3

Sunday, April10

I was a knot of dark, tangled emotions when my plane touched down in New Orleans. Since the day of the fire, they'd been raging

out of control. Gone was pragmatic, steady Zo. From the ashes of my mother's fiery grave, a wild thing had arisen.

The horrific, wholly inexplicable sensations I'd experienced as I'd somehow shared my mother's death hadn't revisited me,

but the crusty dragon birthed in my belly at that moment had neither departed nor calmed. Rather, she grew testier and more

volatile with each passing day. I attributed the fractious inferno to grief, as I did everything lately.

The evening sky was indigo and orchid, and the city, silvered by recent rain, was lavender grit, bougainvillea, neon signs,

and gently decaying architecture. As we taxied through the narrow cobblestone streets to the Hotel Monteleone, where I'd be

spending the night before leaving for Divinity, Louisiana, tomorrow afternoon, I listened to my cab driver tallying the places

in the city I should take care to avoid. New Orleans was magical, with countless experiences to be savored, but a solitary

traveler, he warned, should give wide berth to certain pockets of the city. I took mental notes of those areas, although I

had little intention of leaving my hotel.

If tonight was anything like the nights preceding it, I'd be in bed, crying, trying to decide what to do next, pretending I had a choice, any choice at all, other than lining up three new jobs and working to exhaustion to pay Mom's medical bills for pretty much the rest of my life. They'd begun refusing treatment until I'd agreed to leverage my future, putting all accounts in my name. At least now I wouldn't get fired all the time. There was that depressing bright spot.

The Monteleone soared up from the grimy street, an elegant ivory Beaux-Arts hotel embellished with elaborate moldings, attended

by impeccable doormen who ushered me inside. After registering at the front desk and peeking into the rotating Carousel Bar

she was stolen from me before her time. I'd understood the parameters of our life: Mom had cancer

and at least another year to live. We'd had plans for that time. We'd gotten none of the lingering goodbye we'd expected. She'd promised to tell me more about my father, said

there were things about the Greys I needed to know before she died.

A blessing, I would muse eventually in the bleary-eyed, cotton-brained hours of dawn, after I'd wept myself dry. I knew the

horrors the future held for her, for both of us, had she lived.

Still, there are blessings that flay to bone.

You must promise me , Mom had begun insisting in recent months, that you won't grieve me when I'm gone. You've paid too high a price already. Live, my darling Zo. Live. Be irresponsible

for once in your life. File bankruptcy and seize every opportunity that comes your way. Find a husband, have babies. You'll

be such a wonderful mother!

Mom had wanted desperately to hold a grandchild before she died, avidly encouraging it. She'd made it clear she had no issues

with me having a baby without a husband on the horizon. It would be just us, three generations of Grey women. Before she'd

gotten so sick, I'd often thought I might one day do that. I loved our life. Wherever we landed, in whatever town, we always

found a bit of land, grew a garden, and found some kind of work. I loved the bond we shared, her uplifting way of looking

at the world no matter how hard things were, and I looked forward to being a mother. I imagined the joy of holding my own

child might eclipse all other joys, and there would be nothing I wouldn't do for my daughter or son, no price I wouldn't pay

to see them grow strong and thrive, love and be loved. To share that experience with my mother had been a nearly irresistible

pull in my blood.

But Joanna Grey, quiet and grateful for life's many gifts, haunted and hunted yet cheerful and kind, frail in body yet formidable

in will, would never hold a grandchild. I'd failed to grant that wish, and countless others. I'd failed to save her. I'd failed

the devotion of being at her side, holding her hand, assuring her of how deeply she was loved, that she was the best of mothers,

so that the last earthly words she heard were ones that warmed her heart and comforted her soul. I failed to ease her gently

into that good night.

I tossed my head, shuttered those thoughts. I knew they would return all too soon, with a thorny cluster of others I couldn't deal with, so I pushed up from the edge of the tub and stared at my reflection in the mirror. Glittering amber eyes stared back, and I knew the edge in them, the wildness, the hunger. As close to need as I ever got. I'd learned to need nothing at a young age; it was easier when your life was always vanishing in the taillights of a hastily packed car.

I made the impulsive decision to treat myself to dinner downstairs at Criollo, further proof of my volatile emotions. I should

have been hoarding every cent I had, but should didn't carry the same weight it once had. Easier to take risks when you were the only one who might suffer for them and could

live on cans of tuna and boxes of crackers for a few weeks to recover from the splurge.

I showered, did my hair and makeup, then slipped into one of the two new dresses I'd bought on sale. I had two pairs of jeans,

five shirts, seven pairs of underwear, and two bras, one white, one black. I could travel carrying everything I owned. It

was a strange feeling. No family, few possessions, no home. I simply couldn't conceive of a world without my mother in it.

I felt invisible. I hungered to be seen. Touched. Made to feel alive to counter how dead I felt inside.

Around my neck, I dropped the amber pendant I'd been wearing the day of the fire, added the matching earrings, slid into sandals,

grabbed my purse, and headed downstairs to the hotel restaurant, where I would eat crab cakes and crawfish, maybe try Criollo's

legendary bread pudding, have a drink, and find something luscious and chocolatey on the menu.

I'd not been able to promise Mom I would be irresponsible. I'd been taking care of us for so long, I knew no other way to be. Nor could I convince myself to weasel out of debt by filing bankruptcy because, well, I wasn't a weasel. Yet. Perhaps, after a few years of drudgery, I'd grow whiskers (and balls) and slink away any way I could.

Not grieve her? Impossible.

But I could fulfill the most important part of what she'd asked of me. What I knew deep in my heart was all that mattered

to her, if somewhere, unseen, she lingered, watching over me.

Live, my darling Zo. Live.

Later, I would recall that when I walked into Criollo that night, I felt strangely as if I were attending a debutante ball and, for some inexplicable reason, I was the diamond.

I would also know why.

As the hostess escorted me to my table, eyes followed me, and I was gratified to see many of the men watching me were the

type I found attractive.

I never had time to date. The loss of my virginity was a dreadful, awkward affair I preferred not to think about, but it hadn't

dissuaded me from trying again. Rather, it refined my selection process. No more boys. I liked men, even then. I'd never had

bad sex again. I'd decided then and there that in the future, I would make sex all about me, what I wanted it to be.

I had no time for a relationship, but there were nights I needed something for myself, something that was all my own and only

about me, and I'd hungered for it so badly, I was nearly wild with it.

Sex had proved a viable petcock for a system about to blow.

I hadn't needed it often. Sometimes I'd make it six, seven, even eight months before the pressure built again and I hungered to feel seen, caressed, cherished for a time, if only my body and only an illusion. On those nights, I'd prowl, tense and volatile, searching for the right man, one that made lust burn in my veins, was willing to exchange first names only, no personal talk, no strings attached, and most definitely, no tomorrow.

They weren't easy to find. I have a type; I like self-possessed, strong, magnetic men, and I like them to have a bit of an

edge, a hint of wildness. Hidden depths, layers, an indefinable quality of... more . I also like them tall, dark, and muscular. On the rare occasions I indulge, I shoot for the stars.

Sometimes, it took me days to find the elusive fruit for which I hungered, but tonight I marveled as I glanced around the

restaurant; I seemed to have fallen in the berry patch. Either that, or men just came darker, hotter, and more to my liking

in the Deep South.

Ever vigilant of wasting time, I'd perfected a siren's call that never failed me. Once I made my decision, I gave the man

what I thought of as the Look, and we'd end up in his bed, or up against a wall, in a bathroom stall, anywhere that wasn't

home with my mother.

I don't think I'm all that, but men seem to appreciate my tangle of long coppery chestnut hair and unusual golden eyes. I

have clear, healthy skin, and I've always been mostly happy with how I'm built. My body is strong from hard work, lean and

proportionate for my five-foot-eight frame. However, I don't think my success rate has much to do with how I look. Men are

kind of... well, easy. We women know, for the most part, if we want to get laid, we can. Men don't have that assurance,

and a lot of them seem to have figured out that hitting on a woman too aggressively can get them in loads of trouble these

days. So I take the risk out of it for them by making the first move. I like doing it. It makes me feel strong, a woman making

her own choices, in control.

It's a simple look, really, easy to put into my eyes, perhaps because by the time I get around to doing it, I'm a gasket about to blow. I'm surprised more people don't do it. Especially women. I once tried to explain it to a co-worker, who'd stared at me, baffled; said nobody could read a look and eyes didn't talk.

Yes, they do. Saying too much, too often. I rarely meet a person's gaze, preferring to focus on noses, blurring the irises

and pupils. On the rare occasions I do lock gazes with a person, I tend to get hit with a messy tangle of emotions, sometimes

images, rarely pleasant.

If a man ever gave me such a blatant, sexually loaded, I-want-to-devour-you look, I'd be lost. None ever has. Yet, I hope.

Over an appetizer of shrimp, blue crab, and avocado, I studied the room, gaze drifting from table to booth, peering into the

smaller, more private dining rooms on the sides, never lingering overlong. For a change, the dragon in my belly seemed...

placid, content, even, as if rumbling soft approval of my plans. Probably just grateful I was finally about to do something

besides cry. If so, it was a sentiment we shared.

I had a luxury suite upstairs, a king-size bed, a Jacuzzi bath large enough for two, plus an enormous walk-in shower. I wasn't

about to waste it all. Mom herself had encouraged me to seize my opportunities, and Criollo was certainly teeming with them.

I was finding it difficult to narrow down my decision, and I'd never had that problem before. If Frankfort was famine, New

Orleans was feast.

There was an older man, forty or so (age doesn't matter to me; it's what they exude), thick dark hair touched with silver at the temples, wearing an elegant suit, yet I could tell his body was strong and rugged beneath it. The dichotomy intrigued me, made me think all civility might fall away with the shedding of that suit and he'd be pure animal in bed. Plus, I could count on him to be experienced.

Then there was the man seated near the bar, in his late twenties, who I decided was Mediterranean, wearing a muted scarf with

a collared chambray and jeans. He had a lean, athletic build, and I knew he'd be pretty much the perfect casual sex but not

necessarily the best sex. Still, the waitresses were lingering nearby, vying to bring him his next drink. He, too, had presence.

I was surprised to realize most of the men in the restaurant did. I'd never been in a room with so much palpable masculine

energy before.

At a table near the door was a man, probably thirty-five, with short black hair, the shadow of a beard framing his wide jaw,

and a mouth I could kiss for hours before unbuttoning that crisp white shirt to drag my tongue across his beautiful dark brown

skin. There was something watchful and refined about him that intrigued me. His gestures were fluid and precise, he was kind

to the staff (always a big hit with me), and I got the sense he was a man who concealed his strengths, played his cards close

to the cuff in public, which made me insatiably curious to know what he was like in private.

Then there was a man unlike any I'd chosen in the past, perhaps thirty, blond with ocean-blue eyes, leaning back, legs outstretched in a booth in one of those side rooms with the dimmed lights. He intrigued me, despite my preference for dark men, because of something in his eyes and the way he moved, with power and grace. He wore faded jeans, a blue T-shirt, and boots. As I stole another glance at him, he stood and stretched over the table, accepting a bottle being passed from booth to booth in that private area, and his shirt slid up, affording me a glimpse of his cut stomach. My gaze lingered appreciatively on the leanness of his hips, the muscular ass, the broad shoulders. He threw his head back and laughed and, before drinking, shouted out a toast with a sexy Irish accent. I wasn't entirely sure what he'd said, but I liked the sound of it and decided perhaps it was time for something different.

When the waiter returned to take my entrée order, I declined to place it and requested my bill. I'd order room service later.

My appetites had changed.

I waited until the blond sat back down and let my gaze rest on him. The moment he turned my way, my chin would notch down,

I'd glance up from beneath my brows with a sheen of challenge, the promise of a wild side. I would put all I felt into my

eyes, let it gather intensity and radiate toward him. The hunger, the frustrated energy that desperately needed an outlet,

the pain, the grief, the passion, the loneliness born not of weakness but from the appetite of a strong young woman seeking

an equal in sensuality, intellect, and competence. I wouldn't send it to him wending gently around guests, delicate and inquiring.

I'd slam it into him.

I'd say with flat ferocity, I want you. Come to my bed. No apology, no ego, no games. Only hunger and lust and the burn of my passion, and I will be

kind though not necessarily gentle, and you will never forget this night.

The blond man's head began to turn toward me, and tensing with delicious anticipation, I notched my chin down.

As his gaze was about to collide with mine, abruptly another man slid into the booth next to him, obliterating my view of

the blond with his dark, powerful frame. He said something to the man, punched him on the shoulder, as if in consolation,

then turned his head and locked gazes with me.

And I do mean locked .

I was caught, trapped, ensorcelled, spellbound, powerless to look away. I stared helplessly into eyes dark as a raven's wings, into a face more formidable than handsome, and the instant he knew he had me bound, he caught the tip of his tongue between his teeth in a smile that dripped challenge, and flung his words across the room at me, sharp as knives.

He said, I want you. Come to my bed. I know how wild you hunger to be. I'll meet you in those untamed lands, and I'll be kind but not

gentle, because gentle isn't what you want. You want to feel intensely, dangerously alive, to recover dreams you've been forced

to abandon, faith you've lost, power that's been stripped from you by the incessant, mundane demands of the world. Fuck me,

woman. I'll give you all that and more, and you will never forget this night.

The breath whooshed from my lungs in an incoherent sound, and for a moment, I couldn't form a thought.

Then, as my brain cleared, my first thought was incensed: How dare he interfere with my strong, aggressive woman-in-charge-of-her-own-life moment? I was as offended as I was—

Oh, God, he was rising, collecting his drink, and heading toward me, and I had no idea how I'd failed to see him while scanning

the restaurant. The presence he exuded was staggering, more than the other four men combined.

Dozens of heads swiveled to follow him as he strode my way, and I got the sudden impression that something was going on in

Criollo tonight that I didn't understand. As if threads of cohesiveness stitched together each moment that had passed since

I'd entered the restaurant, with each person in that room, and everyone else could clearly see the fabric of this night but

me.

Then he was at my table, staring down at me, and the fanciful thought burned off, mist in the sun.

I said before that I have a type. This man typified the type. This man was the mold for it, and they'd broken it after they'd made him, and every other man I'd chosen in the past had been only a shadow of him. The kind of edge I looked for—this man had in spades. His edges had edges. There was a kind of... were I fanciful, I'd say an aura that surrounded him, silvery and seductive and stitched somehow of both luminosity and utter absence of light, as if he wore a full moon's brilliance purled to midnight as a cloak.

"I'm Kellan."

"Stop," I said hastily, before he could say more. "No last names."

"I had no intention of offering you one."

I scowled, both pleased (he knew the rules) and irritated (he seemed to be the one making them). I'd always thought I would

savor it, absolutely lose my mind, if ever a man gave me the kind of look I used.

I thoroughly resented it.

Would I have chosen him, anyway, if I'd seen him? Yes. That wasn't the point. The point was, he chose me ; it chafed, and now there was no way I was going to have sex with him, despite the fact that the blond was currently gathering

his coat to leave and the Mediterranean man was already gone.

Then there was the fact that the bastard's look had been so much more polished than mine.

"They always come when you summon, don't they?" Irish accent, like the blond. Sexy as hell. When he twisted a chair around

and dropped into it, it creaked beneath his weight. Maybe six foot five, two hundred and forty pounds. I like big men; they

make me feel like I can go crazy on them in bed and not worry about hurting them. My mouth went dry.

"I didn't ask you to join me," I said flatly.

"Nor have you told me to leave."

"Leave."

He stood instantly.

"Sit down," I snarled.

Amusement glittered in his dark gaze. The chair creaked again. My mouth was absolutely parched.

"You prefer to choose," he murmured. "It makes you feel strong."

That was it exactly. I'd been in control of so little in my life, I needed this one thing. And I hadn't fully understood it

until this moment, when the man made the choice for me.

"Losing control because the world has taken it from you in infinitesimal degrees, without warning and without your consent,

in demeaning ways, is one thing. Losing control because you choose to, because you've met someone you can let go with, break

free, obey no rules, tithe to neither god nor demon, that's entirely another."

"And I suppose you think you're that someone."

"I was watching you from the moment you walked in and knew exactly what you were looking for. Ian, the blond you'd settled

on, is a good man, without question. I'd want him at my side in a fight, and I trust him running several of my companies.

But he'd leave you just as unsatisfied as they always do. My guess is that's how you prefer it. Playing it safe. You never

choose anyone you might want to see again. How's choking down that same bland appetizer, over and over, working out for you?

Ready for a meal yet?"

Implying he was the meal. And how subtly he'd just made it clear he was wealthy and Ian worked for him, not vice versa. "Oh,

fuck you," I growled.

Wolfishness and mockery shaped his smile. "Your suite or mine?"

"You think you know me. You don't know me," I shot at him.

"You don't know you," he fired back.

It's funny. We think we want a man who sees us. Who gets us. But wheel that rarity up to the table, and we get downright defensive,

erect barricades left and right. He was correct. My life had been composed entirely of responsibilities, bills to pay, too

much to do, too few hours in the day, a dying mother, no time to wonder what I wanted or might one day become, if given the

chance.

I'd wanted Joanna Grey to live. I'd become what she'd needed me to be.

Without her, I was floundering.

In a strange way, it felt as if, the day she'd died, I was born. That she'd had to become a thing of the past for me to become

a thing of the future; for me to even understand I could have a future. It was the only explanation I could find for the countless

volatile emotions waking up inside me. I must have put myself into a shallow trance to survive. Numb was eminently capable.

Empty of want, of need, one could give endlessly, completely. And I didn't regret it. I'd do it over and over again.

Yet here I was, a blank slate at twenty-four. Each day I awakened, my brain kicked on, and the only thing I had to ask myself

was: What do I want to do? Granted, I was buried in debt and didn't have all that many choices, but suddenly, there was nothing

and no one else to consider. I had no idea how to live this way. I'd become obdurate as ice to deal with my reality. Thawing

was a melty, messy process I was rather beginning to despise.

"I'm Zo," I said irritably.

He laughed. "Could you sound any pissier telling me your name?" Then his smile faded, and his gaze darkened with chal lenge and frank carnality. "Tell me, Zo—what do you want to do?" he said in a low, rough voice.

I wanted to stand up, tell him to go to hell, and walk away. Yet I knew, even from our brief exchange, this man wasn't the

kind to offer anything to a woman twice. And since the moment he'd dropped into that chair across from me—no, from the moment

he'd knifed into my head with his damn look—I'd been burning with lust. The dragon in my stomach was snorting and stomping

and turning in voracious circles. We were in complete agreement about this man, and I was the new Zo, who was going to live

and not miss opportunities.

I leaned forward and told him in exacting detail what I wanted to do. What I wanted him to do to me.

Muscle working in his jaw, eyes glittering, he rose and offered me his hand. I shivered when he laced his fingers with mine.

Presence was an understatement. People make so much noise about IQ: intelligence quotient. I've never found myself impressed

by that number. I look for AQ: awareness quotient, and Kellan's was off the charts. He saw. He knew. He put things together,

divining patterns in the smallest of details. Later, I would learn his IQ was astronomical, too, so much so that he had difficulty

communicating sometimes and could work himself into a lather about it. Later, I would learn many things about Kellan, some

of which I would refuse to believe, for if I did, they would terrify me.

I didn't emerge until late the next afternoon, barely able to walk and barely meeting my driver in time.

Kellan fucked as if I were both woman and wolf, lady and whore, hummingbird and hawk.

He saw me. The good and bad, the selfless and selfish. The woman who'd bled out, without reservation, for the mother she loved, and the quiet rage it made her feel at pretty much the whole world. The lonely orphan and the she-dragon that needed no one and nothing but the chance at command of her own destiny and soul.

He saw the hunger and fear and pain, and the unbreakable vow I'd made to myself that all I had been to date in my life was

not all I would ever be.

He was, hands down, the best sex of my life, making good on his promise that I would never forget this night, and I've had

my share of good sex. It's the only place in my life I've permitted myself to be selfish and utterly unrestrained. To take

as I desire, to give as I choose, to demand and bestow explosively, pouring through my hands, from the very core of my being,

an inferno of passion, releasing the countless things I don't permit myself to say and, often, refuse to acknowledge I feel.

The anger, hope, joy, fear, every shade of emotion—I drench their bodies with it. I forget myself. Nothing exists but the

moment, their body, mine. Releasing all that pent volatility recharges me. I stand up from sex-soaked sheets far stronger

than I got into them.

Kellan was dangerous.

He fucked like I did. As if it was all about him. He took and gave the same way, his touch electrifying, laced with the same

explosive charge. His lust was equally bottomless. We burned up that bed, we knocked over tables and chairs; I'm not entirely

certain we didn't shatter the glass door of the shower. He seemed to flawlessly intuit each nuance I was venting, throwing

it back at me, egging me on, pushing for more. At times, it became a flat-out battle to outdo, to un do each other.

He reached inside me with his strong hands and searing kisses, with the burn of his big, hard body against mine, to ex pose parts of me I'd refused to see. It was raw, it was fierce, it was frighteningly intimate. I left hungering to see into him as clearly as he seemed to see into me, each brilliant and every shadowy, demon-inhabited corner of his soul.

I wanted more. Of him . I'd never felt that before.

I left feeling as if his every touch had been somehow seared, with the chafing permanence of a brand, deep into my skin.

I left—no, I fled while he was in the bathroom, hastily snatching my clothes and donning them as I raced for the door—without his last name,

without giving him mine.