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Chapter One
Waiting at the tall, coal-black door, atop one of Seattle’s most prestigious residential buildings, I already have the breathless apprehension that Lucien Warnak always sets off in me. A stirring of amazement and fascination curls in my mind, but strong, dark sensations, physical pre-echoes, clang and buzz below the surface.
When my eyes have adjusted to the dark, the door swings open and for a moment, I’m dazzled. His huge frame is in shadow in the doorway, backed, surrounded by a blast of light. He has a glow like a halo around him.
His head tilts and I catch the gleam of his smile as he stands back and holds the door open. His eyes burn hot, like he sees inside me. He reminds me of the myth of the vampire, that he can’t come in until you invite him in. But once you’ve invited him, it’s irrevocable.
What if he invites you, though? If you accept, does it mean you can’t leave without his permission?
Lucien Warnak is not a vampire. Not as far as I know. But with his eyes and his other-worldly good looks, he could pass for one. He’s the senior partner in the law firm where I work. Or where I did work, at least. The amount of time I’ve been out of town, I’m expecting to be fired.
After a cozy chat with Cherrie, my friend from the diner in Deep Channel Valley, MO, I bought a small, palm-sized device. I got it as protection.
Silly idea, I know, but it was all I could think of. My reasoning was that if I could get myself to enough orgasms, I would be able to get my body bored with the idea. Or satisfied, at least. Like that would ever work. But I thought it was worth trying.
I didn’t know another way I to prepare myself. I needed something to help me get through an intimate, private dinner with Lucien. Something other than clambering across the table and licking his face off, of course.
There was always that option, but it might not seem entirely professional and lawyerly.
Since the day I met Lucien at my first interview for the firm, he always looked at me with a raw, undisguised hunger. After a meeting once, Liza Kemp, the head of HR said, “I can have a word with him if you’d like.”
I thanked her and told her I was fine. Which was true. I think she just wished he would look at her like that. And, really, I’m surprised that he doesn’t. I would have expected her flame-red hair and her luscious curves to exactly match his appetites.
Knowing that I would see him in a private, intimate setting, I wanted to be prepared. Not that there’s much I can do. Almost every time I think of him, the images make my body ache for him. His voice on the phone when he invited me made me melt like a collapsing altar candle.
So, the night before our dinner, I buzzed with the little device Cherrie recommended. I buzzed with it all night long. I sparked and buzzed myself until I shook and shouted and convulsed and drenched my bed. I tired myself out, and I must have driven the neighbors to fury with shouts and rattling the bed against the wall.
I made myself weary and achey in all my muscles and joints. I’m sore enough that it hurts to sit down, and I’ve got a tender spot at the top of my thigh where I twisted my hip.
Lucien called me in Missouri while I was still away from work after my adoptive parents passed. He invited me to dinner. In his apartment. Tall, dark, and devilishly handsome, Lucien is the senior partner in the law firm Raven Warnak Stein, where I assume I must be on the brink of being fired.
When he told me, “We understand, Ms. Carlisle. Losing both parents, and so close together, must have been incredibly stressful. All the torturous arrangements you had to make must have been stressful. Maybe come back to Seattle. Come back to some law practice. It could help take you out of yourself. Offer you a fresh perspective. ‘Ground’ you, as people seem to say now.”
I heard the subtext, and I knew what he meant. My empty office isn’t doing the firm any good. At least, I thought that was what he meant.
But when he opens the door to welcome me in, his white teeth gleam, and his eyes burn me from head to foot, and I know I didn’t use up all my juices. There was plenty left. My stomach drops like a sack down a well and I’m drenched before I even step inside.
Men don’t scare me. Plenty have tried, but I’m not afraid of them.
What frightens me is the power of my own feelings. The emotions and the needs that well up and boil, that swell and rise inside me. Feelings that course through me and want to take me over.
Emotions like the dark, swirling currents that curl my mind around Lucien’s muscle and sinew. Feelings that want to hurl me at him. An urge to jump on him, hard enough to knock him down. I want to feel how much strength it would take to topple him.
“May I take your coat?” His voice is like the purr of a leopard.
He holds out his hands, and I know he would like to take more than my coat.
His apartment is a Beaux-Arts palace, inside a twenty-first-century penthouse. High, draped curtains and sculpted fireplaces, tall candleholders and crystal chandeliers frame views over Seattle to the snowcaps of the Olympus mountains.
He gives me vintage white Burgundy in a goblet. We swap business gossip. His news is on a higher level than mine, but he doesn’t one-up me. He listens with a convincing appearance of sincere attention. His gossip is more up to date than mine, too, of course. I’ve been in Missouri and out of the loop for nearly two months now.
While we talk, I try not to fixate on the way that his tongue moves behind his lips as his eyes follow my mouth.
When he asks how I like my steak, I have an urge to tell him I’m a vegan, just to watch him conjure and finesse an alternate main course out of the air. I know the steak is going to be fantastic, though.
I’d like it long, hard, and pulsing. But I tell him, “Rare.”
His eyes narrow and his head inclines elegantly as he says, “I’ll do my best to sear it to perfection for you.” He makes a fractionally long ‘f’ sound over ‘perfection.’ It makes me think of a movie scene. Anthony Hopkins is talking on a payphone about fava beans and Chianti.
