Reluctant Adept: Book Three of A Clairvoyant's Complicated Life (5 page)

Because I could, I tugged on his neck and, when he leaned down, I kissed him soundly on the mouth, earning his immediate reciprocation. Afterward, I sighed and rubbed my lips together, savoring it. "That's something I've not been able to do in a long time," I murmured.

He chuckled, taking the cold bottle I handed him. "I think it's been all of twenty minutes, not that I mind."

I shook my head. "I haven't had a boyfriend I could touch without a barrier for over ten years." I gave him a sly smile. "I've missed the novelty of being able to mark my territory in public."

"Well then … I'm happy to oblige." His grin turned wolfish. "Mark me anytime. Since it works both ways, it's to my advantage."

Julie shoved a plate between us, unrepentantly breaking up our quiet conversation. "I figured you guys could share. With the two of you going at it, Kieran needs to stick to psi-free," she said with a knowing wink.

I took the plate from Julie, responding with an exasperated widening of my eyes, and thanked her.

"It twists off," I told Kieran, when I saw him frown at his bottle's cap and then scan the nearby table, probably for a bottle opener. Many of our more modern conveniences were lost on him since, until a month ago, it had been over fifty years since he'd spent any appreciable time on Earth.

Julie pulled off her disposable gloves and tossed them into the trash. Grabbing a beer, she said, "Come on, Kieran. Let's introduce you around."

I liberated a psi-free mineral water from the tub, stuck it under my arm, and then trailed behind with the plate, stuffing a loaded tortilla chip into my mouth and trying not to dump it all over my blouse as I walked.
Oh, man. Heaven.
The fingers of my gloves were going to be an oil-stained mess by the time I was done, though. Why could I never seem to remember to take at least my right one off before stuffing my face?
Bonehead.
Fortunately, I kept several extra pairs in my purse.

A few steps past the fireplace, Julie stopped to whisper intently into Kieran's ear.
Uh oh.
I knew that look. She was up to something, but between my chewing, our distance, and the ambient noise, I couldn't overhear what she'd said. Kieran faced away from me, so his expression was no help. He gave her a nod and then continued to follow in her wake across the room.

Damn it.
With my mouth full of nachos, I couldn't scold her, and when I realized she'd headed straight for her husband and Glen, my ex-boyfriend—the one who dumped me last year because he was sick and tired of dealing with all my 'necessary precautions'—I wanted to yank her back and threaten her with horrible things if she didn't behave. Why had I shoved the entire mile-high chip into my mouth? No doubt I had cilantro stuck in between my front teeth, and to top everything off, I couldn't take a swig of my water because the bottle was still encased in its protective shrinkwrap.

Resigning myself to the coming discomfort, I offloaded my plate on the nearest table and then sidled up to Kieran.

"Hey, sweetie." Julie beamed at her husband, pausing to greet Glen before going on, "Hon, I want you to meet Lire's beau. Kieran, this is my husband Steven and his friend Glen."

They shook hands while I did my best to avoid looking at my ex.

Why was I so uncomfortable? Yes, he'd hurt me, badly in fact, but I'd been over the jerk for months. Maybe my sudden cold sweat was because I had little experience with ex-boyfriends, having had so few of them. Honestly, this was a novelty I could have lived without, in spite of Kieran overshadowing him. Not because Glen wasn't attractive; he was, in a clean-cut Microsoft executive sort of way. It was just that Kieran—in addition to being incredibly sexy and well-built—possessed an enigmatic aura that marked him as being dangerous if provoked. He stood out in the room like a fallen angel among the rabble. Glen was so far removed from Kieran's league, it was laughable.

I busied myself with unwrapping my water bottle, needing to hide behind it.

Maybe most women in my shoes would be feeling smug and victorious right about now, but for some reason I itched for a hole to fall into. Julie was my dearest friend and I loved her to bits, but this whole setup smacked of … of high school.

As I gulped from my bottle, I almost cringed, wondering what Kieran must think of it. The guy was a twenty-seven-hundred-year-old dignified sidhe.

Strange as it seemed, it was only at odd times like these that the age disparity occurred to me. After all, we were both adults. By all appearances, Kieran didn't look any older than my thirty, but Julie's mischief had me considering the bizarreness of it. His teenage years were so long ago, at this point they must be an indistinct fog lurking in the furthest corner of his mind. Besides, the sidhe were far too superior to experience anything as plebeian as angst. Most of them no doubt popped out of their mothers' womb wearing tuxedos and ready for higher education, skipping puberty entirely.

Why had I decided this party was a good idea?

The touch of Kieran's caress on the back of my neck startled me. I jerked my attention upward to find him gazing down at me, his lazy grin and twinkling eyes speaking of mischief. To my shock, he leaned down and pressed his lips to my temple, soothing my anxiety with a gush of warmth. I blinked up at him, mystified and pleased in equal measure, until Glen's shocked voice reminded me we had an audience.

"Hey, don't— " Glen reached out, as if to grab Kieran, but stopped short. His confused gaze ping-ponged between us, eyebrows raised and mouth slackened with shock. I swear I heard Julie snicker, but that could have been my imagination.

"You— " he stopped, dropping his arm and stepping back as he took a breath to regain his cool. "He can touch you. You said … I mean, I thought that was a problem."

Problem for
you
, dickwad,
I thought as I slid my drink to the nearby table, freeing my hand to wrap around Kieran's waist.

"Not for the right man," Kieran replied, his fingers still curled possessively at the back of my neck.

Whoa
. Okay, maybe I was starting to enjoy this. Glen looked nonplussed. If not for some of the hurtful things he'd said when he dumped me, I might even have felt bad about it.

I leaned into Kieran when his arm snaked to my waist, encouraging me closer. He sure knew a little something about marking territory, and I planned to reward him later. He hadn't needed to go along with Julie, who'd certainly instigated this, but he'd done it anyway, surprising me yet again. There was a playful side to Kieran, and I enjoyed uncovering it.

"You mean the right
elf
," a statuesque brunette threw in, her sultry voice failing to conceal a sneer.

Perhaps an inch taller than Glen's five-foot-ten and looking way too young for his late-thirties, she insinuated herself into the conversation, perching her narrow chin on his shoulder and wrapping her arms around his waist. With her heavily made-up eyes, stylishly tousled hair, and what little I could see of her skintight leather ensemble, she wouldn't have looked out of place at the MTV Video Music Awards. For a party among friends, though, it was a little much.

Her turquoise-blue eyes narrowed as she examined Kieran and me and added, "Although, any elf would do. Like the strigoi, touchies can't read them."

I bristled at the derogatory terms. Interesting, though, that she'd used the formal name for vampires.

She stalked to Glen's side, draping a possessive hand on his left shoulder and fingering the top edge of his black turtleneck with the tips of her glossy-red nails. "But as far as elves go, this one has little to crow about." Predatorily, she scrutinized Kieran and sniffed. "Pity."

What the hell was she smoking? If Kieran walked the runway, he'd be a slam dunk for hottest male model of the year. Whenever we went out in public, he drew appreciative stares from practically every female we passed, in addition to a fair number of men. It would have irritated me if not for the fact that Kieran dismissed it, as if the attention meant less than nothing to him. At first, I thought it was because he continued to harbor a dim view of humans—he'd once told me, in his experience, human women had proved to be 'vain, weak-minded, insipid creatures' who only craved to bed him a their 'earliest convenience.' However, I'd come to realize that Kieran simply didn't view himself as being particularly attractive.

Squeezing my side in warning, Kieran placed his beer on the nearby table, but I was too incensed to spare it any thought. Who did she think she was, anyway?

"Clearly, you don't have eyes," I scoffed. "Not that we give a flying crap." I dismissed her with an eye roll and turned to Julie. "I must have missed the 'Rude Skanks Allowed' sign on your door, Jules."

Julie didn't react. In fact, our exchange seemed to have left both her and Steven lost for words.

Kieran's magic swept over me and blurred movement wrenched my attention back to Glen and Miss Brunette-and-Bitchy.

Joining the two of them was an eye-catching newcomer, another MTV-wannabe by the look of his trendy, monochromatic wardrobe. Slim ebony suit, silver-gray shirt, and meticulously trimmed goatee, the man was a six-foot-three study in how to be tall, black, and handsome without trying. He stood at the brunette's side, restraining her outstretched arm, which he'd plainly grabbed mid-strike.

No way.
The idiot woman had dared to take a swing at me?

Kieran's protective shroud surrounded us. Since the brunette remained on her feet, instead of collapsed into a bloody heap on the floor, her companion must have interfered before Kieran could unleash his corrosive shadow on her skinny ass.

"Now, Eva," the man crooned in a deliciously cultured British accent. "What is it Americans say? Sticks and stones? Besides, that was a rather coarse thing to say, even if true."

He was dissing Kieran's looks too? What was this—opposite day?

Somehow, I'd stepped into that Twilight Zone episode where the model-perfect blonde laments the fact that her 'treatments' hadn't fixed her horrible facial disfigurement, and then the camera pans back to show all the doctors and nurses with pig snouts instead of noses. If these two thought Kieran wasn't much to look at, I couldn't imagine what their idea of a showstopper might be, although, the two of them weren't exactly hard on the eyes. Not a snout in sight. Maybe they had curly tails that I couldn't see. I almost snickered at the thought.

Eyebrows creeping upward, I shook my head. This whole encounter bordered on the bizarre.

The man tucked Eva's arm under his, stroking her still-clenched fist soothingly, easing her fingers apart. His graceful brown hands contrasted prominently with her fair skin, calling attention to his long fingers and smooth caresses. The sensuality of each stroke sent a shiver through me. When I glanced into his dark brown eyes, he stared back with an intensity that shot sparks of alarm clear down through my heels. This man might be a lot of things (intimidating, striking, and sexy to name a few), but I was fairly sure
human
wasn't one of them.

In one swift move, Kieran turned into my one-armed embrace, pulling my shoulder firm to his chest. With a flick of his wrist, his magic sword manifested in his right hand. "She is mine," he said in a tone that was both calm and inexorable at the same time.

It all happened so quickly, I didn't have time to gasp, much less issue protest.

"Of course she is," the man replied, smiling with all the humor of a shark swimming in chum-filled waters. "Lovely party. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Nathan."

My eyes widened at his elongated, sharply pointed canines.

Oh shit.
My first contact with the strigoi and Kieran acting like a possessive Neanderthal did not project the message I wanted to convey. I came close to jabbing him in the ribs with my elbow, but the ominous absence of party chatter finally permeated my indignation.

I glanced around me. Julie and Steven hadn't moved. They stood riveted in place, both of them blinking slowly, eyes glassy. Glen, too, seemed to be some kind of trance. A glance about the shop revealed more of the same. Interspersed among the dazed partygoers, I spotted at least six other strangers, all of them eying me with cold malevolence and projecting tightly coiled menace.

Nathan and his cohorts had mesmerized and taken control of everyone in the freaking room!

No, not Jules! And Steven?

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit
…

I swallowed hard in a hopeless effort to control my skyrocketing alarm. There was a reason an unsolicited strigoi bite was a felony in most states. More powerful than the strongest roofie, strigoi venom acted on the central nervous system. Enhanced by magic, it produced a highly suggestive state that lasted indefinitely, without physiological side effects, other than being at the mercy of the vampire who wanted a meal and whatever else. Worse, its continued effect could only be countered by the strigoi's antidote. Victims could be told to go about their lives, just as my friends had been told to enjoy the party, but unless they received the anti-hypnotic or the strigoi died, they'd be forever compromised, unable to resist the call of whichever vamp had bitten them.

I turned back to the British vamp. At least, he
sounded
British. For all I knew, he was a two-thousand-year-old Celt who'd spent the last few centuries in the UK … aside from being black. I didn't think that quite fit the image of an ancient Celt, but I'd not read many Celtic artifacts so I could hardly call myself informed.

Shaking off the useless, random thoughts, I clamped down on my distressed need for air. "You guys know those photos I sent weren't meant to be a threat, right? I wanted to get the domn's attention, to prove that I'm not a prank. Your PR guy wasn't particularly … gracious when I called." Somehow, I managed to avoid sounding panicked and even diplomatically added, "I guess I can't blame him. A demon invasion does sound pretty farfetched."

Nathan's dark gaze briefly wavered. "You spoke to Frederick? When?"

Frederick was the prick who'd threatened to drain me for wasting his time.
A-ha.
Maybe it had become clear to Nathan that delightful Freddy had stonewalled me.