Lure of the Wicked (14 page)

It was the easy, familiar way she looped her arm through Phin’s.

And the easy, too familiar way he kissed her cheek.

“Andromeda Nikolai,” he said, turning to place the short girl directly in Naomi’s reach. Her fingers itched. “This is Naomi Ishikawa. Naomi, an old friend, Andy.”

A little blood would make her face look less severe, Naomi decided as she took the woman’s offered hand. Andy tugged her down to kiss the air beside each cheek.

It took effort not to crush the slender fingers in her grasp. “Nice to meet you,” she murmured.

“Any friend of Phin’s has absolutely questionable taste,” the woman named Andy said cheerfully. “But I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Ishikawa. I understand you’re in need of a gown.”

Naomi straightened. “Am I?”

“Isn’t she?” Andy turned, found Phin where he’d wandered to a rack of sumptuous emerald green silk. “Phin, you didn’t tell her?”

“No.” Naomi put a hand on her hip. “He didn’t tell her. What’s going on?”

When Phin only pulled a gown from the rack, something draping and shimmery, Andy shook her head. She turned back to Naomi, blue eyes dryly amused, and said, “I guess that’s that. Now, I’ve got your measurements—” Naomi’s face must have betrayed her sudden, fierce resentment, because the diminutive woman laughed. “I have an eye, don’t worry. Phin didn’t measure you in your sleep.”

“I don’t sleep around him,” Naomi muttered, and then palmed her face with one hand when Andy’s smile turned wickedly amused. “That’s not what I meant.”

“But it will be!” she singsonged gaily. She caught Naomi’s arm in one hand, a digital readout with the other. “I have an idea of what I’d like to see you try on, but I’d like to know what your personal taste is.”

Naomi felt like a dog towed along on a leash as she followed the woman to a small, brightly lit sitting room. “Something not gray?”

“Oh, no.” Andy’s energy infected everything around her. Against her will, Naomi found herself liking this strange, platinum-haired whirlwind. Even just a little. “Nothing simple or plain for you. Phin?”

“Already miles ahead.” Phin’s voice drifted out from between racks of clothes. Naomi found herself placed in a fitting room, the slatted door shut firmly on her half-formed protest.

Staring at the glossy black wood, Naomi could only throw up her hands.

Why not? She usually liked picking out clothes. Granted, her clothing didn’t usually cost the same as a new fucking car, but hey, she was Naomi Ishikawa. This was par for the goddamned course.

And a great opportunity to get what she really needed. Quickly she dug through the rainbow bag and located her comm. It was the work of moments to send out a message.

If getting a gun back in her hands meant sitting through yet another clothes fitting, she’d do it with a smile and like it all the way.

A tap on the door had her throwing her comm back in the purse. “Yes?” She swung open the panel, came face to taffeta with a frothy concoction of midnight blue.

“Try this,” Andy began, and then thrust the gown into her hands with an impatient sound. “You need to be quicker, goddess. Here.” Before Naomi could stop her, the woman stepped into the dressing room. Andy had quick hands, impossible nerve, and she found herself stripped to her underwear before she could do more than roll her eyes.

“Wow.” Andy put her hands on her hips, studied her from the tips of her clear-polished toenails to the crown of her tousled hair. The red lace contrasted with her pale skin, a shade darker than Andy’s own suit. “You’re stunning.”

“I’m—” Her mouth pursed as Naomi tried to find the perfect word.

“Overwhelmed?” The woman pulled the dress from her hands, found the zipper Naomi hadn’t noticed, and tugged it off the silk padded hangar. “Confused? A little ticked off?” Her grin wicked, Andy spun her finger in the air. “Yes, you are certainly dating Phinneas Clarke.”

“Naked,” Naomi corrected firmly. “I’m naked, is what I was going to say.”

“Partially naked,” Andy said, and held the dress open for Naomi to step into. “Beautifully in disarray. If I had my camera—”

“I’d jam it down your throat.”

Andy’s sharp peal of laughter was all Naomi heard as she struggled into the gown. “I like her, Phin!”

“Mine,” she heard from beyond the fitting room.

Naomi blew out a breath, then winced when she caught a glimpse of herself in the three-paneled mirror. The material hugged her figure, its sleek lines a stark contrast to the pouf of sheer material gathered at the shoulder. The same material lined the square back, trailed down to her hips and flowed in a smooth wave to the floor.

Luxurious. Decadent.

Mine
, he’d said. She blinked at the mirror.

“Oh, God.” Andy looked horrified. “No, off, now.”

Naomi complied, a flicker of amusement edging out irritation. “Is this one of yours?”

“It’s all mine, honey, and—hey, Phin? No pouf.”

“I’d stay away from taffeta in general.”

Naomi jerked her eyes to the mirror and caught Phin lounging in the black lacquer door frame. Color framed him in a sea of material, but it was his slow, smiling appraisal that sent flutters through Naomi’s stomach.

Ridiculous, since he was talking about a dress.

Straightening her shoulders, she stepped entirely out of the gown Andy held for her and turned slowly, spinning in a deliberate display of naked limbs, the taut, flat muscle of her belly.

“I didn’t know you knew dresses.” Her tone was husky. Suggestive. Mocking, Naomi knew and didn’t moderate it. She glanced at Andy and asked with as much sincerity as she could, just to piss him off, “Is he gay?”

Andy laughed her ass off. “No,” she managed. “God, no. The man just has immaculate taste. Especially about what looks killer on a woman’s body.”

His eyes skimmed over her face. Her mouth. Touched her curves, as physical as the remembered the feel of his hands on her.

Red lace and warmed skin.

Naomi raised her chin and knew exactly how futile this was as she pressed a hand to the lace-covered tattoo at her abdomen. She knew how this would end.

Blood and bullets.

His gaze turned to fire. To wanting.

And then he nodded at Andy. Crisp. “Absolutely no taffeta. She’ll look like a parade queen.” With that, he was gone, leaving behind a selection of gowns hanging from the slats on the door.

Andy tossed the midnight blue gown to the floor. “Next!”

Chapter Twelve

N
aomi Ishikawa was all woman.

Phin hadn’t doubted it, not for a second. As she tried on dress after dress, he watched the rigid line of her back slowly ease. Watched wary irritation melt into something warmer, something much more relaxed. Much more amused.

Fun. Naomi was having fun.

The thought made him want to insert himself into that easy niche of feminine laughter and kiss her until her breath fragmented in her chest.

As something dangerous fragmented in his.

He rubbed at his sternum idly, surveying the picked-over remnants of Andy’s design studio. Something else. He was missing something, something perfect.

He heard the click of her wicked heels before her voice, quiet. Judging. “You like her.”

The top of Andy’s ice blond hair barely came to his shoulder. He glanced down at her, at her wide, shrewd blue eyes. He couldn’t lie, not to her. She knew him better than that. “Yeah.”

Her mouth twisted. “You sure know how to pick them.”

Shared memory sparked between them both, mingled laughter and an indulgence so brief, it barely registered as a footnote in her ambitious career.

Or so Phin figured.

Still, he turned, tucked a finger under chin. “Hey,” he said. “What is it?”

“Oh, you know,” she said lightly, and braced a hand on his shoulder to bring him down to her level. Her lips were warm, brief on his cheek. “Remembering good times. I’m tapped out, did you find anything else?”

“I liked the red.” Phin let her change the subject, but he kept her hand tucked in his. His best friend.

He hoped it was enough.

She grimaced. “Too obvious.” A beat, and then her mouth flipped up into a catlike smile. “But one of my best.”

Phin chuckled, turning again to study the starkly contrasting viewing studio. “The black velvet—”

“Ugh, no.” She waved that away, effortlessly freeing her hand with the gesture. “It practically flattened her chest. She looked like a twelve-year-old boy in a skirt.”

“Impossible,” Phin argued. “Besides, did you see what it did for her—” He stopped. Frowned. “What is that purple thing there?”

Andy followed his gaze, her smile widening as she saw what caught his attention. She hurried across the floor, dug through the clothes hanging together until she could find the start of the material trailing from the bottom of the rack.

“I had,” she crowed triumphantly, “completely forgotten about this. This is it, Phin.” Fabric shimmered through her arms like violet moonlight, as fragile as spun silk. It caught the harsh light from the ceiling, reflected it back in shades that made him think of the heart of a thunderstorm, a purple sheet of lightning.

He whistled. “Go stop her from trying anything else on.”

“Naomi?” Andy pitched her voice to carry. “This is it!”

Phin heard Naomi’s muffled question, heard Andy’s excited nonanswer, and grinned. He checked the wide face of his watch, reassured they’d have plenty of time before the reservations anybody else would have had to wait months to make, and barely kept from climbing into that damn fitting room himself.

The knowledge that she had spent most of the past two hours wearing nothing but red lace and his scent had steadily redirected the flow of blood from his brain and into his pants.

Tonight was going to be exquisite agony, and he’d already had her once.

He stared into the ordered chaos of Andy’s studio and wondered if everything was all right in Timeless. Not for the first time, he checked the comm clipped to his belt, saw no message, and was only partially relieved. They’d call if there was a problem.

He just couldn’t shake the certainty that there was.

Behind him, Andy cleared her throat. He turned, expectant, and saw only her. Smiling in knowing sympathy. “We’re going to go ahead and fix her hair and makeup. You go fix yourself a drink.”

“Is it perfect?”

“You’ll see,” she said, and vanished back into the elegant fitting room station.

Phin obeyed, but only because the urge to peer over the top of the paneled wall was too strong to completely ignore. Rueful, he crossed the studio, stepped into the large, equally as stark office, and helped himself to Andy’s carefully stocked bar.

He drank the expensive imported whiskey slowly. It’d take them time to prepare—growing up among women taught him time was a given—so he made himself comfortable behind Andy’s black metal desk and cracked open his comm unit.

At the very least, he could get some work done. It kept him from drinking too fast, and his brain from what was going on in the dressing room.

Only half of the smooth whiskey remained when Andy cleared her throat from the door. Phin set down the glass, rose, and hesitated when she said simply, “Stay there.” She vanished again. Shadows mingled, feminine voices murmured.

He felt as if the air had been punched out of his lungs as Naomi took her place.

Her hair had been swept off her neck, coiled into sleek curls and pinned in place with diamonds that winked like stars in a tapestry of night. Her makeup was subtle, luminescent. It swept her eyes into more dramatic lines, polished her mouth to a lush, tempting gleam.

Her expression was cool, indifferent, but he knew her better than that. Beneath the material that cupped her body like a lover’s hands, her muscles were rigid with tension. And Jesus, she didn’t need to worry.

“You—” Phin swallowed hard. “You’re stunning.”

The gown’s lines hugged her body, its corset strapped tightly under her bust and beaded with gold in diagonal patterns. It pushed her breasts high, shaped her cleavage to something he didn’t think he’d be able to resist staring at all night. Her shoulders remained bare, porcelain smooth, while more of that soft, shimmery material draped over her arms in faux sleeves.

And her legs. God in heaven, Phin was going to die a happy man. The slit in the side of the draped gown stopped a hairbreadth from the band of red lace he hoped she still wore beneath. It was signature Andromeda, intensely sexy and completely unapologetic.

But Naomi wore it like it was made for her. Just for her, and her long, long legs.

“Phin?” She tilted her head, the column of her slender throat moving as she swallowed. “Hello?”

“Wait a minute.” Phin circled the desk. Very slowly crossed the office to stand just out of reach. It only got worse—better, Christ,
worse
—the closer he got. She looked like a goddess, like some kind of moonlit creature of the night, and he—

“I expect,” Andy said severely from behind her, “that she will arrive to Swann’s in the same condition that she is now.”

Naomi shifted, a flush of color sweeping over the tops of her lovely breasts, over her shoulders and cheeks. Her eyes filled with laughter, knowing and wicked, as they met his. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Same condition.”

She turned, and his eyes flicked to the strappy stiletto heels on her feet. They were barely noticeable, a glint of gold crossed over her ankles. He wanted them over his shoulders.
Now
.

“Uh, yeah,” he managed hoarsely. He cleared his throat, met Andy’s narrowed eyes and tried again. “Absolutely, perfect condition. Andy, you’re a genius.”

“No,” she corrected, and tucked her arm in Naomi’s. “I’m an artist.
She
is the perfect canvas.” When she offered her other arm to him, Phin took it. He matched Naomi’s smile with his own as Andy led them both to the door. “Have fun, behave”—this with a stern look at Phin, who had the grace to smile sheepishly—“and for the love of all that is holy, Naomi, try the dessert. I don’t care what, you just must have something and think of me.”

“I’ll do that.”

Despite her polished shine, Naomi looked glazed enough that Phin took pity on her. He touched her shoulder, felt the electrical twinge all the way to his chest when his fingers encountered bare skin. The faintest edge of a faded scar. “Why don’t you go to the car,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

To his surprise, she didn’t argue. She turned, holding the rainbow purse that didn’t match the gown in one hand and a sleek gold handbag in the other, and bent to receive Andy’s air kiss. “Thank you,” she said, a glint in her eyes. “It was great meeting you, Andy.”

“I expect you to tell everyone that you’re wearing an original Andromeda,” the designer said brightly. “I’ll have work until the next earthquake.”

Naomi turned, sliding him a thoughtful look over her bare shoulder, and proceeded down the steps. Martin hurried to meet her, holding an umbrella over her head. His expression was rapt. Awed.

Kicked in the gut, and Phin knew the feeling.

“Thank you, Andy.” He bent to kiss her cheek. “You know I owe you.”

“Boy, do you,” she said indulgently, and caught his arm when he straightened. “What do you know about her, Phin?”

Her eyes were serious, her tone lowered enough that he frowned. “There’s a lot I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I can tell you this: She’s funny, and smart. She’s gorgeous—”

“Clearly,” Andy interjected wryly.

“I mean on the inside, too.” Phin looked up, saw her step out of the way of a man in a dark overcoat walking by. He said something to her, something flattering, because she smoothed a hand over her gown and smiled.

Naomi’s gaze flicked to Phin, but he couldn’t read it in the dark.

Andy’s fingers tightened on his arm, brought his attention back to her. Worried. “Do me a favor,” she said quietly. “Just do this and we’ll call it even, okay?”

Covering his fingers with hers, Phin promised, “Anything.”

“Ask her about her tattoo.” When his eyebrows rose, Andy smiled, a resigned curve without humor, and patted his hand over hers. “Enjoy your evening, honey. She can keep the dress.”

Before he could ask anything else, she pushed him toward the waiting car. Toward Naomi’s silhouetted profile, waiting now inside the warm interior.

“Same condition,” Andy reminded his back, and Phin sighed. Her laughter followed him all the way to the street.

Naomi watched him carefully when he slid inside the opened door, banking a sudden, vivid smile as he tucked himself on the opposite seat. He slid as far into the other corner as he possibly could.

The gown revealed too damn much of her long, smooth legs, crossed at the knee. And no visible tattoo.

“It’s going to be a long drive, isn’t it?” Laughter deepened her voice, that smoky edge that wrapped like a hand around an erection that didn’t need any more help. He jerked. “Would it help if I—”

“Don’t,” Phin said tightly, locking his hands around the seat, “breathe. Or we’re going to end up exactly where we were when we arrived.”

“Oh.” Naomi uncrossed her legs, crossed them again in slow, wicked challenge. “Well, okay, then.”

Phin reached for the champagne.

M
iles would have to tail them to Swann’s.

She glanced out the window, eyes tracking the muted shades of light and motion filtered out by the dark glass. He was out there somewhere, she knew he’d have to be.

If not, she was going to hunt him down in this purple dress and kick his ass. She wanted her gun.

Her skin tingled, as physical as a caress, and she knew Phin was watching her. Again. Still. A part of her reveled in it, knowing he found her irresistible in this wretched, cloud-spun dress, and a part of her knew he only
saw
the dress. The rich girl.

The heiress.

Still, it was one night. Dinner, a dress, Phin’s hands and mouth on her, what would it cost her? Tomorrow she’d start pushing Carson. Harrying him. She’d find out where he hid, how, and take away his ground. She didn’t have time to wait for blueprints anymore.

Tomorrow she’d have bullets to give him.

Just for tonight, she could be Naomi Ishikawa.

Her gaze slid back to him, to the set of his jaw, his glittering eyes, across the dark interior. “So. Swann’s.”

His mouth quirked. “Andy has a big mouth.”

“Lover?” Naomi kept her voice casual, but she saw his smile deepen, saw him nod in the shadows.

“For a little while.”

“What happened?”

Phin placed his empty glass back into the sideboard. “She wanted a career more than she wanted a partner.” He glanced at her.

Or, she realized with a sudden wash of humor, her cleavage. Shifting, she hooked a finger into the tight edge of the corset. Pulling on it didn’t give her any more room to breathe. The damn thing was boned with steel. “You don’t seem very broken up about it.”

When his glance flicked back to her face, amusement settled over his features like a shroud. “It was almost eight years ago, Naomi. We were both young. I was focused on Timeless, and she wanted her design studio.” A beat. “I turned thirty-two earlier this month. I lost my virginity when I was seventeen, and no, it wasn’t with Andy. My first kiss was at a birthday party for a schoolmate. I was ten, she was eleven. Would you like to know how many people I’ve slept with?”

Her chin lifted. “Only if you’d like your rosy view of me tarnished beyond repair.” Saccharine sweetness dripped from every word.

His eyes narrowed. Through a veil of relaxed, pleasant good humor, his gaze glittered dangerously. “Really.”

The car slowed. Naomi meant to hold that gaze, to show him that she could sit in a luxury car, wear a designer dress, and lose nothing of the woman he didn’t know she was, but light shattered over the tinted windows. It exploded like fireworks, drawing a sudden frown, swift tension as her gaze jerked to the window.

“Welcome to Swann’s,” Phin said dryly.

“Reporters?” Naomi didn’t like the look of it. Too many people. Photos. Her face in the news. Worse, on Phin’s arm. “I don’t like reporters.”

“They barely qualify as that.” Phin shifted, reached behind him to tap on the glass between the seats. It eased down, Martin’s capped head tilting as he guided the car through a line of similar luxury vehicles.

Naomi scowled. Busy night for the rich and infamous, wasn’t it?

“I have phoned ahead, sir,” Martin was saying in neat, precise tones. “They are prepared around the back.”

“Thank you.” The window eased up as Phin turned back with a smile. He straightened his jacket. “That should take care of that.”