Fire Me Up
Page 2

"I could have had a nice vacation in the Bahamas, but oh, no, I had to come—" My feet stopped moving. They simply stopped moving as my eyes bugged out of my head, my heart ceased beating, and my brain, usually a reliable and trustworthy organ, came to an abrupt and grinding halt. With no obstructing crowd remaining, the group of people standing just outside the floor-to-ceiling glass windows on the west side of the train station was perfectly visible to me.
Jim stopped and looked back at me, one furry black eyebrow cocked in question at my abbreviated statement. "You aren't using crude sexual slang, are you? No, you can't be, because I know for a fact you haven't been get-tin' any since we left Paris."
Slowly, I blinked to make sure I wasn't seeing things, my stomach turning somersaults, my whole being riveted on the scene just outside the station.
Jim turned to see what held me in such thrall. "Wow. Talk about speaking of the great horned one. I must be psychic or something. What's he doing in Budapest?"
It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. It just hurt, period. I felt like someone had used me as a punching bag for a few hours, every atom of my body pulled so tight I thought T was going to explode into a million little pieces.
Outside the window a small clutch of people stood before a long, glistening black limousine, evidently there to welcome the VIPs from the train. They consisted of three men and one woman—all Asian, all dressed in red and black. The men wore black slacks with open-necked shirts in different shades of red, while the woman looked as if she'd just stepped from the cover of Beijing Vogue. She was tall and willowy, had long, straight glossy black hair that reached to her waist, wore a black miniskirt and a red leather bustier, all carried off with an effortless grace that spoke of years spent in expensive Swiss finishing schools.
But it was one of the men greeting the VIPs who caught and held my attention. The wind rippled the dark forest green silk of his shirt so that it outlined the lovely curves of his muscular chest and arms. That same wind was responsible for his dark hair, longer than I had remembered it, ruffling back off a brow graced by two ebony slashes that were his eyebrows. Despite the heat of the August afternoon, he wore leather pants—tight leather pants—the garment glistening in the sun as if it had been painted on his long legs and adorable derriere as he made a courtly bow to the VIPs.
"Drake," I said on a breath, my body suddenly tingling as if it was coming to life after a long, long sleep. Even his name left my lips sensitized, the sound of that one word strange after its banishment from my life four weeks ago.
Four weeks? It seemed more like a lifetime.
Jim gave me a long, appraising look. "You're not going to go all Buffy/Angel on me, are you? Mooning around bemoaning the forbidden love that cannot be? Because if you are, I'm finding myself a new demon lord. Love I can take, but mooning is not in my contract."
I started toward the window, unable to help myself, my body suddenly a mass of erogenous zones that wanted more than anything on this earth to place itself in Drake's hands. His lovely long-fingered, extremely talented hands.
"Aisling Grey."
The sound of my name brought me out of the trance. I swallowed hard and looked around, my mind a muddle of desire and lust and erotic memories that damn near brought me to my knees. Names, as I have had opportunity to point out, have power, and Jim's invoking my name had the ability to snap me out of something I had spent every night praying for strength against.
"Thanks, Jim." Slowly I gathered my wits and determination, thankful that in the hustle and bustle of the train station no one had noticed a deranged, lust-crazed woman and her demon in talking-dog form. "I don't quite know what came over me."
It raised an expressive eyebrow. "I know."
I dragged my eyes from the sight of Drake and his men waving the VIPs toward the limo. I hauled my wheeled suitcase forward and out the doors, purposely turning my back to the scene that had held such interest, Jim pacing silently beside me. "I'm OK now. It was just a little aberration. I told you when we left Paris that things between Drake and me were over. It just took me by surprise seeing him here, in Budapest. I had assumed he'd still be in France." Safe. Several hundreds of miles away. In a completely different country, living out his life without me.
"Uh-huh. Right. Tell it to the tail, Aisling."
I ignored my smart-mouthed demon as we joined the end of a queue for taxis. The handful of people ahead of us laughed and chatted gaily, just as if their world hadn't come to a grinding halt, whereas mine ... I glanced back at the limo. Drake was overseeing Pal, one of his men, loading the matched set of luggage in the back of the glossy car. Bustier Woman was speaking to one of her contingent, suddenly calling for Drake. I narrowed my eyes as he strolled toward her with the same fluid, coiled power that sent shivers of delight down my back.
Had Once. Now, of course, it did nothing for me. Nothing at all.
I sighed. Jim stuck its snout in the bag of the elderly couple in front of us, saying softly, "That was a pretty pathetic sigh. It had a lot of meat to it."
"I know," I answered, trying not to grind my teeth as the woman put her hand on Drake's silk-clad arm, no doubt caressing his wonderful steely bicep. "It's really bad when you can't even lie convincingly to yourself."
Jim pulled its head from the bag to look at me, its eyes opening wide suddenly as it made an odd combination of a bark and a warning. "Behind you!"
I dropped its leash and spun around in a crouch, half expecting an attack of some sort, but finding instead that my suitcase had attracted the attention of three street gypsies, all of whom obviously had the intention of lightening the load of my possessions."The amulet!" I screeched, throwing myself on top of the half-opened bag.
The biggest of the thieves, a young man who looked to be about nineteen, jerked the bag out from underneath me, his accomplices pulling on the outer flap so that it peeled back like a ripe banana. I lunged toward the small brown leather amulet bag that was stuffed into my underwear. "Hey! Let go! Police!" My fingers closed around the bag just as the youngest thief, a girl of about fifteen or so, grabbed it, but I had not survived my Uncle Damian's wrath concerning the loss of a valuable antiquity for nothing. I had to save this one at all costs. I jerked the amulet free just as someone behind me shouted. The street gypsies snatched up handfuls of my things—pants, shoes, and my cosmetic case—before racing off in three different directions.