The music altered, the Canon disappearing beneath a low, techno throb, like a heartbeat picking up pace, and the genteel society women were suddenly sitting straight in their seats, straining to keep their eyes on the cake as it glided down the forty foot catwalk. Maybe it was the lowered lighting, maybe the free-flowing champagne, maybe the cake itself amidst a group who allowed themselves to lunch only on lettuce and white wine, but the emotion I now scented was a growing hunger, the biting hook of cinnamon and allspice and a small dusting of pepper. The cake began a slow rotation too, and the music swelled.
“That’s not a birthday cake,” Lena cried next to Madeleine, standing to clap her hands with everyone else. “It’s-”
“Beefcake!” Cher jumped to her feet as the top of the cake burst open, sparkly icing flying, music pounding, women screaming, and a shirtless man suddenly gyrating like his hips could power a vehicle.
“That’s some filling!” Suzanne, the forty-something-year-old blushing bride, squealed in my ear.
Cher clapped madly on my other side.
I took one good look at the man’s face and spewed champagne all down the front of my enhanced bust line.
Coughing, I wiped the tears from my eyes, and made brief eye contact with the dancer, still humping air, his pelvis doing things that were illegal in Suzanne’s home state.
He paused in his dance of love long enough to locate me. Thank God superheroes didn’t have the power to kill with looks alone. Because my ally and onetime lover-Hunter Lorenzo-shot me a look so wilting I would have keeled over in that moment. Instead, I swallowed hard, and set down my champagne glass, excusing myself to little notice. Hunter kept dancing, Cher pulled out some bills, and Suzanne headed to the stage to cop a feel.
I didn’t laugh.
Vanessa hadn’t shown. Hunter had just burst from a cake. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but like another superhero spotting the bat signal against the night sky, I knew that whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
2
“That was horrifying.”
“No, it wasn’t that bad,” I assured Hunter as I handed him a towel. We were backstage, shuttled to a corner of the dressing room while models wearing-or not wearing-lingerie trotted out pieces for Suzanne’s trousseau. I mentally marked a particularly cute peignoir for later. “You’ve actually got rhythm.”
Unamused, Hunter snatched the towel from my hands and wiped icing from his chest. I found myself staring a moment too long, and looked away before he could catch me. It was the first time we’d been alone since the end of our affair a month ago, and by “affair” I meant something that’d ended almost as soon as it began.
As he turned his back-his beautiful back-to me, I pulled on a black trench coat and reminded myself that starting a relationship on the rebound was asking for heartache. Though the tension between Hunter and me had gradually eased, that didn’t mean we were back to normal. Our interactions were stilted, the pauses filled almost to bursting with everything we were trying not to say, or even think. There was absolutely zero innuendo or sexual tautness, and there’d always been at least that. Even my teasing had no effect, as if what once stood between us had never even existed.
It’s resolve, I thought as I switched into sturdy soled boots. I knew how it felt to have an indecision finally put to rest. I’d done the same with my last boyfriend, Ben, so I recognized the hardened glaze shellacking Hunter’s once soft feelings for me. When resting on me, his expression was faraway yet focused, like he was seeing past skin and blood and bone and laying his mind’s eye at the base of my spine.
It wouldn’t have been so bad, I thought, tucking my heels into my bag, if I didn’t have the memory of how he’d once let that knowing gaze linger on places only lovers found of interest. He’d once captured and followed the length and shape of my fingers, clearly reimagining them on himself. He’d memorized the curve of my wrists, which he once held and bit and raised above me in bed in willing surrender. He’d run his jawline along the muscles in my calves, taking pains to caress them before sliding them around his sides, covering himself in a second skin.
All of that was suddenly barricaded behind a wall of something he wanted more, but as there was no end to the things on this earth a man could want, I had no idea what it was.
But I did know that despite our physical attraction, and a mental connection once forged through magic, Hunter had his own dark secrets. The ones I was aware of-an undercover callboy identity, a cameo appearance with someone in the Shadow manuals, a daughter no one else knew about-were only the beginning. Experience had taught me that beneath such jagged tips lay emotional icebergs, and Hunter, I thought, stealing a glance as he pulled a long-sleeved collared shirt over his head, looked like an unsinkable ship going it alone. For some reason, it made me fear for him.
“What’s your problem, anyway?” I said, careful to keep my voice light. “I mean, this is well within your line of work, right?”
I was referring to that secret work as a male escort, even though I knew it was only a cover in his search for someone, or something, else. Hey, I had to deal with the Jessica Rabbit references in my cover, so why should I let the facts stop me?
“I don’t do that anymore.”
“I know.” He’d sold his Mustang, cancelled his private number, and disappeared from the escort brochures, leaving behind only wistful memories of lonely women. What I didn’t know was why. I couldn’t tell from his demeanor whether he’d found what he was looking for or if he’d given up altogether. And the dead calm of his gaze told me he wasn’t saying.
“So where’s the real stripper?”
He jerked his head. “Still in the cake.”
I snorted, and crossed to the corner to peer inside. Sure enough, there was a hunky stripper inside, sleeping like a well-built baby. “You climbed into a cake with another man?”
“Shut up, Jo.” He crossed the room, and for a moment it looked like he was going to keep on coming, and
“You wouldn’t have had to if Vanessa had shown up.”
“Exactly.” He flipped a cap on to conceal his hair and facial features.
I frowned. “What?”
“She’s missing.” He jerked his head to the door, assuming I’d follow. “Let’s roll.”
Missing? I shook my head, but willed my feet into moving. “No. She’ll be here. I was just texting…”
The text had no punctuation. Vanessa, as I’d known earlier, would never do that.
“Oh, my God.” No, I pleased silently. Visions of Vanessa laughing and smiling and blowing kisses raced through my head. Not her. Not
Hunter led me from the ballroom, careful to keep a discreet distance between us. I put an extra sway in my hips but kept up the pace. We had to get clear of Valhalla, and the Eye-in-the-Sky security system, before we could look like we actually knew each other. Here, in the Archer dynasty’s hallowed gaming halls, we were Olivia Archer and Employee.
“We think they got her while she was on her way to you, so they shouldn’t be far.” Hunter nodded to another guard, who goggled at me when we passed. I shot him a smile that could melt iron and kept walking. “Same message sent to everyone on her contact list. Riddick, Jewell, and Warren were all together when they got it. It’s how we figured it out so quickly.”
And Hunter, who acted as a security guard at Valhalla when not saving the world, had been the closest to me. I should’ve known he wouldn’t have taken off his uniform and climbed into a cake unless the situation was absolutely dire. “Whoever has her is trying to use her to get to me, aren’t they?”
