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  Allie didn’t know mothers, but Lila had given Allie a quick, affectionate hug when she said that, the kind of bubbly warm hug that makes you feel like you matter. Allie imagined that was how mothers made you feel.

  Marcus had a way of looking at her that made her feel as if she mattered. But there was nothing motherly about the feelings he demonstrated.

  She mattered to Eddie. Allie decided she couldn’t afford to matter.

  “We need to put something together that will drop his jaw,” Lila was saying. “We’ll just see who begs for what.”

  And two hours later, when Lila’s bed was heaped with outfits examined and discarded, when her kitchen table was scattered with cosmetics and brushes and combs and hot rollers, when Allie was painted, primped and perfected, Lila finally led Allie to stand in front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom.

  Allie blinked. Ordinarily, mirrors creeped her out. She was too stunned to be creeped out. The woman in the mirror was always a stranger. The stranger in the mirror, the woman who fingered a curl that dangled from an updo looked like someone she might see in a magazine ad for perfume or jewelry. Rather than a don’t-touch-me look, she compelled Allie to reach toward her. Allie’s fingers connected with cool glass, but her mind connected with an old memory. She was reaching toward a dark-haired girl in a mirror. Only her hand went through, and the girl grabbed it.

  Allie pulled back, looked down at her hands.

  “Hey, Allie? You okay?”

  Her head came up and she turned. She knew some sort of touch would be appropriate at this point. At the diner, at the office, people used some touching gesture to get past awkward moments. In Eddie’s world you touched for two reasons—for sex or to smash a fist in someone’s face. Lila’s fingers were making fluttery movements, so Allie grabbed both Lila’s hands. “I’m more than okay,” she said, hoping she sounded excited instead of scared. She forced herself to take Lila’s hands in hers. “You’re a miracle worker. It’s a shock looking in the mirror. I don’t even recognize myself.”

  Lila beamed and pulled one hand free to adjust a loose curl that fell over Allie’s forehead. “Oh it’s you all right, sweetie. The you that needs to be let out more. But something’s wrong. I get the feeling you’re spooked. Sometimes it helps to tell a friend.”

  A friend. Allie turned that concept over in her mind. If she included Lila and Franny, she could count the number of friends she’d had in her life on three fingers. One of those friends she’d nearly gotten killed.

  “I’m not the safest person you could pick for a friend.”

  Lila pushed some blouses aside, kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged on a corner of the bed. “Why’s that?”

  Allie perched beside her. “My father likes to shoot people.”

  “Even your friends?”

  “Well, in his defense, the friend he shot was a boyfriend. When he walked in on us we were exploring our friendship beyond my father’s idea of proper boundaries. Which is funny when you throw in the fact my father owned a club that rented women to the customers for sex.”

  Lila squeezed Allie’s hands. “Your father killed your boyfriend?”

  “He shot him. He might have killed him, but we were by the river and Jason jumped in. Lucky for him, it was night and he could swim. Eddie, my father, couldn’t.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I took the coward’s way out and ran. Been running ever since.”

  “You were how old?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Let me just take a wild guess here—not that you come across as antisocial or anything—Jason was your first and only?”

  Allie sighed and nodded. “And that was only our second time.”

  “You sure Jason came through okay?”

  “Yeah, his brother knew a doctor you could pay not to ask questions or notify the cops. We lived in a neighborhood where people didn’t ask questions. Jason texted me once to say he was okay. I ditched my phone after that so Eddie couldn’t track me. Eddie isn’t the sort who forgives and forgets. I can’t remember ever seeing him so mad. I had to stay on the move, keep a low profile.”

  “So it’s possible this guy who’s so bent on taking you to dinner could have been sent by your father?”

  Allie plucked a silk blouse from the pile of clothes on the bed. She shook it out and chose a padded hanger to hang it on. “No, I’ve ruled that out. I’m not afraid Eddie sent Marcus. I just don’t know the rules with him, how nice people go about dating. You know?”

  “Nice people?” Lila touched her face again. “Sweetie, you are nice people. Whatever nonsense got spouted at you growing up…forget it. Wanting sex doesn’t mean you’re depraved or a slut. The rules are whatever you want them to be, whatever you need them to be. If a guy has a problem with that, it’s his problem and you find another guy. Got it?”

  Allie smiled.

  Lila tweaked a curl at Allie’s nape. “Now I’m going to worry about you all night.”

  “I should forget all this, go home and curl up with my contract.” Go home and pack was what she was thinking.

  “No. Really, Allie, you need to get out and have some fun. Get past this. You let Eddie keep you from that and you might as well just go back to that cage he raised you in.”

  It was like a cage. More so than Allie was willing to admit to Lila. She’d spent most of her life in the apartment above the club, not allowed out onto the street, not even allowed school beyond a few alcoholic tutors he’d scraped up on occasion—and those only after he decided her quick mind and eagerness to please were valuable assets to some of his business enterprises.

  Lila was right. Eddie still controlled her. It was time to break free. She’d meet Marcus and take a night of pleasure for herself. Hey, maybe she’d really change things up and try having sex indoors, in a bed.

  But there were cages that didn’t require bars or locked doors. There were cages constructed by experience, connections, intimacy. Those cages were the kind that could trap a person forever. Would getting involved with Marcus be the exchange of one cage for another?

  Chapter Four

  He was waiting just inside the restaurant door when she appeared—twenty minutes late. Completely out of character for her. She seemed edgy, frustrated.

  She looked about her, but not directly at him. There was another gentleman in the foyer, a couple of inches shorter than Marcus, at least twenty pounds heavier. Surely, she must be able to tell them apart. He frowned and went forward to greet her. As soon as he moved toward her, she looked directly at him. Only when he smiled did she send a relieved, but cautious, smile back at him. He’d learned a lot from his research that afternoon and now he recognized that aloofness as the tool Allie relied on most when she was unsure of identity.

  “Hey,” she said. Not using his name he noted. She might as well have asked, Is that you? Are you my date? They’d spent half an hour staring directly at each other’s faces over lunch. They’d been nose to nose that morning—though that encounter had included a few distractions.

  “Hey,” he said back. Now her smile broadened and warmed.

  He held out a hand and she put hers in his. “Allie, what is it? You’re ice cold. Trembling.” The coat she was wearing looked warm enough for the chill of a March evening.

  “Nothing. I got lost. No big deal.” She shrugged.

  He led her into the candlelit restaurant. “Our table is ready. You should have asked for directions when we were on the phone this afternoon if you didn’t know the way.”

  He led her on through to a table that looked out on a small lamp-lit garden. The restaurant wasn’t busy. The subtly romantic atmosphere and quiet conversation around them were perfect for weaving the seductive spell he had in mind.

  “I might have asked for directions,” she was saying, “if I had been the one to take the call.”

  He was helping her out of her coat when she made that little revelation. She was wearing a dress, simply cut to reveal a hint of cleavage
, enough creamy skin set against the dusky-rose color to make his mouth water, sexy in a delicate way rather than a come-and-get-it way. Shy and alluring at once. It suited her perfectly. He knew the entire contents of her wardrobe—not enough to fill up a suitcase. This wasn’t hers. He doubted she’d gone shopping for a date with him, hadn’t had time between work and now.

  Her hair was gathered to the back of her neck where it fell in a tumble of loose waves to cover bare neck and shoulders. He breathed a delicate perfume that made him want to press his nose to her neck and follow the trail down that sweet curve of her back and lower to discover where else she had dabbed scent.

  A waiter took their coats. Marcus was trying to remember what he said on the phone as they followed the hostess to a table. Not something meant for any ears but hers, but the details remained vague. At the table he held a chair for Allie and she seemed startled by that small gesture, hesitating a moment before slipping into place. He lingered a moment just above and behind her, enjoying the view.

  “So if that wasn’t you on the phone, who was I talking to?” he asked.

  Allie fingered a delicate chain with a pearl drop pendant. “My fairy godmother.” Her head dipped and she was looking down at herself as if she were looking at someone else. “She’s got one heck of a magic wand.”

  Marcus leaned in, stroked the pearl, his knuckles grazing her breasts. “I see the same Allison I’ve always seen. The Allison you work hard at hiding. The only magic is your friend’s ability to reveal you.”

  One of those long curls had fallen over her shoulder, a coil of dark silk drawing his eyes to the contrast of luminous skin and taking them on a journey to the swell of her breasts. He allowed himself the pleasure of sliding his finger inside the soft silken tunnel, his mind going to a vision of her under him, legs around his waist and him sliding inside her. He’d barely been in her presence five minutes and already his control was slipping away. He dropped into the chair across from Allie and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t reveal where his thoughts had wandered. The waiter returned and for a few minutes they were distracted by the business of ordering.

  When the waiter left them, Allie’s confidence abandoned her. She looked everywhere but at him. She fiddled with her dinner napkin, draped it over her lap and from the movement of her shoulders he could tell she was strangling it. He tried to ease the tension with humor.

  “I won’t molest you until after dessert. I promise.”

  She froze. Her gaze snapped up and locked with his. Her eyes were a deep green that penetrated to a degree that startled him, reminding him of Hella.

  It had been at the edge of his awareness from the beginning, a sense that there was more to Allie than just an advanced human level of intuition and perception. That she could be more like him than he knew. But, just to start, those green eyes of hers, rare in humans, didn’t exist among Pantherians of any tribe or subspecies.

  And if she were Pantherian she wouldn’t be living here on her own. It had been a couple of centuries since Pantherian females were last allowed to mingle freely with humans. Longer than that since they were permitted to go about unescorted. There weren’t enough Pantherian females left to risk short visits to human regions. No female had been formally allowed off the island of Pantheria in half a dozen years.

  But even though Allie couldn’t be a shifter, she was not your ordinary human. His instincts were firm on that point. What did that leave? Psychic gifts? Mesmeric talents? There were layers to Allie he was going to have to explore.

  “So you learned all about me at lunch,” he said. “Tell me about yourself. Where did you grow up?”

  “I grew up in your average, urban-bighted corner of a city,” she said with a shrug. “You?”

  “In a forest in Siberia,” he said.

  “Ah, I thought I detected a hint of an accent. I couldn’t place it. So you were raised by monks?” She took a sip of water, watching him over the rim of the crystal goblet. A spark of laughter glinted in her eyes. Good. She didn’t believe a word he was saying.

  “By wild tigers actually. You?”

  Her answer was as flippant as his. “I grew up in what you might politely call a brothel. My father was a high-end pimp. I didn’t know my mother, but my guess is that she was a high-end hooker. What were your parents like?”

  “Overprotective.”

  They sparred back and forth with their fantastical tales, only his side of it was truth, however unbelievable. He knew she was making her side up, but she delivered the story without hesitation and in unwavering deadpan. He gave up trying to get the truth and ventured into safer conversational ground—the weather and global warming.

  He tried sneaking in personal questions. She sidestepped every one with a fantastical fabrication and turned the questions back on him. Blocked at every new angle, he fell back on a trick that had served him well across the centuries—mesmerism.

  He dipped his hand into his jacket pocket and plucked out the prop he needed—a smooth white rock, oval and flat, with a faint tinge of blue in the center to add to its sense of mystery.

  “Give me your hand.”

  Allie hesitated, then acquiesced. He could feel the faint tremor move from the back of her fingers into his palm when he turned her hand palm up. With one hand under hers, his other covering it, he called her attention to the sound of the fountain just behind her, commenting on how soothing the sound of the water was. He watched for the expected drop in her shoulders, softening of the muscles around her full lips. When her gaze met his, her pupils were wider, more receptive.

  “This is a moonstone.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “From the moon?”

  He used his attention to lead hers, glancing at the floating candle that flickered in a bowl of water and flowers at the table center.

  Marcus pressed the stone into her palm. Tapped its center gently three times while he spoke in soothing tones.

  “No, not from the moon, from the ocean. But I found it soaking up moonbeams on a black sand beach.”

  She nodded as if that were a perfectly acceptable reason to call it a moonstone. He smiled, pleased with her willingness to play along.

  Her eyes followed his break in gaze the first two times, done slowly while he was talking. The third time her attention stayed with the flowers and light. A soft half-smile curved her lips. Her hand stopped trembling.

  “I found it on a tropical island, a beautiful, safe place.” He emphasized the word safe. “It has been rocked in the ocean, kissed by the wind and bathed in moonlight on the other side of the world.” A shiver passed through her, an expanding awareness that felt like a tug on his attention. Briefly the image of a shabby red blanket decorated with images of white kittens flashed in his mind. A security blanket from her childhood possibly. A reasonable projection when he was trying to create a security attachment to his gift.

  Marcus resisted the temptation to follow that image and discover what Allie’s past could tell him. Prying unnecessarily into someone’s thoughts went against his sense of honor. Creating a trusting dialogue that would encourage her to reveal what he needed to know was his preference. He had a particular destination in mind—Hella—and this time Allie wasn’t going to lead him off track. “Close your eyes and open your senses to the moonstone’s magic.”

  Allie closed her eyes. The tension in her fingers relaxed the tiniest bit, and then more as the stored vibrations from the ocean passed from the stone into her palm.

  Then she looked at him, green eyes clear, unguarded. Just where he wanted her.

  “What do you hate, Allie?”

  The answer was quick, unfiltered. “Pretending.”

  Her shoulders hunched forward, as if she could deflect the obvious next question, or braced for its pounce. When her eyes opened, wariness looked out at him. He didn’t ask the question he believed she expected. He gave her a crooked bad-boy grin, an invitation to mischief.

  “Is there anything you like to pretend? A particular
fantasy you like to lose yourself in?”

  Her face relaxed, took on a soft glow. Sparks danced in her eyes.

  “One or two.”

  Marcus put his hand over hers, squeezing her fingers tight around the rock he’d tucked into her hand. “Hold that thought. Don’t let it go.”

  Dinner with him was like sticking her finger in an electric socket and discovering she had a fondness for electric shocks. The air around them vibrated with possibility. It snapped and popped with restrained tension every time his arm brushed hers.

  He was a toucher.

  She hated touchers. But in the park that morning she’d begged for more. It wasn’t the case now with his hands cupping hers. Marcus knew how to touch, more a rubbing of skin to skin than a confining grasp. She barely heard the lines he used to try to charm her. Her attention locked on scarlet blossoms in a crystal bowl, a candle glowing in the center. Vibrations and air currents moved all the centerpiece elements in a slow swirl, catching light and shadow to paint and repaint the water’s surface.

  At a pause in his speech she nodded, barely curious about what he’d said, the stillness taking hold was such a blessed escape from the usual self-critical chatter at the back of her mind that she hardly dared to breathe for fear it might slip away.

  When she finally did look up into his eyes, she wasn’t the Allison Lila had made up for dinner, the one with hair curled and makeup carefully applied. She wasn’t even Allie the ad writer in her shapeless business suits. She was that wild and elemental soul he’d called up in the woods that morning.

  He knew it too. It was there in his eyes, recognition, as if he shared the same vision. His pupils had narrowed, his breath caught and he broke off mid-sentence, lips still parted. He’d closed her fingers around the stone. The stone was hot, hot enough to burn. She held tight.

  “Tell me all about pretending,” he said. His tone had a lazy, dreamlike quality, like the hum of a bumble bee on a summer afternoon. Dreams. “Tell me your favorite fantasy.”