Protecting His Witch (Entangled Covet) (Keeper Of The Veil series Book 1) (2 page)

Chapter Two

A decade later…

The timeless chords of a swing-era favorite filtered between the whirling vertigo in Kat Ramsey’s brain. She attempted an eyelid crack. Light scorched her retinas.
Too soon for vision.

She stumbled backward, bumping into a wall. With her eyelids sealed shut, she waited for her vision to stabilize.

It had happened again—the bizarre world shift. Moments ago she’d been modeling her newest online super-sale find in front of her full-length bedroom mirror. The strappy designer high heels worked with the spaghetti-strap black gown she’d purchased a year ago. Then her brain went dizzy and poof…now she was here, wherever here might be, in Otherworld.

The magical reality change wasn’t time travel. Everything in Otherworld was the same year and similar technology, but it wasn’t her home. Different people, different organizations, and slightly different politics.

The hum of many conversations at once registered in her ears as the chords of the familiar tune continued. The imperfections of the music suggested a live band. She squinted. Her eyes burned, but she forced them to stay open. Nearby a horde of elegantly dressed women verbally one-upped each other and sipped at cocktails. The glut of jaw-dropping designer formal wear and sparkly jewels suggested a high-society shindig. Her dress was appropriate, even if it was off-the-rack.

Between one blink and the next, her eyes gave the thumbs-up on twenty-twenty again. A large banner along the far wall proclaimed, “Rose Center Juvenile Diabetes Benefit sponsored by Ryan Corp.” The pamphlets lining the wall near her indicated this was the Natural Science Center in New York City.

Her heart raced, and she forced herself to swallow. Legs still wobbly, she continued leaning against the wall.

Pull yourself together. You’ve done this four times before. You’ll get through this and go home.
She focused on the physical act of breathing. Air in. Air out. Air in. Air out.

A waiter paused in front of her with a tray of glasses filled with white wine. Kat took one and thanked him.

She pushed away from the wall and sipped the wine. The rich, buttery flavor of chardonnay coated her palate and soothed her dry throat. “Mmm,” she mumbled.
This isn’t the cheap stuff.

A horde of people crowded her, and she started to move away, but a male body smashed into her. The three-inch incline she’d forced her feet into was no match for a battering ram.

With lightning speed her unintentional attacker pulled her tight to his chest.

Thank God the wine didn’t spill
.

“Pardon me,” a husky male baritone murmured. He didn’t release her.

Startled to find herself walled in by the heat of a seriously intimidating, hard, male body, she backed up a step, forcing her savior to let go. “Thanks,” she murmured.

One glance up and her lungs went on strike. This guy was built big. Uncompromising raw power in a six-foot-something package met her stare. A thin, sexy scar over his right cheek suggested he might not have had a pampered heritage. He was gorgeous. Forget gorgeous. He was utterly, mind-blowingly handsome.

The corners of his lips tipped upward into a seductive half smile. A smile she knew too well—Matthew Ryan.

“Are you enjoying yourself, Ms. Ramsey?” His gaze traveled to her chest and followed the line of the silver chain that disappeared between her breasts. His gaze darted up to hers. They scorched with the offer of sex and any carnal fantasy she dared conjure.

“Matt?” Sensation so intense it bordered on pain flooded her body, as if every cell had suddenly jolted to life. Her skin tingled, tight and hot.

“So you do remember who I am.”

She wished she could squelch the flush that heated her cheeks, and the compulsive need to moisten her lips. “I’m not really enjoying myself so much. No.” She took another step back, needing to distance herself from him. Her body might still light up for the bastard as instantly as the first time she’d met him a decade ago. But the memory of his rejection remained etched into her memory like a bad tattoo. Indignant hatred surged. She tried to catch his thoughts, but got nothing from him. Not even an impression of his emotions. He was still the only person she’d ever met from whom she couldn’t pick up mental ramblings.

“No? Aren’t you supposed to be polite and tell your host this is the best party you’ve ever attended?” His lips quirked upward into a grin, flashing a set of perfect dimples.

Ryan Corporation. Matthew Ryan.
Damn.

She glanced around. Distractedly she said, “Looks like a great party.” Detailed male reviews of her anatomy, and women dissing every aspect of her appearance overloaded her brain. She massaged her temple against the seed of an excruciating migraine.
Focus,
she ordered herself
. Stop catching everyone’s thoughts
.

The attention didn’t surprise her. His presence commanded notice. Success and confidence seeped from his pores. As did power.

Her head pain pushed into the pulse-throbbing phase, and she winced, rubbing a spot on her temple.

“Headache?”

The cold clamminess of nausea had her swallowing hard. She forced a smile. She would not show weakness. Not in front of him.

You will not puke
. “I don’t often attend this type of event. I admit this wine is excellent.” She tilted the glass to her lips. One whiff of the liquid’s floral bouquet and she knew she shouldn’t swallow. A childhood of ingrained social etiquette instructed she not spit the liquid back into the glass as her stomach demanded. Her Southern belle mother’s horrified face swam in her brain. With determination she forced the liquid down. Her stomach clamped tight, warning her it would cope, but wasn’t happy.

She chanced meeting his gaze—another colossal bad choice. Her nerves buzzed like a virgin facing her first kiss. She went for the wine again, not even realizing until it coated her taste buds.

The back of his fingers whisked across her exposed chest, briefly touching the chain. The delicate intimacy of the touch electrified all exposed skin. Wine caught in her throat, stimulating an immediate cough.

“Bit of glitter or something,” he mumbled. The blue of his eyes smoldered when they lifted from her chest. He grinned as if he knew exactly the havoc his touch wreaked.

Kat wished she could come off as apathetic but her cheeks heated and she couldn’t hold his gaze. Oddly, her head no longer throbbed. The nausea had also vanished. Usually it took hours when a crowd’s thoughts overwhelmed her for the head pain to subside. There must be something to be said for distraction. Or, maybe Matt really did have magical capabilities.

She chanced meeting his gaze. The sexual invite in his deep blues shot her mind right into a scatterbrained fluster. A giggle almost escaped.

Was he trying to push them into the foreplay zone? Maybe this was his normal interaction with every woman he encountered. God knew his body was killer and his eyes promised satisfaction, something she knew he could deliver.

She’d never let him touch her again.

Close it down and objectify
, she ordered herself. She focused to shut down her emotional grid as best possible, and on being professional, something she’d perfected after years as a veterinarian subjected to the gamut of wacky. Despite his self-assurance, a cold stillness rested at the surface. Gone was the enthusiasm of youth she remembered from their college one-nighter. Beneath his veneer, she sensed he masked a crouching deadly power. His was the gaze of a high-end predator, throwing its prey a seductive look, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

And she was the prey. The thought doused any hint of lust like an ice-water splash.

“Not married?” His gaze skipped to her ringless left hand.

She lifted an eyebrow but refused to answer. Instead she asked, “You?” Her gaze fell to his left hand, also bare.

He flashed her a drop dead gorgeous smile. “It’s been a while, wildcat.”

“Not long enough,” she gritted out. An unwanted vision from their long-ago night slow-moed in her brain. Washboard abs…hips pumping rhythmically just one beat too slow to meet the desperate need he created. Her body temperature escalated to critical overheat.
Stop it
, she ordered her mind.
The Sonora Desert will ice over before we’re going there again.

“We could do better a second time.” His self-assured, yet stunning grin irritated her.

“In your dreams.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again, and frowned. Was he taking her hint they weren’t going there? And was that disappointment swirling in her gut?

A fiftyish man, with a handsomely tanned face and in-shape body, stepped in front of Matt. “I was just over there at the bar. I haven’t seen you in a while, Matt. Nice party.” He held out his hand.

Matt returned the handshake. “I hope you’re enjoying the evening. Kat and I were just on our way to the dance floor.”

Kat pasted on a pleasant smile.
Like hell I’ll dance with you.

The interloper’s gaze dropped to her chest. His thoughts echoed loudly in her mind:
Fantastic boobs. Wonder who she is and where his girlfriend is. No surprise he’s got a hard-on.

Her eyes skirted southward on Matt, confirming the comment. Her face flamed hot. No hint of teasing remained on his face. No knowing eyebrow quirk. Just a mask of harsh control—unreadable and remote.

“Are you doing a speech tonight?” the guy asked Matt.

“Of course.”

She phased out of their stilted, polite conversation. Years of pent-up resentment exploded in her brain. The unfaithful bastard probably seduced women on a nightly basis whenever his girlfriend left town. Her eyes narrowed his way, but his gaze didn’t meet hers. She wanted to scream,
You have a girlfriend! Planning to cheat, again?
Anger revved, close to boilover. She threw a mental slap at him, but gasped when pain rocked her brain with the sensation of smashing against a brick wall. He blocked her?

What just happened? The two previous mental slaps she’d thrown landed her intended victim on the floor. Perhaps he really had used magic to clear her headache today and all those years ago. What was this guy?

His rebuke-filled gaze zeroed in on her. In a bored tone at odds with the warning in his eyes, he said, “I hope you’re planning to donate.”

“Of course.” The other guy leered at her chest again.
Bet Matt wouldn’t mind me borrowing her tonight.

She stepped sideways, closer to Matt, creeped out by the guy’s wolfish grin and the montage of X-rated images flashing through his brain.

Matt clasped her hand and said, “If you’ll excuse us.” He placed her glass on a passing waiter’s tray and led her toward the floor.

She hesitated. Matt gripped her arm and propelled her through the crowd. He leaned close to her ear and whispered, “If you don’t dance with me right now, that guy will read it as a yes to you spending the night at his penthouse.”

She whispered back, “All he did was look.”

“He’s richer than God and fucks a different girl every night. I’m sure he’d be glad to add you to his dossier.”

“Are you any different?”

His lips thinned. “Yes.” Based on his closed look, that was as much as she’d get from him on this subject.

“Fine.” Despite the resentment simmering in her blood, excitement thrummed through her as they neared the dance floor. Last year she’d won the national amateur Latin Dance championship. She loved moving on a dance floor.

On their way through the crowd, she glanced up at Matt again.

His stylishly disheveled black hair was just a tad too long, but not long enough to cover the small bad-boy silver hoop in his right ear. The earring didn’t mesh with the expensive tuxedo tailored to his body. Over the years he’d retained the panties-dropper sexy. That in combo with the power he now radiated ramped him up to devastating.

And she wasn’t the only one to notice. She gritted her molars in annoyance as most of the women in the vicinity stopped to stare. The only one who didn’t seem to notice was Matt.

A random thought from a woman sneaked into her brain,
He never dances
. A man thought,
She looks like his first wife.

He’d been married? She didn’t like that thought. At all.

Once they reached the dance floor, he glanced down. “That guy wasn’t your type, anyway.”

Heart racing, she tilted her head back to look up at the man towering over her. “And just who do you think is my type?”

His gaze darted down to her mouth. Heat sparked in her belly, igniting the need to succumb to the white-hot connection between them. She didn’t know what she wanted more. To slap his face publicly and extinguish this connection forever, or his arms around her to keep this connection burning hotly.

…

Your type? Me.
Matt could barely believe the gorgeous redhead he’d tried to locate for a decade was here. And almost in his arms again. Kat Ramsey in reality eclipsed every latent memory of their one night, and every fantasy his brain had conjured since. They needed to resolve the problem of that zinger of a curse, which had rendered every encounter with other women to be a disappointment. But at the moment he barely cared. He was so hard that it might push him past the breaking point. He might just drag her to a dark corner and kiss her until the firecracker smoldering beneath the surface broke free. He wanted to hear her cry out his name in pleasure again.

“Smile. People are staring,” he whispered.

A classic Sinatra song started, although the singer didn’t do the vocal part justice. He slid his hand around her waist and stepped them into the slow dance. Her body was stiff, but she didn’t trip or step on his toes. In fact, she moved so gracefully in sync with his lead that he suspected she’d had training.

A tense smile touched her lips. “I heard someone back there say you don’t dance.”

“It’s been a while since I braved stepping onto parquet.”

“I guess I should be honored then.” She didn’t meet his gaze.