“Agreed,” he said.
The bathroom was large and luxe, but she was too anxious to notice details. She hurried into her costume and painted her face, stabbing herself with the mascara wand until she started an inky landslide. She put on lipstick, draped the purple veils. The scratchy tickle of synthetic hair brushed her exposed back. Her bare feet flexed against the smooth hardwood flooring. She reached out to open the door and make her entrance.
And hesitated.
It felt like going through some momentous portal, all because of his unexpected reply.
Real. That was all she’d needed to hear.
She opened the door.
Chapter 7
Noah sat down in the wingback chair. His AVP was running wild. His heart raced. His face was hot. He’d affected her, too, judging from the fluctuations of rose-tinted light that swirled out from her. She radiated a sensual energy so luminous it was like she wore nothing at all.
The light that had opened up around her like a flower when he answered her question had spread out and out, extending far beyond the confines of the room and his sight, augmented or otherwise. He’d never seen anything like it.
One true fact shone in his mind. He was hopped up to maximum intensity, but he wasn’t in freak-out AVP mode. Not at all. No kill plans were coming up.
On the contrary. He felt great. Riding huge waves of scorching lust, yeah, but otherwise, great.
He didn’t even need to analog dive this time. Fuck glacial caves, mountains, seabirds. This thundering heat felt so much better.
He’d been half hoping the lust effect would fall flat when she walked in. If it did, then all that was left to do was to get the facts straight: Why did she contact Bea? What did she know about Luke? Had Mark sent her?
Noah hadn’t told her the whole truth—he did have an agenda. But there was more to it than that. Much more. And it was all about her.
Nothing was ever destined to be simple for him.
The thought that Mark might have been her lover disturbed him. If Noah let himself dwell on that, his combat program would take him someplace very dark, very fast.
He and Mark were both Eyes Guys. Same brain stim, same implants, same mods. Everything Mark knew about himself as a modified human, he knew about Noah. Once the Eyes Guys learned to decode energy sigs, they could literally see people’s brain activity projected outside their bodies. Like computer code, but translated into shapes and colors and patterns. Once you learned to extrapolate thoughts and feelings from the data, it got easy.
It often happened that Eyes Guys had surfed the same thoughts together. That was one good thing about AVP. Too bad the stress reaction threatened to drive them all bugfuck.
Unless it was flash-frozen into deep arctic chill. As he had done, mostly successfully, for years. Until today.
No one had a sig like Caroline Bishop. She looked like a walking, breathing passion flower to him. Mark would have liked it as much as Noah did. Mark would have wanted to fuck her. Mark would have known just how impossible it would be for Noah to resist her. He could very well have sent her to infiltrate. Even trained her.
Then again, Caroline Bishop had never approached him. She’d been minding her own business when Hannah hired her to dance.
Their meeting could be defined as random, but it didn’t feel random at all. More like inevitable. And fucking incredible.
He clenched his fists and waited for her to emerge.
Real. What a strange word for him. Or her. Her persona was false. She wore a disguise, used a stage name, lived under the radar. Her life was so false, it had swung all the way around to the far side, where it had then become, paradoxically, real again.
He couldn’t reason this feeling into submission. Her realness moved him. It gave him a falling-away feeling, a sense of depth and space. He hadn’t felt that way since before Midlands. Maybe not since Dad had been killed.
Maybe never in his emotionally stunted life.
She was on the run. He recognized the vibe from his childhood with his mom and dad. He’d buried all those memories very deep, with the other relics of a past he couldn’t bear to think about.
His con-artist parents had been an unbeatable team. Noah had been their assistant since he could talk, and probably before as an adorable baby, the ultimate prop. He had a natural talent, they told him. He was a good liar, pokerfaced, fast on his feet, calculating, cool-headed. Asa had been nearly as good, but Noah had the advantage of age and experience, to Asa’s eternal dismay.
After Dad was killed and Mom vanished, all his skills had been brutally put to the test. It had been on him to keep pulling rabbits out of hats while Asa zoned out, and Hannah wept. He’d held them all together. Until Asa bailed on them.