CHAPTER
FIVE
It took Eleanore two showers, with a trip to the gym
in between, for her to expend even a small amount of the nervous
energy that Christopher’s kiss had charged her body with. She had
never kissed a man before. Growing up, she’d never been in one
place long enough to have a boyfriend. And now that she was on her
own, she hadn’t slowed down any. One glance at her sparse living
quarters was testament enough to that.
Christopher Daniels
was her first.
She had nothing to
compare him to, but if her current frazzled, oversexed state was
any indication, he was a good kisser. A very, very good kisser.
Like, The Princess Bride, five best
kisses ever kisser.
She couldn’t wait to
tell Angel about it. Of course, she also knew that she shouldn’t tell Angel about it. After all, bragging
about this kind of thing was what teenage boys did, not grown
women.
She laughed at
herself as she finished towel-drying her hair and headed into her
office to sit down at the computer. The time at the bottom of the
screen read 7:12 p.m. She had a little while before Daniels would
show up if he was serious about taking her out. She had no way of
confirming the date, as she didn’t have any method of reaching
him.
Ellie pulled up her
e-mail account, confirmed that Angel was online, and opened a chat
box.
E: You’re not going to believe what happened today.A: Hey, girl! What happened? Something good, I hope.
Ellie was about to
reply when she heard the sound of a Harley roaring up the lane
beside the apartment complex. Eleanore knew that Angel loved
motorcycles; she went nuts over the silhouette of a man on a bike.
Ellie was pretty sure that the real
reason the girl liked Christopher Daniels was that in Comeuppance, he’d ridden a Triumph.
The bike drew nearer
and Eleanore let her fingers play over the keyboard.
E: Hold on—hog going by. Sounds like magic.A: Oooh! Quiet moment of respect now commencing....
But as Eleanore read,
she frowned. There was a skidding, swerving sound, distinct and
chilling. And then that brief heartbeat of silence, the kind that
occurs right before something goes very wrong.
The sound of a crash
in the night is electrifying. It captures your attention, no matter
what you’re doing. It shoots through your body like a steel rod and
activates the scenery of your imagination. The sound of the
accident was like the crunching of full tin cans beneath a
steamroller, and it instantly iced Eleanore’s blood.
She was up and out of
her chair before she fully realized what she was doing. Her body
moved on autopilot—through the office door, through the living
room, and then through the front door of the apartment, which she
barely realized she’d opened using telekinesis.
When she stood on the
landing outside, she turned toward the street, automatically
searching for any immediately visible signs of wreckage or mangled
bodies. However, she saw nothing but the slight sheen of the
blacktop in the reflected light of streetlamps above. The night was
silent.
Had she imagined it?
Maybe she was more tired than she’d thought. But then something
blinked. Red. White. Red.
A taillight, she thought. She raced down the
stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. Distantly, she wondered
why she was the only one to have heard the crash. It wasn’t that
late at night. Shouldn’t there be other lights going on behind the
windows of neighboring apartments by now?
Eleanore hit the
bottom landing and rushed toward the parking lot and the street
beyond. There, she stopped and peered in the direction from which
she’d seen the blinking light. The street was empty, and there was
no noise save for the buzzing of the streetlights, the harsh sound
of her breathing, and the whimpering of a chocolate Labrador
retriever who sat beside a toppled, crunched, and riderless
motorcycle.
Eleanore’s heart
leapt into her throat. She willed her legs to move once more. The
November night was cold. All she wore was a thin pair of yoga
pants, a white T-shirt, and a pair of sheepskin Warmbat
boots.
The taillight
continued to blink on and off, but there was no sign of the person
who had been in the motorcycle’s saddle. There was a ditch a few
feet away, its deep recesses lost in shadow. Stomach knotted with
fear, Ellie crept to the lip of the ditch and looked down. In the
vague darkness of the shadows below was a long figure wearing what
appeared to be leather. He was instantly recognizable as a
man—tall, lean, and broad shouldered. At first glance, none of his
limbs were twisted at odd angles. But his helmet was
missing.
A black puddle was
spreading from beneath a shock of longish, unruly white-blond hair.
Eleanore couldn’t see his face. He was lying on his stomach. As she
skidded down the cement slope, unconsciously grateful for her
boots, she realized that she didn’t want to see his face. It could be gone, after all.
If he hadn’t been wearing a helmet at all, it was likely that he
was dead.
She reached the
bottom and then crouched beside him, heedful of the ever-expanding
crimson-black puddle. Her long, slim fingers checked at his wrist
for a pulse.
There wasn’t
one.
“Oh God, no . . .”
She felt herself beginning to panic and heard it in the rising
pitch of her voice. She knew she had to get his heart beating
first, before anything else. She could heal his wound easily
enough, but if he had lost too much blood, his heart would give her
trouble. She couldn’t make a heart beat if there was nothing for it
to pump.
Eleanore placed her
hand palm-down as gently as she could on the man’s leather-clad
back and closed her eyes. She felt the heat in her hands and she
knew that the magic was working when she also felt herself grow
weaker.
She urged his heart
to beat first and then quickly concentrated on his head wound.
Too hard, she thought distractedly. The
wound was more difficult to mend than it should have been. She
healed one separation to find something wrong underneath; layers
and layers of misfiring synapses and broken connections and
internal bleeding. It was a head injury of the worst
kind.
This is wrong, she thought, her teeth clenched in
frustration. It shouldn’t have been this hard. It was as if his
body were fighting her, damaging itself on purpose in order to make
things more difficult. Healing someone always drained her to some
extent, but this one had her careening toward
unconsciousness.
Eventually, the body
under her hand stirred and slipped from beneath her, but by that
time, she was utterly wasted. She started to fall forward and
caught herself on the man’s shoulder just as he rolled over and
looked up at her. His eyes were the color of a charcoal storm,
speckled with flecks of platinum that looked like both diamonds and
steel. The storm deepened beneath her and Eleanore found herself
entranced.
He sat up and shifted
so that he held her exhausted body in his gloved hands. She had no
choice but to let him; she was weak beyond speech or
movement.
My God, she thought in stunned silence as she
stared up at him.
His face was
undamaged, and it was the most incredible face she had ever laid
eyes upon. His fair skin and fine, absolutely perfect features
reminded her of an anime character, especially when paired with his
white-blond hair and incredibly tall, muscular physique. He had to
be a model. Maybe a movie star.
He looks like an angel, she mused as the Earth
shifted beneath her.
Her vision was
tunneling. As she slipped beneath that warm, black blanket, she
thought she caught the hints of a smile at the corners of his
perfect mouth.
Cruel, she thought.
And then there was
nothing.
There was something
wrong. Uriel glanced at the grandfather clock again: 7:13. He
turned and paced through his quarters and left his wing of the
mansion to rush down the stairs to the main area
below.
Michael was there,
preparing to go to work; on his uniform, he wore the gold bar of a
lieutenant, but they knew that he would soon be making captain.
Though he used a different name and background information each
time, Michael quickly worked his way up through the ranks of every
precinct he went to work for. But the fact that he never aged and
was never seriously hurt even though he was often shot at made his
choice of professions a difficult one. Max was sometimes called in
to wipe memories, as he had the time that Michael took several
bullets to the chest.
In the end, Michael
would quit his job under the pretense of wanting to run the family
business or travel the country in a Winnebago. Uriel had little
doubt that the archangel cop would soon be quitting again; he’d
been with the NYPD for fifteen years now and hadn’t aged a
day.
It struck Uriel as
strange that he was still there; he thought Mike was supposed to be
at work an hour ago. He was running late for his shift, apparently.
Maybe he was trying hard not to get that promotion.
Gabriel was just
getting back in; the fact that he was still damp from a shower at
the station house was evidence that he’d been in the thick of
another fire that night. However hard it was for Michael to be a
cop, it was worse for Gabriel, the firefighter. You could fake the
near miss with bullets. Fire was another thing altogether. It was
vicious and unpredictable and always left scars.
Now Gabe sat on one
of the couches, silently pulling on a dark bottle of
beer.
Uriel passed both
brothers by without a word and headed to the kitchen. He looked at
the clock on the microwave: 7:14.
He gritted his teeth
and ran a nervous hand through his thick hair. He felt on edge. He
was anxious and restless and impatient and it was understandable;
time was passing at an insurmountably slow rate. He needed to see
his archess again. He needed to hold her, touch her—take her.
But there was
something else, too. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it felt
a little like there were guard dogs in his brain, and right now
they were barking up a storm.
“I’m going,” he said
as he left the kitchen and strode across the living room to where
his leather jacket hung on the coatrack.
Michael looked up and
caught his gaze. “You’ll be almost an hour early. She won’t be
ready.” He shook his head in warning. “Women hate
that.”
“She’ll get over it,”
Uriel muttered as he grabbed his keys and pocketed
them.
Gabriel had been
silent on the couch, but now he leaned forward, put his empty
bottle on the coffee table in front of him, and stood. “I’m going
with you.”
Uriel stopped and
looked up. Their eyes met; their gazes held.
“You aren’t the only
one who can bloody well feel it,” Gabe told him, going for his own
jacket.
“Christ, I knew it,”
Michael muttered, taking his hat off and joining them beside the
coatrack. He looked down at his uniform, there was a flash of white
light, and suddenly he was dressed in street clothes. “I’m going,
too.”
“I’ll meet you
there,” said Azrael from where he was emerging at the archway that
led to his wing of the mansion.
All three brothers
turned to watch him pull on a long black trench coat, every ounce
of his six-foot-five frame radiating the dark charisma that was the
Masked One.
Now Uriel understood
why Michael hadn’t left to go to work. All of his brothers had been
in tune with him enough to know that something was bothering
him—that something was wrong.
He nodded his thanks
to each of them and then turned toward the mansion door. Luckily
for the archangels, the mansion was really no more than a temporal
spell of sorts; a portal through the magical building’s doors could
be opened to any other door anywhere in the world. Uriel opened the
door and stepped through to find himself coming out of an apartment
a block down from Eleanore’s.
The night was cold
and dark and almost unusually quiet. Azrael flew ahead of them
while they jogged down the street, and Uriel was grateful for the
vampire’s speed. The closer they got to the complex, the more Uriel
was certain something wasn’t right. By the time he reached the
stairs that led to her second-floor apartment, he was taking them
three at a time and practically flying himself.
The three brothers
came to Eleanore’s door to find it ajar. There was silence
beyond.
“Az?” Uriel
called.
“Come in, Uriel.
We’ve been waiting for you.”
It wasn’t Azrael’s
voice that greeted him from the other side of the open door. It was
Samael’s.
Uriel pushed the door
open to reveal Samael seated in the same spot that Uriel had been
sitting in a few hours earlier. A tall man in a dark blue business
suit was standing dutifully beside him.
Azrael was standing
across the room, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over
his chest. He shot Uriel a warning look, his gold eyes flashing,
and then turned his gaze back to Samael.
“Where is she?” Uriel
asked angrily, stepping into the apartment.
“Honestly, Uriel, can
you think of nothing more original to ask?”
“I’ve got one for
you,” Gabriel growled, coming in behind Uriel, his own silver gaze
glowing like ice. “Where the fuck is
she, you scaff bastard?”
Samael chuckled, the
low sound deep and rumbling. “Now, now. This is no way to greet a
guest who’s come with good news.”
Uriel waited,
wondering how long he would have to stand there before he could rip
off the fallen archangel’s head.
Samael casually
unbuttoned the top button of his expensive charcoal-gray suit
jacket and adjusted his tie. “Your archess is safe and, thus far,
untouched. I’ve come to offer you an accord,” he said, with every
hint of nonchalance. “I propose a bargain.”
“Of course you do,”
Michael said. His tone was as low as Samael’s. And, at the moment,
just as deadly.
Samael went on as if
Michael hadn’t spoken. “It’s simple enough. I wager that I can win
the heart of our lovely Eleanore before you can, Uriel. The stakes
are these,” he said, as he leveled his powerful gaze on Uriel and
pinned him to the spot. “I win, and not only is the archess mine,
but you agree to serve me for all time. You win, and of course, the
archess is yours.”
The room was silent
for what seemed a short eternity. Michael cocked his head to one
side and frowned. “I’m sorry. I’m sure I didn’t hear you right. I
could have sworn you just proposed a wager that there’s no way in
hell we would accept. Would you mind repeating
yourself?”
Samael’s smile
broadened. He looked down at his hand and appeared to study his
perfect manicure. “She has already fallen for me, Uriel.” He
addressed his next words to Uriel alone. He glanced up at the
green-eyed man who had once been the feared and notorious Angel of
Vengeance. “I can have her in a day. No more.” He let his hand drop
to his side and straightened. “And you’ve no way to get to her.” He
shrugged. “You don’t even know where she is.” His smile was back.
“Do you?”
“I’d wager she’s in
your bed,” Gabriel ground out through clenched teeth.
Uriel chose that
moment to strike, but his brothers were no fools. It took all of a
heartbeat for Michael and Gabriel to come forward and wrap their
arms around Uriel’s strong form. Azrael whirled through the room,
his body seeming to mist under the speed with which he moved. He
stopped between Uriel and Samael.
“He has Eleanore,”
Azrael said, spearing Uriel with a golden gaze. “Remember
that.”
“Oh, I dinnae think
he’ll be forgettin’ it anytime soon,” Gabriel muttered, his grip on
Uriel’s thick, banded arm very, very tight.
“Of course, you can
try to take her from me, Uriel,” Samael continued, as if nothing
had just transpired. “But good luck convincing her you’re in the
right—and I’m in the wrong.” He cocked his head to one side and his
gray eyes glittered. “Especially when you bring the bracelet into
the scenario.” He shook his head. “I doubt she’ll appreciate the
lovely gift once she knows the truth.”
“Get out.” It was
Michael who spoke then, his voice a mere breadth above a
whisper.
Samael’s eyes cut to
the tall, blond archangel who had once been the Old Man’s favorite
so long ago. His charcoal gaze began to glow. The look they
exchanged was of the most pure form of hatred. Masked by the
sheerest facade of calm.
“Very well.” Samael
nodded once. “I’ve said what I came to say.”
He stood and moved to
the front door of Eleanore’s apartment, the man in the blue suit
following on his heels. In the doorway, Sam turned and his gray
eyes pinned Uriel one last time. “The ball is in your
court.”
With that, Samael’s
form melted into the darkness behind him. He and his servant
vanished and the apartment was once more free of his ominous
presence.
Eleanore came awake
in a pleasant daze, her limbs deliciously heavy, her body languid,
her mind strangely at ease. But the feel of the mattress beneath
her was different; it was foreign to her. The air felt unfamiliar.
She slowly blinked her eyes open. Where am
I?
She could sense that
it was freezing outside. It was a hard November freeze that would
kill what remained of the farmers’ crops and the last, stubborn
roses that clung to untended vines across the town. She could
always sense these things, so she knew it to be true despite the
warm, white comforter draped across her.
Slowly, she sat up;
the sleepy succor her body was wrapped in made her feel luxurious
and easy, like a cat taking a stretch after a long nap. Again, she
blinked. Her short-term memory was blurred, but miraculously, she
wasn’t afraid. She should have been. This, she knew. And yet . . .
she couldn’t seem to be bothered.
“Where am I?” she
asked out loud, taking in the opulence of the massive master
bedroom suite she found herself in.
A hearth sat nestled
into the opposite wall, flanked by carved granite and marble. It
crackled pleasantly, the fire within it the perfect height and
warmth. The flames sent dancing light across the marble floor and
its thick rugs. The pile of the rugs was high, inviting bare feet.
There were tapestries on the wall, each depicting something ancient
and mysterious. There were unicorns and dragons and there was text
written in languages she didn’t comprehend. The air felt clean,
free of dust, and scented with something she couldn’t quite put her
finger on. A kind of flower? A spice? It was intoxicating and made
her feel even more relaxed.
There was a large oak
door in the wall adjacent to the fireplace and upon it now was a
gentle knock.
Eleanore wondered who
could be on the other side, and when she did, she remembered
everything that had happened that night: the motorcycle accident,
the mad dash across the street, the fight to save the victim’s
life.
She remembered
passing out—and looking up at an angel’s face right before she had
done so. She sat up a little straighter, ran a nervous hand over
her hair, and glanced around at the bed and the room. It must be his, she thought, and she wondered how
she had gotten there.
The gentle knock came
again. Eleanore cleared her throat and called, “Come
in.”
The door opened,
swinging slowly inward. Filling its frame was indeed the impossibly
beautiful angelic rider. “Good evening,” he said. His voice was so
perfect that it sent shivers through Eleanore’s body. She hastily
suppressed the moan that threatened, absolutely forbidding herself
to give this total stranger the satisfaction.
His dark eyes were
glittering with secrets and his lips were curled in a gorgeous,
incredibly sexy smile. He easily strode across the room to stand
beside the bed and she gazed up into his charcoal-gray
eyes.
Oh crap, Eleanore thought. I
want him. And I’m probably one of a million women he’s had in this
bed who wanted him just as badly.
“Where am I?” she
asked.
He was handsome, but
he was a stranger. And she was alone and in his bed.
“You’re at the home
of a doctor who has been out of the country for some time; I’m
renting the house,” he said softly.
He was wearing tight,
worn blue jeans and a form-fitting dark gray long-sleeved shirt
that matched his eyes. Both the jeans and the shirt clung to his
incredibly tall, trim, and muscular body. She could actually see
the muscles rippling beneath the somewhat thin fabric of his
clothing.
“I hope you’ll
forgive me,” he told her, glancing at the yoga pants and shirt she
still wore. “I’m afraid I bled a little on your clothing. However,
I thought you would most likely prefer changing yourself.” He gave
her a sheepish grin then, and it was utterly
disarming.
She blinked and
glanced down at herself. He was right. She was still fully dressed
and there were bits of dried blood here and there. She was
entranced by him and he was far too handsome for anyone’s good, but
he’d been chivalrous. She had to give him that.
“What’s your name?”
she asked.
“Sam,” he told her
simply. Then he bent to sit on the bed beside her and her heart
leapt into her throat. He raised his hand and gently cupped her
face. She was helpless to pull away. In fact, she felt frozen to
the spot as he tenderly brushed his thumb over her cheekbone and
studied her as if she were just as beautiful as he was. “And you
are Eleanore.”
Her heart rate
thrummed madly. “How—how do you know?”
“A long time ago, I
made it my job to know everything.” He smiled a mischievous smile.
“I’ve gotten rather good at it.” He chuckled.
When he removed his
hand, Eleanore felt slightly strange. A little bereft. But his
smile filled the tiny void and she found herself relaxing once
more.
Wake up, Ellie, her inner voice
warned.
She knew nothing
about this man. Not really. She knew he was rich—that much was
obvious from her surroundings. You can’t rent a fully furnished
house with marble floors and tapestries unless you’re loaded. She
also knew he liked motorcycles.
“Sam what?” she
asked. The least she needed was a last name.
He chuckled again and
there were more delicious shivers. “Lambent.”
Eleanore thought
about the name, which sounded familiar. “You mean like Samuel
Lambent, the media mogul. . . .” What a
coincidence, she thought. I’ll have met
two famous, gorgeous men in one week. But of course this was
a different Sam. Lots of people had the same names. And the
extremely wealthy, extremely famous Lambent didn’t come to small
towns in Texas. She was pretty sure he lived in
Chicago.
“I won’t keep you.”
He sighed, his smile almost sad now as he changed the subject.
“I’ll provide you with fresh clothes and a ride home. And I promise
that your secret is safe with me. But”—he paused, his eyes
darkening—“I would ask that you allow me to see you again.” She
watched as his pupils expanded.
She was nearly
trapped in that look of growing hunger until she realized,
suddenly, that he hadn’t denied it. He hadn’t denied being Samuel
Lambent.
“Oh my,” she whispered.
“You are Samuel Lambent.”
For a long, silent
while, Sam just stared at her.
And she stared
back.
Finally, he nodded.
“Yes.” He sighed and shrugged, pushing off the bed to stand once
again. “I’m sorry I kept it from you.”
She swallowed hard,
looked him up and down, and realized she recognized him now. She’d
seen profile pics, snapped hurriedly, in magazines and newspapers.
He never gave interviews, so the photographs were of poor quality.
But there was the tall, strong build. There was the shock of white
hair. They sure as hell didn’t capture his insane
handsomeness.
“Why did you keep it secret?” she asked. Why was he so
secretive in general?
“I suppose I’m nearly
as used to hiding as you must be.” This he said with a lowered head
and a meaningful look through the tops of his charcoal-colored
eyes. She knew damned well what he was referring to. She had saved
him, so he obviously knew she could heal people. And he must
realize that a power like that was too valuable. He knew she must
always be on the run.
And, of course, in
the back of her mind, she wondered whether she would have to run
from him as well. And whether it would do any good to run from one
of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the country.
Eleanore looked away.
“Frankly, I doubt it.” What could he possibly have to hide that was
as bad a secret as hers?
Sam slipped his hands
into the pockets of his jeans. “You don’t think so?” he
asked.
She glanced up at
him. He was looking at the floor, his gaze contemplative. He turned
away from her to walk to a plush overstuffed chair beside a folded
screen on the other side of the room. He gracefully sat down and
then pinned her with his powerful gaze once more.
Eleanore was
instantly arrested. His expression was painfully intense. She
fidgeted and sat up straighter to swing her legs over the side of
the bed. She still felt weak, but not uncomfortably
so.
“In truth, there are
people that I’d rather not have knowing where I am.”
“You’re hiding from
them?”
He
nodded.
“Why?”
He didn’t answer. He
just smiled a small, secret smile and the glint of his eyes told
her that an answer wouldn’t be coming anytime soon.
“It’s really that
bad?” she asked, bewildered.
His smile turned
rather nasty. “You have no idea.”
Again, he stood and
this time he strode all the way across the room to the door. “I’ll
have some clothes brought up for you,” he told her as he pulled the
door open and turned to face her. “There’s a light meal waiting
downstairs; I know you must be hungry.” He smiled a tender, gentle
smile. “Healing people obviously takes a lot out of a person. I’m
indebted to you.” He paused long enough to let this sink
in.
Eleanore blushed and
looked away.
“When you’ve
finished, I’ll be happy to give you a ride back to your
apartment.”
She nodded. Then he
opened the door, stepped out into the hall, and closed it behind
him, leaving her alone.
Out in the hall,
Samael stopped and ran a shaking hand through his white-blond hair.
Then he lowered his hand and looked at it.
This is unexpected, he thought. I’m trembling?
She was getting to
him. Her nearness. Her perfection. Knowing what she was and what
she meant—it was too much. He couldn’t stop thinking about how she
might feel.
And she was so
good. She’s been created as a mate for
an angel—and yet here she was, her own woman, replete with her own
thoughts and morals and her own lifetime to back them up. She was
her own person.
She no more belonged
to Uriel than Samael had belonged to the Old Man.
It was strange for
him to realize all of this. He’d never thought so much about one
human being before. It was making him feel . . . off. Not quite himself.
Samael moved down the
hall to the top of the marble staircase.
“Jason, where is
Lilith?” he called down to the young man who was walking through
the foyer below, a cell phone to one ear.
The man immediately
disconnected the call and pocketed the phone. “I’m not certain, my
lord. But I will find her for you right away.”
Samael nodded once,
and then descended the stairs. Jason met him at the
landing.
“Do you mind my
asking how our guest is doing?” Jason inquired. He was a handsome
young man with brown hair and blue eyes. As he had been when he was
with Sam in Eleanore’s apartment, he was once more dressed in a
very expensive blue suit. He appeared tall, though not as tall as
his master. He was also fairly well built.
There was the air of
wisdom and silent obedience about him that utterly belied the youth
in his handsome features. He waited patiently as Samael glanced
once back up the stairs and then turned to face him
again.
“She’s beautiful,”
Samael whispered. “And precious.” He frowned then, and stared at
something unseen, somewhere in the vicinity of the marble ground.
“I believe I have her trust. And I’m fairly certain she’ll wish to
see me again.” He looked back up and met Jason’s gaze. “Any word
from lover boy?”
“Not yet, my lord.
But soon, I’ve no doubt.”
“No.” Samael smiled
and shook his head. “Nor do I.”
Eleanore sank into
the fine leather of the passenger seat and tried not to fidget.
Everything was happening so fast and it was all so unbelievable,
she didn’t really know what to make of it.
First, Christopher
Daniels. And now Samuel Lambent. Two extremely big people in one
very small town in two extremely short days. It was a little
overwhelming.
Eleanore closed her
eyes and leaned her head back against the headrest of the luxury
vehicle. It smelled nice in here. Like well-oiled leather, new car
scent and gentle, wafting cologne.
Money, she realized. This is
what real money smells like.
She’d always thought
her family was well off, but there was something subtly different
about this. Maybe it was the fact that none of them had ever driven
a Bentley.
“I apologize if I’ve
made your life even more complicated,” Sam said
suddenly.
Eleanore opened her
eyes and turned to gaze at him. Jesus, he’s
beautiful, she thought. His profile was straight out of a
manga comic. So perfect. The gold watch on his left wrist glittered
momentarily under a passing streetlight and Eleanore shook her
head, allowing it to fall back against the headrest once more.
“You’ve made it more interesting, that’s for sure,” she
whispered.
He chuckled, the
sound sending delicious rivulets of pleasure through Eleanore’s
body. How does he do that?
“I’m about to make it
even more interesting,” he said then, his voice dropping to become
even quieter.
Eleanore stilled. She
watched him as he turned to glance at her. “I’m sorry, Eleanore,
but I wasn’t lying when I told you I make it my business to learn
everything I can about people I deal with. And I know about your
association with Christopher Daniels.”
She blinked and
frowned, not sure how to feel about that. “What about
him?”
Sam’s grip on the
wheel tightened and then loosened again. She saw the tension riding
up his arms and into his shoulders. He took a deep breath and let
it out slowly as he surveyed the streets outside. “He isn’t what he
seems to be.”
That’s mysterious, Eleanore thought. Okay. Elaborate, please.
“What do you mean?”
she asked out loud.
At that, Samuel
Lambent turned and fixed Eleanore with a hard gaze. “Let’s just say
you and I aren’t the only two in the world with something to
hide.”