chapter Five
A couple of hours later, I looked utterly delicious and felt completely miserable. Francesca had picked out a few outfits for me, not one of them practical in the slightest. I was currently trussed in a black lace cocktail dress with terribly cute but impossibly high heels. My feet hurt after just five minutes, but I had to admit that the effect was impressive.
So was the bill for everything.
Francesca had sent me to a beauty salon after she’d picked out my clothing. My long straight hair had been fluffed and teased and blown-out within an inch of its life, and the resulting white-blond mess atop my head was gorgeous, artfully tousled, and crunchy with hairspray. It looked great as long as you didn’t touch it. The makeup artist had lined my eyes with a delicate gray liner that made them seem bigger, and had pinked my complexion with some artful blush. The resulting effect was dewy, and I looked very much like a nubile ingénue.
Jason seemed to think so, too, and the looks he was giving me were going to cause a permanent blush.
He was every inch as dazzling as I’d remembered. He had a heavy build, all muscle and tanned flesh, whereas Beau ran toward lean (but with very broad shoulders). He wore a charcoal wool jacket with an open-neck pale blue silk shirt. He looked every inch the rich playboy—except for one thing. For all his gorgeous looks and his money, Jason was very heavily into cheap cologne. Very. Heavily. Either BRUT or Old Spice.
Still, the character of a man wasn’t determined by the quality or quantity of his cologne, and I resolved to look past it. I gave Jason a faint smile over my water glass.
“Is that all you’re going to eat?” he said, indicating my small salad. “Please order anything you’d like.”
I gave a small shrug. “I’m really not that hungry.” Actually, I was ravenous, but Giselle had two more meals scheduled for me, so I was holding back. Plus, everything I put in my mouth seemed to taste like Old Spice. So I drank my water and pretended interest as Jason talked.
And tried not to think about Beau. He’d smelled really nice. Last night when I’d been cuddled up against him, a faint, spicy scent had clung to his skin that I hadn’t been able to figure out. Deodorant or body wash, maybe. Very subtle, and clean.
My nose itched. I decided that I liked subtle and clean.
“—friends with Beau Russell?”
I focused back in on my date, who was beaming a megawatt white smile at me. “I’m sorry?”
“I was asking about Beau. He’s a friend of yours?”
Blank, I stared at him. He’d heard my phone conversation and wanted to call us “friends”? “I guess you could call it that.” Is that what Giselle was calling it? Best to play along.
“I hear he’s an important man in his clan.”
Talking about him made me unhappy, so I said, “I wouldn’t know.”
To my relief he took the hint and switched the topic to other things. Jason was a wonderful date—he was witty, charming, laughed at my attempts at humor, and made me feel pretty. Women slowed as they walked past our table, checking him out. He touched my hand repeatedly, devoured me with his eyes, and made it obvious that he wanted to eat me up like candy.
So why was my brain entirely focused on the man I’d been out with last night? Both men were were-cougars. Both men were handsome. Jason was the epitome of niceness, while Beau’s playful smile drove me crazy with desire.
Torn between two cougars. Strangely enough, not a problem I’d ever thought I’d have.
My next date wasn’t much better.
It was another restaurant (the default setting, of course) and it started out well. At least for the first five minutes. After that we steered directly into uncomfortable territory.
“So,” Garth the naga said, “what do you do?” His eyes watched me with entirely too much interest, his gaze focused on my cleavage. At least Jason had had the decency to look me in the eye.
I toyed with a bit of chicken parmigiana. Was I supposed to admit that I worked at the agency, or should I lie about it? As I hesitated, Garth’s tongue flicked over his lips. Good God, was that thing forked?
Distracted momentarily, I had to regroup. “I’m a professional bookkeeper.”
The forked tongue was seriously giving me the creeps.
“That’s fascinating,” he said in a tone of voice that meant it was less interesting than Styrofoam. “So how did you get into Giselle’s agency? It’s very exclusive.” As in, how did a lowly human manage to become worthy of notice?
“Oh, the usual way.” I didn’t know what the usual way was, but I was willing to bet he didn’t, either. Something slithered against my shoe and I recoiled. What the f*ck? Was that his tail?
He gave me a look that I assumed was supposed to be seductive. “Sanctioned humans are rare,” he said, his eyes glued to my neck like I was wearing some sort of flashing beacon around it. Could he see Beau’s mark as well? “Especially virgins.”
“Giselle told you I was a virgin?” I tried to ask it in a casual tone of voice, as if I hadn’t been screaming inside. As one might ask if their date was a Republican or a Democrat. Or a naga.
Garth looked surprised at my question and took another drink of his wine, his tongue flicking at the edge of the glass. Yep, definitely forked. I suppressed a shudder.
“Indeed. A virgin is highly desired,” he said. “You have been claimed as worthy of notice, you are disease-free, and you are considered a fair mate for any member of the Alliance.”
I was glad I wasn’t eating—if I had been, I was pretty sure I would have thrown up. “A mate?” I said. “How nice.” Lucky me. I picked up my glass of wine and swirled it around, hoping I looked like I knew what I was doing. I had no idea why people sloshed their wine around in their glass.
Garth leaned forward. “Is your heart claimed by another?” His whatever-it-was slithered against my shoe again.
Ugh. If Giselle thought she could blackmail me into marrying one of her clients—after she’d squeezed them for every dollar she could, of course—she was sorely mistaken. I was not about to mate this guy. In fact, I was starting to dread the rest of the dates that she had lined up for me, except for Beau. Garth was staring at my neck again, as if he’d like to cover Beau’s mark with one of his own. My hand slid to my collarbone and I hid the mark. “Oh, my, look at the time,” I said, feigning surprise. As if I’d been so charmed by our date that I’d completely lost track of the hour. I put my napkin down on the table. “I really should be going soon.”
He reached for my hand, an ardent look on his face. “I’ve never met anyone like you,” he declared, his moist palms gripping my hand between them. “You’re beautiful and sophisticated and … virginal.”
Obviously Garth didn’t get out much if he thought I was sophisticated. And it was a little creepy that he kept tossing in the “virginal” thing. I tried to extract my hand from his. “How sweet of you.”
“We need to go out again,” he said, refusing to let me do said extraction. “I could be falling in love.” His eyes flicked again to the wonder spot on my neck that everyone seemed able to see but me.
Would he be half so smitten if I hadn’t already been staked out as private property? I doubted it. “Excuse me, I need to go powder my nose.”
He lifted my trapped hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it, his tongue flicking against my skin. I barely managed to hide the shudder that rocked through me. “Bathroom,” I yelped and jerked my hand away hard, then grabbed my purse and raced to the ladies’ room. There was an attendant in there, and I offered her a twenty. “Can you tell me if there’s a back way out of here?”
She gave me a knowing look. “That your date out there in the bolo tie and the yellow vest?”
“None other. You’ve got to help me,” I said and leaned in. “I think he’s wearing spurs.”
She shuddered. “There’s a door through the kitchen. I’ll take you back there.”