Dangerous Loves Romantic Suspense Collection (73 page)

According to Tim, the head bartender at Club West, she did spend hours in the sun. Both her parents were well-respected anthropologists, professors, and researchers who traveled to the far corners of the world studying primitive societies. Growing up, Faith had traveled with her parents and had spent her formative years in desolate, remote regions that must have been unsuitable for a young child. Hell, according to Tim, Faith had been in the Andes weaving woolen clothes and chewing on roots instead of worrying about what she would wear to the prom like a normal teenager. Not that Horace had much experience with normal.

His early years had been spent digging through dumpsters and taking shelter in abandoned buildings. But that had just been the way of things for him. Faith was different. She was human. Most humans didn’t grow up, traveling from one primitive locale to the next. The thought of Faith spending most of her life learning about other cultures had intrigued him. He hadn’t exactly been prying into her background. He’d simply dropped a word here, made a comment there, and then had sat back and listened to Tim and the other bartenders talk about what had quickly turned into Horace’s favorite subject: Faith Summers.

Not that he was alone in his infatuation for her. It appeared Faith impressed everyone who knew her, which seemed reason enough to keep her at arm’s length.

He didn’t need that kind of temptation, not when the hungers clawing inside him continued to grow dangerously close to beyond his control.

Every time she was in the club, he couldn’t keep his mind on business. No matter how hard he tried to ignore her, his body wouldn’t let him.

He had no right to think of her in that way. He knew that. They had an employer/employee relationship. There could never be anything more than that between them even if he was looking for a relationship, which he wasn’t.

Lavender
.

She’d asked him if he knew her favorite color. It had to be lavender. Though there was nothing ever demure about the way she dressed, she almost always wore a light lavender shade somewhere on her body.

The color suited her. It gave her blue eyes an extra glow.

Tonight she’d worn a short black skirt. Not so short that it was indecent. Just short enough to tantalize. Just short enough to hint at what a man might find if he was lucky enough to pin her against a wall and slide the silky material up her long, shapely thighs. She’d left the soft lavender tank top untucked. The thin material molded perfectly to her breasts.

She must have used one of those glittering moisturizers tonight. She literally sparkled and shimmered as if she’d been dusted with diamonds as she danced under the glare of the bright lights twirling above the dance floor. She danced with herself, moving her body as if making love to a man. Her hips rolled slowly, matching the music’s sensual Latin rhythm.

“Uh… Hello?” Stone snapped his fingers a couple of times in front of Horace’s nose. “Are you even listening to me? I was asking if you’ve noticed anything unusual tonight?”

“What?” It took considerable concentration to draw his gaze away from Faith and the dance floor in order to focus on Stone. “She was stalking me,” Horace said after a long moment. His gaze traveled back to Faith.

Faith had started to dance with one of her girlfriends. They were lightly touching each other’s arms. Horace found it a surprisingly erotic sight.

“All night. She’s been following me around. I can’t figure out why.”

Stone frowned at that. “The girl? You think she’s the shooter?”

“What?”

“The shooter,” Stone said with an edge of impatience. “You know, the shadowy figure Brendan saw kill you in his vision?”

That jolted Horace back to reality.

“No, no. She’s just an employee.” He scanned the expanse of his club and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Well, nothing much. The two men Stone had brought with him stood out. Neither would have gotten past the security at the door without their rather unique credentials.

“I don’t mind Derrick coming along, but why did you have to bring him?” He hooked his thumb in Ricker’s direction. The man was a disaster. He looked like a killer with his hard expression and deep scar running down the left side of his face. His old, tattered jeans belonged in a garbage bin. And Horace knew he’d never seen an uglier shirt than the bright carrot-orange T-shirt with a faded picture of a smiling Florida orange on the front.

“Ricker can stop time,” Stone said. “If someone comes in here with a gun, we might need that.”

“Couldn’t he have at least put on something appropriate?”

Stone chuckled. “Perhaps he’ll start a new trend.”

“Heaven forbid!”

Horace’s gaze returned to Faith and her female dance companion. He also spotted a trio of men with their sights set on Faith. He moved toward her tempted to intervene. Unreasonable, he knew, but he wanted all the damn men in the bar to keep their filthy hands off his assistant bartender.

Derrick, with his kind brown eyes and easy smile, had edged his way toward Faith as well.

“Keep your bodyguards on a tighter leash, Stone.” Horace growled as he gestured toward Derrick. “I don’t want them interacting with…with…the humans.”

Stone’s expression hardened. Horace knew he was treading on dangerous ground. Stone wasn’t a man to be taken lightly. But Horace couldn’t seem to keep his prickly feelings under control…not with Faith around.

He’d given Faith’s mind a considerable push when he’d told her to go home. She should have mindlessly obeyed and left the club. Yet she’d stayed.

Horace wanted Faith gone, out of harm’s way. He had to watch out for everyone else in the bar. But something about Faith made him pay extra attention to her. He didn’t get visions and had never been adept at seeing the future, so he knew what he felt meant nothing. Even so, he intended to do everything in his power to make sure Faith stayed safe, even if that meant keeping her as far away from everyone, himself included, as possible.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to shake the worry that Faith’s life was in as much danger as his.

* * * * *

“Sometimes foreknowledge can be enough to change the future,” Stone said with a yawn several hours later as he headed toward the door.

Horace nodded. Time had drifted to the small hours of the morning. The last of the club patrons had left about a half hour earlier. His employees kept busy cleaning up.

It had been a relatively quiet night. Horace had stopped a college student from overdosing on prescription drugs, broken up a fight, and had handed over two drug dealers to the local authorities.

He rubbed the back of his neck. The tension bound up there had turned into dull thud at the base of his skull about an hour ago. He felt tired and ready to go home.

“Hey, Horace!” Tim called from the bar. “Do you have a minute?”

Horace gave a nod and then told Stone, who looked as weary as he felt, “Go on home. I just need to wrap up with Tim. After that, I’ll be right behind you.”

Stone hesitated before releasing a long breath. “It is late. Call me if you need anything,” he said as he headed toward the front door.

Horace joined Tim at the bar. He listened as Tim explained how he’d found a glitch in the new computerized cash register system. “It’s not recording who entered the transaction, which means we won’t know who gets the tips from the credit cards.”

“I’ll call the tech guys tomorrow,” Horace assured him. “Go home to your wife and kids. I’ll lock up.”

“Did you see—?”

“We’ll talk more tomorrow.” He simply wanted to go home and bury himself in the darkness of his covers. Not that he’d get any sleep. His mind was too tuned into Faith who must be tucked into her own bed by now like a real-life sleeping beauty. Thinking about her and her bed was making him feel as if he was losing his mind.

Those feelings were dangerous, considering—

He couldn’t think about that.

And he shouldn’t be thinking about Faith. Hell, he wasn’t going to get any rest tonight.

While kicking himself for losing control over his emotions, Horace started to lock up and head out to his car when he spotted
Faith
. She had a garbage bag slung over her shoulder and a determined stride as she started to go out the back door.

“What the hell?”

He felt tired and prickly and—thanks to Faith—horny as hell. Didn’t a man have a limit to the amount of teasing he could take? The gates holding back his sexual desires suddenly snapped, and he forgot about all the reasons he should stay away from her.

Horace strode after her. If Faith insisted they play games, he’d play.

And play to win.

Chapter Three

“What are you doing out here?”

Faith immediately recognized his voice. His crisp no-nonsense tone had the power to turn her legs to tingling pools of jelly. She breathed in deeply and tossed the trash bag into the dumpster before turning around to face Horace.

Heck, she’d been waiting for this all night, some uninterrupted time with him. Getting her wish shouldn’t make her heart hammer in her throat, should it?

“Since I was still around at closing,” she said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. “I thought I might as well pitch in, help out.”

“You shouldn’t be in the alleyway at this time of night. It’s not safe.” He took a step toward her. His midnight blue gaze pressed down on her. “You’re not safe.”

It took considerable willpower to stand her ground and keep a sarcastic tug on her lips. She didn’t want to admit that she’d stayed and helped Tim clean up with the hopes of catching a moment alone with Horace. A moment exactly like this where anything could happen. Nor did she want him to know that she had already lost her nerve. The predatory way he was looking at her made her entire body feel all quivery.

“I’m not safe…from you?” she asked. Her voice cracked.

“
Yes, from me
.” He took another step closer.

What had she been thinking? She knew nothing about the illusive Horace West. No one did. Not really. She’d heard he didn’t date, but that couldn’t be right.

“Perhaps I enjoy living on the edge,” she said, surprising herself with the flirty lilt in her voice. She stood a bit taller, tilted her head a bit more, and reminded herself that, no matter how sexy, he was just a man—a man who set off sparks when he touched her. Heck, she could taste the sparks on her tongue right now, and he still stood several feet away.

Oh boy, she was in over her head.

“You don’t have to scare me,” she said. “It’s my birthday, and I’m looking for someone to enjoy it with me. I had thought that you might—”

He touched her hand. His fingers felt hot, as if they should have burned her. And in a way they did. But not her hand. His touch burned deeper. She glanced down and watched as he traced the soft skin covering her knuckles.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” he said softly. “But I do hope you take my warning seriously.”

“You are warning me…of what?”

“I haven’t been with a woman in years.”

“Years?”

“My choice. I have my reasons.” His tender caress trailed up her bare arm.

The sparks between them heated the already scorching summer air. She had to swallow several times before she felt she could talk without her voice wavering. “I-I see.”

“It’s not that I haven’t had the opportunity. Women have hit on me before.” He gave a rueful grin. “Happens pretty much every night.”

She nodded and swallowed again. Should she feel embarrassed that he considered her simply another one of his groupies?

Poor guy, he’d made it clear to her earlier that he wanted to be left alone. But instead of staying out of his way like a good girl, she’d made a nuisance of herself all night.

And she never tossed herself at a man like this. She should be dying from mortification just about now. But she didn’t feel the slightest bit embarrassed. The way he caressed her, lightly rubbing his fingers up and down her arm, made her feel sexy.

Aroused…

And more than a little needy.

“Never,” he said, his soft bedroom voice pressed on her chest and vibrated low in her belly. “Never have I been so…so
tempted
.”

He took another step closer. His leg pressed up against hers, nudging her. The club’s rough brick wall bit into her back. She didn’t realize until that moment that he’d been directing her, driving her, like a lion would a gazelle, until she was trapped between the club’s back wall and his body.

“I don’t know what it is about you, Faith.” He brushed his lips over hers, a teasing gesture that made her hungry for his kiss. “I feel drawn to you. Like a moth is drawn to fire, you know?”

Only she was the one getting burned.

Perhaps she should have listened to his warning. It was hard to think with him this close to her. She could only feel. Her body ached for his touch, his mouth, his body. And that alone made him dangerous.

“I-I—perhaps—we—shouldn’t—”

“Hmmm…” he said and slanted his mouth over her lips. Tasting, savoring, demanding, she respond. His tongue plunged into her mouth and swirled into her depths, careful around her newly pierced tongue.

“You’re right, you know,” he said as soon as he pulled back from a kiss that Faith hadn’t wanted to ever end. His voice was a low purr. “We shouldn’t be doing any of this.” But his body said that it was too late for her. That he would do with her what he wanted.

He pressed his knee between her legs and eased them apart. With her legs spread and vulnerable to him, he lifted her hips until the tips of her toes barely touched the ground.

“
Do
you want me to stop?” he asked.

Every rational part of her shouted at her, telling her that she’d regret what they were about to do. But she didn’t feel very rational at the moment. Whether it was a good idea or not, she wanted to be here.

With
him
.

Doing
this
.

She nuzzled his neck. “Please, don’t stop.”

Horace’s hands traveled over her hips and up her body, and eased beneath her tank top. He touched Faith’s bare skin just under her firm breasts as if his hands belonged there.