Beauty's Beasts (20 page)

“You can be two warm bodies, though,” Nick told him. “You have security privileges, don’t you? You can bypass the scanning frame at the front door?”

Natan nodded.

Riley looked up at the clock. “Four minutes,” she told Nick.

“Leave the gallery right now,” Nick told Natan. “Go out the way the general public does, through the security frame. Then wait about five minutes and come back in using your security privileges. Have a coffee, draw a picture, anything you like. And then, sometime before gallery closing time, leave the gallery again, using the public exit, through the security frame. Then go home, Natan. Stay there, and don’t come back here tonight. Not if you’re the natural coward you say you are.”

Natan frowned, thinking it through. “You want the security counts for bodies in to match bodies out.”

“Yes,” Nick said.

“You’re staying here, to wait for the gargoyles to…what? Wake?”

“Rise,” Riley told him.

Natan squared his shoulders. “All right. I will do what you ask.” He turned and hurried away.

“Three minutes,” Riley warned.

Nick turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Riley went back to studying the gargoyles, but it was a pretense this time. She was steadily counting down the minutes. After what she thought were about three minutes, she drifted out to the edge of the gallery floor and looked around, as if she were looking for Nick. The security guard who had been standing over by the edge of the stairs was heading downstairs. His duty shift was over.

She turned and weaved her way to the back of the gallery and the service corridor and hurried down the corridor to the ladies’ washroom and pushed inside. It was a single facility and built wide enough for wheelchair access. She shot the lock.

Quickly, she shed the prickly coat, the net tee shirt, her boots and the purple pantyhose. She was wearing socks over the top of the pantyhose, which she also stripped, and she put those back on once the pantyhose were removed. From the oversize pocket in the coat, she pulled out a far more modest and traditional tee shirt, which she put on over the leather bra. She pulled the skirt farther down her hips so it covered more of her legs.

The wig went into the pocket the tee shirt had emerged from. From the other pocket she removed a packet of pre-moistened towelettes and used them to remove most of the make-up she wore. With a deep breath, and careful probing, she removed the contacts from her eyes. The contacts and the awful earrings went into the pocket with the towelettes. She rolled the coat up into a tight bundle.

Then she climbed onto the basin, reached up and pushed aside one of the ceiling tiles. She threw the coat up into the ceiling cavity, and replaced the ceiling tile.

She put her boots back on, feeling much more like herself, and shook her hair out.

When she came out of the washroom, she knew she looked totally different. Only someone who may have noticed her boots would have made the connection between the brassy chick who had strolled in on the arms of the trouble-maker ten minutes ago and the brunette who wandered the gallery by herself. Everyone who may have noticed her boots was now off-duty.

As she paused at the flat, glass-topped display case with biography materials on Fábio Natan and the history of gargoyles, Nick passed by on the other side. Like her, he was utterly changed in appearance. The cap, jewelry and stubble were gone and his hair was back to normal. The denim vest, tee shirt, and baggy jeans were now lying on top of the ceiling tiles in the men’s washroom, just as her clothes were. The tailored trousers, leather belt and slim collarless shirt he’d worn beneath looked slightly rumpled, but not enough to even come close to calling him scruffy. He’d straightened up, and squared his shoulders and now he’d removed his contacts, he was back to being Nick again.

He didn’t even glance at her.

Riley looked at the clock. Fifteen minutes before closing time.

Nick’s appearance at the display table meant he had prepared her hiding place for her. She moved away from the display table, taking a wandering path back to the service corridor, glancing around at the exhibition. No one was taking any notice of her. She was normal. Ordinary. Nothing like the potential trouble that had sashayed in the door half an hour ago.

She moved into the corridor once more and hurried down toward the fire escape end. The janitor’s closet was one of the last doors on the right before the metal door. She noticed that the wires Damian had severed over the top of the fire escape door had been repaired.

Riley glanced once more over her shoulder as she reached the closet. No one was passing the corridor opening. No one was looking at her. It was just her mental state. She breathed deeply and opened the closet. The door knob rotated slackly in her hand. Nick had wrenched the locked door open earlier for her.

She slipped into the tiny closet and shut the door behind her. The ruined lock would not lock again. She would have to take care of that when the guards came by to check after closing.

By running her hand along the wall very gently, she found the light switch and flipped it. A low wattage light showed her the four foot by three foot space she stood in. There were a couple of folding yellow plastic warning signs for propping over the top of puddles and spills when members of the public were careless with their drinks and beverages, and a mop and squeeze bucket tucked back into the corner, underneath two unfinished wooden shelves holding cleaning supplies. The faint scent of pine lingered.

She picked up a yellow warning sign. It was surprisingly tall when it was folded flat. She jammed it under the handle of the door.

Then she pulled the mop bucket out from under the shelves and turned it around so that the roller section was facing her. It would make a good temporary seat. She tested it carefully. It took her weight.

So she reached up and switched off the light, plunging herself into thick blackness and carefully felt her way back to her stool. With some careful fumbling, she perched on the rollers.

Her breath sounded extraordinarily loud in the dark. She also became aware of the world beyond the door. People wandering the exhibition at the end of the corridor. The squeak of running shoes on the wooden floor. The hush of people conversing in a public place. The rush of warm air through the central air ducts.

Nicholas would be squeezed into the cupboard they had chosen for him to hide in by now.

Riley recalled Nicholas’ eyes, his body against hers, and a montage of moments from the last two days. Instructing her in the finer points of swordsmanship, a small furrow between his brows. Standing naked at the warded windows of the apartment, his arms crossed, watching the street below with a brooding air, hatching plans. Listening to her with total concentration and being surprised into a laugh, then letting himself go and
really
laughing, his head thrown back. Waking up to find him crouched next to the bed, watching her, his eyes so blue she could drown in them.

Riley had not suspected the icy Nicholas Sherwood had been protecting a passionate, intense, loving,
human
man, but in hindsight, she might have guessed. He let the shield down for no one but Damian. And now her.

Total trust,
her mind whispered. This was what Damian had asked of her. Now Nicholas had given it to her, unasked. She realized with jolt that she could—
would—
do the same. She would do anything that Nicholas asked of her, even if he asked her to give up her life for him. For Nicholas, she would pay that price. If Damian were alive, she would gladly include him in that life-debt, too. But no one else. She understood, now, what Damian had meant about degrees of trust. Now she understood how Nicholas had given Damian his complete and unquestioning trust that night.

Just thinking about Nick roused her and brought her nerve endings alive. This was the first time they had been apart for longer than a few minutes and she missed him. It was like an ache in the chest. She wanted him. Her pussy crawled with fevered need, clamping in on itself. Her breath shortened.

She clutched at the mountings of the rollers, staring into the dark. She wasn’t afraid of the dark at all, even now when she knew there really were monsters that moved out there. But she wanted Nicholas. She wanted to feel him against her.

How long until closing time? How long until full dark? Nicholas had the better time-sense. He would know with utter certainty when the sun had set and would be the one to emerge first. He would come to find her.

Riley knew, though, that she wasn’t going to last in this tiny space. Not alone. Not without Nick.

When the doorknob shifted slightly, the broken metal pieces of the lock rolling inside it, she nearly gasped out loud in shock and slapped her hand over her mouth to hold it in. It couldn’t be the guards doing their closing-down rounds. Not yet.

She stared at the place where the sound had come from.

“Riley, let me in.” It was Nicholas, his voice almost soundless.

She nearly sobbed her relief. She stood and turned the light back on, and pushed the bucket out of the way, back under the shelves, then unhooked the caution sign from under the door. As soon as she moved the sign, Nick pulled the door open, pushed inside with her and shut the door. He kept his ear to the door, listening for a moment. Then he relaxed and turned to face her properly.

“Good idea,” he said and jammed the caution sign back under the door. He twisted hard to do it, for with both of them in the closet, there wasn’t enough room to turn around. He was already pressed up against the door.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“You called to me,” he told her. His fingers traced her jaw. “So I came.”

Riley was far too close to him to be able to put her hands on her hips and challenge him that way. She glared at him. “What do you mean,
called
?” she demanded suspiciously.

His fingertip followed the line of her mouth, his eyes following the trail. “You want me. I could smell it. Sense it.”

Riley caught his wrist and squeezed, making his hand come to a stop. She pulled his hand away from her mouth, bringing it to her shoulder and out of harm’s way, and waited for his gaze to focus on her eyes. Only when she had his complete attention did she speak. “You’re good, Nick. I know you can pick up my pheromones from dozens of paces away. But you’re not that good. You’re lying.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Tell me why you’re really here. What brought you here?”

Nicholas drew in a breath. Let it out. “You,” he said flatly.

“But…” Riley began.

“No pheromones. Nothing, Riley. I…” He hesitated. “I just couldn’t stay away.”

She slid her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him. In the confines of the tiny closet, that was all the movement the space allowed. She pressed her mouth against his neck and licked, and felt him shudder. “For days you have been telling me that business is business, Nick. We’re two hunters who happen to be working side by side. Nothing personal.”

His hands were on her back. Then one slid into her hair. The other down to her hips to hold her against him. “I know,” he said simply.

“We watch each other’s backs, but as soon as we start worrying about each other beyond that, we become a liability and we might as well draw targets on our own backs.” She kissed the underside of his jaw.

His hand slipped underneath the hem of her skirt and stroked the delicate flesh between the backs of her thighs. Instantly, heat flashed to her pussy and made it ripple. She gripped the front of his shirt in her fists. “Not fair,” she whispered.

“All’s fair…” He kissed her as his fingers pushed higher, up against the fabric of her panties, making her groan against his mouth.

His fangs had descended and were protruding just a little beyond his normal teeth. Deliberately, Riley slid her tongue over the ends of them. They were razor sharp, but if she did it softly enough, it didn’t hurt. She stroked the points again and Nick gave a breathless moan. His hand clenched hard in her hair. His cock was iron-hard against her hip and she felt it jerk and throb.

Hot-cold drops of liquid oozed onto her tongue. Riley swallowed before she considered the wisdom of doing that. The effect was instantaneous. Her body was engulfed in hot flames, torrid need gushing from every pore.

“No, Riley. Hush…silence, my lover,” Nick murmured, his lips covering hers, as she scrabbled at his shirt, moaning with desperate desire.

She understood the need for silence, but her hands trembled as she pulled at his shirt. She wanted him naked. Now. Her head throbbed with the simple idea, but her fingers would not cooperate.

Nick took over, swiftly removing the offending items. As he worked Riley shed her own clothes. Her fingers were clumsy, but she managed to remove everything but her boots. There simply wasn’t the room to take them off and before she could think of how she might, Nick picked her up, his hands around her waist. He simply lifted her straight up into the air, giving a hint of his incredible strength.

Then he brought her sliding slowly down the length of his body, until his cock pushed against her cleft. Riley dug her fingernails into his shoulder as he slid into her. She was so wet with juices there was no resistance at all, but the feel of his wide head burrowing into her as he lowered her onto him was so exquisite she began to buck and squirm in delight.

Nick held her as her first orgasm ripped through her and her pussy clamped around him in vice-like contractions. His own breathing was labored.

When her pussy walls relaxed their grip on his shaft, he wrapped her legs around his hips, and thrust into her with heavy, hard strokes.

There was enough of the effects of the aphrodisiac left that Riley could feel every touch exaggerated, playing upon her sensory inputs like an amplifier. She held onto Nick, fighting to stay silent, to not scream out her pleasure at the top of her lungs. She was melting. Falling to pieces around his pounding cock.

Her second climax hit after only a few thrusts, but this time Nick didn’t stop. He couldn’t. He was feeding off her excitement, and driving toward his own nuclear-level explosion.