Seduced by Crimson (5 page)

He arrived late, of course. Chronic digestive problems always did. She tripled the potpourri in the room before he took off his socks. Caucasians had the worst foot odor on the planet.

So progressed her day until four. That was when
he
walked in: a thirty-something surfer with a killer tan, easy manners, and a fat wallet. Xiao Fei's favorite kind of customer. Or he would be if her knuckles hadn't been dragging on the floor from exhaustion.

"Good afternoon," he said, his Hollywood smile brightening the room. Yowza, he was pretty. His green eyes caught the light despite the dim shop illumination. She even liked his thick braid of sun-streaked brown hair, and she usually hated long hair on men.

Suddenly she didn't feel so tired. "How can I help you, sir?"
Please want a treatment. Please want a treatment
. A big tip and a half-naked surfer—what more could a girl want? True, she'd never followed through on such a fantasy, but a girl could dream.

"Well, I'm looking for a plant."

Her smile didn't slip, but the disappointment was crushing. "What kind of plant? We mostly sell herbs." She gestured at the wolfsbane and lucky clover. "We also have decorative bamboo…"

He waved away her suggestions without a second glance. "I'm thinking of a very particular plant. Phoenix persimmon—from Cambodia." He gave the botanical name too, but Xiao Fei didn't hear it over the roaring in her ears.

"Miss? Miss? Are you all right?" he asked. He touched her, and she felt a tingle of hot awareness spear through her.

"Uh, yeah. Sure. Didn't sleep last night. Too much partying, ya know? What were we talking about?" She was babbling, slipping into her valley girl stupid persona because she was freaked out. It wasn't because he was a gorgeous guy that dialed her hormones to "happy." It wasn't even because he'd asked about her super-secret Cambodian magic plant. It was because the world was ending in the next couple days, and she just wasn't capable of rational thought. So she slipped into ditz mode and let her brain go on vacation.

He smiled that dazzling smile again, and Xiao Fei willingly lost herself in it. Much better than those other thoughts. "An herb. Phoenix—"

"Oh, yeah, oh, yeah!" she interrupted. Did he have to bellow the freaking name all over the neighborhood? "Never heard of it. Don't carry it. What made you think we did?" She couldn't afford to give up any fruit now. Not with the demon apocalypse about to begin.

He looked surprised. "I was told you were the girl to talk to. You're Xiao Fei Finney, right?"

She would have denied it, but her stupid name tag declared it loud and clear—in both English and Chinese. "Y-yes," she stammered. "But—"

"Please, let me introduce myself. I'm Professor Patrick Lewis. My mother has been in contact with you."

The damn Internet, seducer of the greedy. It had seemed so simple at the time: sell a few plant cuttings at exorbitant prices, maybe earn enough to get out of her crappy little apartment above the shop. To realize the American dream, even here in Crimson City. Even as a refugee. Who'd have thought those
gun dan
demons would show up, making any mention of the plant highly suspect? How long before they learned how to use the Internet and tracked her down, too?

Better to deny it completely. "So sorry, so sorry. You must have me confused with a different Xiao Fei Finney."
Yeah, right
. As if that were possible. "But thanks for dropping by. Here, have a free ornamental bamboo for your trouble." She shoved a cheap planter at him, but he resolutely pushed it aside.

"Hey, relax. I'm a perfectly harmless guy doing an errand for his mother." Did his voice break a bit on that last word? "Maria Lewis from San Bernardino." There was definitely a note of strain there. "You told her she could pick it up at the shop.
This
shop."

Xiao Fei blinked. She forced herself to breathe. Truly, when he smiled like that, he didn't seem harmless. She was going to kill that online listing right now. "Sorry," she forced out. "Things have been a little crazy here in Crims—er, Los Angeles. Everyone is a little on edge."

"Yeah. I noticed." He leaned against the counter, looking all sleek and toned and handsome. It was a movie-star pose if she'd ever seen one, and yet on him it just looked casual. Gorgeous casual. Can-I-buy-you-a-latte-and-take-you-to-bed casual.

Normally, Xiao Fei would have tossed him out right then and there. From the moment she developed a figure, Caucasian boys had been hitting on her. Something about Asian girls just made them think they had to try. She'd lost count of the number of guys who had come in for treatments just for the chance to get her in bed.

She wasn't interested, never had been. Sex for a hemophiliac wasn't a casual thing. And besides, she'd spent her life just trying to find a place to feel safe. Boys—and men—were many things. Safe wasn't one of them.

But that was before—before the demons showed up, before she realized the world was about to end. Suddenly she regretted having lived so celibate a life. She found herself thinking, why not? Then she was smiling at him in the weirdest way: with warmth and interest.

"I drove by that house on my way here," he continued.

She frowned, lost. "House?"

He nodded. "A couple of miles away. Completely torn to shreds, straight down to the foundations…"

Ah. The demons. Last night.

"Like some monster tore it straight out of the ground…"

The house with the swingset. She cringed.

"And then torched it just to be sure."

A memory clicked into place. The demons she'd seen last night were
gun dan
demons. The kind that shot fire and got in your head like flies until you were screaming and screaming and screaming and couldn't ever stop. Xiao Fei knew them well. She remembered how one of their fireballs could cut through three monks leaving nothing but cinders behind. She knew, and she feared.

"Didn't you hear about it?"

Xiao Fei nodded but said, "No. I've had the radio off all day."

He arched a sun-streaked eyebrow at her. "Uh-huh."

She abruptly realized she was bobble-heading and froze.

"Do you need to lie down or something? You're looking awful pale."

She almost started nodding again. Almost. But then she was hit by a wave of paranoid self-preservation that said,
No lying down! No exposing your throat or anything else! No talking any more with this way-too-casual-and-freakishly-handsome stranger
!

"I'll just get the plant, okay? You can leave then. Take it to your mother. Whatever. Just don't tell anyone where you got it. Hell, don't tell anyone about it at all. Not while you're in Crimson City at least. Not ever!" She spun on her heel and headed for the stairs.

He followed, a bare inch behind her. Geez, she felt his heat on the back of her neck. She stopped and abruptly spun back.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

He flushed and retreated a step. "I… uh… I was just going to follow you. You know, to get the plant. But I guess…" He rubbed a hand through his hair, instantly changing his 'do from sleek chic to rumpled, just-out-of-bed gorgeous. "I guess you probably don't want a strange man in your bedroom, huh?"

She narrowed her eyes. "My bedroom? How did you know I lived here?"

He frowned. "You told my mother. In your e-mails to her. She said so…"

Had she? She didn't remember.

"Wow. You really are paranoid," he remarked.

"I'm Cambodian."
Crap
! What the hell had induced her to say that? Geez, the United States was rubbing off on her if she gave out such details so casually. What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she keep her mouth shut, shut, shut?

The man raised his hands and took another step backward. "Look, I'm obviously freaking you out here. I'm really sorry about that. I don't need the plant right away…"

Good. He was leaving.

"And besides, I'd like a session. Acupuncture. I can get the cutting afterward."

She blinked, her brain too befuddled to compute.

"I'm… having a little problem lately." He swallowed, and his tan skin seemed to pull a little tighter around his mouth. "Dealing with change, you know. It's been really hard." God help her, his voice cracked on the last sentence. And were those tears in his eyes?

She nodded. "A single acupuncture treatment can do wonders to help the body deal with stress." The words were out before she could stop them; she'd used that sales pitch so many times to so many people, it just popped out automatically.

He smiled and, stupid her, her insides brightened. "That's what my mom used to say."

She frowned. "Used to?"

"Er, yeah. Whenever we talked about acupuncture. She's a regular, you know. In San Bernardino. Where she lives." He looked at her, and it seemed as if she saw his whole heart in his eyes. "I'd like to try it this once. To see if she's right. If you don't mind."

"Of course not." She spoke before her brain engaged. She didn't want him to hang around her anymore. She didn't want to get intimate with his energy flow. She didn't want anything to do with him. And yet here she was, gesturing to the smallest and coziest treatment room. What was wrong with her?

She sighed. She was short-circuited, that was what. No sleep, a quart low on blood, and surrounded by demons who wanted to take over the world. Why wouldn't she loiter about with a gorgeous man who was making her act stupider than she had in years?

At least she'd get to see him naked.

Well, this was a new experience, baring his ass to someone so reputedly dangerous. True, she was supposedly a demon killer, but that didn't make Patrick's clenched buttocks feel any warmer. Not much hand-to-hand you could do with your butt in the breeze and your shriveled privates bellying up to a cold treatment table. At least he was lying facedown; she wouldn't have to see his beet-red expression if she decided to kill him.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, his goal was to seduce Xiao Fei. What better start than getting completely naked and disdaining the use of a covering drape? But while he'd intended to flirt with her while she touched him, the trick was to make the scene romantic rather than clinical. And he couldn't be aggressive. And he couldn't turn over until he was a bit more… impressive. Unfortunately that might be a really, really long time from now.

Her fingertips touched his lower back, rotating slightly as she walked around the table. "No wonder you're having problems," she said. "Your entire body is bottled up. You're shriveling your qi. Relax. Let it flow."

She trailed her hand up his spine to his shoulder blades, then down, way down, to the curve of his buttocks. Her touch was soothing, her strokes both professional and incredibly erotic—though how she managed that, Patrick hadn't the vaguest idea. Well, well. Maybe he could do this after all. At least the shrinkage problem was going away.

He took a deep breath and mentally girded his loins, so to speak. He had a job to do here. A damn important one. His parents had given up their lives, and he was damn well going to see this through. Even if he had to get needles stuck in his ass to do it. He was the Draig-Uisge, after all. He had killed for his cause. How much easier would it be to seduce a beautiful woman?

He closed his eyes and threw all his focus into casting the spell. In truth, he would have no idea if it worked; he'd never used a seduction spell in his life. Women just hadn't been that hard to come by. But he had precious little time to make love to Xiao Fei, and if this ancient love charm helped, he was happy to take advantage.

"That's better," she said, her voice low and husky. "Your body is opening up."

That wasn't all that was opening up, thanks to the love spell. The problem with druidic charms was that they often worked great on the intended target—in this case, sweet little Xiao Fei. But they also worked on the caster—himself. AH the mental energy that went into making him more sexually appealing to her made him randy as hell. And at the moment, all Xiao Fei had agreed to do was stick needles in him.

Start with small talk. Ask about her life. Act like this is a normal interaction
. "So, how long have you been doing acupuncture?"

"I learned as a little child in the old country," she replied. A canned speech if there ever was one.

"In Cambodia? That old country?" he probed. She'd started to press warm, nimble fingers into the base of his skull, but stopped when he spoke. She made a small noise. He shifted to look at her face. "I'm just trying to make conversation. Are you always so jumpy?"

She visibly inhaled. Her utilitarian white blouse stretched taut across her chest; then she exhaled in a slow release that ended in a smile. "Perhaps I should be the client."

"Sure!" He almost leaped off the table. Then he remembered he was supposed to want this appointment. Her eyes widened in surprise, and he hastily scrambled to cover his gaffe. "Er, but then I wouldn't… I mean, I need this treatment, right? So I should probably stay where I am. Right?"

She set her hand gently on his shoulder. "I think we'll keep it like this for the moment."