She must have felt the weight of his stare because a funny look passed across her face. She glanced over her shoulder at him. Did a double take. Their eyes met and hers widened. They were the color of the caramel he’d made at two in the morning last Tuesday.
She didn’t look at him with apprehension, like Jester had, but with surprise. Like she’d been expecting to see him and, suddenly, there he was.
When she turned toward him, his body went haywire. That beating pulse took a dive for his dick and his mouth dried up.
“Hi,” she said.
Nothing came from his lips, but inside he screamed. Told himself to walk away. To get away from her now.
Too late.
Here it came. That low, ragged voice breaking free from the dark place where Xavier had stashed it the day he’d arrived in Colorado. The gravelly, taunting voice of the Burned Man spiraled up from the past, and it hadn’t lost any of its punch.
Stay here, ordered the Burned Man. You’re already hard for her. I brought her for you. Take her. She’s yours.
Three seconds. It had taken just three seconds to destroy three years free from the hallucinations.
They came back in a horrible rush, filling Xavier with terror and shame. One moment he was on the crowded festival street of White Clover Creek, the next he was back in the Plant’s breeding block, known as the Circle. White walls, a well-used mattress. Him, naked and anticipating the Burned Man—the Ofarian guard who’d tormented Xavier most of his life—bringing him a woman he was supposed to impregnate.
Today it was the smiling freckled woman whose joy Xavier would quickly erase.
In his waking nightmare, she crossed the Breeding Circle’s white floor without enthusiasm or emotion, like all the others had. In his mind, Xavier plucked the red hat from her head and tossed it to the floor, then he went for the zipper of her coat. Pulled it down, peeled the thick garment from her body. She was naked underneath, and the rest of her was as tan and freckled as her face, but he’d been trained to care only about the heaven between her legs.
He pulled her to the mattress, and even though he hadn’t been made to lie on it in almost seven years, his nightmares recalled the stiffness of it, the bleachy smell of the sterile sheets changed before every breeding session. The freckled woman lay back, turned her face away, and he pushed himself inside her. He shouted at the feel of her—it had been so long—and took what he’d been made for. Years without release built and built and built inside him, propelling his thrusts.
Xavier—the man he had become since escaping this torture, the man who knew this was wrong—grabbed desperately for reality. It slipped out of his reach. In the hideous world of his past, his body still worked inside hers. Long-denied fulfillment—because it could never, ever be called pleasure—and self-loathing collided together at a violent crossroads.
He threw his head back, pleading for mercy. She doesn’t want this. And I don’t want to want this.
The square window he knew should belong to the Tea Shoppe morphed into the wire-crossed observation holes in the Circle. The Burned Man appeared on the other side of the glass, terrifying as ever. Unchanged over the last three years. The scarred cheek and chin, the missing hair, the melted ear, the webbed hand…
Don’t stop, he growled in his fire-damaged voice, the puckered skin on his neck stretching. If you stop, I’ll just bring another.
In the waking nightmares, as in life, Xavier always came. It was what he’d been bred for: to create new generations of Tedrans. New slaves for the water-worshipping Ofarians.
It’s okay, what you’re doing. The Burned Man’s tone rang syrupy false. Xavier had always suspected he’d enjoyed watching, and it had turned his stomach. Her life will be better if she gets pregnant anyway.
A red-mittened hand touched Xavier’s arm, snapping him back to Colorado.
He gasped as though he’d been held under water—a paralyzing sensation he knew intimately—and gulped down the sweet, cold air. The loud drone of the festival slammed back into his ears. Sunlight bounced off the snow piled around the square, blinding him. He knuckled his eyes, hard enough to hurt. When he opened them, she was still there right in front of him, gorgeously and hideously innocent.
“Are you okay?”
Her voice was smoky, sexy, and it tugged him between reality and the evil place in his head. She wasn’t naked beneath him, taking it because she had to. But the possibility of it terrified him.
“Fine.” He ripped away from her touch. “I’m fine.”
Right about then would have been the perfect time for the old asshole Xavier to return, to shove his way through the ever-increasing crowd and not care if he hurt anyone, like the guy who’d knocked down Mr. Traeger.
“I’m sorry, but”—her freckled nose crinkled and a curious smile lit her candy-colored eyes—“I know this’ll sound weird, but do I know you? You seem…familiar.”
He pictured a pristine cutting board, felt the phantom weight of a scary-sharp chef’s knife in his palm, and imagined rows and rows of vegetables laid out before him, waiting. The vision brought him instant calm.
“No, you don’t.” He turned away, found the tiniest crack between bodies, and shoved himself into it. Get away, get away. He angled for freedom, pushing and mumbling apologies to strangers.
“Are you sure?” she called at his back.
The alley mouth leading to Shed was forty yards and forty thousand miles away. The crowd eased some, but the constant touch of unfamiliar bodies gave rise to panic. An elbow here, a hip there. The next one might be the one that made him crack. He had to get into the kitchen.
At last he broke the edge of the crowd and veered into the alley. At the far end flapped the yellow-and-white-striped awning over Shed’s entrance. His long legs strode for it.
“Hey, wait.” That smoky voice. Following him. “Can you hold up a sec?”
Didn’t she realize that if she didn’t leave him alone, the Burned Man would come for her again?
Giant pots holding yews decorated with bows in Shed’s signature yellow and white dotted the wide alley, and Xavier wove among them. Stupid to think he could actually lose her, given that the alley came to a dead end, but he was grasping for any way out. When he ducked under the awning and still heard her footsteps crossing the cobblestones, he knew there was only one option left.
Xavier hadn’t just given up sex the day he’d arrived in White Clover Creek. He’d abandoned magic, too. But standing there, in the cold shadow under Shed’s awning, he reached deep inside himself and pulled out the rusty words of the Tedran language.
No reason to speak it anymore, since there were only two people on Earth who could understand him. Adine Jones, the half Tedran born without magic, had guided him through the basics of the Primary world and then disappeared. Gwen Carroway, the Ofarian Translator who had freed Xavier’s people and stopped the slavery, had started a new life with her Primary lover in Chicago.
It had been ages since he’d spoken his native tongue, but with the first hesitant word, the rest sprang up like the quick gush of blood after a pinprick.
He chose his illusion, imagining the face and body he wanted, and whispered the Tedran words to bring it about. Glamour enveloped him in a light, airy caress. Head to foot, the new image fell around him in a shimmering cloak made of the thinnest material. Touch it and it would dissolve.
He couldn’t deny that for some part of him, using his birthright after all this time was a well-deserved comfort.
He grabbed hold of the thick iron bar on the original granary shed wood door, and slid it wide on oiled rails. Rushing through the little foyer that blocked the winter wind, he pushed open the restaurant’s main door and waddled inside, shouldering a huge purse that wasn’t really there.
Pam, Shed’s owner and executive chef, sat hunched over table eighteen studying receipts and supply orders in neat little piles. By the way her fingers toyed with her short, platinum hair, he knew that something wasn’t adding up in the le
dgers.
The only reason Xavier could work for Pam, a woman, and not fear the Burned Man, was because she sent out zero sexual vibes toward him. Probably had to do with the fact he had a penis.
Across the main dining floor, through the giant glass window of the open kitchen, Jose and Lars were setting up their mise en place for lunch service, their knives flying through prep. Ricardo was bending over the stock pots at the back burners. The familiar and welcome smells, sights, and sounds of the only place that had ever made Xavier happy.
He shuffled around the perimeter of the dining room, making a point to be noticed. Pam glanced up, distracted. “Hey, Carolina.”
“Hola,” he replied in the lilting voice of Shed’s cleaning lady. Magic tingled on his skin.
Veiled in the disguise of a tiny Hispanic woman, he slipped into the back room where Pam stored her linens and cutlery. He shut the door behind him and sagged against the shelves.
Shed’s front door opened.
Pam’s shoes clicked across the dining room floor. “We’re not open for lunch for another two hours.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Her.
Xavier groaned, her voice slicing through him like a newly sharpened blade. Desire flowed into the open wound, and despite his mind’s direct orders to stay away from the back room door, his arm reached out and cracked it open.
She stood by the hostess podium, her eyes darting around the dim dining room. The cold touched her cheeks with a gentle pink. “I was looking for someone. Really tall, wavy blond hair to his shoulders? Navy blue down coat?”
Pam nodded and half smiled in the way that looked like she was laughing at some private joke. “You mean Xavier? Hasn’t come in yet.”
The woman tilted her head, the red pompom flopping to one side. What was it about that silly hat that forced Xavier to conjure images of tomatoes being diced to hell?
“I thought I just saw him come in here.”
“Nope.” Pam fiddled with the menus on the hostess stand, perfectly aligning their edges.
“But he works here?”
“Yeah. He’s my saucier.” When the freckled woman looked confused, Pam added, “One of my line cooks.”
She shifted her weight and a snow chunk slid off her fuzzy boot. “Any chance you have a reservation open for tonight?”
Pam flipped open the mahogany leather reservation book and lazily dragged her finger down the page. “So. How do you know Xavier?”
The woman blushed almost as red as her hat. Xavier was horrible at guessing ages, considering his own was about as twisted as a screw, but she was younger than him. Mid-twenties, most likely. She kicked at the dislodged snow. “I…I don’t.”
Oh shit.
Pam looked like the fox who’d swallowed a chicken. Wrong person to learn a woman was looking for him. She’d been trying to get him to date ever since she discovered him working at an acquaintance’s bistro in San Francisco. She’d even gotten her girlfriend to start badgering him. Between the two of them the barrage was endless. Let’s get the quiet cook laid. They thought it funny, a game.
It was anything but.
Pam arched an eyebrow at the freckled woman, her wicked smile tipping toward flirtatious. “Oh, really?” She tapped the reservation book. “Look at this. Lucky for you. We have an opening at eight. For how many?”
Shed had been booked up for weeks, if not months.
“Um. Two. Put it under my name. Heddig.”
“Got a first name? Just in case I need it?”
Pam would need it all right—to needle Xavier all shift. He considered calling in sick but knew he couldn’t. Not during the festival when every table would be full from lunch through close. Not when the only other option was holing himself up in his house. With the Burned Man making such an abrupt appearance, Xavier didn’t trust himself to be alone.
“My name’s Cat,” said the woman.
“Great, Cat.” Pam clicked the pen closed and grinned. “See you tonight.”
TWO
Here’s what Cat knew about the guy she’d followed from the street performer’s circle: His name was Xavier. He cooked at Shed. And he was one of those incredibly good-looking men who didn’t know it and would never admit it, even with a gun to his head.
Here’s what she didn’t know: how she knew him.
She hadn’t thrown him a bad pick-up line out on the street. She’d been standing there, laughing at the performer in the jester hat, when all of a sudden she’d felt this tug on her subconscious. A burst of awareness—that’s the best way she could describe it. She’d looked up, and there stood Xavier.
She didn’t recognize his face—she’d definitely remember that—but there was something about him. She was far from a granola hippie chick, so it felt silly to admit, but it seemed to be something in his aura. It connected with her, hit some note of recognition deep within her body, and she knew that even in the throng of people she could pick him out with her eyes closed.
But he was a local, and she’d never been to White Clover Creek. Hell, she hadn’t even left the Florida Keys in two years.
And, of course, he’d run from her like she was a leper. Nice, Cat. Chasing down the guy who mowed over about twenty people to get away from you.
She’d never done anything like that in her life. Never trailed after a guy like a puppy. Certainly never stalked anyone by making restaurant reservations just to get another look. No wonder he’d told that woman Pam to cover for him as he hid in the back. Cat would have done the same thing if a strange guy had followed her back to the hotel bar where she worked.
Except that for a long moment, when their eyes had first met, she could have sworn he was interested…
She shook her head to clear it, slapped her mittened hands together and straightened her coat. What was she doing standing there in an alley, propped up by a potted, leftover Christmas tree? Today was one of the most important days of her life and she was about to be late for it.
Back out on Waterleaf, she wove through the mob, keeping one eye on the salted sidewalk. She wasn’t built for freezing temperatures, for snow. At least if she bit it, the tight crowd would keep her from falling on her butt. She was so cold she probably wouldn’t feel it anyway.
Waterleaf cut away from the main square and climbed a steep, steady slope. Lovely old buildings with elaborate, nineteenth-century wood scrollwork lined both sides. Festival goers bundled in thick boots and puffy coats and expensive sunglasses spilled out of the shops and restaurants. A few she recognized from TV or the movies, and their way of sauntering about in the broad daylight was clearly meant to draw attention.
No one knew who she was, but, according to Michael, by the end of the festival that would change. Hell yes. The beginning of the rest of her life.
It had to be. She had no idea where to go or what to do if it wasn’t.
The Drift Art Gallery capped the end of stair-stepped shops at the very top of Waterleaf, before the downtown blurred into residential neighborhoods. A century of Colorado winters had weathered the gallery’s brick, but its wooden trim glowed in bright purple. Striped paper covered the windows, blocking the interior. On the neon green front door dangled a small chalkboard sign: CAT HEDDIG, PAINTER. FEBRUARY 6–MARCH 31. OPENING RECEPTION FEBRUARY 5, BY INVITATION ONLY.
Even though full-on hypothermia was about ten seconds away, she just stood there on the slanted sidewalk, staring at her name. So it was real. Her first show. Her big debut, to take place in front of scads of Michael Ebrecht’s Hollywood folk.
Back when she’d first picked up a brush, almost six years ago, she hadn’t known this was where she wanted to be. All she knew was that there was something artistic and magical and frustrated swirling around inside her, dying to be released, and that she refused to be a bartender for the rest of her life. Now that she was here? It felt like she was standing on a stoop, lifting her hand to knock on the door of the place that was to become her home. And that’s all she’d ever wanted, wasn’t it? A true home.
>
Nerves skated around her belly—the good kind, the dreaded kind, all mixed together—but she wouldn’t let them stop her. Not now. She opened the creaking wooden door. An old-fashioned bell tinkled overhead. Bass-heavy music played somewhere out of sight, mingling with the sounds of men’s muffled voices. She stepped into a cloud of paint fumes. Ladders and folded drop cloths sat in the far corner of the long, narrow exhibit space.
She heard Michael before she saw him. “No, Helen. No. That’s not what we agreed. Pond #11 will go up front, hanging from the ceiling when you walk in. Bam! It hits you right away.”
Pond #11 was Michael’s favorite painting of hers that he didn’t already own.
He appeared from the back hall, trailing a statuesque woman in her late sixties with dyed black hair and glasses on a long, beaded chain. Helen Wolfe, presumably, Drift’s owner and curator. Helen was shaking her head, talking to Michael over her shoulder as he snipped at her heels. Cat gasped. No one ever walked away from Michael. And if they did, he certainly never followed.
They didn’t see her and she didn’t call to them, painfully curious to hear what they had to say when clearly she was their topic of conversation. Helen whirled, jabbing her glasses at Michael. “That was before I actually saw it. It’s too large. Cuts off the flow of the main gallery and the view from the street once the paper is taken off the windows. We’ll do a ceiling mount of Pond #11 in the back gallery, use it to draw the crowds into that room. Happy?”
Michael ran a hand around the back of his neck. “Then Ocean #16 goes up front.”
Ocean #16 was Cat’s favorite.
Helen considered him for longer moments than Cat figured him patient for. Cat was dying to know how this woman was able to speak to Michael the way she did.
“Agreed,” Helen said.
A young woman just barely out of college stepped from the side office. She, too, wore glasses, though they were likely just for show—she had that faux look about her. She made a beeline for Cat. “Sorry, but we’re closed for installation. You’ll have to come back February sixth.” She emphasized sixth as though to underscore only certain people would be welcome for the opening on the fifth.
A Taste of Ice (The Elementals) Page 2