Into Her Fire (Fantasy Heights) (5 page)

She inhaled sharply at the threat of another deep pang. It was a struggle to maintain eye contact as he tugged the improvised clamp hard, then let go.

The resulting rebound sent a surge of shocking, dense hunger through her belly. And when his fingers returned to the earring, she almost snapped out a protest. If he was angry with her, there were less torturous ways to get his point across.

This time, though, he broke the eye contact and applied both hands to the earring, removing it with slow, careful precision. His hands were steady and he stayed quiet until both clamps lay on the tabletop beside her hip.

Breathing a bit easier now even though a renewed rush of stinging pain hit her nipples, she knew the answer but asked the question anyway. “Untie me?”

He ignored the request. “How did you know I wasn’t him?”

“You sound different. Why are you here? And what happens if my client shows up?”

“He’s not your client anymore. He won’t be back.”

She stared at him, searching for any sign that he might be lying. As if she could ever tell, with him. “Why did you try to fool me?”

“Probably for the same reason you didn’t stop me. I had a theory, and I wanted to see what you’d do.”

A frisson of fear gained a tighter hold on her throat than was strictly comfortable. “Why?”

He lifted a hand again to trace a meandering line from her right kneecap, up her thigh, straight for that hypersensitive hipbone again. Her muscles contracted involuntarily, making her tug at the leg restraint.

While she was still twitching from the blatant provocation, Thomas asked, “Who sent you here?”

“My mystery client booked this place, if that’s what you mean.”

Black eyes went very flat. “Cut the deliberately obtuse act. Keep lying, and you’ll find out I can turn real hostile in a real big hurry.”

“I don’t understand. You asked who sent me here, and I answered.”

“Don’t. Just don’t. The only thing I haven’t figured out yet is who you were supposed to target.” Thomas settled a hand on her abdomen, resting it there, feeling the rise and fall of her breaths. “If it’s me, good luck with that. And I don’t really care if it’s Warnous. Or Lily or Brandon Briggs. I’ll have to stop you, of course, but it won’t be personal.”

She wanted to defend herself. She needed to, but had no idea what he was talking about, or where such suspicion would come from. And this was dangerous. He’d made it very clear the other night that he didn’t want her to know he was an agent. He’d sworn at Steph, trying to stop the disclosure after the Warnous incident. He was angry, and it seemed his travels had left him with enough time on his hands to construct theories and convince himself of the worst.

He continued. “But just in case it’s Josh you’re after, let me repeat myself. Josh Taylor is a decent man. Sometimes I think he’s the only decent person left on this planet, and I will bury every last one of you fuckers if you come after him.”

Amanda had stopped breathing early in his speech. She remembered the last time Thomas had threatened her about Josh. She had been so utterly convinced that he would carry out his threat that she’d been furious with him ever since. This time, fear had begun to short-circuit all else.

“Thomas, I swear to you. I would never do anything to hurt Josh, and I don’t understand why you’d think I would come after him.”

“Right,” he said. Dry. Dismissive. “You messed up. You finally made a mistake I could point to as proof when Jerod asked if you wanted to stay at Fantasy Heights. Anyone else would think twice after what happened that night, but Jerod said you didn’t even hesitate.”

Viewing it from Thomas’s skewed perspective, she supposed she’d left room for concern. Gail and Robert Warnous had shown her in vivid detail that a very real potential existed for something crazy and violent to happen at Fantasy Heights. So why? Why had she been so quick to commit to staying? She must have asked herself that question seventy times in the last two days, and still hadn’t come up with an answer that made any kind of logical sense. How was she supposed to convince Thomas her motives were above reproach when she didn’t even understand them herself?

He changed course. “Let’s skip the posturing and make a deal. You tell me what you’re after, and who sent you. Once I’ve got my answers, I’ll let you walk out of here with no consequences, long as you never come back.”

A double helping of frustration piled onto her tone. “Thomas, no one sent me here. I’m not after anyone.”

“Okay, then let’s pretend you’re telling the truth, and let me show you how it doesn’t track. I’ve already done the work. I’ve made every excuse for you, wasted hours trying to find any legitimate reason for a jilted bank manager to stay here. Like maybe you were pissed off at the world, and this place is your way of kicking it in the teeth. Or maybe you wanted to hook up with some unsuspecting sex-starved rich guy, hoping to rebound your way into his trust fund. The worst, though, was when I thought maybe you were the demented Florence Nightingale type, helping the world ground their sexual third rails, one orgasm at a time.”

Hearing his theories, she almost felt sorry for him. How exhausting to spend so much time with someone he trusted so little. No wonder he sounded so tired and fed up. And somehow the truth came stumbling out without passing through the ‘it’s okay to say this out loud’ filter. “I guess Derek was right. I really am pissed off at the world because things didn’t work out the way they were supposed to. And when I came here, for the first few weeks, all I cared about was losing myself in sex. God, it felt good to be adventurous and rebellious. And physically, the sex was beyond anything I could have imagined. But I don’t think I was ever really here, mentally, until that day I saw Marla kiss Gail Warnous. I mean, I hated you at the time, but I still didn’t want you to be hurt. That’s when I started paying attention to the little things, noticing that things weren’t right, and how no one around here was exactly happy. And then Fiona Cornell broke into my house, and my mystery client slipped me a note. Who could walk away from that? Not me. Not most people. Most people need to stick around and fix the problems and make things right again for people they care about. It gives them a higher purpose than just converting oxygen into carbon dioxide.”

Thomas’s response was instantaneous and harsh. “Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit. You’re the same way, or you wouldn’t threaten me about Josh.”

Her arrow hit its mark. Now she was the one wearing the accusatory expression, and Thomas was the one starting to doubt. She could see it on him. Sometimes, if she got under his skin enough, he forgot to disguise his body language. When he rested both his palms on her belly and his fingers tensed up, the gesture had no menace. More like he was hanging onto her without actually allowing himself to grab hold.

He really did want to believe her.

A long, noisy silence settled over them while her mind raced, digging for the right thing to say. Finally, he let out yet another soft growl of frustration. “What the fuck is going on around here? It doesn’t track. It just doesn’t track.”

“Thomas, please. You’re scaring me.”

He lifted his head up, and she was instantly reminded of that moment out on the quad, when he and Josh had glared at Robert Warnous. Only this time, she was the enemy. “Good. Someone needs to teach you respect for the amount of power flowing through this place. And the amount of trouble it attracts. But it won’t be me.”

Her belly felt cold when Thomas lifted one hand to lean sideways and slip the knot binding her right wrist. Then he stood up and freed the other. While she sat up, he rubbed her skin with his thumbs, stimulating blood flow.

Apparently unconvinced that she was no threat, he left the ankle restraints. “What time is Eric coming for you?”

“I’m supposed to text him. Why?”

“Where’s your phone?”

“In my purse, out in the car.”

He turned and walked out. Figuring he’d gone to retrieve her bag, she freed her ankles and got off the table. It didn’t occur to her that he wouldn’t return. Not right away, but after a minute or so, she put her clothes back on, and began returning silver dishes to the table, and replacing covers over the chocolate, fruit, and chilled utensils.

It was the melting coffee chips that got her. A growl of agonized vexation leaked out when her throat started to burn and close. She wasn’t really going to cry about this, was she? She wasn’t really going to waste emotion on someone so unwilling to trust her that he’d choose to believe her a spy sent to infiltrate Fantasy Heights and destroy Josh Taylor, over the truth: that she wasn’t smart enough to flee this place and reclaim her safe, boring existence.

The unfairness was quickly swept away by an unprecedented anger. How dare he leave that way? Why did he think he could make all those crazy accusations and then simply walk out?

And what about her mystery client? What happened to him? Why wasn’t he coming back?

Worried, Amanda was about to drag herself out to the car when Eric came in, eyes bright with a frightened intensity as if he were expecting the worst.

She held her hands up. “Whoa. What’s wrong?”

Eric’s shoulders sagged, and then he reached over to his right and swatted a switch on the wall. “Son of a… Your client hit the panic button on his way out.”

Amanda sucked her teeth, carefully keeping her mouth shut. Eric didn’t know Thomas had taken the place of her mystery client. She convinced herself she preferred things to remain that way.

“Sorry. I didn’t realize.”

Eric shrugged it off and radioed security that they did not, in fact, need to storm Haynes House. After he took her home that night, he went to sleep in the guest room while she sat down in the dining room to stare at a wall. Bits and pieces of her day spun and collided, crunching and grating like rocks in a tumbler. Another performer getting fired. Everyone arguing. Derek talking about repressed anger. Ridley and her weird cult thing, and the Paramour Project. No more mystery client. Her own babbled admission to Thomas. His accusation that she had a target at Fantasy Heights. His renewed threat about Josh.

Maybe he was right, in a way, that she didn’t track. She hadn’t been herself since she’d arrived here, if that was even possible. Everything about Fantasy Heights was alien to her old life. Cast into this place, she’d been stripped of her social standing, her friends, her loyalties and old habits, everything that made up her identity. And not for the first time, she felt as if underneath all that had been someone unknown and untested, with a completely different set of interests, talents, and personal attachments. About the only thing this new identity shared with the old Amanda was the need to keep people from being hurt.

Someone needs to teach you respect for the amount of power flowing through this place. And the amount of trouble it attracts.

She thought about that for a long time, drifting. There was so much she didn’t understand about Thomas. Steph had said he ran background checks. Fine, Amanda could buy that, but Thomas could do that without performing on set, let alone becoming a lead performer who’d earned himself a huge, loyal following.

He didn’t track, either. Not for her, and she decided it wasn’t in her nature—old or new—to leave that alone. After obsessing for more than an hour over how to decode him, she hauled herself to bed, no better off.

The following day she spent gearing up for the Josh reunion. She hated to feel that divisive fear, the guilt over having no idea what to say. All she could do was hope that inspiration struck at the right time, because Thomas was right: Josh was a decent man. More than anyone around here, she would hate to see him hurt, and she would never forgive herself if she dealt the blow.

An assistant presided over wardrobe that evening. The department never ran as efficiently without Kara at the helm, but Amanda had no trouble getting ready for the event. She made it through with light makeup and her hair bullied into a mass of long, messy curls. For a costume, she wore flame-red bra and panties beneath a white silk shirt and another pencil-slim steel gray skirt. Last came a pair of black leather Mary Janes she wanted to keep.

Everything went fine until she realized she couldn’t remember how to get to the shadowbox. She retraced the steps Kara had taken that first night and quickly found the short hallway and the black door. Remembering how she’d felt back then, she went up the steps and slipped through to the blind.

This time, she didn’t feel nervous or uncertain, though when she thought about it, her situation hadn’t changed much. She was still mostly clueless. Still being tested. The only difference was that this time, when she stepped into the blind, she knew exactly what would happen.

No sign of Josh yet. She sneaked to the edge of the black-painted wall to peer out at the shadowbox and beyond. Outside the glass, she couldn’t see much. Just some vague shapes far afield in the darkened club.

A flicker of light overhead caught her eye, and she looked up to locate the panel of projection lenses casting images onto the blind wall. From her angle, she couldn’t see what they were, but she supposed movies or other erotic fare played while the shadowbox wasn’t manned by live performers.

Withdrawing, she meant to check around for the silk cords they’d need, just in time for Josh to arrive.

He didn’t say anything, simply appeared behind her. Naturally, Josh being Josh, both hands went to her buttocks, and she felt her pussy clench again as he slid his hands down to curl his fingers over the hem of her skirt. He lifted it, then drove a finger between her buttocks and beneath her panties in search of her slit. He closed his teeth on the back of her neck. She pressed against him, appreciating him more than ever. Josh had no idea what to say either, so he was skipping past all the awkward, straight to showing her how much she’d been missed.

He turned her around to kiss while he took inventory, visiting her hips, her jaw, her ribs and finally her breasts. His thumbs and forefingers carried on to pinch nipples still tender from Thomas through silk and bra. She stared up at him, waiting, knowing he could do whatever he wanted to her, and it would all be good.