My Dangerous Pleasure (7 page)

She looked up at him. “Excuse me?”

“Who are you calling?”

“My assistant baker.”

“What for?”

“I have private orders to fill. I’m hoping she’ll help me out. And let me crash at her place for the night.”

That couldn’t happen. “You’re staying with me. I have four bedrooms, two and half baths, and I only use one of each. There’s room in my kitchen for your groceries. Hell, you can even bake there.”

She chewed on her lower lip and half glared at him, probably because she was too nice to do any worse. Without going into her head, Iskander didn’t have any idea what she was seeing when she looked at him. Some women didn’t like his tats. Then again, some did. The women he ended up taking to bed weren’t sweet, polite women like his tenant. The women he fucked loved his tats. A lot.

He liked a little wild in his partners, and if Paisley Nichols had ever been wild, he’d eat his shorts. He said, “You’re thinking way too hard.”

“I hardly know you.”

“I’m your landlord. You’ve been writing me checks for months.” He laughed. “Cupcake, if I was a serial killer, I’d have picked you off ages ago. And if you’re one, no offense, but I think I can take you down first.” He grinned because he just now thought of a major plus to his invitation. “We,” he said, “are going to be friends with benefits.”

Her eyebrows shot up her forehead. “I beg your pardon?”

“Benefit for you—a place to stay and free run of the kitchen. Benefit for me—you bake extra.”

She blinked a few times. Her lashes were dark red, too. “That’s kind of you to offer.”

“Yeah. I know.”

She had cheekbones. A strong face, if you just looked at her without thinking about getting her naked and flat on her back. Sure, she looked sweet and talked sweet, but there was more at home upstairs than being a nice girl. “Just for the night.” She waved a hand. “Day. Whatever.”

“Until I get your place redone.” He tossed in the deal sealer. “No rent until you’re back in your apartment.” He spread his arms wide, and in his peripheral vision, he saw dust drift from her apartment into the air. Some of it floated contrary to the breeze and headed for her. Rasmus wasn’t joking about Paisley. “Come on. Otherwise you’re sleeping on a couch in someone else’s place. Here, you get your own room and your own bathroom, full use of the kitchen, and no rent. How can you pass up a deal like that?”

“I suppose I can’t.”

He handed back her phone, and she dropped it into her purse. “All right, then. Roomie.”

“For now.”

“Hang on and I’ll get your groceries.” He did just that. As he came down the stairs with her bags in his arms, he watched her. Too bad the benefits weren’t going to include sex. His tenant was seriously, wickedly hot.

Five minutes later, they were standing in his kitchen, him with his arms full of her grocery bags and her with her mouth open. “Oh,” she said, all soft and whispery. Her Southern accent got thick. Really thick. “I have surely died and gone to heaven.”

He pretended she meant that for him, which led to some other images that stirred him more than was appropriate. “Is that so?”

“That’s a Viking range.” She walked forward, one hand extended. She caressed his stove. “A double oven?”

He walked to the counter and put down the bags.

“You have everything.”

“I run a full-service facility here.” He’d brought lots of women here, but this was the first time one was more turned on by his kitchen than by him.

She walked under the copper-bottomed pots and pans he never touched, staring up at them like she was getting a vision of bliss. He wondered if she looked like that when she came. He started mentally undressing her. Her top went first, and in his imagination, she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“There’s a bunch of other stuff in there.” He pointed to one of the lower cabinets.

She went down on her knees and opened the door, taking out all sorts of pans, crooning, swear to God, to each one as she took it out. “I didn’t know you cooked, Iskander.”

“I don’t.”

She stood and he lost his prime view of her ass. He backed away. Human women were his thing these days, but it would be stupid to sleep with this one. Really stupid, for some reason he was having trouble remembering. She headed for the grocery bags and started unloading them. She opened the refrigerator and stood there staring in. “I guess it’s been a while since you’ve been shopping.”

His fridge contained two bottles of soda and a week-old box of pizza. He reached past her and grabbed the bottles. “Something to drink?”

“No, thank you. I don’t drink Coke.”

“Now, that is just plain insulting.” He kept his tone light. “This here is root beer.”

She waved a hand at him. “Where I come from, everything’s ‘Coke’ until you need to be specific. Coke’s bad for you. Nothing but empty calories.”

“Whatever.” He lifted one of the bottles.
Do not look at her tits
. “You sure you don’t want one? I have two.”

“Thanks, but no.”

He concentrated on her eyes. Her big, pretty, hazel eyes.

“Do you have flour?”

“What’s that?” He took a long drink of his root beer and managed, just, to hold back a belch.

“You bake with it.” She opened a few cabinets. They were all empty except for the ones with dishes in them. The groceries that were still good got divided between the fridge and the empty cabinets. When she was done, she leaned against the counter and crossed her arms underneath what had to be the most perfect, gorgeous breasts in creation. His favorite part of the female anatomy. He kept his eyes on her face. He deserved some kind of medal for that. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

“Sure.” He wiped dust off his chest because it let him sneak a look at her rack.

“Why does someone with no food in his house have a kitchen like this?”

“I bought this place as a fixer-upper. I had to tell the contractors what I wanted to do with the kitchen. I don’t know shit about kitchens, so I took them to see Harsh’s and told them to give me one like that.”

She blinked a couple of times. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

“A good kitchen adds resale value to the house. It was a great investment.” He brushed more dust off his shoulders. “So. What kind of cake you making?”

“None right now.” She sighed. She sounded tired, and given it was almost seven in the morning, she probably was. “There’s a few more things I need.”

“We both have this crap all over us.” He kept brushing at the dust. “Why don’t we take a shower and then you give me a list, and I’ll see about getting what you need.” When he looked up, she was staring at him, her mouth open. “Showers,” he said, realizing the problem right away from her stricken look. “Separate showers. Unless…” He was all for doing whatever he could to get lucky. “Do you want to share?”

C
HAPTER 6

About the same time. Broadway and Baker,
San Francisco

H
arsh watched Emily dit Menart walk into his office and sit on his red leather couch. The Baker Street house belonged to him, but in the time he’d been traveling for Nikodemus, the house had become a communal stop for several of Nikodemus’s sworn fiends, including Emily. He didn’t mind. There was plenty of room, and if he needed to get away, he had a smaller place not far away, as well as a farmhouse in Sonoma County. Nikodemus, aware that Harsh’s place had become a halfway house for several of the strongest fiends loyal to him, had paid off the mortgage and transferred enough into an account for Harsh to pay the property taxes and his expenses.

Emily dit Menart was so beautiful he couldn’t help but stare. That kind of perfection was rare in any human. She was tall, nearly six feet, and statuesque. Probably more so than usual since she was breast-feeding. Other than eyes that betrayed her exhaustion, she didn’t look like a woman who’d just had a baby. If anything, she was a little too thin. The physician in him wondered if he ought to explain to her that she needed extra calories until she weaned her son.

Even Maddy, who was sitting behind Harsh’s desk, stared at her.

Emily’s blue eyes were made all the more striking by her inky black hair. She wore dark jeans, a pair of canvas slip-on shoes, and a cotton nursing top, and she looked glamorous in them for reasons he didn’t understand but could not dispute.

She hadn’t been a model, though there must have been offers. What she’d done instead was get a PhD in molecular biology. She’d been doing a postdoc at UC Berkeley before she got caught up with her late husband, the mage Christophe dit Menart. All that beauty and brains notwithstanding, she had more to deal with than motherhood. Christophe had wiped her past from her mind and substituted a false one. She had no memory of her education. Or anything else about her real life.

Harsh didn’t envy Emily her present situation.

“Dr. Marit,” she said. Her voice was as sexy as the rest of her. She crossed one long, slender leg over the other.

“Mrs. dit Menart.”

She was a witch, quite a powerful one, but with almost no training. Magekind who didn’t get training typically ended up insane or dead, so that made Emily unusual to say the least. According to Maddy, who made a point of studying these things, Emily had been spared either of those outcomes because her father, a mage who had burned out his powers, had managed to teach her enough to keep her alive and sane.

“Ms. Winters,” she said with a nod in Maddy’s direction. “Nice to see you again.”

Harsh took a moment to reflect on the fact that he was in a meeting with not one but two highly intelligent women. Emily was breathtaking, but Maddy Winters was no slouch in the looks department, either. After all the months he’d been traveling for Nikodemus, it was about time his life had a benefit or two.

The demonkind were exquisitely sensitive to the magekind, and that aspect of his magic naturally responded to the two women. He was, however, equally aware that witches of their power were dangerous to him. Perhaps especially so to someone with his rare condition. Never trust a mage. Or a witch. Who knew that better than he did? And here he sat with two witches.

Maddy cleared her throat. “Thank you for meeting with us, Mrs. dit Menart.”

“Please.” She glanced at Harsh and then at Maddy. “Call me…” For a moment she looked lost, and Harsh had the absurd desire to find a way to make everything better for her. That, of course, was not his right. “Emily, I suppose.”

Christophe’s alteration of her memories had included giving her a new first name—Erin. Then he’d taken away her last name when he married her. She’d been told her real name was Emily, but she had no recollection of that. No wonder she was having a hard time adjusting.

“Dr. Marit, do please sit down.” She leaned over and patted the other end of the couch.

Instead of sitting on the couch, he offered the women water from the mini-fridge. Both nodded, and he poured the water into squat tumblers of sapphire glass. Only then did he sit, in the red leather wingback that, angled as it was, let him see Maddy behind the desk and Emily on the couch.

To his chagrin, he wished he’d worn a suit instead of jeans, a T-shirt, and his battered leather work boots. Behind his desk, Maddy was smirking. Yes, she must think it quite amusing to see him losing his cool over Emily dit Menart. Every inch of the woman represented white privilege, from her pale skin and blue eyes, to her childhood in the rich East Bay enclave of Piedmont, to her education, whether she remembered any of it or not. She’d probably never dated a man who looked like him.

“Thank you, Dr. Marit.”

“Call me Harsh.”

Emily nodded, looking like some kind of fairy-tale princess. In his peripheral vision, he saw Maddy pick up a pencil. He returned his attention to Emily but heard the soft tap of a pencil on a folder.

“I know Emily’s my real name,” she said. “But I don’t remember it. It’s foreign to me.” She rubbed her arms. “Cold as ice.” Her voice was calm and at odds with the emotions he was getting from her, even though he was blocking contact with both of the women. “Distant.” She lifted a hand, and light reflected from the diamond in her wedding ring. “Vaguely repugnant. Which I supposed Christophe intended.”