A.K.A. Goddess (27 page)

Now he stiffened, full poker face. When I simply waited, he asked, “When did you become such a bitch? Or was I just too stupid to see it before?”

Him? He was upset at not knowing secrets about me?

“Maybe it was when one of your club mates threw me on the Metro tracks the other day. So swear.”

Did I detect a flicker of shock at my close call? Maybe it was some naive part of me still stuck in wishful-thinking mode, wanting my old, imaginary Lex back. He said, “Yes, Magdalene. I swear on the soul of my mother.”

That victory was tempered by the fact that the way he was looking at me—think mongoose vs. cobra—nobody in their right mind would believe we wanted to go upstairs together.

So I laughed. That startled him, but it also gave me a chance to lean into him as if he’d just said something winning and to whisper, “You wanted to dance, Captain Evil. Dance.”

He still didn’t look excessively happy. Luckily, Lex rarely looks very happy, even when he is. Content is a victory. So when he drew me back out onto the dance floor, and I pressed into him for what had become a lilting Rodgers and Hammerstein piece, it probably looked convincing enough.

Especially when I pillowed my cheek on his solid shoulder, like I used to. It didn’t take much to melt into either the dance or his body, another moving meditation. My own body’s memory didn’t bother with little matters like trust. My body just liked him. A lot.

It knew his thighs, brushing mine, and how he moved. It knew the brace of his chest. It knew his tension-hard back, beneath the fine weave of his tuxedo jacket. My body had no complaints…as if physical familiarity meant something.

Lex tipped his face near my hair as if praying to me, also a move from better times. After some time to establish a facade that already felt too real, he murmured, “Someone threw you on the Metro tracks?”

Instead of answering, I said, “Do you know of a place in France called Ramonchamp?”

“Yes. It’s near the German border. Why?”

So much for still wishing I could trust him. “No reason.”

“René de Montfort threw you on the Metro tracks?”

So he knew de Montfort well enough to recognize the man’s hometown. “It will take more than that to stop me.”

“Unfortunately for you, Mag, there’s a lot more than that out there. There’s more than that just at this party.”

I lifted my chin to nose up his clean-shaven throat—oh, but he smelled good—and to nibble his earlobe. His thick, ginger-brown hair tickled my cheek. Even over the horn section, I heard his sharp intake of breath.

“If you’re playing with me tonight, Alexander,” I murmured, “I will hurt you. Badly.”

“I know you, Mag. Your threats don’t carry a lot of—Ow!”

That last, because I’d bit his ear. Just hard enough not to draw blood. He jerked back, eyes widening down at me. Several other dancers glanced at us in concern.

“Oops,” I said innocently.

Lex forced an iffy, all-is-well nod toward our onlookers and returned his leading hand to my back. Warily.

When I began to nuzzle him again, I could feel his neck and shoulder muscles tense in expectation. This time, though, I licked his earlobe, refusing to feel guilty.

It’s not like I’d even broken skin.

“I have had a week, Lex,” I warned, low, into the crisp collar of his dress shirt. “Do. Not. Push. Me.”

“I don’t even know who you are anymore.” He sounded as affronted as he’d looked.

“Welcome to my world.” Except that I didn’t want him in my world anymore. “I want to get this done with. Don’t you have to look as if you’re into me, too?”

His fingertips slid slowly, seductively down my bare spine, hitting at least three major chakra centers en route and seriously interesting a fourth. “How’s that?”

That was sending dangerous jolts through my central nervous system, is how that was. You’d think I would be better able to resist him, knowing he was such a lying bastard. Not to mention, having gotten such a thorough Lex-fix just a few days earlier.

Instead, it’s as if Paris had only whetted my tastes, as if the challenge of his secrets and threats added something to our already strong attraction. Maybe I was kinkier than I’d thought.

No, I wasn’t going to sleep with him. But…was there any reason not to enjoy the prologue?

“Before we go upstairs,” I murmured, close to his lips, in what I hoped looked like love talk. “Tell me that you have information for me there.”

Over his shoulder, I saw Phil watching us.

Lex’s family had never exactly embraced me. Had they known I was a Grail Keeper all along? Was that part of the problem?

“Yes.” Lex’s breath heated my bare shoulder in dangerous ways. “I’ve got something. Whether I share it or not…”

I pressed myself closer against him, to hurry things along, and felt his firming interest against me. “Oh,” I murmured—still talking about the information, of course. He was smart enough to know that. “You’ll share it.”

“Don’t flatter your—”

I shut him up with my tongue as I covered his mouth with mine, flaring gloved fingers into his hair, all but pasting myself against him. I felt him shudder, attempt resistance…

Then he gave up and drew me closer—especially the hand that was claiming my bottom, pulling me against his obvious interest.

More important, he danced me—awkwardly—out of the gallery and toward the main foyer with its sweeping staircase.

This was a new brand of kissing for us. It wasn’t loving. It wasn’t worshipful. It was competitive, and yes, I was clearly kinkier than I thought, because it was also incredibly hot. Lex’s leading had gone to hell. He bumped us into another couple, then an archway. I smiled satisfied triumph. Then his seeking hand, already inside the back of my dress, slid over the curve of my breast and I stumbled into someone, too.

“Well, really,” complained whoever it was.

Lex and I laughed into each other’s mouths and steered each other toward the stairs. At least we were convincing. If we were really sneaking upstairs to play spy/counterspy, no way would we be this obvious, right?

I didn’t feel dizzy with it; I felt energized. Hungry. Powerful. Even knowing nothing would come of it.

So to speak.

When we reached the steps, we did our best not to actually race up them, Lex’s hand on my waist, mine feeling across his tight butt in a way I never would have dared when I hadn’t wanted to embarrass him. Not caring somehow freed us. Every landing we would kiss some more, deep and aggressive. Practiced—we each knew what the other wanted, and even flirted at giving it—but dangerous, too. New. Uncertain. Excited.

The need to put on a good front made a hell of an excuse.

I lost count of landings. Then a hallway, with a glimpse of suits of armor and a huge flower arrangement. Then Lex framed me into a doorway, kissing down my shoulder, down the plunging neckline of my gown, between my breasts…oh goddess, yes….

I slid a chain-draped knee between his legs, up his inner thigh and higher toward other promises, and he groaned.

He also managed to gasp, “My room.” Even as he nosed a chain strap off my shoulder, kissed the cup of my gown off my breast to give it some one-on-one tongue bathing.

My breast was as eager as the rest of my body, even while threads of good sense—though muffled—screamed that this was bad, bad, that I had business to take care of.

“How nice for you,” I gasped. “Your room.”

He was pushing against me, pledging, longing, me between him and the door. What was it, with us and doors?

“Nothing—” the effort of words seemed a breath away from beyond him “—happens.”

At first that made no sense. Not with another chain strap conquered and the rest of my bodice sliding to my waist. I didn’t just know that this would be hot. It was already hot.

This would be scorching. Forest-fire level. Burn-off-everything-and-start-the-forest-over hot.

Then I figured out what he meant. “No touching in the room,” I panted, despite the bliss of what he was doing to my oh-so-appreciative breasts. “You swore.”

At that, a little clarity trickled through me, drops of coolness amidst the inferno. I’d had a reason for demanding that promise, whatever his reasons for keeping it.

Lex grunted something that sounded like “Out here….” But mmm, he was talking with his mouth full.

I arched my back, luxuriating in what he could do to me. It was a deliciously shocking compromise, sure. Sex in the hallway. Standing up. Pushing aside the tuxedo and expensive gown. Seeing what he felt like through silken gloves….

Clarity, Mag.

“No,” I gasped—and sidestepped out of his embrace.

That’s all it took, like a deep breath of fresh air. Oh, sure, my body still demanded his—hot currents stormed through me, pooling in sensitive, discomfited parts, but this was too important to risk.

Lex slumped, front first, against the empty door where I’d just been, eyes momentarily closed.

Besides, I thought, sliding my bodice back up over my damp, hungry breasts and readjusting the gown’s chain straps. If we had sex, and then he helped me, I would feel like a prostitute.

Guess I’d found another line I wouldn’t cross.

“No,” I said again. Not that he was pushing it.

I almost felt guilty. Almost. Then I remembered all the Comitatus downstairs. That he’d known the rules. That this “into each other” pretense was his idea in the first place.

At that, I was marginally more okay with this.

Without looking at me, Lex dug a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door, then opened it for me.

I went in, politely not looking at him either, and sank into an upholstered chair near a table where he’d set up his briefcase and laptop computer.

I crossed my ankles. My body was starting to realize it was out of luck tonight. It was complaining.

“Make yourself at home,” Lex managed to murmur—noblesse oblige, and all that—as he passed me to open a second door. When he turned on the lights, I saw it was a private bathroom.

He shut the door wordlessly behind him—and locked it. I heard a faucet turn on, running water.

I bit my lip, torn between the guilt I refused to feel and the mischievous temptation to ask if I could help by making lustful, oh-baby noises from my side of the door.

I chose courteous silence.

That, and searching his room.

L ex’s guest room offered enough paneling and bookcases for a myriad of hidey-holes. Since we didn’t live in a game of Clue, I checked the wardrobe instead. Clothes for his visit hung neatly inside, but there was nothing in his pockets. No guns or technogadgets filled his case on the wardrobe’s floor.

Nothing under the bed. Nothing under his pillows.

Quickly I returned to his laptop, portable printer and file-stacked briefcase. As soon as I touched the computer’s space key, killing the screensaver, I faced an administrator’s login screen demanding a password. Damn.

That left the files. Despite his wealth, Lex has always overworked himself—it didn’t stop once he graduated early from prep school and Yale. I saw he hadn’t changed in the pile of folders on his briefcase and the scattering of CD-Rs, some labeled, most blanks. The CDs, like the file folders, seemed devoted to the job of running his family’s business, QuestCo.

I flipped through return-on-investment reports, departmental budgets and privately commissioned market-trend analyses. Stuff that, if I worked for a rival company, might be worth quite a bit.

Maybe even enough to buy the grail back?

But no. After how I’d reacted to Lex’s seeming involvement in the world of corporate espionage, no way would I join their ranks. His business interests, at least, remained safe from me.

As I put the file folders back onto Lex’s soft-sided briefcase, I felt a lump beneath them. I peeked into the case and saw that he also had a hardcover book. I recognized it.

Goddess Cultures of Europe and England, by B. Taillefer.

So Lex had been reading up on goddess worship?

Hearing the water turn off, I sat before Lex came back into the bedroom. He wasn’t wearing his tuxedo jacket anymore, and he’d loosened his tie. He smelled more of soap and water than anything else. I could have been mistaken about what he was doing in there…but I didn’t think so.

Especially considering how well his trousers fit again.

He gave me wide berth on the way to the bed, where he sat and fixed me with an unpleasant stare. “Tell me about the cup. What’s so important about it?”

“It’s mine and I want it back, that’s what’s so important.”

“How did you lose it?”

“A curator at the Cluny, Catrina Dauvergne. Do you know her? She said she’d find a way to display it, but she lied.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Lex. “I don’t know her.”

“Not that it matters. Even if she is a fan of unicorn tapestries and Stuarts. She’s looking at acquiring another one.”

Lex pressed his lips together. “A Stuart?”

Funny. “You do have my information, don’t you?”

“I’ve got it,” he assured me. “How the sale takes place, when, and what prospective buyers need to put up, bona fide, to get in. But whether I’m sharing that with you…” He shrugged.

He’d never been so cagey with his favors before. In fact, he was usually downright bountiful. But that was before I’d learned his secrets and called him on them.

“Let me guess,” I challenged. “You took a vow of secrecy about the sale too, right?”

He rolled his eyes. “I just want to know about the cup. And here I thought you didn’t take any vows of secrecy at all.”

“Proof that smart people don’t need vows to keep secrets.”

“Then you’ve wasted both our time.” He stood stiffly.

I stood, too. “You have information and you won’t tell me?”

He looked at me coldly. “Goose. Gander. Figure it out.”

“Why do you even care about the grail? What does it mean to you and—” But I stopped, because he’d startled at the word grail. “What is it?”

“You mean the cup.” He backed to the window. Since it was dark, I assumed his room overlooked the back of the house. “I’m not being unreasonable here, Maggi. This is Negotiation 101. We each have something the other wants—goods, services, in this case information—so we trade. Quid pro quo.”