Kael snorted in derision. “All that, huh? From a few parlor tricks. You’re more insane than I thought.”
Ianna straightened, swinging her legs off the couch and to the floor, her eyes narrow and flashing. “Parlor tricks? You felt the darkness. You know it was there.”
“I felt somethin’ alright.”
The priestess felt anger, hot and bright, flare through her at the American’s taunting. Her fists clenched and her teeth ground as Kael’s bright eyes mocked her from across the room.
The realization came quickly to her that Kael was cleverly baiting a trap for her to fall into. “Very good,” she purred, releasing her anger and smiling to display a twin row of carnivore’s teeth. “Very, very good.”
Kael simply smirked and watched the ice in her scotch-rocks swirl slowly around.
Knowing she was a hairsbreadth away from losing her audience, Ianna silently
ran through a handful of scenarios before coming up with the only one that stood a chance of working. “If you’ve nothing else pressing for this evening, why not spend a night out on the town with me? A few drinks, a little fun, perhaps find a less than willing victim to terrorize? I can show you, if you like, exactly how I do what I do.”
Kael’s smirk became more pronounced as she raised her gaze from the amber fluid in her glass to the deep caramel eyes of the woman seated across from her. “And here I thought I a magician never revealed his secrets.”
Ianna returned the smirk with a sultry grin. “Given the right …incentive …a magician might be willing to share almost anything.”
The American tilted her head just slightly. “What’s in it for me?”
“Learning the secret to ultimate power isn’t good enough for you?”
Kael kept silent for a moment, taking a healthy sip of her drink and enjoying the pleasant burn as it made its way down to her belly. “No.”
The priestess could feel her anger surge again, but fought hard to keep it at bay. Explode now, and she’d loose this delicious woman forever. No questions asked. And with her would go the one chance she had to pay her family back for their betrayal of her. She had within her grasp a way to overcome that brutal humiliation which she had never lived down. And she was damned if she was going to let it go.
“What more can I offer?”
Kael smiled full out then. And to a casual onlooker, it might even have looked genuine. If they didn’t look into blue eyes which were colder than the arctic tundra. “When the time comes, you’ll know.”
It was then that Ianna realized that in trying to evade the American’s trap, she’d fallen neatly, even eagerly into it. Her awe of the woman before her rose another notch, and she bowed her dark head, gracefully conceding the round.
*******
Kael stepped out of the convertible and straightened the clingy fabric of her dress, inwardly cursing herself for allowing herself to be talked into wearing such an uncomfortable excuse for clothing. Not that she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, dress to the nines when the occasion warranted it, because she had, many times.
She was, after all, a woman who believed in using, to the fullest, every asset at her command. And she wasn’t disingenuous enough to overlook the blatant fact that her body was one of her most dangerous, and compelling, assets.
That didn’t mean, however, that she had to enjoy being packed into a dress half the size of a respectable cocktail napkin, but if it got her the results she wanted, the minor sacrifice of her comfort would be a small price to pay.
Gracefully stepping out of the driver’s side, Ianna rose to her full height and twitched the soft fabric of her spaghetti-strap dress into place. Brushing her hair back over her shoulders, she walked around the front of the car and came face to face with a vision in black. Her eyes took the full measure of the taut muscles and sumptuous curves before her, and her lips stretched into a full, awed smile.
“Mmm. That dress on you gives new meaning to the word ‘delicious’.”
Kael smirked. “Save the pick-up lines for someone who gives a shit.”
The priestess laughed. “The body of an angel and the tongue of Satan himself. You are a worthy prize.”
She felt her hand, which she’d raised in an attempt to brush off a stay piece of hair from Kael’s dress, captured in a grip strong enough to crush bone.
“I am no one’s prize,” Kael hissed through a smile dangerous enough to belong to a hunting shark.
“A figure of speech,” Ianna attempted to reassure, her voice and tone as strong as she could manage.
“Remember not to use it again in the future, witch,” the American responded, giving the hand she held one final, strong squeeze before thrusting it away from her.
Instead of answering, Ianna turned away, and rubbed the feeling back into her hand.
Kael started forward, sharp eyes missing nothing. The exterior of their destination resembled hundreds of similar mock-ups of American discotheques scattered liberally around the world, down to the bright neon sign and the long line of people waiting to be noticed. The only thing holding the crowd, beautiful and non, back was a thin velvet rope and a small, bespectacled doorman bookended by two mammoth bouncers who took scowling to an art form.
Smiling, Ianna bypassed the line, stopping before the doorman and bending down to achieve an eye-level conversation with him, showing generous cleavage as an added incentive. “May we pass?” she purred.
He froze in the act of waving her away, his eyes becoming glassy as he stared down the front of her dress.
Catching something in the periphery of his vision, the doorman turned his head slightly. His jaw dropped as he watched Kael stride toward him like a model fresh out of a magazine. The sounds his throat was making were completely unintelligible, but their meaning was crystal clear.
Ianna’s smirk turned into a grin of triumph, and she straightened to her full height, placing slim hands on her shapely hips. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’, then?”
Still gobbling, the man reached out a less than steady hand and unlinked the velvet rope from its support post, allowing the two beautiful women to pass unhindered, to the great displeasure of most of the crowd who had been waiting for hours for just such an invitation.
Immediately upon entering the building, Kael’s ears were assaulted by the heavy bass thump of a disco tune which drilled down into the marrow of her bones and set up residence in the roots of her teeth. She followed the priestess down a short, dimly lit hallway as a gauntlet of men leered at them from along the walls. The men were dressed in nearly identical costumes, from polyester shirts opened almost to the navel, thick gold chains nestled in greater or lesser mats of chest hair, skin tight pants and matching jackets. Thick black hair was greased back in the latest “disco-pompadour” fashion, and crooked, nicotine stained teeth gleamed in the dim lighting. The stench of unwashed bodies beneath cheap cologne would have been enough to drop a team of lathered horses in their tracks.
The American came to an abrupt stop as she felt the rude caress of a hand up the back of her leg. Quicker than thought, she turned, grabbed the offending hand out of thin air, and bent the man’s wrist and fingers back, forcing him to his knees, gasping in pain. Her eyes were glittering diamonds; her smile cruel and cold.
The rest of the men shuffled in embarrassment at the ease with which their compatriot was taken down. The overblown machismo faded from their puffed up bodies like water through a sieve.
“Touch me again, boys,” she purred, voice low and soft and full of menace, “and you die.”
The threat was reinforced by the audible popping of bones as Kael drove the man’s wrist past its breaking point.
The man’s howl of pain was drowned out by the blaring music, but the American knew her point had been well made.