Dangerous Loves Romantic Suspense Collection (71 page)

She drew a careful breath. It’d been a long time since she last had the freedom to choose her own clients. Anyone with thirty-five dollars enjoyed admittance into the tattered tent she’d set up on a vacant lot in one of the forgotten suburbs of Chicago.

The police rarely ventured down this narrow alley. And when they did, they weren’t looking for business license violators.

“Please, sit. Tell me what you seek,” she said, even though the last thing she wanted to do was look past the veil and into this man’s soul.
Stay away from the dark ones
, her mother had always warned. The haunted ones brought nothing but trouble…and death.

But she couldn’t turn him away. She needed the money tucked in his pocket, money so rich she could almost smell it. Here in Chicago, a place that had never been her home, she needed every penny she could get. Just staying alive was expensive these days.

Never a minute passed that she didn’t wish she were back in the old country, in Liechtenstein. Back home, surrounded by a large family who supported each other, she could be choosy. But not here. She had to eat and pay her rent. And haunted or not, this man was the first new face she’d seen all day.

The silent man tugged at his sharply pressed pants legs before sitting in the empty chair, a red velvet upholstered wreck she’d scavenged from a garbage dumpster. Without saying a word, he dropped the cash on the silk-draped table that separated them.

She rubbed at the ache in her temples before taking his hand.

“Tell me what you seek,” she repeated. His palm felt smooth, as if he’d never worked a day in his life. Not a single day.

She glanced up. His eyes, deep, unreadable dark voids, met hers. Czarina jerked back. No one should have eyes so empty, so cold. Those eyes, she’d seen them before in a nightmare.

She dropped his hand. It landed like a dead weight on the table between them.

“I-is it love you wish to find?” she asked, hoping beyond hope the heat had baked her brains and had her imagining evil in the eyes of an ordinary man.

“The Lion.”
The man’s lips didn’t move, yet she’d clearly heard the words.
The Lion.

The scent of danger filled the muggy air within the tent. Czarina slowly eased her chair away from the table while her eyes remained locked on the man across from her. “I don’t know how to find him.”

The Lion belonged to part of a group of creatures who called themselves
the Protectors
. They looked like men, lived like men, but they weren’t human. What were they? Where did they come from? No one seemed to know.

Lady Czarina had cared for one once. An infant found in a neighborhood very much like this one. Discarded, perhaps. Or maybe he’d never had parents in the first place.

The tales stored in her family’s collective memory called these men who weren’t men an ancient race. A race to be respected…
and feared
.

“I cannot help you.” Her voice turned cold. Hard. She didn’t want anything to do with what this man sought.

Not anymore.

They might look like humans but they didn’t have a drop of humanity in them. She’d once tried to help the infant she’d raised, to protect him from his fate. That one, he was the Lion’s friend—the one she called Fish. He and the others had thanked her by stripping her of everything: her shop, her livelihood, her dignity.

No more.

Never again.

“You must help me,” the man sitting across from her demanded. “You
will
help me.”

Before she could protest, he grabbed her neck with his unyielding hands. Icy fingers like bands of steel squeezed.

“Tell me.” His lips remained pressed together, but his voice growled in her ears all the same. He shook her like a feral dog would a small rabbit. “Where is the Lion?”

A vision slapped her in the face.

Bright.

Blinding.

Unbending.

A life flashed before her dimming eyes. Not a prophecy of her future, but the Lion’s.

She saw the Lion at work in his bar. His heart had long been closed off to everyone around him, even his friends. And though sexual yearnings pulled at him from every angle, the Lion denied himself any pleasure. He’d remained celibate for many years now.

Oh, what a fool you are, Lion!

The long span of celibacy would only make the force poised to rip his future to shreds that much more powerful.

“Horace West,” the lipless voice crowed, pulling Czarina out of her vision and back to her very frightening present. A slow smile drew across the stranger’s face as his hold on her neck began to crush bone.

“No,” she gurgled. She didn’t want this. Never this. They were all pains in the ass, but they didn’t deserve to—

“The force waiting for him…she’s going to be Horace’s death—” With no one of use to hear her, Lady Czarina used her last breath to make one final prediction, one only Horace could change. “She’ll be his death, and he will be—”

“
Her destruction
,” Lady Czarina’s killer finished for her.

Chapter One

The house band at the popular nightspot, Club West, thumped a sensual Latin beat. Horace leaned against the door to his office while keeping an eye on the dance floor.
His dance floor
. He shifted uncomfortably.

Young women bursting with life moved sinfully close to their partners as if the music carried them mindlessly in a ritual that men and women had played out since the beginning of time. All those luscious feminine bodies dressed in outfits designed to tease. The array of slinky fabrics did one hell of a job displaying a banquet of tight delectable curves.

A perky breast peeked out of a beaded top as a woman danced through the crowd and nearly brushed against him. A beautifully rounded ass, perfectly designed for a long, sweaty night of sex, swayed not three feet away.

Damn
.

He scrubbed his hand over his face. He’d kept his hungers at bay for far too long. His thoughts strayed to the sexual more and more often lately. He’d begun to think of these women as objects first and humans second.

Not good.

Not good at all.

Not that he’d dare act on his cravings.

He couldn’t. All he planned to do tonight or any other night in his club was watch. And make sure no one did anything stupid.

A high shriek over near the bar jarred him to attention, followed by another and another.

What the hell?

He’d raced halfway across the dance floor when he realized the shrieks were laced with giggles.
Down boy
, he told himself,
don’t go making an ass of yourself. Especially not in front of her.

His newest bartender, Faith Summers, was at the center of what looked like a cheerleader’s convention. Four perky women jumped up and down in a circle around Faith, while they laughed and laughed their pretty heads off.

It was Faith’s night off, but his employees often spent their free time at the club. They had the pull to get their friends to the head of the line. The wait outside could last nearly half the night, otherwise.

“I can’t believe you actually went and did it!” one of Faith’s groupies shouted above the music.

Faith smiled. Even from halfway across the room, Horace could see the wicked spark that lit his newest bartender’s light blue eyes. She shook back her shoulder length dark blond hair. Her pearly lips parted. And slowly, seductively, her pink tongue licked her plump bottom lip and then arched up.

Good God, she’d pierced her tongue!

Horace’s eyes nearly rolled out of his head. Did she know the rather sensual purpose of that smooth metal stud? He closed his shocked eyes and fought away a startlingly realistic image of her running that newly pierced tongue over his tightening arousal. The cool steel contrasting with her hot flesh…

Down boy. I’m serious this time.

Faith’s friends shouted with laughter again.

Horace let out a long frustrated sigh and returned to his spot at his office door. Over the years, his lack of love life was turning him into a predator, one that lurked in the shadows and stalked the young, the beautiful, the helpless. He was slowly turning into the same kind of creature he’d been charged to protect the humans against.

He grimaced and crossed his arms over his chest. Faith and her friends had moved out onto the dance floor. He tried to ignore her, to put her out of his over-heated thoughts.

Her zest for life, her explosive happiness only reminded him of how lonely his life had become over the past few months. No, that wasn’t quite right. He’d always been detached from the world, apart and yet unable to completely break free. His friend’s recent marriage had only highlighted the unforgiving loneliness he’d ignored for as long as he could remember.

Sure, he could smile at probably any one of these beauties losing themselves to the primal drumming of the music and lure her over to him. It wouldn’t take much more than a few charming words to entice a woman to his bed. It wouldn’t hurt if he also happened to mention how he was the owner of Club West—the exclusive club with an entrance line that often wrapped around the block in the River North neighborhood of Chicago. Its popularity was making him filthy rich.

Funny, Horace had never cared about money. Success had always been his goal. He tackled any challenge set before him, no matter how steep. He never cared about the recognition he received for his efforts. More often than not, he shunned the attention.

Not that his desire for solitude mattered much. As long as he could remember, people had been drawn to him.

Years ago, a one-night-stand—one in a long line of beauties—had once told him that he had a dazzling force of personality. And that personality of his gave him the power to weaken a woman’s resolve.

That was back when he rarely spent the night alone. That was before…

It no longer felt safe taking a woman to his bed. Especially not a
human
woman.

But with each passing day, his hungers grew. He wondered which would be the greatest danger: to give into his urges or to continue to deny himself out of fear of…
what
?

Hell, he didn’t know. And it didn’t matter. He had no business hooking up with the humans in that way.

Not that they made keeping away easy. No matter how hard he tried to hold himself apart, humans still flocked around him, thanks to his “
dazzling
force of personality
,” he supposed. And with his recent success and money, he found it more and more difficult to escape the humans and just be alone for a while. Because whenever he was in the middle of a crowd like this, his loneliness yawned wide and empty.

Horace’s slow gaze drifted back toward Faith. She was dancing with the four other women. She didn’t seem to notice or care that every single man in the room watched them. God, maybe he should take one of those beauties to bed for the night. He’d get some satisfaction for this aching need eating at his soul, and perhaps he’d also be able to forget about his black mood for a while.

“So why don’t you?” Brendan asked, his loud voice cut through Horace’s tumbling thoughts.

“Stop that,” Horace growled over the thumping music as he turned and watched his friend walk toward him. He hated how Brendan could pop in and out of his head and read his thoughts like that.

Apparently marriage had sharpened his best friend’s extrasensory abilities. Wasn’t it supposed to do the opposite?

“Not when it’s with the right person,” Brendan leaned forward and said with a wily grin. “Marriage has some other pleasing side benefits, too.” He looked too damned satisfied with himself.

“Will you stay the hell out of my head?” Horace grumbled with less heat than before. “If wedded bliss is so…um…blissful, why are you here and not at home enjoying your bride?”

Ever since Brendan had met the mysterious Dallas St. John, Horace hadn’t seen much of his friend at all. He suspected Brendan still spent most of his time, and his energies, in the bedroom.

“I could say sexual exhaustion has brought me crawling out of my lair so I could catch my breath.” Brendan gave a dramatic sigh and pressed his arm against his forehead.

“I don’t need to be able to read minds to know you’re lying. What’s up?”

“Two things. First—” He pushed a silver bag tied closed with an elaborate satin bow into Horace’s hand. “Happy birthday.”

Horace absently fingered the silky bow. “Is that today? I’d forgotten.”

“Of course you had. And so had I, but Dallas hadn’t. She cares about you as much as I do. She’s the one who insisted I come over here even before—” Brendan drew a halting breath and got that tense look on his face Horace knew from years of friendship he needed to be worried about.

“What? What’s going on?”

Brendan didn’t answer him. Instead, he pushed open Horace’s office door and herded Horace inside. Although Horace was bigger and stronger than Brendan, he let himself be pushed into the small space.
Something’s up
. Brendan wouldn’t look so damned serious otherwise.

Horace gave a last wistful glance toward Faith and her friends, and then closed the door behind him.

* * * * *

He’s gone.

Faith stopped dancing and stared at the empty space where Horace had stood with his arms crossed over his broad chest. She’d felt certain he’d been watching her. The press of his intense gaze had made her feel sort of light-headed and tingly.

She’d liked it and missed it right away, and she missed him.

“Come on.” Her friend Kimmi tugged on Faith’s arm and started gyrating her hips in time with the music. “Dance with me.”

Faith forced a smile and followed Kimmi’s movements while trying to forget Horace West and his sexy-as-sin body. She had no business lusting after the club’s owner. Heck, she’d never even met him.

Tim, the head bartender had hired Faith a little over a month ago. She’d expected Tim would have introduced her to Horace by now. But on the nights she served, Horace always kept his distance.

After a while, she began to think Horace treated all his employees that way. However, last week after attending her last class for the day at the University of Chicago, she’d stopped by the bar to pick up her paycheck. And there was Horace with the bartenders, laughing at a joke one of them had made and acted like part of the group, friendly even. It was enough to give a girl a complex, considering how he’d never so much as smiled in her direction.