A.K.A. Goddess (18 page)

“This is way beyond acceptable, Lex. You have no right to invade my privacy like this. And stop staring at my breasts.”

Classic blunder. Obediently his gaze drifted lower. His lips hinted at a smile.

I snatched the towel he held. He didn’t pull it from my reach—cramped as this portable was, he didn’t have room to. But as I tugged it to me, he came with it.

Brave, foolish man, to get in striking distance.

And yet I didn’t want to hit him. Resorting to violence seemed its own kind of failure, especially considering how I felt about the damned Comitatus. Especially when Lex was more annoying than threatening.

I mean—he was Lex.

“This is breaking and entering,” I told him, wishing my words could cut deeper against his Stuart sense of self-entitlement. “You just crossed a major line.”

Instead of apologizing he said, “The same line you crossed that time you invaded my hotel room in Manhattan?”

Oh. The memory of that disoriented me just long enough for him to draw the towel slowly across my wet shoulder, gently past my shoulder blade. Long enough for him to lean even closer and murmur, “I don’t remember protesting. As a matter of fact, weren’t you naked then, too?”

“We…were dating then.” The towel continued its long, slow stroke into the curve of my spine. I shivered in reluctant appreciation.

Lex’s voice, so near my ear, became a whispery purr. “No, we weren’t. That’s what got us dating again. That time.”

“It’s still not—” But the towel had reached my butt, and I bit my lip instead of continuing.

“What’s sauce for the goose,” he teased, circling the terry cloth across one of my hips and forward. Lower….

“Don’t quote adages.”

He whispered, “I know what adages do for you.”

That touch of silliness, in the midst of his seduction, gave me the breath of clarity I needed. I snatched the towel from his hand before he could go any lower with it.

And felt instantly cold, despite the steamy warmth around me. Lonely, even. Damn it.

So I’d done something similar, a few years back. These were different circumstances. “Well, we aren’t dating now, so you can just look elsewhere until I’m dressed. Got it?”

With a lingering look of appreciation, Lex turned away.

“Not facing the mirror,” I warned.

“You still don’t trust me?”

“Not lately.” And, double-checking his angle from the mirror—which, fortunately, was small and rusted and steamed over—I finished drying off. “How did you find me here, anyway?”

“You’ve mentioned the place before,” said Lex. “We argued about staying here once, remember? At the time, I won.”

That was the problem with having dated someone with such sharp recall. “You said it sounded like a dump,” I chided, now that he’d prompted my own memory.

I pulled on the panties I’d washed in the shower with me. I’d wrung them out in the towel and hung them on the curtain rod, but of course they were still damp.

I really wanted to go shopping.

Lex said to the corner, “No offense, Mag….”

Oh, sure. Just because we were standing in a portable, communal shower set up in the middle of a scrubby courtyard, he thought the place was a dump?

“So, what, you just staked the place out?” I pulled my camisole on over my humid skin, then paused. “No! You don’t have that kind of spare time. You hired someone to stake it out.”

Lex tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling, still not turning to look at me. What a nice guy he was, following my instructions like that.

I smacked him on the back of the head.

“Hey!” Now he did turn back, surprised—and apparently amused. I doubt he gets smacked often. “I was worried.”

“It’s not your job to worry.”

“Well then, consider it my hobby. An addiction, if you must. You’re in a foreign country—”

“So are you.”

“Your apartment was burglarized, your aunt was attacked, and you’re involved with God-knows what kind of people.”

“Excuse me?”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t call when you got back to town.”

“Wouldn’t that be my choice?”

He scowled. He wore scowls well. “Not if it puts you in danger.”

“Actually, yes. Even if it does put me in danger. Even if I’m, oh, facing off against masked gunmen or driving like a maniac or swimming underground rivers without equipment, that would be my choice. Not yours. Not anyone else’s.”

Lex said, “Be serious for a minute, would you?”

He honestly thought I was joking—which, weirdly, delighted me. I laughed from sheer relief.

“It’s not funny, Mag,” warned Lex. But I’d been through way too much over the past few days to just dismiss this moment of respite. Lex was still being Lex—spying on me, making decisions for me, breaking into my shower.

I stopped laughing. “I locked the door. How’d you get in?”

“It’s a cheap lock,” he said. “Cheap places like this have cheap security. I could have been anybody, Mag. I worry.”

“That’s your problem.” Though I supposed his spying and intrusions made it partly mine.

“You think I’m being paranoid? If some pervert grabbed you in the shower, what would you have done about it?”

I folded my arms. My skin still felt sticky from the steam. How Lex could wear even a light, Italian suit coat and look so cool, I’d never understand. “You don’t really want to test that theory, do you?”

In answer, he slid his gaze down me again. I was only wearing panties and a camisole so far, after all. My wet hair stuck to my back.

Amusement pulled at his mouth, as if usurping his otherwise cool demeanor. “Are you suggesting some kind of kinky role play, Magdalene? Or do you just want to kick my ass over keeping an eye on you?”

“Definitely the latter.” I stepped into my cargo pants. “What you call ‘keeping an eye on me,’ other people call ‘manipulation’ and ‘stalking.’” But hell, he was my stalker. “Come on, pervert. Someone else might want the shower.”

“I’m sure this place has a high germ quota to fill.”

“That attitude won’t win you any points, buddy,” I warned, reaching into the shower for—oh, yeah. The Melusine Chalice. How quickly we forget.

I hesitated. If Lex was somehow involved, then we—the grail and I—were in major trouble.

But, damn it, my worst suspicions about Lex were based on ancient Stuarts showing up in conspiracy books as being decidedly antigoddess. My distrust came from an accusation of perjury which I still didn’t completely understand.

Yes, I wanted to keep the grail safe. Nothing wrong with that. But I’d also spent so much of my lifetime with this man.

It would be one thing if I were blindly in love. But whether I loved him or not, it wasn’t blind. I knew Lex could be proprietary and willful. I even knew he had the capacity for violence—and that he generally controlled that. I also knew he’d developed an almost Machiavellian attitude about certain laws, business ethics and society—hence our most recent breakup.

But on top of all that, I knew—as I’d realized in the river—that Lex would do almost anything for me. He’d loved me through braces, weight issues—”scales” and all, you might say. He’d once promised never to cheat me and, as far as I knew, he’d kept that promise. Even the time he’d sliced that tray into his cousin’s face, he’d seemed to think he was doing it for me.

Oh, we clearly had issues to resolve…or not resolve, as I chose. But the immediate question, whether to bring him to my room to talk or to knock him unconscious and run away with the grail was pretty clear.

I retrieved my gym bag and dried it off with my already-damp towel.

“You shower with your luggage?” Good. If he hadn’t commented, I might’ve thought he was faking ignorance.

“Hostels have a slight theft problem,” I admitted, shouldering the bag and reaching past him to open the door. The afternoon air might be warm, but at least it wasn’t steamy. I sucked it in gratefully, especially after last night.

Lex followed me out. “It’s a shame you never went into advertising, Mag. Any second now, you’ll have me wishing we’d spent a nice fortnight here after all.”

“Snob,” I said—but I smiled. It’s not like he was wiping everything with a handkerchief before he would touch it. He had that much class, anyway.

Actually, class had never been a problem for Lex.

“Flake,” he countered, equally good-natured—and it was such an unclassy thing to say that I almost laughed again. Damn it, I’d missed him. I usually did. Why was that?

As I reached my little room, I stepped back. So he’d learned to pick locks, had he? “Demonstrate.”

Lex shrugged, pulled a key from his pocket and opened the door. My mouth opening, I immediately patted my pants—

And felt a hard plastic key ring. He hadn’t taken my room key, anyway.

“I can see why these places have a theft problem.” Lex held the door open for me, eyes bright. “Never underestimate the power of a bribe.”

Shaking my head, I went in and slid the bag, with the grail, under the bottom bunk. “So what the hell are you doing here, anyway?” I demanded, turning back to him.

In my most paranoid fantasies, he would be holding a gun on me, or opening the door for black-clad, ski-masked Comitati.

Instead, Lex closed the door and stepped forward, sliding his strong arms around me, all fine fabric against my bare skin, for a wholly different fantasy. “Right now?” he whispered, leaning close. “I’m giving you more reasons to kick my ass.”

Then he kissed me. Proprietary. Willful.

Whatever connection we’d shared, familiar from over half our lifetimes, clicked solidly into place. My body recognized him in a hot rush. My soul recognized him with something like the delight of homecoming.

After the week I’d had, I downright welcomed him.

Issues or no issues, I turned him against the bed, murmured, “Watch your head,” around his tongue, and laid him down so that I could kiss him far more fully.

He went willingly, his critique of the hostel forgotten. I straddled him, cradling his head as I folded myself down and we reacquainted ourselves with each other’s mouths and tastes and hungers. He slid his arms back around me. One of his hands followed my spine upward, into my wet hair. One headed downward across my behind.

Good. He really had incredible hands.

Finally things felt right. My world had gone crazy over the last week, what with break-ins and murder and priest kissing and goddess bonding. But Lex was a constant. The feel of his hands worshipping my body with intimate knowledge, of the eager hardness in his Italian pants, was equally certain. Challenges and even danger still waited outside of this hovel of a room. But together we created a kind of emotional stillness and safety, like a time-out.

A time-out full of ragged breathing. Tongue kissing. Exploring each other’s bodies to see how much we’d changed in the past year. Learning that everything was just about where we’d left it…from what we could tell through clothes, anyway.

I wasn’t just straddling his hips, now; I was riding his hardness through my cargo pants and the fine fabric of his slacks. Leaning over him, my hair curtaining our faces with heavy dampness, I brushed my camisole-covered breasts across the front of his suit coat and drank in his low, appreciative moans as greedily as I’d drunk goddess power the night before.

I wanted this. Him. I wanted to celebrate being alive—and what’s more alive than sex? Especially after the confusion with Rhys, I wanted to flaunt my femininity, my sexuality.

Only one thing I didn’t want.

I pushed up off Lex’s chest, so that I could keep from kissing him for a few critical seconds. But I didn’t stop moving on him. “This doesn’t change anything,” I gasped.

“Anything,” he repeated, his thumb sliding between my legs and sending a jolt of promise shuddering through me.

Oh, how I wanted this! But he could have just been parroting me. “Us. Your family. Last year’s—”

My own gasp of pleasure interrupted me, and Lex’s eyes, which had darkened toward brown, crescented with satisfaction.

Then I said, “Last year’s trial.”

The corporate espionage trial. The one in which he may or may not have lied on the stand—something I would have a hard time forgiving. Especially from him.

Now Lex’s eyes closed with something other than ecstasy. Something closer to annoyance. “I hate it when you bring up that damned trial.”

I rose up on all fours, no longer riding him. “Oh, do you?”

“Although hate may be too strong a word.” But when he opened his eyes, I saw that he was joking. Or half joking. Hard to tell with him. Either way, we’d just hit a stopping point, damn it, damn it, damn it.

Maybe we could hit another starting point. “So tell me you were innocent.”

Lex scooted backward, sat up against the faded wallpaper at the edge of the bed. He looked like an advertisement for casual elegance amidst bohemian squalor. “You know I can’t.”

I rolled onto my hip, my head beside his ribs, and arched my neck to better see him. “Because you were guilty?”

“Because I signed a confidentiality agreement.”

“Awfully convenient, that.”

He searched my face for a long moment, then shifted his gaze to the space between us, to the bulge in his trousers. “Not really. No.”

“Why did you sign it?”

He raised his knee on my side, protecting his vulnerability. “For the company.”

There was a good reason for you. “Your father’s business. Cousin Phil’s company.”

“The Stuarts’ business, which makes it my company. We couldn’t just settle—” But he pressed his lips together. That, too, was apparently confidential, and it pissed me off. It was one thing not to talk about work with competitors. It was another not to be able to talk about it to his lover.

Well, I’d certainly been right, hadn’t I? Us getting it on a few minutes ago hadn’t changed anything. Would it ever? Was this where we were stuck, after so long?

I thought a moment. “Are you sorry you signed it?”

Lex lifted a heavy strand of damp hair off my face, studying me as he might a fine painting. “I thought it was the right thing to do, Mag. I still think so. But after losing you, I wish I’d thrown the pen in the damned lawyers’ faces.”

Had he known he was using the exact right magic words? The right thing to do. Even if QuestCo had bent some laws—and I didn’t even know that for sure—the deal had satisfied his own internal sense of honor. When had I stopped trusting him? When had I stopped believing in that strange, solid honor of his?