Mystical Seduction: full-length sensual paranormal romance (The Protectors) (2 page)

That was back when he rarely spent the night alone. That was
before…

It no longer felt safe taking a woman to his bed. Especially
not a
human
woman.

But with each passing day, his hungers grew. He wondered
which would be the greatest danger: to give into his urges or to continue to
deny himself out of fear of…
what
?

Hell, he didn’t know. And it didn’t matter. He had no
business hooking up with the humans in that way.

Not that they made keeping away easy. No matter how hard he
tried to hold himself apart, humans still flocked around him, thanks to his “
dazzling
force of personality
,”

he supposed. And with his recent success and money, he found
it more and more difficult to escape the humans and just be alone for a while.
Because whenever he was in the middle of a crowd like this, his loneliness
yawned wide and empty.

Horace’s slow gaze drifted back toward Faith. She was
dancing with the four other women. She didn’t seem to notice or care that every
single man in the room watched them. God, maybe he should take one of those
beauties to bed for the night. He’d get some satisfaction for this aching need
eating at his soul, and perhaps he’d also be able to forget about his black
mood for a while.

“So why don’t you?” Brendan asked, his loud voice cut
through Horace’s tumbling thoughts.

“Stop that,” Horace growled over the thumping music as he
turned and watched his friend walk toward him. He hated how Brendan could pop
in and out of his head and read his thoughts like that.

Apparently marriage had sharpened his best friend’s extrasensory
abilities. Wasn’t it supposed to do the opposite?

“Not when it’s with the right person,” Brendan leaned
forward and said with a wily grin. “Marriage has some other pleasing side
benefits, too.” He looked too damned satisfied with himself.

“Will you stay the hell out of my head?” Horace grumbled
with less heat than before. “If wedded bliss is so…um…blissful, why are you
here and not at home enjoying your bride?”

Ever since Brendan had met the mysterious Dallas St. John,
Horace hadn’t seen much of his friend at all. He suspected Brendan still spent
most of his time, and his energies, in the bedroom.

“I could say sexual exhaustion has brought me crawling out
of my lair so I could catch my breath.” Brendan gave a dramatic sigh and
pressed his arm against his forehead.

“I don’t need to be able to read minds to know you’re lying.
What’s up?”

“Two things. First—” He pushed a silver bag tied closed with
an elaborate satin bow into Horace’s hand. “Happy birthday.”

Horace absently fingered the silky bow. “Is that today? I’d
forgotten.”

“Of course you had. And so had I, but Dallas hadn’t. She
cares about you as much as I do. She’s the one who insisted I come over here
even before—” Brendan drew a halting breath and got that tense look on his face
Horace knew from years of friendship he needed to be worried about.

“What? What’s going on?”

Brendan didn’t answer him. Instead, he pushed open Horace’s
office door and herded Horace inside. Although Horace was bigger and stronger
than Brendan, he let himself be pushed into the small space.
Something’s up
.
Brendan wouldn’t look so damned serious otherwise.

Horace gave a last wistful glance toward Faith and her
friends, and then closed the door behind him.

* * * *

He’s gone
.

Faith stopped dancing and stared at the empty space where
Horace had stood with his arms crossed over his broad chest. She’d felt certain
he’d been watching her. The press of his intense gaze had made her feel sort of
light-headed and tingly.

She’d liked it and missed it right away, and she missed him.

“Come on.” Her friend Kimmi tugged on Faith’s arm and
started gyrating her hips in time with the music. “Dance with me.”

Faith forced a smile and followed Kimmi’s movements while
trying to forget Horace West and his sexy-as-sin body. She had no business
lusting after the club’s owner. Heck, she’d never even met him.

Tim, the head bartender had hired Faith a little over a
month ago. She’d expected Tim would have introduced her to Horace by now. But
on the nights she served, Horace always kept his distance.

After a while, she began to think Horace treated all his
employees that way. However, last week after attending her last class for the
day at the University of Chicago, she’d stopped by the bar to pick up her paycheck.
And there was Horace with the bartenders, laughing at a joke one of them had
made and acted like part of the group, friendly even. It was enough to give a
girl a complex, considering how he’d never so much as smiled in her direction.

So tonight, when her friends asked her where she wanted to
go for her birthday, she’d picked Club West. It had seemed like a perfect
opportunity to get a closer look at the club’s young, sexy owner.

On her birthday, she planned to confront Horace West and
find out why the hell he’d been avoiding her.

* * * *

“You can’t be serious,” Horace said as he checked again to
make sure his office door was tightly closed. “Come on, Brendan. I know you
want me to hook up with a woman, but threats? That’s going too far, even for
you.”

Brendan drew in a long, deep breath and dropped into one of
the office’s leather chairs. Horace didn’t want to sit. He felt too wound up.
He wanted to pace. But his tiny office didn’t offer enough space for him to
take more than a step or two in any direction. So he leaned against the corner
of his maple desk.

“It was a vision,” Brendan said fiercely. “And the way it
stabbed through me sure as hell wasn’t a joke. My head is still splitting from
its impact.” Brendan leaned forward. His expression twisted with pain. “You
died, Horace. Tonight.”

“Unless I get myself laid?”

“It was just a suggestion. I could make a few calls. Get you
someone you’ll like.”

Horace shook his head. He didn’t get involved with the
humans like that anymore. He wouldn’t.

“How about Kara?” Brendan asked. “She’s one of us.”

One of us
. Lately, though, he didn’t feel comfortable
around anyone. Not even the foundlings.

“No,” Horace said, pushing away from the desk. He needed to
get out of this damned small office. “You and I both know I don’t do casual
sex.”

Not anymore.

He felt Brendan using his psychic powers probing his
thoughts. But it didn’t matter. The reason for his celibacy had been buried
deep. It wasn’t something he thought about. He doubted he could even if he
wanted to.

“Then come home with me. Or go to an all-night bowling
alley. Please, Horace. Do anything. Just don’t stay here.” Brendan sounded
seriously worried, which should have given Horace reason to rethink his plans
for the night. But it didn’t.

Instead, Horace’s black mood turned a shade darker. “Perhaps
it’s my time.”

That sent Brendan launching out of his chair.

“Dammit, I wouldn’t have gotten a vision if that were true!”
Brendan grabbed Horace’s shoulders and shook him. “You saved me once, and I’m
sure as hell going to return the favor! I got this vision for a reason, you
know. You’re not supposed to die tonight.” Brendan shook Horace again and then
smacked him on the center of his forehead. “Get that through your thick skull!”

“Okay. Okay. Let go of me.” Horace peeled Brendan’s fingers
from his shoulders. “I won’t let myself be murdered. At least not tonight. You
happy?”

Horace probably would have decked anyone else for manhandling
him like that. Luckily, for Brendan, he loved the scoundrel like a brother.

“Let me call Cheryl,” Brendan said with a sigh of relief.
“You’ll like her. She’s got legs up to—”

“I’m not leaving the club.”

“What? But I thought—”

Horace settled back on the corner of his desk. He crossed
his arms and scowled. “You tell me that a gunman is going to come into my club
and start shooting. What do you think I’m going to do? Run away? That sure as
hell isn’t going to happen.”

Brendan started to protest, but Horace cut him off. “You
know I can’t leave, Brendan. Every last human here is my responsibility. How
can you expect me to leave here after you tell me that someone is going to get
shot—perhaps even killed—tonight?”

Brendan raised his index finger and opened his mouth but
quickly closed it. Horace didn’t need to be able to read minds to know that
Brendan, perhaps begrudgingly, agreed.

Although no one really knew what they were or why they were
on Earth, they called themselves
the Protectors
for a reason. While they
looked human, each one of them had unique, inexplicable powers.

And they had one more thing in common, each one of them
started out their lives as foundlings. No parents. No family. Horace sometimes
wondered if they’d been dropped from the sky as infants.

When his magical powers were newly emerging, Horace had
thought he was a god, all-powerful and infallible.

They weren’t gods, though. That had been a hard lesson to
learn. They were merely different from the humans, too different to safely
involve themselves intimately with any of them…Especially the women.

“Go home to your wife,” he told Brendan.

He didn’t need his friend to hang around all night and worry
about his safety. He had powers of his own. To remind Brendan that he wasn’t
helpless, Horace held his palm out flat over his desk and, focusing his powers,
made the stapler float up into the air.

“We may not know what will happen tonight, but one thing is
certain,” he said and closed his fist. The stapler crumpled as easily as foil.
It fell back onto the top of the desk with a startling clatter. “I’m more than
capable of taking care of myself.”

Although Faith wanted to get to know Horace better, to
figure out what was going on in that stubborn head of his, even the terminally
optimistic had their limits. She’d tried all night to get close enough to him
to start a conversation. Or to dance. Though she’d never seen him dance with
anyone, she could tell by the way he moved he would sweep any woman off her
feet.

No matter what she did to get close to him though, either an
employee stepped in the way or he was distracted with one of the three
strangers who had started hovering around him like swarm of gnats a few hours
ago.

No problem. She could handle this
.
If the direct
approach didn’t work, she’d sneak up on him.

When he emerged from behind the bar, she stalked him like a
tigress on the hunt across the dance floor. And then closed in for the kill.
She opened her mouth to speak to him. But before she could utter a sound, he
stepped into his office, leaving her talking to his closed office door.

When he emerged again, she tried again to talk to him.

And again.

And again.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and huffed. “I’m
beginning to get the feeling he’s purposefully avoiding me.”

“What?” her friend Kimmi shouted as she shimmied past, half
her body wrapped around a virile hunk of manly flesh.

“Him.” Faith pointed.

At that very moment—
as if he’d heard her
—Horace
turned and glared directly at her.

“Who?” Kimmi shouted, oblivious to the sizzling heat in his glare.

Faith tried to answer her friend but felt pressed into
place.

All night she’d tried to catch his notice. All night she’d
angled for a way to cozy up to him. And now that she’d gotten what she’d come
for—his
undivided
attention—her courage fled.

With the same fluid motion that had made her think he’d make
a fascinating dance partner, he came directly toward her.

“Go home, Faith,” he said.

“It’s my birthday,” she said and stuck out her chin. She had
no idea why she would say something so dumb, but since the words had already
spilled out of her mouth, she couldn’t take them back. “Well, it
is
my
birthday.”

The tension around his lips eased a little. “Really?” he
said, sounding faintly surprised. “Mine, too.”

“We’re both Leos?”

Idiot,
a voice in her head scolded.
Could you get
any more cliché? Think. Quick. Say something intelligent. Show him you’re not
some mindless dolt.

Her mouth turned dry, which rarely happened. And her mind
went blank, and that
never
happened. She never acted nervous around men.
Never. All her life, men flocked to
her
. More often than not, they would
praise her unerring confidence while doing everything in their power to get
into her pants.

She found it a novel—and somewhat frightening—experience to
have that darned shoe suddenly on the other foot.
She
was the one trying
to get into
Horace’s
pants.

Well, not literally into his pants. Not right away. She
wasn’t that kind of girl. But oh, what nice pants.

He wore dark, finely pressed khakis with a cream silk shirt
that hung loosely over his broad chest, emphasizing the barely concealed cords
of muscles. A dark lock of hair drooped over his brow.

And his midnight blue eyes…She could stare into them
forever. The drowning depths in them made her feel as if he could see directly
into her soul.

“Umm—umm,” she stuttered.

“Go home, Faith.” He gently cupped her shoulder and turned
her toward the door. “It’s late, and you have an early class in the morning.”

“I do.” She should go home…

It
was
late…

“Wait a darn minute!” She swung back around and poked her
finger against his chest. “Why do you know when I have to be at the
university?”

“I spoke with Tim this afternoon before opening up the club,
like I do just about every day. He and I come up with the work schedules.”