Page 5 of Lucky or Knot
How did he not topple over in heels like that, let alone leap up from a seat without wobbling even a little bit? And how gods-damned short would he be without them, when he only came up to my chin wearing the things?
On my knees, I’d still have sucking access to at least three quarters of his body.
“Maybe I’m here to audition,” he said, his voice as light and sweet-tart as his scent, laced with a thread of…amusement? “I wouldn’t even fall over. You’re wearing combat boots. What’s your excuse?”
That snapped my gaze back up to his face. My fists clenched at my sides, my claws poking out enough to prick my skin.
“What’s my…” I trailed off into something like a snarl. My excuse. My excuse! Another step forward, and now the room really felt claustrophobic. Probably more so for him, because no one could loom like a pissed-off alpha. I had to be twice as wide as him. Maybe more.
A flash of something likeoh, shitpassed over his pointy little face, and his eyes went slightly, impossibly wider, arched brows rising.
But he stood his ground, maybe because even someone with extraordinary balance couldn’t back up in those shoes without doing an unintentional somersault into the champagne on the table behind him.
At this distance, I could smell the actual warmth of hisskin underlying that magical scent. And I could feel him against my own skin, the energy of him, the frisson of another body’s pulse and electricity.
He bit his lip, a very pearly tooth digging into a flower-petal lower lip.
Jesus, he had to be using some kind of illusion on top of whatever seduction magic he had going on. Didn’t he? For one thing, he might be disguising the scent of his magic. Usually I could distinguish types of magic by their top notes, like perfumes, but his had me confused. He could be a human warlock, or something not human at all.
But seriously, no one looked or smelled like this naturally, right? If Dominic was responsible for setting me up for this nonsense, there’d be nowhere on Earth he could hide.
By the way my mystery man’s eyes were darting to the side, he’d realized he had nowhere to hide, either, and a tendon stood out in his slender neck.
Damn it.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, and forced myself to take that step back that he couldn’t. I’d almost lost my temper, and that hadn’t happened in years, even working with Dominic. For an alpha, I was almost stolid. “You’re a paying customer, after all.”
My little attempt at humor fell so flat I could almost hear it thud into the floor. His eyes narrowed slightly. The pink lighting nearly drowned out the flush on his face, but I could smell the heat of his skin increasing, a fresh waft of his sweetness in the stale air.
“So far only for the bartender,” he said. “But I, ah. I. Ah.”
His shifty gaze lingered on something off in the corner of the room rather than on me. Huh. You had to be really nervous about making eye contact not to keep your attention fixed on the enormous predator confronting you in an extremely enclosedspace.
Also, he had to have noticed the rampant, straining erection that no Nevada law could possibly have kept in check at this point. That likely added to the threatening quality of my presence, even though I didn’t mean it that way. I liked to think of my big alpha cock and knot as more of a promise.
“A E I O U,” I suggested, a bit breathless myself. “You? Ah? Sometimes Y?”
That earned me a sharp flick of his gaze and a twist of his lips that could’ve been meant as a sneer, but ended up looking more like a soft, kissable pout.
“You don’t need to make fun of me,” he said softly, with a flutter of his very long, feathery eyelashes.
Oh, for—Christ. My mouth opened, with something like,Will you knock it off, I work here, not you, so stop it with the magical seduction routineready to come out.
But for a miracle, my brain managed to hang on to a tiny bit of the blood flow that’d mostly rushed south to make me stupid. He might be using magic on me, but he had paid up. I needed the money more than I needed to vent my irritation.
So I could play along, right? That would be the potentially profitable thing to do, wouldn’t it?
Somewhere in the back of my lust-clouded mind, a voice whispered that I never crossed the line with clients. And that while a bit of playing along was part of the job, I was always the one in control…and I’d never felt less in control of a situation than I did now. If this pretty little magical whoever-he-was followed through on any of the suggestions his gleaming eyes and softly parted lips were silently making to me, I ran the risk of knotting my tear-away pleather pants.
Okay, I’d be playing along, at least for now, and pretending otherwise would only be lying to myself. Fine. But was I playing along with some fantasy of his, a prank like I stillhalf thought, or with my own magically stimulated libido?
Only one way to find out, I guessed.
I shifted my weight forward again, leaning, not quite moving yet—but finding a middle ground.
“I’m only teasing,” I said, letting my voice drop to its lowest, raspiest register. “Maybe I like that you’re flustered. It’s flattering.”
His blush deepened, spreading down his neck, a scarlet stain on his white skin. I didn’t know the name for the type of collar his shirt had, but it had a sort of rim that stuck up to the middle of his slim throat. Not a turtleneck, but more like what you’d see on one of those embroidered silk outfits Chinese aristocrats wore in old photos. It had a button at the front that my fingers itched to undo, to see how far down the blush went.
