“Mmm. Such passionate aggression. I love it. Bad attitudes are sexy.” Sparkle laid both palms flat on the glass counter-top and studied her nails. “When did you come into being, Deimos?” Maybe she’d try a different nail color, a deep, sensual shade of red. “What do you think, should I change colors? Maybe I’ll try Dark Desire. It gives me yummy shivers just saying its name. I can almost feel the cool slide of it on my nails, see the intense rich shine of it—”
“Two thousand one, and I don’t give a damn about—”
Sparkle sighed. “I know, you don’t give a damn about my nails. You know, you need to seriously get in touch with your senses.” She studied him. His lithe cat body fairly thrummed with impatience. So young, so reckless, so stupid. “I’m going to lay everything out for you. First off, it doesn’t take any talent to destroy inanimate objects. They don’t argue or say no. Messing with human emotions is the real challenge. People never do what you expect them to do.”
“So what’s your point?” Deimos yawned to demonstrate his complete lack of interest in messing with human emotions. “You still haven’t told me why I have to be a cat. And why can’t I talk out loud?”
Now he was really starting to tick her off. “Look, I’ve been around for thousands of years, and I have power you can only dream about. So my point is, if I chose to mentor you, then you damn well better get with the program.”
She read the mutinous darkening of his amber eyes, the angry twitch of his tail. Her kick-butt approach wasn’t getting the job done. Maybe she needed to appeal to his ego. Males, whether human or nonhuman, were Silly Putty in the hands of a smart woman who knew how to stroke their egos.
Sparkle transformed her expression into her favorite persona: the sensual seductress. She’d practiced and perfected it over the centuries. Now she aimed it at the mini jungle-kitty glaring at her from across the store.
“Come here, cutie.” She crooked her finger at him.
He padded over to the counter.
“Sit here.” She indicated the chair next to him that she always kept ready for any male customer, usually elderly, who grew weak from exposure to all of her erotic intensity.
Deimos leaped for the chair, a soaring graceful arc that fell about three inches short of his target. He managed to hook his front paws onto the seat and hung there with back paws treading air. Sparkle leaned across the counter, grabbed the back of his neck, and lifted him onto the seat. “Your eye-paw coordination is still a little off, but it’ll get better.” A lie. He was a klutz.
Before he had a chance to whine, Sparkle scratched behind his ears and then slid her fingers the length of his back. She felt him relax beneath her touch. “I chose you out of all the newbie cosmic troublemakers because I saw the possibility for greatness in you, Deimos. And all of the most famous cosmic troublemakers have taken cat forms at one time or another. Cats are beautiful, intelligent, and deliciously sneaky. Perfect for spying. I bet you’ll make an incredible spy.”
Deimos blinked as the anger faded from his eyes. “Yeah?” If he wasn’t careful, his expanding pride would puff him up like a balloon, and he’d just float away. “I’ll have to communicate mentally so no one catches on that I’m a spy.”
Sparkle smiled. “Yeah.” But then her smile wavered. “You’re lucky I let you choose your cat form. I was forced to be a white cat.” She allowed herself a delicate shudder. “White made my butt look huge. It scarred my psyche for months.”
She ignored Deimos’s blank look and continued to stroke him. “Only a special few have the talent to impact human lives on a personal level. As soon as I saw you, I knew you were one of the few. You’re immensely gifted and have this amazing sexual aura. It just blew me away.”
Deimos practically glowed. “For real? I won’t let you down. I’ll work my tail off. What’s your plan?”
Gotcha. “Here’s the deal. For thousands of years I’ve served up sex and sin for dessert, so owning a candy store seemed a natural progression. I bought Sweet Indulgence, my little shop of chocolate creams and erotic dreams, because it was next to this Disney World wannabe. I figured that thousands of people would pour into Galveston to visit the theme park, and I’d have lots of potential victims to scope out.”
Deimos washed his face with one spotted paw. “Makes sense.”
“Uh-uh. Didn’t work out. The only ones who walked through my door were young couples trailing their two point five sticky-fingered kiddies after them. They were so not the clientele I’d hoped for.” It hadn’t taken long for her to realize she’d either have to sell her store or get rid of the theme park.
“So I had my attorney buy the park. I’ve renamed it Live the Fantasy, and I envision a reality theme park where adults can role-play wild adventures. Always wanted to be the captain of a pirate ship? You’ve got it at Live the Fantasy. The park is G rated, so the city fathers expect everyone to have good clean fun.” Her smile was filled with wicked intent. “They’re kidding, right? How boring is that? The only good fantasy is a sexual fantasy. I get yummy shivers just thinking about the lust a few intense fantasies will generate.” Sparkle felt tingly all over, the reaction of a true sexual visionary. “I foresee thousands of people jump-starting their sputtering sex lives after a visit to Live the Fantasy.”
Deimos’s whiskers twitched with excitement. “Wow, sounds great. Hey, when you get bored with the whole theme park thing, can
