Dark Admirer (12 page)

But something had been there. She was certain of it.

“What is it?” Gem asked, glancing over her shoulder at the large window.

“I thought I saw something…someone...looking in.”

“Honey, you live in a loft, eight stories up. The window ledge is like six inches wide.
Nothing
is looking in.”

Eve flicked her gaze from the window to Chrissy who was smiling at her with something akin to smugness.

“Forget it, hon. You’re not getting out of this by trying to freak us all out with the voyeur story.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Lynn jumped up in her seat. “Maybe that’s her thing, voyeurism.”

“Um…” Eve hummed, glancing once more at the window. She had that familiar tingling sensation all over body. The same sensation she had around the stranger. The same sensation she had experienced repeatedly during the past two days.

“Um?” Chrissy repeated.

“Yeah, voyeurism is partly it. I mean, not me watching.”

“You want to be watched!” Chrissy cried as she slapped her thigh.

“Well, kind of,” Eve mumbled as she looked around the room. “I mean, well…okay,” she said, setting down her glass on the coffee table. “This is it, the entire fantasy. The truth is, I’ve long thought about how much I’d love to be the object of someone’s fantasy. To be their secret obsession, you know? I think it’d be so hot, because living out some guy’s secret fantasy would really fulfil my fantasy of being this strong, sexually hot woman. You know the type, the kind of woman that captures every man’s attention whether they’re single or not.”

“And the watching?” Lynn asked. “Where does that fit into your little fantasy?”

Eve felt her cheeks grow warm just as she perceived another flicker of movement from the window. “The watching,” she whispered, searching through the dark backdrop of night, “would come in because I would want to be seen with this guy. I’d like to do things with him, and have other men watch. Other men want me.”

“And you’d what? Have a ménage?”

“No,” she said, drawing her gaze away. “Because I’d want the guy to be too possessive, to want me too much to ever share me.”

“Damn,” Jamie said, fanning herself. “You ever thought of being a writer? I swear, I almost had the Big O there, listening to your description.”

“It’s interesting that you need a man’s fantasies to make you feel sexual,” Chrissy said. “You should feel powerful without some man making you live out his fantasies.”

Eve shrugged. She wasn’t getting into her insecurities. Especially not with someone like Chrissy who was immune to weakness. Someone like that just wouldn’t understand.

“Well, I gotta run,” Jamie said, standing and reaching for her purse. “But this has been a blast. God, I hope Josh is still awake when I get home. I’m going to have to brush up on my
Francais
on the way home!”

Eve walked her guests to the door and gave them each a hug. When they were all on the elevator going down to the lobby, Eve closed the door, locked it and walked straight to the window.

Nothing.

Man, maybe she really was losing it. A warm bath and another glass of wine, that’s what she needed. After that, she’d slip beneath her cool, crisp sheets, reach into her bedside table drawer, find her favourite toy and imagine being watched. And who would be watching her?

Her tattooed stranger.

* * * *

Anael watched Eve from the wide expanse of air and concrete. From the upstairs window of the abandoned warehouse he used for shelter, he could see directly into Eve’s loft. He could watch her, and he did.

He thought she might have seen him tonight. As he’d landed on the window ledge, her gaze had sought out his shadow through the glass. But in the end, he’d been able to hide from her. But he hadn’t been able to hide from what he’d heard. What she wanted.

Her secret fantasy called to him. He wanted to be that man. That man who secretly admired her. He was already obsessed by her, that would not be fantasy. But the other part. Taking her in a place where the other males would watch…would want, would crave to be the one buried deep inside her made him hard. Made his cock hunger for release.

Fucking Eve in public and showing the other males what was his, what they could never have, was slowly eating away at him.

He so desperately wanted to live out that fantasy for her. To show her how beautiful and desirable she was; that she could, and was, every man’s fantasy.

The way she looked now didn’t help his raging need. She was wearing a long crème coloured sweater and pair of white cotton panties that barely covered her ass. She was everything he could have ever wanted in a woman. All soft curves with full breasts and rounded hips. Feminine, maternal, but with just the right amount of inner strength that made him want to try to break it, to bend her to his will. He wanted her just a bit subservient, and he would take very, very good care of her, making sure that he kept her safe as he pleasured her beyond what she thought possible.

Even though he was not human, he possessed the aggression and possessiveness of his mortal counterpart. A part of him wanted to protect her, to make sweet slow love to her, to worship her. The other part of him wanted to dominate her, to make her his, to take that inner strength she possessed and crack it—give it over to him.

Yeah, she was everything he had ever wanted and desired, and everything he couldn’t have. Would never have.

“He is most unmerciful to deny you what you want.”

Anael pressed his eyes shut. He could not answer that voice. Could not invite the owner of that smooth tongue into his head.

“After all you have done for Him and his mortals, He cannot even allow you the simple
pleasures of the flesh.”

Breathing deep, Anael sought resistance, fought for the inner strength to resist the lure of that wicked voice whispering in his head.

“You have only to ask and it shall be done.”

He heard the dark promise. Like a lifeline he reached for it, grasping and clawing at it like a drowning man. The temptation was so strong, so palpable that he pressed his eyelids tighter and locked his jaw, fighting the lure of it.

“Ask and it shall be given, your heart’s greatest desire.”

Such a simple little thing, to ask for what he coveted. Yet he knew who offered him this, knew that there would be no turning back, no reconciliation once he accepted a sip from the cup of enticement.

“You’re very strong of mind, so in command of what you should and should not wish for. And yet all that strength has not given you any sense of peace—or pleasure.”

Temptation wound its way around him, coiling and squeezing like a slithering snake. He felt his lashes flicker, felt his lids open and knew what he would see before him.

His heart’s greatest desire.

And there she was, walking into her bedroom, tugging off her sweater. He saw the outline of her heavy breasts in her tank top, and he knew it was the decent thing to do, to look away. But he had to watch, despite the fact that the memories of cold wire piercing the tender flesh of his eyelids came rushing back. It was a reminder—the pain, the agony of the abyss—it was all coming back, rushing upon him, reminding him of his fall. Yet he couldn’t look away. Couldn’t stop watching her as she tossed her sweater onto the bed and walked into the bathroom that adjoined her room. She bent over the white clawfoot tub and turned the silver taps. She stood, her back arching gracefully as she reached for the hem of her tank top and pulled it up, revealing her softly rounded belly.

He couldn’t look away, despite reliving the feel of the wire being poked and pulled through his eyelids as his lids were slowly and painfully wired shut all those long centuries ago.

The shirt dragged up higher, revealing the undersides of her breasts. He was rock hard, his breathing fast, his cock so fucking hard that he brushed the heel of his palm against the fly of his jeans. And still he felt the wire pulling tight, slowly sewing his lids shut.

“Sinner,”
the voice whispered in his head.

He had watched back then, too. He had been a voyeur, had loved secretly watching the mortals pleasure each other, and when his eyes had been firmly sewn shut, a voice had whispered in his ear.
“Atonement for your sins of gluttony and lust.”

Anael was shaking, his hands, his thighs, his fingers as they once more brushed along the burgeoning buttons of his jeans. His breathing was ragged as Eve’s hand swirl in the water of the bath. He could smell her, her silky flesh as the steam coated her skin. He wanted to watch her disrobe, knowing he was truly evil to be watching her like this, to be invading her privacy. But he couldn’t stop. No, he was addicted. Addicted to watching. To wishing. To dreaming of coming to her and taking her with his body.

“You have only to ask,”
the snake seemed to hiss through his thoughts.
“Imagine having the very thing you want the most.”

He was weakened, lured by the lustful image of Eve and the seductive call of the serpent’s tongue. Wavering in resolve, Anael felt himself falling into the darkness. He wanted so much to accept what he was being offered. But instead, he shut out the voice, struggling to hold on to the honour he still possessed.

“But it is not only the pleasures, is it? It runs deeper than that. Love—that is what you truly desire.”

“No
,” he pleaded with the voice, forcing himself to stay strong and resist the urge. But he saw the image of Eve and he saw him together with her, loving her and felt himself slipping closer to sin.