took so long for him to bring it back. When he did arrive, I snatched it out of his hand and didn’t bother to put it on but went out the great double doors and onto the porch (if you could even call it that. It was bigger than my entire apartment).
On my way to the stairs, I wondered how long the valet would take to find my Jeep.
Charming appeared out of nowhere, taking me by the elbow and pulling me around. “Where do you think you’re going?” he growled.
“Away from you.”
Someone passed by and glanced at us. Charming dropped my arm and smiled. “You shouldn’t be out here without your coat. You’ll catch a cold.” He took my coat and held it out like any gentleman would.
The passerby smiled and moved out of earshot.
“Wouldn’t want you to die,” Charming intoned when I slipped my arms into the sleeves.
“Gee, how thoughtful of you to be concerned,” I said dryly.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he said low.
“I’m here for charity,” I said innocently.
“What’s the cause and how much did you donate?” he asked, rocking back on his heels and slipping his hands into his slacks.
Even when he was acting like a pompous ass, he looked like a perfect Ken doll. Idiot.
“It’s called the save-an-innocent-woman fund. And thankfully, screwing up your plans didn’t cost me a thing.”
“You can show up here tonight, try and make me look like an idiot, ruin my chance of getting to know the Target—”
“Her name is Rosalyn,” I interjected.
He talked right over me.
“But there is always tomorrow. And the next day. I’m not going to give up.”
“I told her you were gay.”
That got his attention.
He stood there for long moments, his perfect jaw practically unhinged from his face. “You did what?” he finally asked, shocked.
“I admit, you’re good. You managed to impress her already. I had to do something to lessen the blow of that charm that seems to work on everyone but me.”
The look—the anger—that crossed his face made me take a step back. Again, I wondered if I was acting like a fool by baiting the wrong man.
I certainly didn’t stand around and wait to see what he would do. I rushed down the stairs and gave my ticket to the valet and prayed he would hurry the hell up and that my Jeep wasn’t parked in the nosebleed section of this property.
The valet went off in search of my car and then I was alone. Outside. In the dark.
“She couldn’t possibly have believed you,” he said from behind. His voice was low and calm. Something about that made that feeling in my stomach start up all over again. Full force.
I looked over my shoulder, tossing my curls, and I moved my head. I might feel jumbled up on the inside, but damned if I would show it. “Why is that? All I am is a very concerned sister about her extremely charming brother who just doesn’t understand the effect he has on the opposite sex.” I put my hand on my hip. “Why wouldn’t she believe me?”
His chin dropped down and he pinned me with an aggressive green gaze. The muscles in the side of his jaw worked and I glanced around for the valet. He was nowhere in sight.
Charming’s perfectly polished black dress shoes made a hollow sound when he stepped forward. I turned fully around to face him, standing my ground.
I pretended not to notice the way my knees began to shake as he prowled toward me.
“The valet is going to be right back.” I reminded him we weren’t alone.
He said nothing, just took another step closer, his eyes not once leaving my face.
“Someone could come out here at any moment.”
He stopped in front of me, so close I could feel the body heat he emanated, and his shoulders were wide enough that I could see nothing but him.
He reached out, his hand delving inside my open coat and sliding over my hip, his fingers digging in just slightly. “I like that dress,” he growled. “Red is my color.”
“Is it?” I lifted a brow and ignored the heat searing my body. “I hadn’t realized you’d staked your claim over a color.”
He took another step forward and I had no choice but to step back. He was like a solid wall that bulldozed me wherever he wanted.
“From now on,” he said low, “you aren’t allowed to wear this color.” As he spoke, his other hand also found its way beneath my coat and curved around the other side of my hip.
“I don’t take orders from you.” Damn my breathless voice!
“No?” he asked, amused, the corner of his lips tilting slightly. “What will you take from me?”
My back hit the nearby brick retaining wall. And I was completely surrounded. One of his hands crawled around to the small of my back and grabbed a handful of the red silk.
I didn’t have time to say anything. To declare I couldn’t even stand his presence. I wouldn’t have been able to form a sentence anyway because he yanked me forward and his mouth covered mine.
Aggressive. That’s how he kissed. Like he was staking a claim, not only on my lips, but my entire body.
I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t breathe.
I didn’t care.
I only wanted his lips to never leave mine.
He kissed continuously, endlessly. His lips moved over mine over and over again with the perfect amount of demand. And his hands… Oh mother, his hands.
They had minds of their own. They started out at my hips and around my waist, but they didn’t stay there long. They smoothed out the silk he’d bunched at my back and then cupped my body, sliding up my sides and around until my breasts were filling his very large, very warm hands. He squeezed—not enough so it would cause me pain, but enough that my body arched forward begging for more.
And boy did he give it. His mouth pulled away from mine and my head fell back, my hair sticking to the rough brick wall as he dropped kisses down the hollow of my neck, sucking and licking until I thought I would melt into a puddle right there on the street. His hands fell lower so he could draw lazy circles over my belly, the repeated movement almost making me mad as his lips dropped even lower into the exposed cleavage on my chest.
My hands found his hair and pushed in, ruffling the perfect style and tangling at the base of his head.
I might have moaned.
It was all a blur.
My body was on overdrive and he was the one in control.
And then his hands cupped my face, anchoring it, holding it hostage as his lips ravaged mine some more. I met him kiss for kiss, and when his tongue tangled with mine, every muscle inside my body went lax.
Finally, he ripped his mouth free of mine.
His chest heaved, and with every deep draw of breath he took, he brushed against my chest, which felt swollen and sensitive. I bit my lip
to keep from making a sound.
He gazed down at me, and even in the darkness I saw the intensity in those very green eyes. He looked completely and utterly satisfied with himself.
He reached out and ran his thumb along the bottom of my lower lip. The lip I knew without a doubt was swollen and pink.
“Tell me,” he murmured, caressing the fragile flesh of my mouth one last time. “If I kiss her like that, will she still believe you?”
His words penetrated the cloud around my head, the heavy fuzz of being extremely, thoroughly kissed.
It was all to prove a point.
He did this to me, revved my engine, made a complete and utter fool of me to prove a point.
And what was worse?
It worked.
I kicked him in the shin.
He groaned and bent forward.
“How freaking dare you!” I hissed. “Don’t you ever…” I paused to suck in a much-needed gulp of air. “Ever come near me with that lizard-like tongue of yours, ever again.”
He laughed.
He actually started laughing.
I kicked him again.
He groaned but then lunged at me, grabbing my arm and yanking me up against his chest.
My freaking body was a traitor and it shifted toward him. He chuckled knowingly.
I was about to scream bloody murder and create the scene to end all scenes when the valet cleared his throat behind us.
Charming stiffened and released me, spinning around so fast that I wobbled on my feet.
“Your car, ma’am,” he said.
I stepped around Charming, avoiding any and all contact with him. Touching him again was the last thing I wanted. I stopped in front of the valet with my chin held high. “Thank you,” I said and jerked my head in Charming’s direction. “The gentleman there has your tip.”
Charming made a sound and I smiled at the young valet. “He’s loaded. Don’t take less than a twenty.”
Then I walked, very steadily I might add, over to my Jeep, climbed in, and slammed the door. I didn’t look back as I drove away.
I didn’t need to.
I knew exactly what I was leaving behind.
And I was very afraid that this time I was in way over my head.
Chapter Nine
“Pizza - an oven-baked, flat, disc-shaped bread typically topped with a tomato sauce, cheese (usually mozzarella), and various toppings, depending on the culture.”
Charming
I handed the valet a twenty as the taillights of her Jeep disappeared around the corner. She was a piece of work. Showing up here tonight, hell-bent on screwing up my plans, telling everyone she was my sister.
I made a sound of disgust in the back of my throat as I headed up the stairs, back into the ball, where hopefully I could reverse whatever damage she had done.
Gay. She freaking told my Target I was gay.
I should have strangled her for that.
But I had my revenge. I got her curvy, sassy body all turned on. It must suck to be so turned on by someone you hate.
There was some movement off to my right, over in the darkened part of the huge stone patio that wrapped itself around the entire front of the home. It was a shadow within a shadow.
A low curse fell off my lips. As if this night hadn’t been screwed up enough.
Making sure that no one outside paid me any attention, I made my way over into the darkness, away from prying eyes. I leaned up against the side of the house and looked around for more movement. He was there to my left, trying, I would guess, not to be seen.
“I thought Ghost Escorts were supposed to be invisible,” I said flat. Ghost Escorts were another version of a Death Escort. Except they didn’t kill. Their job was to stay in their “ghost” form—meaning G.R. wouldn’t let them have a body—and they used their “ghost” status to follow Targets around and watch them. They also watched the Death Escorts and reported everything they saw back to G.R.
A very colorful twist on a curse word came out of the dark, and I was impressed. But I didn’t show it. He was following me. If I wasn’t already on G.R.’s shit list, I would have killed him right then, but killing another Escort is definitely against company policy.
“Why are you following me?”
“Shit, man. You saw me?”
“I think that much is obvious.”
“Not again,” he muttered and I glanced in his direction.
“You mean this isn’t the first time you got caught spying on someone?”
“For the record, it isn’t spying when you’re being paid to do it. It’s surveillance. And yeah… I got caught before. On my last job.”
“Which one are you?” It annoyed me that all the Ghost Escorts were black. I knew being so dark was what made them blend so well into the shadows, but it also made it very hard to tell them apart.
“Storm.”
“You were the Ghost assigned to Dex,” I said, my interest perking a bit.
“Yeah. He was cool. We were gonna chill on a beach once his job was done. But then you screwed it all up for him and he got Recalled.”
“I screwed it all up for him?”
“Maybe if you hadn’t been so hardcore after his Target, he wouldn’t have felt the need to protect her instead of kill her.”
“I wouldn’t have been so hardcore if he’d just done his damn job.” I growled.
“Guess it doesn’t really matter now.”
“Why are you following me?”
“Man, I don’t know what the hell you did, but G.R. is hating on you hard right now. So hard I didn’t even get a vacation between jobs. He wants you watched twenty-four-seven.”
First he gives me a lecture, assigns me an impossible Target, stations me in this godforsaken iceberg, and now he’s having me followed? I was really beginning to hate that guy.
“Yeah, well, I don’t want or need a babysitter. So you can just go on and spy on someone else.”
“I don’t take orders from you,” Storm said, his voice going cold.
“You’ll be taking something if I see you creeping around me again.” To prove my point, I shot my hand out toward the darkness where I could see just enough of where he was.
When my hand didn’t go through him, but rather connected, we both froze.
“What the hell?” I muttered. I hadn’t expected that at all. All I was trying to do was scatter around some of the mist that made up his form. It would only annoy him, but it was the only thing that you could really do to a guy with no body. But that was exactly my point. He didn’t have a body…
So how did I just touch him?
“Care to explain how a guy with no body is partially solid?” I asked dryly.
“Nope.”
“Really. I wonder what G.R. would say if he knew he was employing a Ghost Escort who is lacking the actual ghost qualities.”
Another one of those colorful words slipped out and I grinned. This guy was pretty entertaining. “Where’d you learn to cuss like that?”
“I grew up in Brooklyn.”
“I’m from New York, too,” I said, thinking that things from my past just kept coming up tonight.
“Yeah? Well, then you must be good people.”
I was about to make a sarcastic remark, but he started telling me things I wanted to know so I bit back my comments.
“At first, not having a body wasn’t too bad. I mean, without a body, I never really got hungry. I never had to take a bathroom break or worry about taking a shower. I liked watching people when they didn’t know they were being watched—I actually still like that part. You learn a lot about the human population by what they do when no one’s looking.”
He paused and I could feel his gaze, so I nodded. “Go on.”
“But the thing about being a ghost is that no one ever sees you. It’s like you don’t even exist. All my thoughts, my feelings, my opinions… they’re all unheard. Without the mundane things like showering, sleeping, and eating, every day just stretches out
before you like a one long endless event. And man, sometimes a dude just wants to eat a slice of pizza.”
“Hear that,” I said, and without thinking I held up my fist for a fist bump. When I realized what I’d done, I went to lower it, but he stopped me by saying, “Wait.”
So I stopped and held my fist in the air.
I watched as a dark shadow, a black shape in the form of a fist came forward and bumped mine. The force of the impact caused some of his form to slip and spread out like smoke, but some of his shape held and I felt the impact.
“Sitting around and watching people all day gets kind of boring. So I started experimenting, seeing if I could figure out a way to make myself solid. It started working. Now when I try, I can hold a cell phone, make a call. Or sometimes if I’m really bored, I can manage to play a game on it for a while. It just started out as something I wanted to see if I could do. I was kind of shocked when it worked… Then it became an obsession. Only, now…” His voice trailed away.
“Now, what?”
“Only now my body doesn’t seem to ever go all the way back to being a ghost. It makes it harder to do my job. Dex saw me. You saw me… If I keep getting caught, word is gonna get back to G.R., and if that happens…”
“You’ll get Recalled.”
“Being a ghost might not be ideal, but it’s better than that.”
“Maybe we can turn this less into a ‘you spy on me’ job and more into a partnership,” I suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“Meaning, I won’t tell G.R. about your, uh, problem and instead of watching me all the time, you can watch the Target and tell me what she says about me when I’m not around. It will give me an edge if I know what she’s thinking, if I know what angle to play.”
“I can get on board that train,” Storm said thoughtfully.
I didn’t point out I wasn’t giving him a choice. “Just don’t get caught. The last thing I need is another person hanging around and messing up my job.”
He snorted. “That blonde is a piece of work, isn’t she?”
Something short of irritation flashed through me. “You’ve been watching Frankie?”
“She’s kind of hard to miss.”
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