Touch Me (3 page)

But it was the small facts that mesmerized her: that vampires’ mythological aversion to the sun was simply because they were allergic to the sun’s UV rays. That incubi drew energy from the aurora borealis, and that pictures of the aurora were prominently displayed in most incubi homes—rather, Bailey thought, like some Christian homes featured pictures of Jesus or Mary, or of that old guy praying over a loaf of bread. That sirens had an affinity for water and waves, and that a lot of them kept tabs on America’s big surf breaks, dropping everything when word of epic waves went out over the surfer’s grapevine. That werewolves were the only species capable of shifting physical form. That all of the species could breed with each other, and could breed with humans.

And had, for generations.

Incubus clubs. The Underworld Council. Siren song. Sexual feedback loops. Jack continued on, and the web pages kept scrolling by.

Finally, the information all started to swirl together. Bailey held up her hand in the universal gesture for
“enough.” Buffer overflow. Her mind needed to rest.

She tucked her small hand into Jack’s big one. Humanity wasn’t alone. And neither was she.

CHAPTER TWO

Several hours later, w
eighed down by a tool belt and backpack, Bailey wound her way through the maze of scrims, screens and curtains backstage at Underbelly. She was running late, but apparently so was everyone else. Scarlett and her band should have taken the stage ten minutes ago, but pre-recorded music still slithered and thumped through the club’s extraordinary sound system, and when she’d walked past the hospitality room a couple of minutes ago, she’d seen Scarlett, bundled in a purple bathrobe, sipping from a water bottle and pointedly ignoring Lukas. For his part, Lukas, eyes peeled and lips moving, half-blocked the entrance to the room with his linebacker-sized body. Though it might look to others like he was talking to himself, she knew he was issuing instructions to the rest of the Sebastiani Security team via his tiny communication device.

Well, whatever the hold-up was, it meant she had time to change. Installing the extra security cameras Lukas had requested had taken a little longer than she’d anticipated—not due to technical issues, but because she’d spent too much time fighting with a heavy ladder over twice her height. But the cameras were finally installed,
easily jacked into the club’s security system—too easily—and that was something she’d have a serious talk with Sasha and Jack about.

It would have to wait for Monday, because tonight, after
not being able to scare up a single Scarlett’s Web concert ticket no matter how many internet back alleys she’d scoured, she was going to be standing front row center at one of the most highly anticipated shows of the year. She grinned down at the coveted All-Access pass dangling from a lanyard hanging from her neck. Jack had told her that working for Sebastiani Security would come with some unusual fringe benefits, but dude, this was ridiculous.

A heavy curtain tangled around her backpack.
Swiping it aside, she pressed on. Yes, ‘unusual’ was a good word to use to describe the goings-on at Sebastiani Security. All those bags of blood in the break room’s second refrigerator?
Not
there to address emergency medical issues, as she’d imagined, but refreshments for her vampire co-workers. The dogs trotting around the office weren’t her colleagues’ pets, but her actual colleagues.

I work with w
erewolves.
She’d probably committed some sort of cross-species sexual harassment by cuddling the dogs, scratching their bellies, telling them how strong and handsome they were, but damn it,
they’d
flashed their kibbles and bits at
her
, not the other way around.

And the Sebastiani family? Lukas? His father, his sisters, his brother Rafe?
The family had won the freaking genetic lottery, every single one of them possessing preternatural good looks and mad charisma.

It made complete sense now that she knew they
were incubi and succubi. Sex demons. She sighed. At least now she knew why Rafe Sebastiani—long, lean, luscious Rafe Sebastiani—made her ovaries ache.

Jack and Lukas had provided
her with a lot of information earlier, but her admittedly-outsized curiosity was nowhere near satisfied. Unanswered questions buzzed her brain like bees in a hive: How could she tell the species apart when they all passed for human? How in the world had their people managed to hide in plain sight for so long without humans noticing? What possible survival driver would cause a species to evolve so they absorbed emotional energy for sustenance, and emitted drugging sexual pheromones in response?

It boggled the mind, and she was very much a creature of the mind, thank you very much. She had to keep that thought front and center, because
the second-hand pheromones Jack had warned about were already starting to build. Her thoughts were getting a little blurry around the edges, and her skin felt hypersensitive, too tight for her body. She scrubbed at her sternum with her knuckles, rubbed her palm over her breast—Gah. Jerking her hand away, she shouldered through acres of three-story curtain, eyes down so she didn’t trip over the thick cables duct-taped to the floor.

Mind back on the job.

What kind of culture was this, where assaulting a leader’s family for political gain was something that even crossed anyone’s mind? So much for
Star Trek’s
Federation of Planets utopia—

“
Whoa.” She bumped into something—someone—very tall, very hard, and very warm.

Who smelled like sin
.

Sex demon.

“Hey, there.” The guy wrapped strong hands around her upper arms to steady her. “Are you okay?”

She took a big step back, away from the succulent tendrils of scent.
“I’m fine, thanks.” One of Scarlett’s roadies. With his sparkling eyes, slashing cheekbones, and lush mouth framed by a neatly-trimmed goatee, he’d be worth a second look—hell, a third—even without pheromones starting to fog her brain. “Is there a place back here where I can change?” Her tool belt felt diabolically heavy, its weight focusing too much attention on the sudden heat blooming between her thighs. She clenched her hands around the backpack strap so they wouldn’t be tempted to wander.

The guy looked her up and down, quirking a cheerfully carnal smile.
“There’s a guest dressing room back there.” He pointed into the shadows. “I’ll show you.”

Looking where he’d gestured, she saw the door.
“That’s okay. I’m good.”

White teeth flashed in the dim light.
“You certainly are.”

Music slithered and pulsed. Taking a deep breath, she locked her knocking knees. Jack had warned her that personal boundaries between the species were wafer-thin compared to what humans might expect between strangers, but he’d also assured her that no meant no.

What he
hadn’t
told her was that she might think twice about saying it.

She dragged her eyes away from a yard of jean-clad leg. Damn it, where was Sasha with those pheromone intoxication meds?
“I’ve got it, thanks.” She scurried into the dressing room, slammed the door, and shot the deadbolt lock so quickly that the motion-activated lights were still brightening the room when she dropped her hand. The metallic
thunk
sounded unnaturally loud, echoing against the tiles. “Jesus.” Letting her backpack slide down her arm to the floor, she clawed at the fastening of her tool belt. If this was how she reacted to a single incubus, what was she going to do once she was surrounded by hundreds? When Scarlett and her band took the stage, and they flooded the place with pheromones in response to Scarlett’s transcendent siren’s voice?

Incubi and sirens and vampires, oh my.

She shoved away the fanciful thought. Mind over matter; it was time to get to work. She had to prove to Lukas and Jack that she could handle this, that she was worthy of their trust.    

The dressing room was decorated in relaxing shades of plum and green, right down to the hand-painted
ceramic tiles around the toilet, sink and shower, and somehow it smelled like a botanical garden despite there not being a plant in sight. There was a generous supply of fluffy towels stacked in a clever built-in shelving unit, along with enough personal care items to stock a small drugstore. To her right was a rolling clothes rack with big padded hangers, and a tall armoire that locked. Straight ahead was a vanity table with a brightly-lit makeup mirror, a dainty padded stool, and more hair and makeup products than she’d purchased in her lifetime. Unzipping one of the backpack’s outer pockets, she removed hair paste, an eyeliner crayon and lip balm and set them on the table.

Her typical beauty routine didn’t require light, much less seating
.

Kicking off her
wool-lined suede boots, she stripped off her ratty jeans, hoodie and T-shirt, shivering in her panties and socks as she exchanged them for a pair of black low-riders, a plain black baby tee with tiny cap sleeves, a thick leather belt, and her square-toed Frye boots. She needed to blend in, fit in, but not draw undue attention to herself.

Vampire black. It would do.

Vampires were real. A giggle escaped, but she throttled it back before it careened into a full-blown hysterical laugh attack. God, her brain was flooded with information she hadn’t had time to absorb, much less synthesize. If she took the time to think deeply about what Lukas had revealed about he and his employees’ origins earlier that afternoon, her brain would explode.

She quickly smudged some black pencil around her eyes, and then scooped up a small dollop of the hair paste, warming it between her palms.
Tugging some height into the crown of her viciously short pixie crop, she swayed to the muffled heartbeat of the music, barely audible through the closed door.

And
her hand was moving toward her belt buckle. “Damn it.” Stepping away from the mirror, she stalked to the pedestal sink, washed the paste from her hands, and then reached into her backpack again, removing the small hinged box containing the device that would allow her to access the Sebastiani Security communications band. The tiny unit, with its translucent earpiece, was a marvel of engineering, with a miniscule receiver that clipped to the inside of a pocket and promptly disappeared. She was dying to tear into the specs, but there hadn’t been time.

She donned the flexible earpiece, flicked on the receiver, and—

“Sir, you’ll need to check that blade.” Chico Perez was working the metal detector at the front entrance.

“
I need a tow truck.” Winnie. “Some d-bag blocked the alley with their Escalade.”

“
Plumbing problem, second floor men’s room.”

So many voices,
swirling in her head. She finally honed in on Lukas, his deep voice snapping orders left and right. Narrowed her eyes as she listened.

A…a search
? Scarlett’s drummer was missing? She could hear Sasha cursing in the background, and understandably so. Sasha and Jack had worked on the event security plan for weeks, but Bailey was pretty sure that having a band member disappear right before show time hadn’t been on their contingency list.

She
quickly stuffed her work clothes and makeup into her backpack, put the backpack and her tool belt in the armoire, locked it, and pocketed the key. Sasha definitely had more urgent problems to resolve than providing her with pheromone intoxication meds. She’d just have to tough it out for a while. Hand on the deadbolt, she took a couple of deep breaths, and opened the door—

Whoa, head rush.
She threw out a hand to steady herself. How, exactly, did this pheromone thing work, anyway? Being she’d counted on having those meds, she’d skipped that section of the dossier. “Stupid.” She, a very small human, was about to go into a dark, thumping club filled with nearly a thousand vampires, sex demons, werewolves, sirens, faeries, and Valkyrie, on very little data.

Her throat tightened. Failure was a near-certainty—

She gave her arm a vicious pinch. “Suck it up. You can handle this. Just remember that no means no.” A single syllable, two-letter word. That much she could remember.

Closing the dressing room door behind her, she threw her shoulders back, took a fortifying breath, and made her way to the stairwell that led to the dance floor.

***

The music was a riptide, threatening to
knock her down and simply drag her along. Bracing herself, she closed the access door behind her and assessed her surroundings. Not two feet away, pressed up against the carpeted wall and close enough to touch, a couple feasted on each other’s mouths in the shadows, their bodies blending into a single, writhing form. To her right, a trio of women hung on each other, swaying to the slinky Chris Isaak song, balancing their colorful drinks with varying levels of success. Straight ahead, one of the toughest-looking men she’d ever seen stood by himself in the dim light, head tipped back, his face rapturous as the music washed over him.

She blinked and cleared her throat—something, anything to keep her brain in the driver’s seat instead of taking a
sultry, sweaty detour to the back.

“
Hello.” The man was suddenly at her side. “Would you like to dance?” An intriguing scar bisected his eyebrow, and he smelled like a midnight forest. Flashing a charming smile, he exposed long, pointed incisors.

Fangs. He had fangs.

Vampire.

Run
!

No.
She couldn’t run. People were counting on her. Jack was counting on her. Steeling herself, she shook her head with what she hoped was an appropriate amount of regret. “Thanks for asking, but I’m meeting someone.” Her voice squeaked on the last word. Damn it, she was a computer geek, not a bloody actress. What delusional thought process had made her think she could simply blend in? She rubbed her hands over her bare arms. Her skin felt like someone had embedded it with a thousand tiny sensors.

“
Another time, perhaps.” His voice scratched like fine-grit sandpaper, yet the flesh between her legs throbbed like a beating heart. His gaze dropped to the juncture of her thighs for a split second before taking in the bare slice of belly exposed by her short T-shirt, the erect nipples punching against the fabric, her neck—