“You sound worried that they’re going to try to kill me.” His fingertips were moving over her face, just brushing back and forth as if he enjoyed the texture of her skin. Dahlia felt the touch all the way to her toes. Deep inside where heat collected and pooled in her most feminine core, she felt her body clench strongly in reaction.
“I just want to know if you want out now, Dahlia. I can go after Calhoun myself.”
“While I’m nice and safe.” She was looking out from under his arm, searching for the man on the roof. “I don’t think so. This is my mess and I intend to clean it up. Don’t be fooled just because I get a little sick around people and violence. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
He didn’t point out that he shot a man to keep her alive. “Can you see him? The blond on the roof?”
“Yes, he’s glanced this way a couple of times. He has a pair of binoculars.”
“Then we’d better give him something to look at.” He stepped closer, his body nearly touching hers, but not quite.
Dahlia instantly felt the temperature around them rise. “This is risky.”
“Kissing you?” He cupped her chin firmly, captured her gaze with his.
“You can’t kiss me, Nicolas.” Her heart pounded so hard she was afraid it might burst. His face was so perfect to her, etched in granite, the hard lines and planes that of a man, not a boy.
He bent his head slowly toward hers, holding her gaze.
He stopped when his lips were a mere breath away. When she could taste him. When her heart went from pounding to fluttering and her body began sizzling with electricity. “I think kissing you is a very good idea.”
She felt his words vibrate through her entire body. He didn’t actually need to kiss her for her mind to go into meltdown. It happened just thinking about kissing him. “You have such a great mouth, Nicolas. Tempting, you know? But lightning happens when we kiss. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves do we?”
“Is that a trick question? If I say no, does that mean I don’t get to kiss you? Because right now, kissing you seems the most important thing in the world.”
She loved the way his magic voice roughened and his eyes went from ice to a blaze when he looked at her. “Well, then, who am I to tell you to have good sense?” The words came out in a whisper. She could barely breathe with him so close to her. How was it possible to form a rational thought?
He smiled. Right before he kissed her, he gave an arrogant, self-satisfied male smirk. And then she couldn’t think anymore, not even to reprimand him. She was lost in the hot urgency of his mouth. They merged, fused together, burned up in each other’s arms. And the strange thing was, only their mouths were touching. His body remained so close she felt the heat of it arcing through her, around her, but he was careful to keep their bodies apart. And it was the only thing that saved her from melting into a puddle at his feet.
She went weak in the knees and light in the head. The earth shifted and moved. Colors danced behind her eyes, and a strange purring was in her mind. She wanted to climb inside of him and take refuge, take shelter in the cool pools she saw in his mind. How he could be so cool inside and heat up her world so rapidly, she didn’t know. And she didn’t care. Only his mouth and the magic it made mattered.
CHAPTER NINE
Nicolas lifted his head with more reluctance than self-control. He should never have initiated a kiss with her on the street. His body reacted immediately with urgent demands. Worse, his head seemed to be spinning along with his surroundings. He dropped a brief, hard kiss on her upturned mouth and turned his head slightly to get a view of the watcher on the rooftop across the street from them.
“I think my vision’s blurred,” he murmured.
She responded with a hesitant laugh. “If that’s all that happened, you’re a heck of a better kisser than I am. I can’t stand up.”
“I’m afraid to touch you. We might both go up in flames.”
She sighed. “The story of my life. What’s our friend doing?”
“He’s climbing off the roof. People will be all over the streets soon. He can’t afford to get caught up there. He would have done better to be on a balcony watching like everyone else is.”
“If you ever decide to get out of the business, you might want to write a manual.” She couldn’t take her gaze from his face, not even to look at the man they needed to follow. She felt mesmerized by Nicolas. The pad of his thumb was caressing her chin, stroking back and forth in a small rhythmic movement that both fascinated her and sent a shiver down her spine. “Have you ever been anyone’s obsession?”
The faintest trace of a grin softened his mouth. “Only those who want to kill me.”
“Are there many?”
“Not alive.” He shifted and scooped up his pack. “I don’t like people trying to kill me, obsessed or not. I have a rule about that. Come on.” He took her arm. “He’s on the move. Just walk with me, flirt a bit and hold my hand. We’ll catch an early cup of coffee.”
“You want me to blend.” She sighed and tossed back her abundance of hair. “I’ve never been much of a blender. I prefer the dark corners myself.”
“I don’t want him to get a look at you.”
“They don’t know me. I was trained under another name. Even if they manage to find that information, it won’t do them any good.”
He glanced down at her. “The name you trained under was Novelty White. Which of course translates to Dahlia Le Blanc. Not very clever.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t my idea. How would you like to be called Novelty?” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I was a teenager, for heaven’s sake.”
“You have a point. I would have thought you would strenuously object.”
“At the time, I gave very little input. I was going through my silent stage.” She glanced at him with a small smile. “You know the ‘I’m the superior teen and you’re just lint’ stage. Mostly I wanted to defy and irritate Whitney. I took great pleasure in making him angry. Did he really get rid of everyone but Lily? Because if Lily is real, so are the others.”
“Do you remember them? The other girls?”
“Some of them. Most are vague, but there are a couple of the others like Lily I remember. Flame. She had another name, but I’m not certain I remember it.”