Radiant Desire (A Handmaids Seduction, #1) Read online

  Kaia didn’t like to talk about herself. Her reticence originated in the fact that she’d never been a particularly good liar—that was Talia’s forte—and also because there were things about people she didn’t entirely understand, and she worried her ignorance might catch her in a lie.

  “Ah yes, plants. Funny thing is, I don’t really think of Miami as the plant capital of America,” Garrett rejoined.

  “That’s because so many of the wild lands have been destroyed.” She wagged a finger at him, confident that this was one topic she understood. Thanks to human developments, faeries had been forced to retreat from many of the deep forests and native lands that had once been their home. The trees and flowers that had once sheltered them were destroyed, and their birth plants were cut down in vast numbers, making it difficult—if not impossible—for them to reproduce. “If people spent half as much time worrying about plants as they did their haircuts and clothes, the world would be a much better place.”

  He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Forgive me. I had no idea I was dealing with a plant crusader.”

  The bartender returned with the wine Garrett had ordered. Kaia took a sip from her glass, considering her strategy. The direct approach didn’t seem to be working. She decided to try a little more restraint. “Have you got a girlfriend I should know about?”

  Garrett leaned back in his chair and took a drink from his wine, his long, tanned fingers wrapped negligently around the base of his glass. “Did you ask Ted that?”

  Kaia paused, considering her response. She dropped her gaze and traced a circle around the base of her wine glass, feigning embarrassment. “You want to know the truth? I wasn’t really in the mood for… ahem… companionship. Ted looked like the kind of man I could talk to without being hit on.”

  “You’ve changed your mind?”

  She reached out to touch his hand. “You’re very convincing.”

  He snorted and moved out of her reach. “Why do I have the feeling I’m not the first man you’ve said that to?”

  Kaia feigned outrage, while inside she screamed with frustration. Garrett was like a chess player, countering her every move with one of his own. “Look, Ted seemed like a good guy, and that’s all I wanted tonight. At least, until I met you.” She fluttered her lashes until she elicited a snort of laughter.

  “You are something else, aren’t you?” he said with reluctant approval.

  She took his laughter as a sign of progress, and pressed on. “I’m rather offended, actually, by your insinuation. You don’t know a thing about me. What right do you have to judge me, or Ted for that matter?”

  Garrett drank from his glass of wine. “I’ll admit that I might have jumped to conclusions about what you wanted from Ted, but you’ll have to admit that things looked a bit sketchy.”

  “When you have a body like this,” she said, gesturing toward herself and sighing dramatically, “everything looks sketchy. You can’t imagine how difficult it is to get men to take me seriously. They assume I’m stupid or scheming, simply because I look a certain way. It’s a curse, really.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t shed any tears on your behalf. I have the feeling you’re perfectly happy using your looks to your advantage. Not that I have a problem with that. I’ve watched men use their money to push people around for years. I’m not sure why a woman shouldn’t use whatever weapons she has at her disposal.”

  “An interesting perspective. So what is it you do, Garrett, that gives you this unique outlook on life? Business? Politics? International espionage?”

  A tiny smile played at the corner of his mouth. “Real estate, actually.”

  She waited for him to elaborate, but silence followed his bald statement. “Real estate? That’s it? I’m not quite sure what to do with you. You’re a man, aren’t you? Men are supposed to talk about their jobs. So... ” She motioned with her hand. “Talk.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “I’m afraid my job isn’t particularly interesting. In fact, it’s downright boring. I’m involved in the family business. Is that enough?”

  Kaia pouted. “I suppose if that’s all I’m going to get. Now, I noticed you never answered my question about a girlfriend.”

  “Observant, aren’t you? All right, no, there’s no girlfriend.”

  “You’re not adverse to women, I hope?”

  “Hell no. I happen to enjoy women very much. I simply have no interest in marriage, and girlfriends have a pesky habit of turning into wives. So I avoid the whole dirty business. It makes things better for everyone.”

  “You have no desire for a family? A little woman at home to take care of your needs? Granted, there’s that whole pesky, till-death-do-us-part thing, but surely you could work your way around that?” Kaia found herself leaning forward unwittingly, forgetting to maintain the faerie magic that should have been surging at him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat down and actually talked to a man. They were usually too busy trying to get her into bed to waste time in conversation.

  He took a deep drink of his wine. “Not an option. If I were to marry, I would honor my vows.”

  Kaia sobered abruptly. Something about the steely glint to his eyes told her that Garrett believed, sincerely, in what he had said. Which left her deeply confused. Garrett wasn’t married, he wasn’t unfaithful, and as far as she could tell, he was an honorable man.

  What could the first man she’d ever truly liked have done to deserve Zafira’s wrath?

  §

  Garrett couldn’t remember ever having met a woman like Kaia Verde. She said things women weren’t supposed to say, was blatantly seductive without being insipid, and seemed to have absolutely no compunction about her desire to get him into bed. Yet when he forced her to back off on the seduction, he found her mind to be as intriguing as her body. She was literate and intelligent. As the evening progressed, their conversation meandered from lamenting the loss of the wetlands in the Everglades to his favorite topic—music. She must have had some sort of formal training, because she knew musical theory well enough to pick apart the merits of the various forms and argue about them with unexpected passion. She loved classical and Celtic music, while he was a fan of jazz and blues. Somehow, she’d even managed to worm out of him his childhood fantasy of being the next Wynton Marsalis, and that was a memory he hadn’t dredged up for decades.

  Meanwhile, he knew little more about her than when they first met. He didn’t know where she lived, who she worked for, or even the name of the convention she was supposedly in town to attend. All he knew was that she was smart, funny, and utterly unpredictable. It was a heady combination.

  They’d finished one bottle of wine and started another. If she was a prostitute, she was a damn good one. Good enough that maybe he didn’t even mind that she’d probably been spinning lies at him all night long.

  As the wine slid through his veins, Garrett watched as Kaia leaned across the table and began to stroke his arm, followed with tiny kisses on his palm. This should have been embarrassing—he’d never been one for public displays of affection. All his good intentions fizzled away under her touch. When he felt her hand under the table, on his knee and then his thigh, he thought he might have died and gone to heaven.

  And when she murmured, “Isn’t it time to go somewhere more private?” he couldn’t think of a reason to say no.

  §

  Kaia relaxed into the seat of the cab with an inward sigh of satisfaction. Garrett had placed his hand on her inner thigh and kept it there as they traveled—a possessive gesture, like a man laying claim to something he owned. Still, a muscle jumped in his cheek, and when she touched his arm it was tense, corded with taut muscle.

  “Not now,” he said, and removed her hand.

  “No?” she whispered, reveling in the moment. He was on the verge of losing control, but he was fighting it. She had the feeling Garrett was a man who didn’t relinquish control often. The thought of making him do so now had her heart racing with an un
familiar fire. Casually, Kaia slid her palm over his chest and dropped it against his belt buckle.

  With a lightning-fast movement, he grabbed her wrist. Slowly, deliberately, he turned his body toward her and pinned her arm behind her head. Shielded now from the view of the cab driver, he brought his other hand along the edge of her breast.

  “No,” he said. “You’ll have to wait.”

  A powerful sensation shot from her nipple to her stomach. Kaia sucked in a breath, surprised at the arc of pleasure his touch invoked. Kaia didn’t exactly dislike sex, but she rarely enjoyed it. Occasionally, a man would make some effort to pleasure her, but that was uncommon, and she quickly directed her attention back around to him. Yet when Garrett touched her, something strange happened. The heat she usually sent at men flowed through her instead. He was like a mirror, sending her seduction spinning back at her suddenly vulnerable body.

  “Like that, do you?” Garrett grinned, though from the hard set to his jaw she knew it was not without effort. She brought her other hand toward him but he caught that one, too, and trapped it beside the first. He transferred both of her wrists to one large, competent hand.

  “Let me go,” she said in a low voice. She caught the cabbie’s eyes in the rearview mirror and shot him a playful wink. The last thing she wanted was some do-good cab driver thinking Garrett was taking advantage of her.

  “Oh no. I don’t think I like it when you’re in control. This feels much better.” His free hand glided along the edge of her cheek, across her collarbone, and along her breast to her nipple, where it stopped. He caressed the suddenly erect bud with a thumb. Once, then again and again, that zing shot through Kaia until it was a steady throb, and she had to bite her lip to keep a cry of pleasure from escaping.

  Garrett bent over her ear, his thumb still working her nipple, now in agonizing circles, along the edges of the tender flesh and lightly across the top. “Oh, yes,” he whispered. “I like this much better.”

  Kaia struggled against him, but her muscles were trapped in a thick, honeyed fog. That dammed thumb of his kept up its relentless torture, making it impossible to do anything but relish the waves of pleasure he invoked. Even her magic seemed to fizzle away.

  “When’s the last time you screamed with pleasure?” he whispered. “When’s the last time you lost control?”

  Never, she thought dully, her body having mutinied against her in a new, wholly unfamiliar way. She couldn’t move, could barely think, the aching caress like the buzz of a honeybee, growing ever louder, drowning out all other emotion, all other sensation. She had taken an oath, like all of Zafira’s Handmaids, Kaia reminded herself furiously.

  Never yield to a man, and never let him take control.

  Before now, Kaia had never faced firsthand the truth of Zafira’s many warnings. She had never understood what Zafira talked about when she said the faeries must fight their own desire or struggle to keep from yielding to a man’s touch.

  Suddenly, she understood.

  Chapter Five

  Kaia did not know how long the exquisite torture continued, but before long her hips were moving of their own accord, arching and twitching as if desperate for their own attention.

  That was when he started to kiss her.

  At first, it was a gentle, close-lipped version of the familiar caress she’d applied to hundreds of men. His lips and tongue became instruments of the most delicate torture, nibbling gently on the lobe of her ear, licking and sucking along the curve of her throat. She moaned in earnest when he reached the hollow at the base of her neck, and sucked on the tender flesh he found there at the same time he pinched her nipple.

  A moment later, the cab came to a halt in front of her hotel. Bright lights illuminated the inside of the cab, leaving his face shrouded in darkness.

  “What floor?” he asked. Before she could answer, a doorman in a red jacket with gold epaulets opened the door and offered his hand to Kaia. Garrett dropped a collection of bills on the cabbie’s front seat and returned his gaze to Kaia. His chest heaved under his jacket, the only sign that their interlude in the car had cost him anything in the way of control.

  “Ma’am?” the doorman said helpfully.

  She snapped her head toward him and smiled. She placed her hand in his gloved one, and started out of the door with one high-heeled shoe. Knowing she was exposing an excessive amount of bare thigh, she peered around the sidewalk and was satisfied to see several men ogling her from the front of the hotel. She allowed the doorman to pull her to her feet, and made a show of straightening her dress over her hips as Garrett came to her side.

  “Don’t bother. You’ll just be peeling that off for me in a few minutes,” he said in her ear.

  She was horrified to feel the warmth of a blush cross her cheek.

  Faeries did not blush.

  The situation was getting dire. Kaia decided her only defense, as she’d heard men say, was a good offense. She opened two buttons on his shirt, exposing more warm flesh to her sensitive fingers.

  “Should we get started right away?” she replied in a throaty whisper. His heart skipped, accelerating to a furious tempo in his chest. She set her index finger on the skin at the base of his neck. “Maybe I should just take it off now?”

  Negligently, she let her hand drift down his body to brush against the hardness at his groin. He froze and closed his eyes as if he were in pain.

  Kaia smiled. It helped, a little, to know that she was not the only one fighting for control.

  They reached a wary truce in the elevator, as they were surrounded by other hotel guests returning from their evening pursuits. The Avalon was an upscale, five-star boutique hotel in the heart of South Beach, and the patrons dripped with wealth. She had no idea how much a room at the Avalon actually cost; Kaia never worried about such things.

  She had a driver’s license and a credit card that some nameless imp had procured for her in advance of her trip into the human world, and they seemed sufficient to get her anything she wanted. Among the humans, it seemed, credit cards were great magic. To Kaia, the rules surrounding payment and credit cards were decidedly unclear. Hotel clerks, waiters, and just about any man who had the fortune to serve her seemed to be content to take a smile and a kiss instead of payment.

  They exited at the tenth floor and she pulled the hotel keycard from her tiny clutch purse, hoping her hands weren’t shaking. Her body was singing with desire and anticipation, feelings she tried hard to suppress. If she were going to bring Garrett to the edge of oblivion and force him to beg her for release, she would have to remain firmly in control. Still, it took three tries to get the damn card to work, and when it did she threw the door open with relief and practically fell into the dark, empty room.

  The door clicked shut behind them, the sound ominous. Kaia slapped the light switch to her right and spun around to face Garrett. He stood like a statue, arms crossed over his broad chest. Somehow he’d managed to cool back down in the elevator, and now he paced around the room, turning on lights as he went and whistling low when he saw the size of the room.

  “A suite? For one person? This is an awfully expensive hotel, Kaia. I didn’t think environmentalists were quite so well off.”

  “Are we back to suspicion, Garrett?” she said evenly. “I thought we were past that.”

  “I just want to make sure I’m not going to get stuck with your tab tomorrow morning.”

  “I always settle my bills,” she said. She didn’t actually pay her bills but that was a different matter. Kaia took a deep breath and sashayed across the room to stand in front of him. Her heart beat like a hummingbird, tripping hundreds of beats a minute, and she had to stop and catch her breath before placing her arms around his neck.

  Focus on your job, she reminded herself with just a hint of panic. You are a Handmaid—never yield, never surrender!

  She tipped her face toward his and breathed, “I’m not interested in your money. I’m just lonely. Can’t a woman seek out a little companion
ship without being accused of being a thief?”

  She leaned over and touched the tip of her tongue to the base of his neck, pleased when she heard his quick, indrawn breath. She focused all her energy on exuding sensuality, warmth... and, of course, sex.

  She worked her way down his shirt, unbuttoning as she went, stopping only to remove his belt and tug his shirt free from his pants. When the fine, pressed cotton hung loosely on his shoulders, she slipped her fingers underneath and delighted at the feeling of hard muscles, ridges of flesh, and crinkly hair trailing down the center of his chest in a thin line.

  Undershirt, over the head. Shoes and socks, off. Garrett helped, his pupils dilated, nostrils flaring with his deep, measured breaths. He stared at her with an expression of bemused lust mixed with frustration. He knew he had lost control and could do nothing to seize it back.

  Kaia slid her hands in a circle over his bare torso, grazing his erect male nipples with her palms before returning to the top of his pants. She slid down his body, pressing light kisses along the line of hair from the top of his chest down to his pants. When she reached his waist, she slipped her hand over his groin to find the erect outline of him there, waiting for her.

  With some men, she never bothered to take off her own clothes. She stripped them naked, waited until they were completely vulnerable—usually just on the edge of orgasm—and stopped and laughed. And sometimes she would leave them that way, their pride dashed, their ego crushed under her beautiful feet. Usually, she snapped a picture before she went, a token to send to their girlfriends or fiancées. Their carefully built world of deceit would crumble around them, and Zafira would be happy.

  But with this man, it didn’t feel right. There was no deceit here to uncover, no lies to reveal. This was just a man fighting to keep his self-respect in the face of powerful faerie magic.

  And she wanted him all the more for it.

  Kaia shivered at the need she saw reflected in his heavy-lidded eyes. Garrett would not permit her the luxury of remaining dressed, and she had to admit that she wanted to show him her body. She wanted to see his lust boil over, feel his eyes worship her, and his hands touch her naked skin.