Lure of the Wicked (7 page)
“Close your eyes.” Ignoring her completely, Gemma slathered something cold and wet onto the dense ridge of crusted scab. As the fumes hit her eyes, Naomi flinched and squeezed them shut.
She smelled peppermint. Something thicker, almost denser in flavor. Lavender, of course. She’d been smelling lavender since she got off the damned front elevator.
The small, imperceptible ache at her nose eased into languid, fluid warmth.
Surprise tilted her head. With her eyes screwed shut, she lifted searching fingers to her nose and found it damp. Her fingertips immediately tingled. “What is this?”
Warm hands enfolded hers. “Don’t touch it,” Gemma warned. “It’s got a bit of numbing to it, which is why the vapors will knock your socks off at first. Give me a good solid ten count and you should be good to go.”
“Numbing? Will my face go dead?”
“Not unless you use the whole pot and then some. And for heaven’s sake, don’t ever drink it. My son did that once, on a dare.”
Naomi swallowed a laugh. “How’d he do?”
“It took months for him to smell peppermint again without turning green.” She heard the sound of glass and metal, punctuated by the click of Gemma’s shoes on the tile. “All right, take a look around.”
First one eye, cracked slightly in muted apprehension. When it didn’t sizzle out of her eye socket, Naomi opened the other and focused on Gemma’s round, smiling face hovering over hers.
She shifted. Wrinkled her nose, her forehead.
Not even a twinge.
Now if she could get more of that stuff for the back of her head, she’d be great.
“Well?”
Naomi grinned, oddly relieved. “Perfect.”
“Wonderful!” Gemma clapped her hands with infectiously cheerful exuberance. “Sit back, my dear, you’ll have Lacey today for your nail care. She’s amazing, a true gem.”
Already half out of the plush chair, Naomi let the woman guide her back into the depths of the smothering cushions, her heart sinking with her body. “Great, I can’t wait.”
Four hours later, her false enthusiasm flagged completely.
Her nails were trimmed, shaped, polished, and buffed to a sparkling shine. She’d drawn the line at pink polish. Her face had been scrubbed, peeled, abraded, slathered in some sort of vegetable concoction, scrubbed again.
Her body was shiny and pink from the rough, skin-shedding process the matron of torture had called a body scrub, and if she smelled honey ever again, she was going to throw up. Spending thirty minutes drenched in it was enough for a lifetime.
It was all she could do to smile through the anxiety battering at her exposed skin. If it seemed more like baring her teeth than happiness, no one told her.
Throughout the process, Naomi noted a small handful of residential guests and a steady flow of one-day visitors. There was a man who had introduced himself as Michael Rook, long sticklike legs slightly bandied beneath his robe. Greta Hollister, a sweetly shy blond who didn’t say much, and the redheaded British pop star the others called Jordana.
She didn’t factor in the steady stream of day guests whose faces and names started to run together after the first hour.
As she soaked her stripped, burning legs in a shallow, heated pool, Naomi watched them come and go. They trooped in as singles or pairs, some in groups of three. The men and women mingled, each wearing robes like hers. For more personal services or privacy, they were escorted into separate private rooms.
The cynical part of her brain speculated on what other kind of
personal services
Timeless offered on the side.
The staff worked like multiple limbs from the same brain. No guest was allowed to wander unnoticed, each person effortlessly passed from station to station, specialist to specialist. It was so graceful, so unassuming that Naomi recognized the slightly shell-shocked look most of the guests wore.
Maybe they called it relaxing. Naomi called it checking out.
It took effort not to sneer.
“So, you’re the heiress we’ve been hearing so much about.” Water splashed up around Naomi’s thighs as Jordana plunked herself on the heated tile beside her and slid her perfectly toned, stripped pink legs into the water.
Naomi arranged her features into a smile. “Naomi.” She didn’t offer a hand.
Neither did the redhead with the absolutely magnificent display of cleavage between the lapels of her mint green robe. She smiled easily enough, arranging her robe to reveal the maximum amount of leg possible. “This place is something else, isn’t it?”
Hell
wasn’t the word Naomi should offer. “That it is,” she said instead. Mild enough. “Do you come here a lot?”
“No, it’s my first time.” She tipped her head toward Naomi, dropping her voice. “Although between you and me? If it puts me in Phin Clarke’s circle, I’ll be here every chance I get.”
It took even more effort not to laugh out loud. Naomi wasn’t going to claim that she knew him any better than the pop tart sizing him up, but something told Naomi that he wouldn’t touch the redheaded barracuda with a harpoon.
She ignored the slow, lazy curl in her belly, the awareness of something hot and entirely unwelcome at the mention of his name. Phin wasn’t her business.
Except in the suspected-accessory-to-harboring-a-fugitive sort of way.
Right.
“I mean,” Jordana was saying, straightening her perfect legs and raising just the tips of her fire-engine red toenails out of the rippling, heated surface. “Really, I mean, have you seen him? Oh. My. God. The man has, like, shoulders you wouldn’t believe.”
“Wouldn’t I?” Naomi murmured. Her gaze drifted past the singer toward the steady stream of people, of conversation. Snippets assaulted her from every direction.
Stocks. Travel plans. Family. Feed channels and the future. So normal.
Assuming
normal
meant the kinds of plans that involved private jets and personally funded tuition at universities that didn’t accept applications from people like her.
Her jaw shifted.
“And really, it was so terrible.” Jordana sighed sadly. It jerked Naomi’s attention back to her, to the gossipy glint in her hazel eyes.
“Oh?” What had she missed?
Clearly pleased to have a coconspirator, Jordana scooted her amply rounded ass across the tile. “Didn’t you
hear
?” she demanded gleefully. “After the accident, Phinny ordered every maintenance tech to show up and get to the bottom of the mess. It was, like, three in the morning.”
Had he slept at all?
Naomi forced herself to remember that she didn’t care. “Did they find the problem?”
Jordana frowned, puzzlement shaping the cosmetically enhanced angle of her eyes. “Problem?”
“With the door?”
“Oh!” Her expression cleared. “Who knows? You’ll have to ask them.”
“Oh, of course.” The urge to grab the shallow redhead by the scruff of her neck and plunge her face-first into the shallow water made Naomi’s fingers flex with greed.
Spoiled, selfish little—
“And then I heard that after she got out of the clinic, Alexandra Applegate left at dawn.”
—fly on the goddamn wall. Naomi straightened. “What?”
“Alexandra Applegate. Don’t you know who that— Oh.” The singer nodded, as if reaching some conclusion. “You’re not from here, right?”
“Right,” Naomi murmured, but her mind was spinning. Alexandra Applegate.
Hell
. Of course that was who the old woman was.
Why hadn’t the Mission warned her the bishop’s own fucking grandmother was here? Why the fuck hadn’t she recognized her?
Except she’d never met the woman, and pictures just didn’t match up to lobster red skin, stringy white hair, and blue lips.
“Whatever.” Jordana rolled her eyes, flicking wet fingers across the pool. “She probably went home and sobbed into her million-dollar wardrobe. I heard that she was ready to shut this whole place down, which would piss me off. I mean, I just met Phinny.”
Naomi didn’t have the patience for this shit. “Shame,” she said dryly. “Well, nice chatting with you.” She pulled her legs from the warm water, awkwardly getting to her feet on the marble ledge.
“Sure!” Jordana waved her newly polished nails. “Hey, maybe later we can go shopping together. I’d love to show you my favorite stores. There’s this salon, I bet it’d do wonders for your hair.”
More clothes. Another haircut. More money. Naomi’s smile stretched her cheeks into aching points as she retreated.
Behind her, the flamboyant woman’s failure of a whisper sighed out a long, verbal shrug. “I don’t care how much money she has. Did you see her
face
?”
Enough time, and Jordana’s would have matched it.
At the desk, she retrieved her clothes from the efficient Agatha, smiled stiffly through a reminder that her massage appointment would begin precisely at one, and barely managed to get to the elevator before she couldn’t take it anymore.
She needed out. Somewhere, anywhere. She was smoothed and buffed and polished and depilated.
She looked like a goddamn marble statue. Like some rich, pampered—
Shit.
Like every other goddamned perfect woman in that fucking beauty spa.
Fuck her team’s sense of humor. Fuck the so-called relaxation she was scheduled to sit through, and shitfuck to the man named Joel with the magic hands.
The last thing she needed—
wanted
—was to be alone inside her own head.
“T
wo of the suites have checked out.” Lillian’s voice in Phin’s ear registered stalwart resignation as he made his way through the halls. “Alexandra and her retinue, of course, with her regrets.”
“I imagine she went home to be tended by her own doctors,” Phin murmured, bypassing two of the staff’s personal athletic trainers with an easy smile and nod.
Nothing to see here.
He shifted the comm to his other ear as Lillian continued, “And the sweet doctor from New England.”
Damn. He’d been hoping for a good word from the man whose words carried a lot of weight on his side of the coast. Pausing in the hallway, Phin pinched the bridge of his nose. “How did he seem when he left?”
“Quiet. He expressed no displeasure, praised the staff’s precision and care. However, he checked out a full four days early. I think we can extrapolate from there.” In the background, he could hear the muted
click
and
tap
of her keyboard. He could easily picture her in the small, beautifully furnished office tucked just beside his, posture ramrod-straight and hair elegantly upswept off her shoulders.
Like a picture-perfect secretary of ages past.
Phin squeezed his eyes shut behind his fingers. “Okay,” he said again. “All right, it’s not a complete loss. Was Alexandra all right?”
“Your mother took excellent care of her, like she always does.”
“Is she okay?”
Lillian sighed, briefly. “Tired, but she’s out and about now. What about the accused witches you ferried out last night?”
“Seen out safely, thank God. Joel and the team returned home by midnight with nothing out of the ordinary to report.”
“The backup driver was found, then,” Lillian surmised in her simple, factual way “Excellent. Now, what about the sauna?”
Phin turned, checked down both ends of the hallway before allowing himself to slump back against the wall. He could still hear the grim technician’s report, echoing like a death knell in his head. “Sabotage seems the likeliest cause.”
The sound of keys stilled. “Excuse me?”
“The technicians ran a full diagnostic. They were up all night.”
“Which means,” surmised his mother, who knew him all too well, “that you were, too. I trust you’ve managed a nap?”
Phin grimaced. “I’m fine. The sauna, however, is not. We’ve put up a barricade to make sure no one else goes in, but I suspect guests will be avoiding all of the hot rooms for a while.”
“Tell me about this sabotage.”
“The short version? Someone crossed the wiring to short-circuit the lock for the disinfectant mode.” His head echoed like a hollow drum as he let it drop to the wall. “It didn’t hold under the humid conditions, which was the only thing that probably saved Alexandra’s life. Another few minutes—”
Lillian hummed a low note of dismissal. “Another few minutes wouldn’t have been the end of it, but that’s neither here nor there. The important thing here is finding this saboteur.”
He dropped his hand from his eyes, staring blankly at the bank of glass windows that separated the main gym from the surrounding workout rooms. “That’s the catch, isn’t it? Firstly, who would want to do something like this?”
“An enemy?”
“Whose?” Phin murmured. “It would need someone with the know-how.” A sudden flash of turquoise caught his attention, and he tilted his head. He straightened from the wall supporting his weary weight when the vivid color beckoned again.
“Have you crossed the technicians? Maintenance?” Lillian hesitated. “What of the temporaries you brought in through the basement?”
“Mmm.” Footsteps soundless on the carpet, Phin slowly meandered toward the glass bay. “All of our technicians have been with us for over a year. If it was one of them, which I doubt, it had to be a crime in the making for a very long time. And why now? Alexandra is a frequent guest.”
“And the others?”
Phin frowned. His fingertips settled over the cool windowpane, his gaze homing in on Naomi Ishikawa. She was hard to miss.
Impossible to ignore.
“I don’t think so,” he said, distracted by the way her cropped turquoise top hugged her chest like a second skin. It left her back bare from neck to shoulder blades, let him see the smooth flex and ripple of taut, toned muscle as she worked over a body-sized punching bag.
“Why?”
“Take my word for it. Mother, I’ll call you back.” Without waiting for her reply, Phin disconnected the unit.
He couldn’t look away. There was something addictive about Naomi, something inherently fascinating. The way her taped fists slammed into the rough material of the swinging bag, the way she moved like a dancer one minute and a lethal fury of limbs the next. Her ponytail bounced and swayed with every jab, every hook and cross.
Phin grinned as she spun on the ball of one foot and slammed the smooth, bare expanse of her shin into the bag. The impact cracked like a gunshot.
The woman worked over a bag like she’d caught it insulting her mother. It was one hell of an exercise regime.
Phin unfolded the digital screen on his comm unit and tapped in a quick series of commands. Within seconds, Naomi’s designated schedule filled the readout. His smile widened.
She’d turned down Joel for a bone-rattling beat-down.
Either she was a sucker for punishment, or she was—
Something else entirely.
Like a saboteur? Phin’s smile faded as he snapped the unit closed. Impossible. She’d been with him when the screaming started.
But before? She’d said she was exploring.
He shook his head. Paranoia wasn’t a flavor that suited his palate, and a check on the internal security feed would verify her whereabouts easily enough. Hers and all the other guests’. If all of them proved to have time-stamped alibis, he’d have to start looking at staff.
Another thunderous crack ripped through the gym, its impact muffled by the glass. She danced back, shaking out one reddened, tape-wrapped foot, and smoothly shifted her weight.
Fascinating.
Tucking the comm into his inner jacket pocket, he turned and circled the bay of windows. She was so engrossed in murdering the innocent workout bag that she didn’t see him approach. Didn’t hear his initial, subtle cough.
Shoulders moving, liquid control, she drove fast, sharp fists into the bag. Her trim waist slid in fluid lines he assumed meant that she dodged imaginary punches from her imaginary assailant. Thigh muscles flexing, she propelled one knee into the bag. They stretched and flexed again as two more hard, jarring knee thrusts followed it.
She was hell on mostly bare feet.
Swinging wildly, the ends of her ponytail lashed at her sweaty shoulders like black silk. It clung to her skin. To silver glinting at the base of her neck.
Phin’s mouth went suddenly dry.
A barbell; two small, delicate beads. They gleamed like stars centered at the gentle flare where her neck met her shoulders, winked wickedly, maddeningly.
A piercing. A hidden, secret jewel he never would have expected. Not from the stunning heiress with the Japanese name. Not from any woman he’d ever known.
Lust curled like a live wire in his gut, tightened an already attentive erection to a violent, painful squeeze. Phin must have made some move, some raw, strangled sound, because she turned.
Her cheeks glowed pink with exertion, eyes bright. Breathing hard, she took much longer than Phin liked before she dropped her guarded hands and eased her stance into something less vigilant.
Only somewhat less threatening.
But he couldn’t see the damn barbell anymore. Scraping the melted fragments of his mind back together, Phin followed the direction of her eyes. Helpfully he picked up the green water bottle she’d left on a bench beside him.
“Having a good workout?” Phin handed it over, bottom first.
She filled her mouth with the cool liquid, drank greedily, her throat working as he watched. He wanted to run his tongue down every inch of that sweaty curve where her shoulder met her neck.
Jesus
. Trouble.
“Yeah,” she finally said. Wiping at her mouth with the back of her arm, she added huskily, “Nice equipment.”
“Thanks.” He managed calm, even as a slow flush climbed up his neck. She wasn’t talking about him. At least he didn’t think so. She meant the gym equipment, not the dangerously sensitive pulse knocking around in his crotch.
But not thinking about it wasn’t working. Not while she stood there. Watched him.
Hell, breathed.
The top, he decided, didn’t do her figure any justice. Made for sports, it pressed her breasts nearly flat, banded her tightly in a way he knew was necessary for the kind of workout she liked.
But it was hardly fair.
His gaze trailed over that taut, turquoise curve, slid over the sweaty gleam of her neck. Her reddened cheeks. It centered on her nose, and the slash across it that looked somehow less aggressively uneven. Smoother.
Familiar.
A corner of his mouth kicked up. “You’ve met my mother.”
“What?” When he gestured to his nose in mirrored indication, Naomi winced. She raised her fingers, but didn’t touch the slash. “She put something on it. It feels better.”
Yes, that was Gemma all over. Unable to help herself. Phin’s smile widened. “It looks better, too. You’re supposed to be finishing up a massage right now, aren’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “So the schedule tells me.” Naomi turned, seized the still-swinging bag with both hands.
Smooth. Too smooth. Phin hoped she didn’t catch his small, rough sound of amusement. Of hunger. “Do you have something against massage?”
“Is that going to be a problem?” The cool pitch of her too-casual voice warned him off.
That glinting silver jewelry at the back of her neck made him want to beat on his chest and throw her over his shoulder. He rubbed at his forehead, black edges of humor creeping in through a haze of lust. “Not at all.”
“You’re not going to run back to my people and tell them?”
He met her appraisal directly and matched the sharp ends of her mockery with a forthright, easy smile. “You’re the one staying here, Naomi, not them. It’s your money and your call.”
Her lower lip worked, pulling to the side in a way that made Phin wonder if she had a habit of biting the inside of her lip. Telling. She had a lot of tells, he realized.
A lot of signals.
All designed to drive him crazy.
“Hmm.” It wasn’t a thank-you, but he’d take it. Watching him, wary, she raised the underside of her taped forearm to her mouth and caught at the layers with her teeth.
The flash of white, of damp pink as her lip caught on the edge of pale tape, was sexier than a sweat-soaked, punch-happy, troublemaking heiress had any right to be.
“Here,” he said gruffly, closing the distance between them with a few short strides. He wrapped his fingers around her sweaty wrist, gently angling her arm around so he could find the edges of the tape.
It put him too close to her. Too close to the adrenaline-fueled fragrance of her damp skin, to the smell of the soap she’d used in her hair, like spring rain and lavender.
Too close to her upturned eyes staring into his.
The sticky tape caught at his fingertips, resisted. Tore. As he unwound it, layer by layer, something in her stance changed. Shifted. He looked up, met her eyes as she stepped closer, fully into his space. Bare, taped feet to his polished shoes. Sleek, muscled thigh to his slacks.
Chest to chest.
Eye to eye.
Phin’s fingers tightened on her wrist. It was all he could do to force back the awareness, a wild temptation that unfurled in him like a banner. A silent, echoing cry. “Naomi—”
Her eyes lit. “Shut up, Mr. Clarke.”
He did. The instant she leaned forward and fused her mouth to his, he had nothing left to say. Control be damned. Barely leashed desire detonated in his head, shredded every trace of common sense as heat spiraled from her lips to his. Her free hand fisted in his collar, captured him close as her mouth opened, beckoned.
Aggressive. Demanding. She was all that and something a thousand times more primal as her tongue swept into his mouth; the velvet stroke of her tongue slid against his and he surged forward, slammed her back against the rough bag.
Phin wasn’t going to stand there and let her think she had him. Even if she did.
Even if he knew he’d already lost.
The impact rocked them closer together, threatened to knock them over until she braced her legs against the floor and pushed back against the swaying bag.
He stepped into the welcoming vee of her legs, trapped her against his chest, his hips, the hard edge of his erection. Perfect, spiraling focus, a point of pleasure so intense he could only revel in the mind-shattering heat of her body, the soft curves compounded by elastic muscle.
Just the feel of her, the scent of her damp skin, was enough.
Enough to scream a warning. To wave red flags in his mind’s eye. “Jesus,” he managed, his voice strained as she tore her mouth from his. Naomi’s laughter drifted like smoke over his jaw, his neck. Her hips tilted, ground against him, and Phin groaned as he seized her waist.
Too hot. Too fast.
He hadn’t wanted to push her.
Taut with the effort, his hands strained against every impulse to haul her closer. To pull her into his skin and burn them both up to ash. She had to slow down,
he
had to slow down before she stroked him right into an explosive orgasm he wasn’t prepared for.
But Naomi wasn’t letting him play nice.
The sharp edge of her teeth bit a line of fire into the skin of his neck. He gasped, pleasure and pain combined into a wild surge of need. “Naomi—”
“No,” she murmured. She lifted her head, pulled her fingers through his hair to meet his gaze with a glittering need of her own. She twisted, throwing a leg over his thigh. His hips jerked of their own accord, and he gritted his teeth. Locked every muscle.
Just the press of her body. Jesus, just the demand, her laughter. Unable to help himself, he slid his palms up the sleek heat of her flat belly. Her ribs. He found the edge of her cropped tank top, worked underneath to encircle one constrained breast.
