by Romi Hart
Hiding behind the dining-room door was the first moment he got clear of her even for a second. In a few minutes, she would come down those stairs and walk into that dining room and he would do the same thing. Then he would be with her again. He couldn’t predict what she would do and he couldn’t trust himself to react the right way. How could he maintain his professional distance with this going on?
He had to keep his head. He had to hold her at arm’s length. He couldn’t fall for her. Christ, how could he even think about falling for her? She was the daughter of a powerful leader of an Anarock Crest. He was here to negotiate with Bernard, not to boink his fucking daughter, which was what he really wanted to do with Claire. When he really admitted it to himself, all the rest led to that inevitable conclusion.
His heart ached from pounding so hard and his ribs hurt from holding himself tense and stiff all these hours. He needed to rest and think. He needed to get back to Central City. He could regroup there. He didn’t want to go back to Central City, though. He didn’t want to leave. He couldn’t even think about leaving or going anywhere away from her. Holy fuck!
Even these thoughts sounded alien and apart from him. These Novaks never used profanity. Thinking those words sounded crass and low to him. He held himself to a different standard now. They made him do it whether he wanted to or not. After only a few hours, they changed his world. It wasn’t just Claire. They all did it.
Now he had to stand up, throw back his shoulders, and walk into that dining room. He had to sit down at that table and share their food. Part of him suspected he’d be crossing an irreproachable bridge by swallowing their food. He’d be consigning himself to the SeamStream Crest just like Persephone in the Underworld. That was what Claire meant when she spoke those fateful words. Welcome to SeamStream. He just didn’t know it at the time.
He had no choice. They invited him and he couldn’t do anything that might color the negotiation. He came here to do a job for Victor. If sharing a meal with these people might give the Prometheus Crest an advantage to winning the Novaks as allies, he had to do it. He was trapped.
They must have known that when they invited him. That was why they invited him. Shit, he was in over his head. He saw it all happening and he couldn’t get out of it. He just had to go through with it and let himself sink into their pitiless grasp.
He pushed himself off the wall and forced himself to open his eyes. He would get through this dinner. He would do his job and get out. That was all he could do.
He marched to the door and swung around it. He walked in and all three brothers from the office met him coming. Damien broke into a smile and thrust out his hand. “There he is. Are you getting everything you want?”
Finn couldn’t exactly tell this man he wanted his sister and he wasn’t getting that. Instead, he only nodded. “This is a great house. I hate to ask what business you’re in that you can afford this.”
Damien made a face. “You don’t want to ask, but even if you did, I couldn’t tell you everything. Only Daddy knows everything.”
Finn cocked his head and studied the big man. He really was an exact, younger replica of his father, but something in Damien’s manner made him more accessible than Bernard. Damien didn’t cut his companion down to an insignificant speck. Damien’s eyes warmed Finn with comradely affection. They gave him a distinct haven of comfort and understanding in this family of deadly sharks.
“What happens if he gets injured or, Heaven forbid, killed?” Finn asked. “How can you run a business with only one person understanding every part of it?”
“He has people working for him in each area.” Damien shot him a quick grin. “I suppose if he dies, we’ll find out real quick what-all he has going on. Until then, it works, but I can see you’re looking at more than just the surface. That’s good.”
At that moment, Claire strolled into the dining room. Her arrival went largely unnoticed by everyone else present, but it fired a lightning bolt through Finn’s being. He sensed her presence across the floor. She made his nerves sing even from a distance. He felt her creeping up on him. He felt again those satin arms slithering around his ribs threatening to tow him under, but when glanced over his shoulder, she was nowhere near him. She wasn’t even looking at him. She was talking to Lucy.
Bernard finished saying something to Pablo and got to his feet. He set his tumbler aside and strutted to the long dining table. “Let’s get started.”
Everyone responded to those simple words and closed around the table. Each person migrated to his or her own seat without being told. Finn hung back until he noticed one vacant chair, but he hesitated to approach it when he saw it was sight next to Claire’s. Did they do that on purpose to throw him off his stride? Everything they did seemed calculated to produce the maximum disturbance for him.
Bernard waved to him without looking up. “Take a seat, man. We’re glad to have you. We don’t often get guests from the outside.”
All Finn’s instincts told him to stay away from that chair at all costs. He didn’t want to sit down, but he had no choice. He got himself into this situation. Now he had to go through with it.
He did his best to block Claire out of his mind and crossed to the spot. He sat down in the chair and pulled himself up to the table. “How many people are in your Crest? Is it just you?”
He swept his gaze around the table. He couldn’t imagine a house Crest of Anarock consisting of just six people, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was these six. They could do anything they wanted. They commanded such mind-blowing power and wealth, not to mention unflinching, unscrupulous intent to accomplish their aims.
No one laughed at the question. “It’s not just us,” Damien told him. “We’re a big extended family of thousands. Our cousins, our aunts and uncles, and other distant relatives all work for the company.”
Claire leaned close to Finn from one side. He froze when she slid her delicate small hand onto his thigh under the table. “Those people you saw at the office are our cousins. They work out of a different office over at the Westin Hotel.”
Finn stared straight in front of him counting down the seconds until she took her hand away. The Westin? These people must have more money than God, but he already knew that.
She didn’t take her hand away. She snuck her fingertips up his leg toward his junk. He didn’t want to get turned on right here at the dinner table, but she worked her magic on him the way she did upstairs. His thick member swelled inside his pants and strained his ass against the chair.
Just when he couldn’t decide what to do, she dragged her wicked fingertips across his ragged skin and left him in a sweating frenzy. Now he was hard with no chance to relieve himself.
He didn’t want to relieve himself—not here, not now, and sure as fuck not thinking about her. He didn’t want to feel this way about a woman sitting right next to him. He had to keep his mind clear. He had to pay attention at every second to the slightest facial twitches of everyone around him. Now she ruined that by breaking his concentration.
Four tuxedoed waiters glided into the dining room and started serving the most opulent meal Finn ever saw in his life. First, they orbited the table serving soup. They began with Bernard and worked clockwise around the room. Now that he observed their habits, Finn realized the siblings didn’t select their seats at random. They arranged themselves in order of age with Damien at his father’s right hand.
That put Claire in the last place at her father’s left side, which made her the youngest. The realization gave Finn another pang of anxiety. She was her father’s youngest daughter, his baby. Bernard wouldn’t react well to someone putting the moves on his beloved daughter.
Finn wasn’t putting the moves on her, though. She was the one putting the moves on him and she made no bones about her intentions. She felt him up right here at the family dinner table in front of her father, her brothers—everybody. She didn’t show any compunction about who saw her. She didn’t even seem all that concerned with whether
he welcomed her attention or not.
Pablo spoke up from Finn’s other side and distracted him, but only slightly. “We got some more information on the Omega Battalion if you’re interested.”
Finn whipped around to stare at him, but Bernard answered first. “Of course, we’re interested. Tell us all about it. First, tell us where you got the information. We have to know that so we know how much credence to give it.”
“You can give it all the credence it deserves. It came from Christophe at the Ponce de Leon.”
Bernard raised his eyebrows. “Really? What is he doing mixed up with the Omega Battalion?”
“He shouldn’t even be aware of the Omega Battalion,” Conrad added. “He never leaves his room.”
“According to him,” Pablo told them, “two girls infiltrated his house and insinuated themselves with his girls. He found out about them because some customers gave them outstanding reviews. They said these two girls gave them the best time of their lives and they wanted to make sure they got the same girls the next time they came back. Christophe never heard their names before and he never interviewed or approved them working out of his house. When he looked into the matter, he found out that these two told his own girls that he did hire them. He called the first one to his room. When she first walked in, she looked like any normal girl, but when he told her to do her thing for him, she somehow managed to impress him in a way that not even he was accustomed to.”
Damien burst out laughing. “That’s impossible.”
Lucy frowned at her brother. “How could she do that? He’s a mutant with mutantly-endowed anatomy.”
Bernard turned a patronizing smile on his daughter. “Mind your grammar, darling. Mutantly is not a real word in the English language.”
Finn furrowed his brow. “Are you saying this cat has an exceptionally large….?” He didn’t want to finish.
Damien chuckled behind his knuckles choking on his soup. “He’s hung like a horse. He assesses his girls’ abilities by getting them to service him. He hires them based on how well they handle him.”
“He claims,” Pablo went on, “that this girl not only took every throbbing inch of him but her inner muscles were somehow able to stroke him in exceptional ways—shall we say, inhuman ways.”
Conrad nodded and put another spoonful of soup in his mouth. “It sounds like Christophe isn’t the only one with mutantly-endowed anatomy.”
“He claims she gave him the best time of his life, too,” Pablo continued, “so he guessed she had some power to respond to a man’s individual sensitivities and adjust her body accordingly.”
Bernard laid his spoon beside his dish. “So what happened? How did he find out she belonged to the Omega Battalion? How did he know she wasn’t just any other mutant off the street?”
“Apparently, she was so good that she started to scare him. He realized she wasn’t really human at all or even a mutant from Anarock. He yanked her away and demanded to know who she was and where she came from. The minute he broke contact with her, the other girl rushed in and they both vanished through a portal. They disappeared out of his room.”
“So what’s he doing telling us about it?” Bernard asked. “Why not tell Victor or Punchy or one of the other Crests?”
Pablo shrugged and bent over his soup again. “If you ask me, he did it to gain some bargaining advantage with us. He didn’t say so, but that was the impression I got. He wants to get in our good graces.”
“Well, put it on his tab. It will take a lot more than that to earn him any points with us, but at least we know they’re here.” Bernard turned to Finn. “There you go. They’re trying to infiltrate Anarock.”
Finn stared at the man. “This is news to us. We always thought they would go after the Prometheus Crest. We never considered they would try to invade a different Crests.”
“Why shouldn’t they?” Claire chimed in. “With Bryce in charge of the Battalion, he knows where to plant his people for maximum effect. He knows better than to send some strange whore into the Prometheus Crest or even NightRage Crest. He knows girls from both Crests cross South Claiborne Avenue all the time to work in each other’s territory. If he sent a new girl there, your Crests would notice her in seconds. He would have to send her to a Crest that wouldn’t necessarily rat her out to Victor right away. What better Crest to infiltrate than SeamStream?”
Finn swiveled around to face her. When he did, her eyes captured him in a tidal wave, not just of pure lust but of emotion, too. Who in the name of God was this woman? She talked about the house Crests of Anarock like she knew every intimate detail about them. She talked about Bryce Griffin being in charge of the Omega Battalion. She talked about South Claiborne Avenue like she walked back and forth across it every day.
She didn’t break eye contact with him. She gazed down into his soul with that unwavering intensity that ignited his blood into molten lava.
Pablo’s voice floated into his mind from behind. “Now you’re wondering how Bryce knew enough about the SeamStream Crest to send a girl our way. You’re wondering how he could know that much about us when you and Victor didn’t even know the first thing about us.”
Finn couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t look at any of these people without losing his shit, especially Claire. He sat straight in his chair facing forward and focused all his attention on his soup bowl. He didn’t alter his gaze even when the waiters went around the table removing the soup and replacing it with salad.
The conversation went on around him. It didn’t include him anymore. “He made a mistake sending such a skilled girl,” Bernard mused. “He should have sent someone with average abilities, someone who wouldn’t attract attention.”
“We don’t know it was Bryce who sent the girls,” Lucy added. “They could have come on their own or someone else could have sent them. We don’t know they belong to the Omega Battalion. I’m sure some other mutant groups have portal-casters at their disposal.”
“Lucy’s right. We should look into this. We can get Albert from Hoffman to track her.”
Finn’s head shot up and he blinked at Bernard. “What? You can track them?”
“We can’t,” Bernard returned. “Albert is a wizard of the NightRage Crest. He can track these portal-casters. He can find out where the portal went.”
Finn’s heart flipped. “Really? Could you put us in touch with him? Maybe he could help us find Bryce and Alexa, too.”
Bernard waved his fork before using it to push his lettuce around on his plate. “Consider Albert’s services and his identity a bargaining chip in our negotiations for an alliance. If you and your Crest come to the party and we do end up sealing an alliance, we’ll put our resources at your disposal. Until that happens, we keep our assets and you keep yours. That’s the way these things work.”
Finn stared at him rifling his brain for any way to bend this situation his way. He couldn’t think of anything to say besides, “I should go. I have to tell Victor about this.”
He wiped his mouth on the spotless cloth napkin and placed it next to his plate, but before he could stand up, Bernard lifted his chin and smiled at him. “Why would you run out on such a pleasant evening when you have Claire to entertain you?”
Finn couldn’t blink. He couldn’t look away from those ice-crystal eyes gnawing into his guts. Bernard’s gaze pinned him like a bug, but with those few simple words, Bernard vaporized all the confusion clouding Finn’s judgment.
So it all came down to this. These Novaks were throwing Claire at him to swing negotiations that hadn’t even started yet. They used their own sister, Bernard’s own daughter, to twist Finn around their fingers. They did it on purpose to stop him reporting to Victor. Even knowing that Finn couldn’t get up. He couldn’t leave. Christ, what were they doing to him?
The Novaks knew all about the Omega Battalion. They even had a way to trace the Battalion’s portals to their source. They could find out where Bryce and Alexa went. If the Prometheus Crest could use this Alber
t character to track the Omega Battalion, maybe the Prometheus Crest could launch a preemptive strike. They could hit the Omega Battalion and knock them out before they attacked Anarock again. Failing that, at least the battle would take place on some other planet instead of raining death and destruction on the streets of New Orleans.
7
Claire cast sidelong glances at Finn throughout dinner, but he ignored his salad. He barely spoke to anyone except when they asked him a direct question. He withdrew in on himself. He did his best to erase himself from their company, but he didn’t fool her.
If she leaned close to him, he reacted in a split second. He jumped in his seat. Either he jerked away or, more often, he stiffened against her presence intruding into his stupor. He reacted every single time without fail. She didn’t have to touch him or even speak. He couldn’t ignore her, though he tried his hardest.
She observed every breath lifting his shoulders and rippling his back. She examined every intoxicating dip of his eyelashes when he blinked. He radiated vibrant energy right there in the chair next to her. He held her riveted to him and nothing else.
The meal ended. The family sat around the table for over an hour sipping their after-dinner drinks. They talked business. The farther Finn retreated into his inner protective zone, the more Bernard and his children let themselves slip into discussing parts of their enterprise they would never reveal to anyone else.
A few times during the conversation, Conrad or Lucy would glance in Finn’s direction as if to ask if they should really be talking about this stuff in his hearing. Bernard showed no such scruples. He even broached new subjects Claire would have considered off-limits to any outsider.
The longer this went on, the more she began to comprehend her father’s design. Claire couldn’t tell anymore if Finn was listening or not. Maybe he didn’t understand how unusual this situation was, but Bernard didn’t appear to care. He must want Finn to hear these things. He must want to share his business dealings with Finn, which wasn’t like Bernard at all.