SeductiveTracks (8 page)

“Oh,” she swallowed and again reminded herself to act as if
this was all interesting but nothing to do with her.

“This all sounds amazing,” she continued, “but I don’t
really see how I can be of any help to you gentlemen.”

“I know you’re Shadow,” Matt said.

Kelly blinked in shock and struggled not to show too much on
her face as Matt sat forward on his chair, his hands linked around his knee and
his head tilted to stare hard at her. His bedroom-blue eyes pierced her with their
intensity and she felt as if he could see through into her soul and read her
heart and mind.

Her deepest desires and fantasies felt exposed and she
struggled to breathe for a moment. Matt’s gaze caught and held with hers and
Kelly’s strength wavered. Part of her wanted desperately to cave in and tell
him all her secrets. The temptation to place her heart and soul in Matt’s large
hands, to trust the depth of desire she could see within those royal-blue eyes,
was immense.

The silence stretched between them, and Kelly could feel his
mind reaching out to hers, his gaze speaking to her, saying she could trust him
and he wanted her to confide in him. Decades of being alone, however, were a
hard habit to break. It just didn’t feel right to spill her secrets to an
Enforcer, even one as handsome and tempting as Matt. She had conditioned
herself to keep her secrets her own for too long. It tore something inside her,
but Kelly forced the words from her lips.

“I’m sorry but you’ve made a terrible mistake,” she said. Her
voice sounded dull and mechanical, but she forced herself to continue. “I’m an
Archivist. I do research and filing. I’m not a thief, and certainly not some
exotic cat burglar. I’m so sorry you’ve wasted your time coming down here to
see me.”

A part of her expected Matt to take her words at face value,
stand up and apologize for taking up her time. He stared harder at her, as if
the beam of his blue gaze could read her most private thoughts. The silent,
weighty seriousness of his stare showed her that this was not a wizard to be
put off by a few negative words.

Her brain registered the tenacity of Matt’s personality—it
matched her own proud and remarkable stubborn streak. Kelly guessed it would
not be as simple as a few words to deter this wizard. She felt equal parts
excitement and resignation at the thought of him pursuing her in such an
intense way.

“We actually want your help.” Matt smiled sexily at her as
he explained. Calm determination rang clear in his tone. Kelly had a feeling
he’d set his mind to something. Her breath caught and her heart pounded in her
chest as she wondered what kind of decision he had just made.

“I know…
we
know,” Matt continued, correcting himself,
“that you are Shadow. Our captain wants you to join us and help to steal some
very important items from some very bad people.”

Kelly’s heart fluttered at his words, and when Matt caught
her gaze again, the blue within his eyes deepened. A wicked grin spread across
his face and the glint in his gaze darkened. Kelly didn’t need to be psychic to
realize he had thought of something very sensual.

His grin had her knees wobbling. Kelly felt grateful that
she was sitting down. Her panties grew damp at his smoldering look, and she
could see herself tearing their clothes from their bodies and begging him to do
whatever it was he was thinking of and picturing in his mind to make him appear
so delicious. His grin was lethal and she had the insane urge to do anything he
wanted her to. She’d never been so tempted to unleash her desires, just to see
such a hot gaze directed at her once again.

“I really don’t know what you expect… I honestly don’t
think…” Kelly found her mouth and throat dry and speech impossible with those
dark-blue eyes burning into her. Her cheeks flushed as she had the very vivid
mental picture of his stare piercing her like that, hungrily, as he thrust his
thick cock inside her, penetrating her body and claiming her soul.

“The thrill will still be there,” Matt promised, and for a
moment she thought he had read her mind and was promising her untold ecstasy in
bed with him as he ravaged and claimed her body. Kelly felt heat prickle along
her skin and knew she’d flushed. Aroused, she nevertheless found herself
embarrassed by him being able to read such hunger and desire on her face—until
he continued to explain.

“Stealing for the good guys will still give you the same
high as stealing for your own, more personal reasons. I promise you that.”

Kelly shook her head but was unable to speak with the
mixture of need and worry hammering at her. Part of her longed to give in and
follow along with anything Matthias tempted her to do, but part of her still
feared this was a trap.

“Join us,” Matt pressed, his tone dark and intoxicating. “It
will be just as exciting. The thrill will only increase with us. I can see in
your eyes that you want to. Give in to me, please—it will be beyond anything
you can imagine, I swear.”

For a brief moment Kelly wondered if she was losing her
mind. While Matt’s words were fairly chaste, they were highly inflammatory. She
could swear he was propositioning her, not just offering her “legitimate” work
for her shady hobby.

The temptation to take Matt up on his claims that she’d find
as much enjoyment from stealing with him as working on her own tugged at her.
She had not needed to struggle with herself in a very long time. Giving in to
the very real desire she felt to explore his body had her feeling weak and
shaky.

Part of her couldn’t help but be intrigued by the
proposition of stealing for the Enforcers. She had never considered working on
the same side as law enforcement. Even as she toyed with the idea of taking
Matt and Julian up on their offer, her brain warned her to be cautious. Deals
this good usually were too good to be true.

“Why would the Enforcers, let alone the human police, want
to hire a thief?” she asked, being sure to word it carefully so as to not admit
to anything more dangerous than idle curiosity.

Julian, Kelly noticed, had appeared distracted throughout
the entire exchange. At her question, he seemed to snap back to attention and
replied as if feeling guilty for not paying any notice to the interview thus
far.

“There’s been a drug making the rounds,” he explained,
“called Jolt. It somehow manages to infuse magical essence into the user and
addict them instantly. Humans start to show magical talents and achieve a huge
high, but the crash is bad and over time the drug burns them out. We’ve
recently heard that a partial antidote might have been created. The people who
started the work aren’t going to be able to create a full antidote, which is
something we could really use to help these kids. It’s also unlikely that, if
we asked, they would share their knowledge with any form of law enforcement.”

Kelly raised an eyebrow and looked from Julian to Matthias.

“And so you’re hoping that by hiring a thief, this ‘Shadow’
you’ve mentioned, you can use her to steal the antidote for yourself?” she
clarified.

“Like I said,” Matt replied, “you’ll find that stealing for
the good guys is just as addictive as doing it for yourself. Who knows? You
might even be surprised and find it more satisfying than doing it for your own
reasons.”

Kelly couldn’t help but be perplexed. What on Earth was it
about her that had Matt so certain she was Shadow? The wizard had never met her
before today—she sure as hell wouldn’t have forgotten having met him—yet he
spoke with such iron-clad certainty, as if there were no doubt in his mind.

With the exception of Liv and a circle of less than half a
dozen friends, no one knew about Kelly’s sideline. Her parents were dead and
she was not close to the rest of her family. All her colleagues, clients and
the vast majority of her friends and acquaintances thought of her as nothing
more than a dull, nerdy Archivist who worked hard and had a nearly dead social
life.

Had it been suggested to them that she had a secret,
alternative life moonlighting as a cat burglar, most of them would have died
laughing, not even able to entertain the possibility. So what was it Matt could
see in her that no one else could?

“I’m an Archivist,” she finally said, hating how prim she
sounded even to her own ears. “I’d be more than happy to look into this
antidote for you and study the latest journal articles—research is what I do,
after all—but I’m afraid I can’t help you more than that.”

The two men exchanged a look and after a moment Matt nodded.

“That would be a wonderful start. Thanks, Kelly,” he replied
with a smooth, mild tone to his voice.

Kelly frowned, a little uncertain. Despite his words, she
could tell something was off. The glint in his eyes and determined set to his
jaw indicated to her that this was a stubborn wizard, not a man who would give
up or take no for an answer.

“It will be the start and finish of my helping you,” she
insisted. Matthias just grinned, seeming amused by her reaction. He opened his
mouth, appeared about to add something else, but Julian interrupted him.

“Your friend, Red…I mean Olivia…if she would be a help to
you, I really think you should ask her to assist in whatever manner she’s
capable of,” he said. Kelly relaxed and smiled at the blond man. His
hopefulness clearly shone through in his soft gray eyes and his request.

“Red,” Kelly mused with a small smile. “She has the temper
to back up her coloring, you know. Anyway, Liv is a Retriever. I don’t need her
help with my work, but she’s been my best friend since we were very little. I
have to say she’s not usually shy about asking men out. You made an impression
on her, so if you want to make the first move I’d hurry up if I were you. Liv
isn’t the sort to hang around waiting and wondering.”

Julian tilted his head to the side as he listened to her
words. He nodded once and remained silent. Kelly thought the quiet man would be
a good complement personality-wise for her best friend. He seemed rock solid,
calm and unflappable.

For a police officer, he hadn’t appeared to blink or think
twice about speaking with a supposed thief, even sounding her out for some help
with a mission. Someone that tolerant and dependable would be perfect for her
friend, who often moved before she thought her actions through. More than once
in their younger years, she and Liv had needed to extract themselves from some
debacle or other because Kelly had found herself caught up in some crazy scheme
Liv had dreamed up.

Now, for herself… Kelly realized with a heated rush of
desire that she found her mind and soul filled with the image of dark, shaggy
hair and deeper blue eyes than she had ever known existed.

“So where do we go from here?” Matt asked, once again dragging
her mind in from daydreaming. Kelly realized that from the moment Matthias had
walked through her door she had spent more time fantasizing than she had in the
last week or two combined. Determined to retain some semblance of normalcy and
control, she stood up and indicated the door with a wave of her hand.

“I’ll look into the drug. You obviously have my contact
details here, so I’m not that hard to track down. I’ll be in touch when I find
something useful for you.” Kelly hoped that if she sounded in charge the two
men would follow her lead.

Matt and Julian exchanged looks and stood up. Julian reached
a hand into his pocket and withdrew a business card from a slim leather wallet.

“Please call when you find something,” he said.

Kelly felt her heart lift and her stomach sink at the
realization the gentlemen were leaving. A curious mixture of relief at being
let off the hook mingled with disappointment that it had only taken a few firm
words to scare Matthias off her scent. Maybe she’d imagined the depth of connection
between them. If that were true, then she must be a whole lot hornier and
lonelier than she’d realized. Visions of evening after evening spent online on
the matchmaker website flittered through her mind before she squashed them.

“Of course,” she assured Julian as she took the card. They
shook hands and she turned to Matthias, expecting to receive a similar card and
handshake. Instead he stared at her with those gorgeous bedroom eyes and
grinned at her.

“Julian will head back to headquarters,” he said, “and I’ll
be staying with you. I’m sure you know that your essence is impossible to
Track, and I don’t want to risk losing you again. We’ll be doing that innocent
research together, since you think it’s the only way you can help us. I think
some time spent studying and analyzing journal articles together could be good
for us, sunshine.”

Kelly struggled with the dichotomy of the emotional
reactions going on within her. She was pleased he could guess at what lay
beneath her surface, even as it created more turmoil. Nothing at all seemed to
be simple around this wizard.

She was not worried anymore about having Matt down here with
her. For starters, the archives were not exactly a hotbed of iniquity. Few
visitors under the age of sixty came down here. Kelly would not have been
surprised if most Mages under twenty-five didn’t even know where the archives
were located, let alone what was stored down here.

The other reason she wasn’t too concerned was because
Matthias didn’t appear interested in carrying her off to a concrete cell and
locking her up for the rest of eternity.

Indeed, should he bring out a set of manacles or cuffs,
entirely
different
thoughts would wrap themselves around her mind. Her
heart would pound hard in her chest, but for very sensual reasons, not from
fear. The thought of Matt carrying her off somewhere to “teach her a lesson”
was enough to have her panties soaked once again and her body flushing in
places that had nothing to do with repaying her debt to society.

Kelly had no doubt that Matt didn’t believe in her
innocence. Neither did she think for a moment he was anything other than
serious when he said he’d be sticking to her like glue for the foreseeable
future. Considering how in the last fifteen minutes alone sexual chemistry and
electricity had sparked between them, she wondered how long they could last
without stripping one another naked and indulging in every heated fantasy that
ran through her mind.

For a brief, uncomfortable moment she wondered if she had
bitten off more than she could chew.

* * * * *

Matthias had to control himself and remember it wasn’t
socially acceptable to lunge across the desk that separated them and pull her
body beneath his. Just as he’d fantasized while watching her in the café, Kelly
did have eyes like pools of melted chocolate. Dark and fathomless, they drew
him in and urged him to glance below her carefully constructed surface.

Every time their gazes met, hope surged deep within his
chest that he wasn’t imagining the electricity arcing between them. He felt
certain he’d be left with a hole of loss in his chest if this magnetic
attraction was not reciprocated.

The way she looked at him with those big, beautiful brown
eyes, the way she tilted her head and her straight, short hair grazed the top
of her shoulder, the way her body seemed to flow gracefully when she moved—it
all entranced him in a way he’d never experienced with another witch.

And the way her eyes drank him in…it made him hunger with a
burning curiosity. He craved answers to his questions. What was she thinking
about within that beguiling brain of hers? The puzzle she presented to him was
intoxicating and alluring. The feelings Kelly—Shadow—raised in him were
captivating. He knew that they could prove dangerous to his very soul should he
fall too far, if he were alone in this madness.

For the first time in his life Matthias had an inkling of
understanding about how people could become addicted to dangerous things like
drugs. Even knowing the road they had begun to walk down was not a safe one,
the thrill, the pounding of his adrenaline, the sheer naked
enjoyment
he
got from it, tempted him to go ever farther down the path.

He knew that Kelly was Shadow and that she was a thief. A
talented burglar, with control and skills he couldn’t even come close to
replicating. He also knew beyond a doubt that she loved it. She was by no means
a “safe” witch to be all hot and bothered about, yet he could no more turn
around and walk away from her than he could sever his own arm.

At first Matt had assumed he would need to bribe or somehow
“convince” Kelly to join their side. He’d thought that between luring her with
the thrill of legitimacy in her thieving and some blackmail or bribery, they
would be able to get her on board. He now knew that wasn’t the way to approach
this—or not fully. She’d been tempted, he could tell, but it wasn’t enough.

Having met her, he could see she wasn’t evil or corrupt. She
didn’t give off a vibe that she was interested in power or the money her
actions must have brought. Neither did she appear to have anti-authoritarian
tendencies—she had treated both him and Julian as representatives of the
Enforcers with politeness and respect. While she had continued to deny her
alter ego, she had not baited them or acted superior in any way. She didn’t
seem arrogant or cocky about her abilities, nor did she seem to want to rub her
secrets in their faces.

Nothing like that had come across in her attitude toward
them. The only logical solution was that she enjoyed the thrill and did it
because she
liked
to use her magical talents in such a manner.

Now he needed to think of ways she might be able to achieve
an equal level of excitement, but not by doing anything she could be locked up
for. Matt wanted to walk a little in her shoes. If he could get an appreciation
of the hold thievery had on her, maybe he could work out how to best promote
the offer Will had for her.

Matthias nodded to Julian as his partner left with a small,
very knowing smile. A level of trust had developed between them and clearly
Julian knew he would call when there was something they could act upon. Matt
felt grateful for the time and space. He found himself craving privacy with
this witch.

The door closed behind Julian and Matt stared at Kelly. They
stood only a dozen feet or so apart, the room seeming even tinier now they were
alone. Hunger rose within Matthias. The mental image of licking a hot trail
down Kelly’s neck with his tongue, unbuttoning her shirt and discovering for
himself the softness of her round, firm breasts and what the inside of her
mouth tasted like seared itself across his mind.

Lust clawed at him and he had to tighten his hand into a
fist to stop himself from reaching out to her. He took a deep breath to try to
control his spiraling emotions. He stared at Kelly, surprised to catch her
shifting uncomfortably in her chair. Her face was averted and she was staring
at something on her bookshelf.