Prologue

I don’t like hurt.

Especially the emotional kind of hurt. It does something to the body. Leaves marks on your soul. It weighs on you and damages part of who you are, in tiny fragments that sometimes heal, but forever leave an invisible scar. It doesn’t feel good and it takes too long to make sense of and get over.

The thing is, some people, are brilliant at emotional hurt. They can manipulate and deceive and impact that thing in you that will cripple you badly. They’re the ones who like hurt, hurting others.

Humans can never wrap their head around the logic of that motive. But the reality is, it’s like a sensation, a high, a good feeling, a normal impulse for them to hurt others. A natural response. An instinct. It’s in their nature and they can’t fight it.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t need to be wrapped in cotton wool. I’ve never really led a charmed life. It’s been rough all over and if all you know is rough, then all you know to do is roll with it, survive it. Which is what I’d been doing for years. I’ve been doing the best I can. Anyway I can. Anyway that suited me and helped me and got me what I wanted out of this life.

Hurting someone like me, with my 'talent', gift, ability whatever you want to call it, it’s more than hurtful. It’s more than a passing thing if it’s done right. It’s damaging. Blindingly damaging. It’s like taking all your feelings, and perceptions and everything you have at your disposal and putting them off line. It changes your insides and remakes you.

It’s why I’ve always been a loner. I learned long ago, that I couldn’t do my thing, I couldn’t read people; get their truth, if they ruined parts of mine. It’s why I’ve never had a relationship. Never allowed myself to feel all those things, that so many people take for granted in being human. Love, passion, desire, want and need, trust and companionship.

Those things are the downfall of someone like me. They counter more than they feed. I don’t want to lose a part of myself to that, because it happened once before when I was young and it wasn’t good, it was bad, very bad, and not just for me. The truth can hurt, and it can set you free, but at what expense?

People don’t know where that saying came from and it’s probably a very good thing, because if you saw what I could set free, from within me, you’d be beyond scared. You’d be cowering before me.

I know what lies inside me and it isn’t good. Nobody can see it, because nobody knows to look for it. To think of it. Because the truth is, what you make of it and nobody makes much of me, because that’s the way I like it.

Guess that’s a form of deception, an odd thing for a truthful person to do. Maybe I’m not as pure as my abilities might make me seem. After all, I use them by giving them to the person who’s willing to pay the right price.

Does that make me an honest soul?

1

I knew I was being followed. But I tried not to let it show. It was dark and yet, I walked down the street and didn’t feel the least bit threatened. Because I was aware of my predator and because I’d just walked on to the working girls alley. Ready for Friday night business as usual.

I picked out a place against a poster paste-up wall of what looked like the street artist, Rone’s work. I like his style; he does this paste up pop art style women’s faces in different colours. With different expressions. I really like street art; it is my kind of art. I should really start collecting street art.

I wrap my black leather jacket around myself and stand against the plastered wall on one leg. My other leg up against the wall. Friday nights in Melbourne town are busy. The start of the weekend holds so much promise for anything to happen. Everyone is happy.

I glance down at myself. My brown hair is tied back in a simple ponytail and I’m wearing a rock music t-shirt, a leather jacket and denim mini skirt with boots. I am after all trying to appeal to a certain demographic when it comes to my workload.

Friday nights are usually the best night for me to pick up clients. They pay better, and it means I don’t have to then work for the rest of the week. So I try to make sure I do well on Friday nights. Looking around I try to get a sense of who it is that is following me, but can’t see anyone who looks creepy and suspicious, well, more than normal.

A young male eyes me up and down and slowly walks over to me; his shoulders draw up high to his head, his hands in his jeans pockets. He looks all of twenty-one. Like a university student. Not quite my usual demographic.

“Hi, um I want to,” He pauses softly. I smile, this is always entertaining. Watching them figure out how to say out loud they want to pay for sex with me.

Pushing off the wall I walk over to him, we both have our hands still in our pockets. I step closer to him, so he can get a good eyeful of my body and really feel awkward around the opposite sex. I’m sadistic like that. “Um, how much for what?” He blurts out quickly.

“Depends what you want. If it’s just a hand job it’s twenty-five. If it’s a blow job, the price goes up to fifty, full service requires a room in the motel around the corner, that does not come out of my fee. It’s one hundred.”

“Yeah, I want that, full service.”

“Show me the cash.” He pulls out his wallet and opens it, flicking notes for me to see. I have to make sure he has the money. I don’t want to waste my time leaving my piece of real estate if he isn’t going to help my bank balance. Because my space on working girl alley will be taken over by any one of the other girls until I get back, if they think they can get any of my cliental. Which is fair enough. After all, a girl’s got to eat. We are a competitive bunch of bitches.

“Okay, let’s go.” I state firmly as we start walking off together, down the street. We walk into the late night motel. It is clean and simple and very used to renting out rooms by the hour without questions or identification required. I wave at the desk clerk who is quite used to seeing me. He smiles back at me politely. Just a regular Friday night.

The boy and I take a key and go to room eight. It’s, simple and without any fancy trimmings. A large double size bed in the centre, a bedside table on the right hand side, and a small, non-digital TV and video recorder in the far right hand side corner. There’s a small bathroom attached to it with a basin, toilet and a questionable shower. One towel is provided. Generous.

My new client is unsure what exactly to do or how to start things off. Clearly a first time with a working girl for him. “Cash up front, let’s get that out of the way shall we?” I suggest pulling my hands out of my leather jacket.

“Oh right.” He sounds genuinely surprised. “It’s one hundred.” He pulls his wallet out and counts out one hundred dollars out. I fold the notes up and slip them into my left boot.

“Right, so how do we?” He asks again, confused by the process of how to deal with a prostitute. I slide off my jacket and drape it over the ignored television set.

“Well, do you want me to call you something?” I ask curiously. This guy is not like most of the males I deal with. They are either rather alpha like personalities or drunk out of their minds and groping and drooling over me before the door had closed.

“Um, yeah.” He says and then has the decency to look shy all of a sudden. I wonder what embarrassing name it is he wants me to say. “Good boy.” He replies. I walk over to him and smile warmly again. Putting a hand to the side of his jaw and cupping it. Clearly there are mommy issues with this one.

Oh well, who the hell am I to judge? I have family issues too; I’d been booted out of home at fourteen. The foster system I’d been in and out of had not been kind to me. So when I aged out at eighteen and gotten immediately forgotten about, I hit the streets and had been on my own ever since.

I might let men pay me money to use my body for their own pleasure, but I never really help them along. I drop my hand away. Payment means they had to have the guts to do something about getting what they paid for. I am not here for psychology sessions, or to boost their confidence by holding their hands. I will perform when required. It’s about business for me.

Good boy walks over to me and puts his hands on my hips and slides them up over my breasts. I have full breasts, that usually get a good looking at by most males. I’m not top heavy, which seems to be a rather unique feature in women these days. I have quite an even physique for my height of five foot seven.

He looks at my t-shirt covered breasts and squeezes them in his hands. He strikes me as new to sex and just wanting to get some more and can’t get it any other way, yet. Good boy pulls at my t-shirt hem and I helped him pull it off me. Showcasing my breasts in a rather stunning bra. The bra is red and white striped with a black edges strip to it.

Good boys eyes widen when he sees them and he dives at my left breast and then my right, groping and kissing each one before settling on pulling the edge of my bra down and sucking on my left nipple. “Good boy.” I mutter and slid my hands up his back.

I’m surprised to find that I rather liked him. His tongue flicks out and plays with my nipple as his other hand squeezes my right breast. “Good boy.” I repeat and he pulls the bra down to cop a better feel. He kisses between the mounds of flesh.

Without looking up at me said, “Take it off. I want to see them.” My fingers reach around to the back of my bra and unhook it. Good boy relents space and straightens up enough for me to undo the bra and slide it down both my arms, throwing it in the direction of my jacket and t-shirt. Good boy’s face has lit up with delight. Another happy customer, how nice.

He sits down on the edge of the bed, still fully clothed. I stand in front of him. My breasts come level to his eyesight. He cups them and begins kissing, sucking and playing with my nipples. I’ve never had a boyfriend or a relationship beyond financial exchanges like this one. Most men, don’t see me to get me off, they depend on my services, to get them off and to fulfil their needs.

“That’s a good boy.” I repeat a few times, as he finds his confidence and comfort in sucking on my breasts. Good boy surprisingly, isn’t unpleasant and for once, I find the way he plays with my nipples, almost enough to pay attention to. He undoes his jeans and pulls out his cock.

“Good boy.” I murmur as he switches to sucking my other breast and I pat down his hair and he starts stroking the length of his cock. It’s your average cock I guess by looking at it. He is hard and is nowhere near coming yet. So it seems our encounter might go for the full duration of the hour he’s hired the room out for. The young are always so enthusiastic, not that I am old, but I am older than him.

Most of my clientele aren’t in control of their lust long enough, to take advantage of an hour with me. I’m not ashamed to say I didn’t mind taking advantage of that. I’m just here to make my money the easiest way I know how and to get in and out, so to speak. Besides, this isn’t the only way I make a living. But it is the more regular out of my skill set.

Good boy is enjoying my breasts, so it surprises me when he stops sucking on them and looks up at me. “I want to jerk off between your breasts.” I lower myself to my knees, between his legs. He moves forward and positions his cock between the cleavage of my breasts.

Opening my mouth I let a long line of drool run out, from my mouth down between my cleavage as lubrication before I squash my breasts together for him. He moans loudly at what he is seeing. The he starts to move, thrusting between them. I watch him, watching his cock sliding between them. He never looks at my face while he does it.

“Such a good boy.” I say softly as the start of pre cum on his cock begins to glisten. “Fucking my tits.”

His eyes flick up to me then and he stills, his cock wedged between my breasts. “Suck it. Suck my cock.” It sounds more like a plea than a demand. Like he is holding on to what control he’s managed to get. Clearly I’ve amped up the time-release on his pleasure button. I let my breasts drop from around his cock and he looks at them fall away from him.

“Put on a condom. I only suck with one of those on.” I say back at him as he again touches my breasts. He clearly doesn’t like the idea. “What if I came over your tits instead?”

I’m okay with that. It’s obvious he isn’t sure what he wants to do, so he reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out a condom instead. He slides the condom on to his fully hardened cock. Clearly he thought I’d suck first and he’d shoot later.

Sliding to my knees before him, I run my hands down the length of his sheathed cock, holding the condom in place, I take him in my mouth and suck looking back up at him, all big eyed and beautiful.

He reaches for my nipples and pinches them and I suck him harder, increasing the pressure and making him hiss. Then I start to move, fast on him, it doesn’t take much to make good boy come. Most men would’ve pulled out before they reached their climax and then fucked me. But good boy isn’t all that skilled in restraint and knowing what he wants yet. Which is fine with me. Means we aren’t going to be using the room for the full hour he’d paid for.

He cries out unable to stop himself as he comes and jams me further down onto his cock as he grabs my hair. Pulling back I sit back on my heels once I feel him stop shaking. He looks dazed and sleepy. Standing up slowly I reach for my clothing, and start to dress again. “But I’ve got the room for a whole hour, we could do more.” He says to me as I turn around putting my breasts back in the bra.

“Our transaction was not for the duration of room hire, if you want more, it’ll cost more.” I said watching him look at his now flaccid cock. He glances over at me. “That was amazing, can I see you again?” That surprises me, my clientele aren’t regulars and none of them want more than a dirty, illicit quickie on the side.

I smile at him and slid on my t-shirt. “I only work Fridays, down where we met.” He nods his head and blinks laying back against the bed, tiring from the exertion.

“So maybe next Friday I could see you again?”

I pull on my jacket and move towards the door. “I’d like that.” I say opening the door and waking out. It isn’t exactly unappealing to have good boy as regular customer, especially if he isn’t going to be a terribly demanding one and still pay my rates of service. But then I can see his type a mile away, he’s likely to want me to pretend to be his girlfriend.

I leave the motel and re-enter Friday night in the back streets of Melbourne. Again, I find myself looking around, the feeling of being watched but not actually seeing anyone or anything out of place is odd. I’m not normally paranoid but vigilant of my surroundings. So finding nothing out of place is unnerving.

2

It is one of the reasons I don’t do street sex work all the time. Predators often see prostitutes as easy marks. That no one would miss. What they fail to realise more often then not, is that street workers are a community unto themselves who know those around them and their clientele and they try to have a good relationship with the cops, so when things happen, the bad guys can be found fast, so no one else sufferers.

I walk back to working girl alley and see a red head in overdone make up and high heels glare at me then walk away from my spot on the wall. Clearly I haven’t been gone long enough for her to use my spot for picking up clientele. My clientele. Good.

I’ve barely gotten my back to the wall when a young corporate guy in a suit nods his head at me and I move forward. I forget about my paranoid feeling instantly. This is my regular Friday night clientele type.

“Hi” He is here for a good time, not a long time, I can almost guarantee it. It is the end of the working week and he needs to do more than blow off steam.

“What will seventy five dollars get me?”

“Hand job or blow job.” I state back at him all business. He glances me over and I push back my jacket slightly so he can see the outline of my breasts against my t-shirt. He licks his lips.

“And if I want to see those titties too?” What with it with men and breasts?

“Anything more is one hundred and there is a motel around the corner you will need to hire a room for. That does not come out of the price.” He licks his lips and seems to think about it, looking at his watch. Clearly he has somewhere he needs to be. A rush job.

“Hundred huh?” I stroke his hand lightly before backing away.

“Trust me, I won’t tell you’re girlfriend how much I’m worth the fuck, before you go and have drinks with your mates for the rest of the night.” He looks at me highly surprised then. Guess I hit close to home.

“How’d you know that?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Good guess what most guys are up to on a Friday night in this town.” I say moving back to my wall space. If he wants conversation he can damn well pay for it. I am on the clock.

“Okay I’ll take the upgrade.” He smirks at me. Good because I don’t like squatting over broken glass and urine scented cobblestones to suck cock. I push off the wall and we walk to the motel. Where we enter a different room this time. It looks exactly like the other room I’ve already been in.

Cheating corporate guy pulls the money out of his wallet and hands it to me. I count it and slip it in my jacket pocket. Before stripping out of my clothes, entirely. He is stripping off out of his pants and losing his jacket and tie eagerly.

“Condoms? Yours or mine?” I asked him slipping off my boots.

“Uh, I have some.” He says digging around for his wallet and pulling one out and putting it on. Of course he does. This guy is a regular cheater. “Suck my cock.” He is all action. No time to waste. I can appreciate routine professionalism. I get down on my knees and began long languid strokes along his shaft, before progressing to sucking him, deep into my throat. He thrusts his hips back and forth, fucking my mouth.

Unlike good boy, cheating corporate guy has more control and takes longer to really reach an excited precipice that has him hissing and shouting “Fuck, stop.” I have been on my knees for a good three minutes, at least. Pulling back I release him from my mouth with a resounding pop. He still hadn’t taken off his shirt or socks. Classy.

“Up.” He states and I stand up wondering what position we were going to fuck in. As it turns out it’s two positions. Starting off with the standard missionary, me on my back on bed so he could lick and suck and grope my breasts while he thrusts into me, my legs wrapped around his waist, and then when he really needed to go hard to come off for his climax, he flips me over. Onto my hands and knees so he can ram his cock home.

Got to say there’s really nothing wrong with a good hard fuck if you can get it every now and then. Unfortunately in my line of work, most of the men who fuck me aren’t particularly brilliant at the actual fucking part. And I never get off on it. I’ve faked it several times for those that wanted to believe they were the gods of fucking. But no john has ever made me climax. My fingers, make me climax. A vibrator makes me climax.

But I can appreciate it when guys who can deliver a good fuck, came along. I work myself back on him as he slams into me continuously, panting and moaning a lot. Eventually he comes.

Besides, this transaction is about his pleasure, not mine. Which was why he is fucking me before he clearly has to work for the fuck from his girlfriend later on. We pull apart straight away, he disposes of the condom in room’s bin and we dress in silence. He actually holds the door open for me as we leave the room.

“You’re right,” He says to me as I pass him in the doorway. I arch an eyebrow at him. “That was worth the price.” Men, so easy to please. Such simple creatures. Unlike good boy, he’d taken a good thirty minutes to get off. We leave the motel together with cheating corporate guy walking out behind me. The feeling of being watched, spied on returns with a strong sense of closeness. I look around again and note nothing out of the ordinary. This is going to drive me nuts.

“Thanks,” Cheating corporate guy thinks I’m looking back at him as he ducks his head and walks off in the opposite direction to me. Frowning I start walking back to working girl alley. But I can’t shake the feeling of being watched. “Show you’re fucking self.” I yell into the night air. Turning around a few times, I wait for my mysterious guest to come into my line of sight. “I know you’re there, so give it up.”

As a working girl I’ve never really had any hassles before, I’ve been lucky so far. But I’ve heard of girls who have developed fans, stalkers, men obsessed with them. Men who want to save them, want to hurt them to show them they care. You name it, prostitutes attracted all types.

A male figure walks out of some dark shadows that encase a building and some surrounding wheelie bins opposite me, as I stand with my back to working girl alley. I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but it isn’t him.

3

He’s tall; around six foot six and has long blonde hair. He strides out in a black shirt, heavy, mid calf length woollen coat, black jeans and heavy duty boots. He looks like he just misted out of the black shadows, or they fell back in silence to reveal him to me. He makes a rather smooth entrance and walks directly towards me and I stand my ground, crossing my arms over my chest, to let him know I’m not intimidated by him. He looks like a model. Like I’m going to be intimidated by a fucking model.

“Miss Phoenix,” He says when he gets close to me.

“If you’re an officer of the law you are required to identify yourself to me now, even if you’re off duty. Especially now since I’ve asked for you to identify yourself.” I’m startled he knows my surname. No one around here knows my name. In working girl alley I go by Bridget, after the Rone poster girl print.

He looks rather handsome with his smooth skin, English I think. My skin colour is darker than his and I’m not particularly dark. I have a honey coloured tone to my skin. He has amazing cheekbones, high cut and a square jaw and sharp, piercing blue eyes. “I’m not an officer of the law.”

“Then how the hell do you know I’m Miss Phoenix?” I ask dropping my hands to my hips.

“My employer is rather interested in you.” He says casually, hands in his overcoat pockets. His body language seems relaxed and non-threatening and he is a respectable distance from my personal space. Very cautious, I think or falsely alluring. Probably the later.

“Well then, he needs to step into my office, it’s around the corner, in front of the posters.” I start walking off on him. “Office hours are until I say they’re not and I’m currently between appointments. So I could slot him in.”

“Miss Phoenix,” I turn around to look back at the handsome stranger. “He’d prefer to talk to you in person about your full skill set, including your other service.” Handsome man takes a hand out of his coat pocket and pointing towards the end of the street, cheating corporate guy had gone down. “The car is this way.”

“Dude, I don’t know who you think you are but I do not hop into cars with strangers I do not know.” I look him over. I can’t really get a read on him, he is very cool, debonair and calm beyond belief. Which is a little odd. Most males, tended to emit, emotion and wear it all over their body language, highly visible, one way or another. But handsome here, is like a poker face. Unreadable and giving nothing about him or his employer, away.

“I assure you if it’s about the loss of wages for your business tonight, my employer can make that up to you.” He says producing a leather wallet and without bothering to count notes, grabs a thick handful and holds out his hand to me. His long, neat, manicured nails, between the notes.

I eye him and then the money and snatch it up and count. I let out a whistle. “Don’t you know it’s not good for your health to carry this much money around this part of town?” That earns me a small smile at the corner of his mouth. “Do you even care to know how much you just handed me?”

“Not unless I’ve managed to secure an appointment with you, at my employer’s behest, which requires us to go in the car to his place of propriety.” He isn’t coming across like a threat to me, but there is something making me hesitate. An instinct of some kind. Not that I can’t handle myself. Besides, it seems this mysterious employer of his isn’t after sex, rather he is after my other line of business. That has been slow as of late, hence why I’m out here hooking on a cold Friday night.

“That depends, you said you’re employer is interested in my full skill set. Who referred you to me?” What I do occasionally in daylight hours is a speciality. It is rare and unique and it cost more than a pretty penny for me to take a job on my terms.

Therefore those who know about what I can do, are limited and my business as a result is for the privileged few and done by word of mouth referrals only. It isn’t exactly illegal what I do, but it is somewhat shady on the ethical side. But I generally didn’t have much of a problem with that. My morals are scrupulously low.

“Henry McDougal.” He says at me. I riffle through my memory to recognise the name. He wasn’t a one of my corporate clients. I don’t recognise the name at all. “Uh, he procured your current type of service and described you in a way that got my employer’s attention for your other, service.”

My eyes narrow on him. So Henry had been a john, and something he’d said about me as a prostitute had gotten to this guy’s boss, which had made him know about my other line of work. That didn’t really make sense to me but a small part of me knew it could make sense and might just be how someone else, with insight, into the darker places of Melbourne, might know about me.

Human’s aren’t too cluey about paranormal beings amongst them. But other paranormals are very clued in to the types of beings that frequented Melbourne and beyond. So it might be that handsome’s boss was a paranormal being. That much, made sense to me. I just had to wonder, what type he was. I’d had run-ins with two types. Sex with one type.

Werewolves and shape shifters were the most common to cause the most trouble and notoriety amongst the public but not the only ones. They just tended to be the ones, everyone focussed on, made films and wrote books about. Which was fine with me, I wasn’t looking to be the centre of attention and infamy.

“How’d he describe me?”

“He said you had an un canny ability that was like psychic de-ja-vu.” Handsome responds to me, dropping his arm down by his side.

I nod my head. Yep, that sounds like someone after my other line of work. It pays better than hooking. “You got yourself an appointment.” I say back at him as he again points in the direction of the car. We walk off towards it, with the handsome stranger, slightly in front of me.

The coat made him looked broad shouldered and I see that his hair is utterly straight and goes down to his waist. We walk to an idling stretch limousine waiting around the corner curb. Handsome opens the door for me and stands back.

I put a hand on the door and the car roof and looked inside first. Nothing but leather seats and a bar fridge with low-level roof lighting. I glanced back up at him, and see nothing in his eyes or face that gives anything away. I slide into the back of the limousine and handsome follows, closing the door behind himself.

He tucks his coat around him and leans forward towards the small partition window between driver and passengers. Knocking on it twice the car starts to pull away from the curb. He sits beside me, instead of in front of me. I think it’s slightly odd. The hired help usually sit opposite the client, to watch or intimidate.

“So you know my name, what’s yours?” I ask him checking out his profile as he sits beside me.

“Tarin Armadel.” He replies holding out a hand for me to shake. I look at it and shake it firmly while I hold his eye contact. Again there is a sense of void from him. He remains masked and unreadable to me.

“You’re not human are you Tarin?” I say still holding his hand. He glances down at my hand in his.

“So it’s true then, you can tell that much from just simple physical contact?”

I let go of his hand. “I can do more with less and even more with more. You’d be surprised at my skill set.” I replied flippantly at him.

“You are correct, I’m not human as such, like your self.” He says settling back into his seat and looking at me. Not bothering to offer me anything more to go on.

“Well you’re not a werewolf or shape shifter, I’ve been around enough of them to know the scent and set of behaviours of them.” He looks at me and smiles, producing two rather large, extended fangs from the top of his teeth. They aren’t dainty in the slightest and they look razor sharp.

“Oh, vampire.” I mutter softly, slightly engrossed in how beautifully white they are and how deadly they look. I should be scared; I know that much even if my body refuses to react in fright at the sight of them. Is it wrong that I think they make him look sexy? The fangs retract and he snaps his mouth shut quickly.

“The fangs always throw people off. Fucking vampires.” He snorts shaking his head. “It’s all anyone thinks about these days.”

I frown, I have no idea what else could have fangs like that and be human looking. Then again, the paranormal world is a lot bigger than what I barely know of its small corner in Australia.

“Sorry,” I mutter, looking away from him.

“It’s alright. Most people would say the same thing. You’re not the first to mistake me for one of them.” I wait for him to tell me what he in fact is. Silence fills the car and Tarin seems more than comfortable to just sit there in it. I roll my eyes and look back at him.

“So what are you then?” A small smirk at the corner of that mouth again. Like he’d pleased, I am the one who breaks the silence first and has to ask him to know what he is.

“A shadow.”

A shadow, I’ve never heard of one of those before. So I have no context for what that actually means. Great, mister mysterious hasn’t actually told me anything about himself. I push back into my seat again in frustration.

“You’re the first shadow I’ve ever met.” I reply to fill the otherwise intended silence of the car ride.

“Congratulations on the milestone.” He says causing me to laugh out loud at him. I shake my head and stop laughing again and run my hands over my raised, denim skirt. Sitting still for long is not my forte, neither it seems is making non offensive conversation with a shadow.

“Do you have any children Miss Phoenix?”

“Please, stop with the Miss Phoenix thing. If you know my surname, you surely know my first name.”

“My apologies.” Tarin pauses before adding “Katelyn.” And smiling. A full blown white tooth smile at me. My eyes look over his teeth. Just normal, perfectly human, polished white, teeth that I bet an orthodontist would kill to proclaim they’d done the work on. “Were you expecting fangs?” He asks noting my line of sight. Looking away quickly at least I have the decency to blush a little.

“Well, yes.”

The car slows down. I’ve barely been aware of it moving and where we’re going. I’ve been so busy talking to Tarin, focussed on Tarin. I can’t help but wonder if he’s done some sort of glamour on me, to distract my attention from my surroundings. I’d planned to look out the window and landmark my way to where I was going. I wonder if shadows even glamour, or if that was just a myth associated with fanged types of paranormals of today. I’m about to ask where we were when I recognise the wide and annoyingly bad intersection of Kew Junction that we drive through in the eastern suburbs side of Melbourne.

The limo turns off the main road and into a few back streets, pulling into the driveway of a large, white double storey mansion. Three words came to mind instantly. Very Rich. Nice.

4

Tarin escorts me into the house, excuse me, Mansion. To be honest, my place isn’t exactly much smaller than the mansion. But that is because my residence is a warehouse. So not nearly as glamorous, really. Or classy. Or opulent.

He opens heavy, wooden, double doors into what is supposed to pass for a dinning room, but seems to be more of a feast hall from the decadence of it. A long table is situated off to the right hand side of it with sixteen heavy, high backed, carved, wooden seats around it. There is food on the table. Not the whole table, but more than enough for one person, at one end of the table. Clearly my company was expected.

“Are you hungry?” Tarin asks me, slipping off his overcoat and hanging it over the back of the third chair along the table. I can’t help but check him out without the coat on. He is slightly slimmer than the coat gives away.

“Shouldn’t we wait for your boss?” He turns around slowly and puts a hand on the high backed, ornate chair at the head of the table, nearest the food and I blink. Slow realization hits me. “There is no boss is there? This is about you, right?”

He lets one of those small smirks form at the corner of his mouth again and I cross my arms. Damn is my radar slightly off with this one. He is good. Or being a shadow allows him to beat my internal system of recognition. Especially since he doesn’t appear as a threat to my instincts. That’s something.

“What gave it away?” He asks looking back at the food on the table, like he is contemplating it. Tarin picks up a bottle of red wine and uncorks it before pouring himself a glass of wine. He holds it up to me, I nod my head that I would like one.

“The car ride, that’s where you slipped up.” I say getting his attention again. He raises a perfectly shaped eyebrow at me and picks up his wine glass.

“Do tell.”

“Where you were sitting. Next to me. Bosses sit next to their subjects, the hired help sits opposite the subject, to intimidate, to watch. The boss sits close to the subject to control, to intimidate or awe them.” I pick up my glass, sniff it, and find it smells like red wine, so I drink a mouthful.

“What was I going for sitting next to you I wonder?” Tarin points to the chair next to him at the table. Between the one with his jacket on it and his head of the table chair. I put my glass back down and follow his direction.

“Awe, clearly.” I mutter unimpressed with his attempt at feigned innocence. I drop my arms from my chest and walk towards the table.

Food isn’t exactly a bad idea. I hadn’t eaten in hours. I’d kind of gotten used to having to eat late at night, real late at night on a Friday night because of the hours of working girl alley. So eating earlier than normal isn’t unappealing to me. He pulls out the heavy chair for me and I walk around him, and sit down into it, he pushes it back in with ease before sitting in his own chair.

“What do shadows eat?” I eye the small banquet for two that has deliberately been set up for our arrival. “What no virgin sacrifice for you to drink blood from?” Tarin laughs at me. It’s a warm, light laugh that makes me think of sunlight on skin. I wonder if he sees sunlight, he is kind of pale. Not deathly pale, but pale all the same.

“Oh, I drink blood.” He smiles fully at me, flashing fang before closing his mouth. Party trick, I gather. And yet, it makes me clench my thighs together, under the table. He knows he is sexy, damn him, I’m not about to flatter his ego by saying it out loud.

“So why the lying to me then, and the elaborate charade?” I ask picking up my plate and a fork. I’m thinking of having the shaved meat off the bone that looks like it is still warm. Along with the rather healthy looking, quinoa salad mixture.

“Simple really, I didn’t think you’d come along if I said it was just for me. After all, as you wisely said to me, you don’t hop in the car of strangers and I wasn’t about to conduct my business out in the open on the streets of Melbourne.”

I put down my plate and roll my eyes at him. “There was a motel right there, we were standing in front of it. Could’ve hired a room. By the way, for the right price, I did hop in the car.”

“I told you I wanted your full skill set. And money doesn’t really concern me, you will be adequately paid.”

It was my turn to laugh at Tarin’s expense. “Baby my full skill set can be done anywhere. Doesn’t even have to be about the sex. Some guys just want to be held, naked. Other just want to suck my” Tarin holds up a hand.

“I don’t wish to know the details of your other dealings. Well, not those ones anyway.” He says capturing my attention as I ignore the food in front of me.

“What does that mean?” I ask picking up my wine again.

His eyes drop to my chest and back up to my face. “I want to hire you for a job for me. You’re a truth-sayer right? That’s what Henry McDougall couldn’t put his finger on when he said you were like psychic de-ja-vu to him. That’s why you called out that suit on cheating on his girlfriend before partying with his mates tonight.”

“I guess.” I reply looking back at my dinner plate and tucking into the salad with a large forkful. Chewing it I note all the flavours of what has been put into the simple looking salad, and only then realise how ravished I am. “Thing is, truth can be a common misconception, just like you and vampires.” I watch his reaction as he sneers at the V-word.

“Tell me what you would call what it is you do then.”

“I can tell the best truth out of people. It’s a little different.” I chew on the quinoa and swallow as I think about it. “The best truth isn’t always the absolute truth, but it’s the closest I can get you to the honest truth. It’s what people perceive to be their truth.” I keep clearing the seed salad off my plate.

“So it could be the honest, absolute truth, right, if they’re an honest person?” Tarin asks cutting into some meat.

“I guess. But it’s kind of rare these days to find someone who’s one hundred precent honest. There’s usually some ambiguities in there in most of us.”

“But in theory, there might be one or two utterly, honest, souls out there.”

I look over at him and finish my meal. “What do you do, suck blood from only honest souls?” He arches an eyebrow at me.

“You think badly of me.” Tarin says putting his cutlery down and wiping his hands and mouth with the linen napkin provided. He picks up his glass of red wine and downs a mouthful. “I’ve clearly gotten off on the wrong foot with you. Shall we start again?” Tarin asks pushing out from the table and standing. I try to push out from my chair and find it’s too heavy for me to move. He walks around to me and pulls my chair back.

I stand up and glance over my shoulder at him. “I can handle you. You paid me enough to put up with you for at least an hour and by my calculations, that hour’s almost done.”

“So my money’s only good for that short a time span? Interesting given I heard you charge your clients less for non time calculated time with you and room hire that you don’t pay for.”

I turn around to face him. “I’m not sure why the elaborate games with you. But I’m not really one for game play like this, so cut to the chase and tell me what you want. That’s what you paid me for, to hear you out on a business transaction.”

He looks me up and down, then slowly circles around me, close, before stopping in front of me again. “You’ll do.” He says going into that calm mode he’d been in before, when we’d first met.

I glance him over then. From head to toe and note he is erect under some tight fitting, black leather pants. Has our little sparring of words gotten him excited? Is this actually about sex? Or does he just not care to hide his arousal in his own house? My eyes linger over the outline of it. Is he dropping his guard around me now cause he feels comfortable in my presence?

“I’m not ashamed.” Tarin says as my eyes draw back up to his. “You’re very attractive and I have to say, show great spirit. Has anyone ever called you a spit fire?”

“No. So is this just about some sort of sexual game? Cause if it is, I can play my part. You just have to tell me what it is, you want to do.” My heart starts beating a little too fast as I speak the words out loud. There is definitely something about Tarin that tells my instincts I should be aware of or I should be wary and possibly, afraid of him. There is a hint of darkness there. He’s been hiding it well, from me.

The way I get the truth from people, differs, depending on the person I am with. Sometimes I have to have touch, the more generally, the better, or easier it is for me to do my thing. But it isn’t always necessary, at least not for an initial assessment of character. Hell anyone could do that, we all have instincts, it is just that most people ignore them, or didn’t hone them to their utter full potential.

The closer I am to someone, the stronger the reading I can get on them. Tarin is directly opposite me, one more step and he’d be in my personal space, and he is currently respecting it.

“I do have a business offer for you, that I want to hire you for.” He replies back at me, pausing. “We could discuss it over sex, work out the terms of our agreement.”

Kinky, not the first kinky male I’d come across. But definitely the first shadow. Guess I could just add it to my repertoire.

“Sure.”

5

He stays where he is and I know, what he wants before he even says it. I pull my t-shirt up and over my head. Tarin does the same, sliding off his long sleeved top. He doesn’t wear anything underneath it. We stand staring at one another’s chests.

I am pretty sure he has a better one than I do. There isn’t an ounce of fat on him, he is chiselled, hard bodied perfection. I might have begun to drool a little. I close my mouth and bite my lip. Tarin is rather stunning and all he’s done is loose his top.

My eyes flick up to his and are surprised to see the way he looks at me, was with something else, desire? Men look at me with lust.

I silently reminded myself, that I haven’t gotten into anything yet, the money he’d paid me could be given back if I wanted to give it back. Not that I wanted to. And it had been to secure an appointment with me to hear him out, nothing more, nothing less. So why are my instincts suddenly gearing up on me? Is it because I haven’t been able to sense terribly much about him because of him being a shadow?

“Are you un-dead?” I blurt without thought. That makes his eyes change to a sharp focus on me, that is more like intense, controlled anger. Sheesh you think I’d said the V-word at him. Again.

“Do I look dead to you?” He mutters suddenly moving away from me.

“Dead isn’t how I’d describe you.” I say deliberately glancing him over and lingering on his outlined, leather, erection. That makes him raise an eyebrow curiously at me.

“Dare I ask how you would describe me.”

“Hot and evasive.” He thinks about it for a moment and seems pleased by my answer.

“Come,” he says holding out his hand to me. I’m sure what is going on, but so far, I feel within my depth. So I take his hand as he escorts me back out of the dining room and down the wide hallway into the bathroom.

“You do that a lot, answer a question with a question. Very evasive, and I’m guessing, highly deliberate. I should know, I’m rather used to doing the same thing.” I say to him as turns to face me.

“Strip.” He commands ignoring me calling him out. I start shimmying my skirt down my hips. He starts to undo his boots and take them off. “I’d rather you didn’t smell like other males when you’re in my company.”

Interesting, I think, he must have a strong sense of scent. Given neither male had ejaculated on me, which would’ve been stronger and far more easier to pick up on. Than a bit of rubbing against one another in sexual acts. “Okay, I can do that when you’re not picking me off the street in the middle of my business.” My skirt falls down around my boots and I slip them off.

“In fact, while you’re under my employ, you won’t engage in sex with any other male but me.” I stand up straight and look at him.

“You get to employ me, not tell me what to do. There’s a difference.” I reply standing in my underwear before him, my arms again, crossed over my chest, plumping up my breasts.

It gets his attention and he drags his eyes up from my breasts to my collar bones, to my throat and slowly back up my face, to my eyes. “And that’s not negotiable.” His gaze on me makes me feel rather warm in my stomach, and between my thighs. Warm and wanted.

“Name you’re terms then.” He says indicating I should continue to take off my underwear for him.

I unhook my bra and slide it off, dropping it to the tiled ground around us. “I need to hear the job first, what is it you want me to do exactly and who to, all of it.” I say sliding off my boy leg shorts and standing up straight and naked before him.

Tarin remains silent as he looks me over and slowly circles around me, taking his fingers brushing over the soft skin of my rear. He walks around to the front of me again. His fingers brushing over the hair free skin of my pussy before undoing his leather pants as he closes in on me.

I watch him undo the leather and slide it down enough for him to pull out his cock. He is long and thick and very hard and ready. The sight of him makes me lick my lips. Sucking on that monster, will be a dutiful, pleasure. If he asks for it.

His hand encases the swollen head and I can see he is playing with it. I find myself wanting to play with it too. To touch him, but I refrain. I look back up at Tarin’s torso, taking my time and enjoying the view. Taking in the lines and counters of his body before getting back to his face. He smiles at me then, revealing fangs.

Those fangs. I stare at them in fascination, again. God I am easy. Show me something dangerous and sexy and hello me! I want to touch them also only I want to touch them with my tongue. The thought makes me salivate a little.

“You can do that any time with the fangs huh?”

“Yes, although I only tend to do it for two particular reason, most of the time. Can you guess what that is?” Tarin teases me.

“Feeding and fucking.” I husk at him. Both ideas appealing to me greatly, especially if they involve him. Tarin moves into my space and I press my breasts into his chest. My softness against his hardness. His hand starts to glide lightly down his cock.

“Good guess.” He mutters back at me in a low voice laced with the heat I’d seen on him earlier.

“Not a guess.” I reply looking at his lips and wondering if he cuts himself with those fangs. “Just the honest to goodness truth, right Tarin?”

“Right, Katelyn.” He smirks back at me.

I move in on his mouth before he is ready for me. Catching him off guard and unawares. Not that Tarin seemed to mind. Not that I mind. I didn’t think there is much that happens around Tarin that catches him by surprise.

He opens his mouth to receive my tongue and I lick the back of his upper teeth, touching the edge where the roof of his mouth meets, while holding his gaze upon me.

Tarin’s eyes widen and he moans instantly. Yeah my truth-sayer abilities gave me a distinct advantage that no one I’d ever come across had ever figured out yet. It means that I have a map to their bodies hot spots, the ones that turned them on the most, not the ones that we were told were supposed to turn us on. These were the areas they wanted to be touched.

Nobody ever thought of their body as a living form of truth. They all thought it was about words, thoughts, memories and actions. I stroke my tongue over the roof of his mouth, slowly taking my time as Tarin’s hands, both of them now, suddenly grip my naked hips. Holding me to him, pressing into him, and his yet to be released monster erection.

Blue eyes stare into mine and he stays exactly where he is. Where he wants to be. Taking in the bursts of pleasure my erotic tongue is filling his body with. I stroke the back of his teeth a few more times, as he remains still, open to me, his tongue holding still. Before pulling back slightly, so he can relax his mouth and breathe.

“Don’t stop.” He pants at me in a heavy, desperate, voice.

I smile at him. Stopping myself from laughing at his highly desperate state of arousal. Quite a contrast from the aloof and in control and somewhat deceptive, Tarin Armadel I’d initially met. I’d all but undone him in a mater of seconds. God I’m good and so worth the money.

“No intention.” I reply back at him softly and notice his fangs, look bigger than before. “Open for me.” I say as he opens his mouth wide to pull back his lips so he can show me those gorgeous, deadly looking fangs. I run my tongue along one side of the right one. Tarin’s moan is loud and his hands moved to my rump to cup my ass cheeks. I slid my arms around his waist in kind.

Stroking the fang with my tongue, I work it on all sides. But it isn’t until I start sucking on the tip of it, and taking it into my mouth gently, that Tarin’s fingers start to dig into my soft flesh. Almost to the point of bruising painfulness.

I move across him, my breasts crushing and dragging my stiff nipples over his chest as I remain, squashed up against him. I repeat the process on his left fang. Tarin starts to squirm a little against me then. We remain locked together in an embrace, my own hands mirroring his and feeling his, taunt, leather clad ass press into them. He wants this and he knows I know that he wants it.

I start sucking on the left fang, hard. Tarin starts to move against me, rubbing the swollen head of his cock against me. Moving the foreskin back and forth against my belly. I suck harder intermitting with licks on the roof of his mouth and taking the other fang, he moves faster. Until one final, hard, suck makes all that resolve, and control of his, utterly shatter him.

Tarin cries out against my mouth as his fingers dig into my flesh and the feeling of warmth from his seed spurts onto my belly and his chest and the underside of my breasts.

Tarin gasps out loud at me as his climax takes him over. Shaking in my embrace as we stand there, together, in his bathroom. He is incredibly beautiful to watch finding his release. I smile brightly, happily, at him. It’s rare for me to encounter intimacy and passion in the act of sex. For me, sex is always just a functionary role. Not one I do for pleasure. Probably a small part of my brain tells me, because I’ve never had any reason to get pleasure from it. Until now.

Because I’d never meet, him. Tarin is a first and I find myself looking at him with amazement and wonder. That I would get that experience from him. And yet, that’s what seemed to snap him back to reality instantly. He pushes me away from him, releasing me, violently fast. Making me stager two steps backward.

“Clean yourself up.” He mutters not bothering to look at me as he tucks himself back into his undone pants. “After you’re done here, we’ll meet in the dining hall and I’ll tell you about the job.” He stalks out of the bathroom fast and disappears from sight. My smile falls from my face.

6

I shower and meet Tarin back in the dining room. Ignoring him I walk over to the table, cut myself some now cooled down meat and use my fingers to pick it up and roll it up and bite into it. I am over the formality of the situation. Ice-breaker, done.

Tarin has cleaned up too, he is in a plain black faded t-shirt, and black jeans, and he is barefoot. His long blonde hair is swept behind him. He looks like a heavy metal god. It is a good look on him.

“The job,” Tarin starts, clearly not prepared to acknowledge anything else between us. It’s back to business, boring! I bite into the meat again and look at him plainly. “I need you to get some information for me, regarding a business dealing I believe is going to take place soon.”

“Vague, aren’t you?” I mutter picking up my neglected and still half full red wine glass as I sit on the edge of the dining room chair’s arm rest, my legs out straight in front of me, ankles crossed as Tarin sits again in his chair, at the head of the table.

He picks up his own wine glass and sips from it. Finally looking at me again. I scull the rest of my wine and put the glass back down. He looks up along my naked legs, till hit the hem of my skirt, before going to my face. The mask of cool and aloofness firmly in place. “I will need you to accompany me to a function where I need you to identify people with information I seek. And then we’ll have to take from there, if I can’t deal directly with them myself.”

I frown at him, chewing on the last bit of meat I’ve cut. “That sounds way too easy. I need more details than that.” I state.

Tarin sighs. “They will be paranormals. All of them.” That means, unlikely to be easy to read.

“What type?” I ask him. I haven’t come across anyone who my talents couldn’t work on yet. But there is always the possibility when it came to paranormals, they aren’t structured like humans and reading them is usually far more involved and difficult.

“Does it matter? Is this going to be a problem for you?” He asks over his wine glass.

I shrug my shoulders loosely. “Can’t say it will, can’t say it won’t.”

“Now who’s being vague Katelyn?” He responds with.

I smirk at him. “I tend to get hired for humans to use on humans. Silly stuff mostly, like corporate espionage, under the table dealings, that kind of drama.” I sip from my wine. “I haven’t meet a human I couldn’t read, yet. But paranormals, they can be different.”

“How so?”

I down another mouthful of the rather tasty red wine and hold up my glass at him as I speak. “Take you for example. Shadow. Never, met a shadow before right?”

“Right.”

“Can’t get a read on you.” I say watching his facial expression closely. Tarin contemplates my words and drinks the rest of his wine in silence. So I wait for him to say something.

“And you think, maybe it’s because of what I am that you’re ability is somehow not able to work?”

“Blocked.” I reply. “I sensed your presence in the street, but that could be down to instinct and awareness of my surroundings. Something you need when you’re working the streets. So if there’s going to be other shadows there,” I say waving my hand at him “I might not be able to get you what you want. I couldn’t guarantee it and I sure as shit don’t work for free or money after the event has transpired. And I have a strictly no refunds policy.”

“Hmm, well I suppose it’s possible that other shadows could be there, but there really aren’t all that many of us left, so I’d say it would be a long shot if it was one of them.”

I put the wine glass back down on the table and stand up. Feeling a little bit bold with him. I take two steps towards him. “And I knew exactly how to please you in the bathroom because…” I let my words trail off and smile. I don’t want to loose the job. Not if it means I get paid well enough not to put with bad sex on the streets of Melbourne for awhile and not if it means I might get to have sex with Tarin in the process. My brain is busy telling me how so worth the price, that will be.

“Because why?” He asks unable to not take my bait. I walk over in front of him and straddled his lap. Tarin’s hands moved to my denim covered ass and hold me there. I can feel his erection again, through his jeans. I want that erection inside me. Not pressing against me, teasing me.

I lean forward, towards his face, angling down for that mouth. “That’s a secret.” I say softly. I feel his hands go from cupping my ass on him, to sliding up my back, under my jacket, under my t-shirt, touching my skin.

“If you play nice, I will too.” He smirks back at me.

“Oh I am always, nice Mr Armadel. Wether my clients deserve it or not.” His hands trace lazy palmed circles and strokes over my back.

“Are there other paranormals that you find yourself blocked on?”

“Haven’t come across any but maybe the exotic and rare kind, like yourself might pose a problem..” I say back at him. “But I guess, we won’t know until I do some field work for you, huh? Unless perhaps you can get your lovely, talented hands, on a guest list, we could perhaps peruse over and figure out some things on? Like who’s going to be there, what they are and if they’re likely to be the one you’re after?” Tarin’s hands slid up my sides, his thumbs coasting over the grooves of my abdominal muscles before brushing my bra again.

“I might be able to do that.”

“So what type of event is it?” I ask as his fingers pulled down the edge of my bra so he can tweak my nipples between his fingers. “Because my wardrobe attire, is coming out of your pay packet at your expense. Let me guess, it’s a company function and I’ll need to be your assistant for the evening.”

Tarin’s mouth quirks, like the idea of minion in corporate pencil skirt and pinstripes had appeal to it. “No. Nothing like that. You’re secret identity for this job will be as my lover.” Tarin says pulling on my nipples, just a bit harder, making me let out a soft gasp.

“Lover?”

“Yes, that way, we can work any angle we want for you to get close to others if need be. You could be cheating on me, you could be up for trade, you could be,”

“Whoa! Wait a second.” I say putting my hands directly on his shoulders. He flicks my bra straps down my shoulders and pushes my bra down again, so he can cup and continue to fondle my breasts. “You are not handing me around.”

“But if you require touch to get the information,”

I push back from his shoulders but he grips my breasts tightly. “Katelyn don’t defy me.”

“I told you I can get information from being close as well. I don’t always have to have touch.” He loosens his grip on my breasts. “But it helps.” I conceded. “That doesn’t mean you get to pass me around to your mates.”

“Not my intention. I merely meant that if you had to say, have sex with someone to get my information, then, we would have the ruse to use as an excuse for you. And no one would be any the wiser. After all, you’re kind of rare and exotic and unheard of in the wider community, aren’t you? I only happened to find out about you through the luck of what passed for mundane conversation.” He begins pulling my bra back up and my bra straps.

I sit up straight and re-adjust my breasts into my bra as he removes his hands from under my t-shirt. “Yes.”

“And the more anonymity we can give you, the better it will work for me. That way no one will be any wiser as to what is actually going on and we’ll more than likely bait the hook with you.”

I lift my head back and laugh out loud. At my own stupidity really. “So I’ll be bait to lure in those you think are the threats to you and likely to hold your information. Under the ruse of being your lover, they can what, abscond with me? “I shake my head at myself again. “That’s what tonight was, it was a dry run, a test run over a business proposal.”

Train looks at me again, poker faced and serious. The mask of cool aloofness firmly in place. “So well go over the finer details when I have more tomorrow, but we can agree on a few things now. Whilst with me, no sex with other men,” He continues on as if I haven’t just connected the dots on his mindset with that revelation.

“But you just said,”

He holds up a hand dismissively “You’ll be at my beck and call until this is done or I’m satisfied it’s done. You can live in one of the bedrooms here and”

“No.”

He raises his eyebrows at me in surprise at my defiance. “I have my own place, I live there.”

“Well then how do you expect to be at my beck and call?” Tarin asks me as if it has never occurred to him that I would never say no. I’d guess not a lot of people ever said no to him.

“I don’t. Not more than is necessary.” He remains silent and impassive. “Oh fine, get me a mobile phone then. Coming out of my fast growing expense account that you will provide me with for the job.”

“Agreed.” We fell into silence again and I find myself holding his gaze.

“I will ensure my driver is available to you at any time. You will not work your regular night time profession or take on any other jobs while you are with me.”

“Agreed, although we already covered the no sex part.” I say back at him cheekily.

“I never said no sex Katelyn.” He says pushing me against his erection, so I can feel it against the entrance to me.

“Agreed.” I mutter heatedly. Why am I so needy to have sex with this guy? No male I’d ever met had made me want to actually have sex with him in a purely pleasurable sense like this. “And you need to be aware and agree, that whilst I’m hired for this specific job of yours, I may not be able to get you what you want in the end. Because I just don’t know enough of how my ability works on paranormals, you’re kind of like a first, here.”

Tarin tilts his head to the side and gives a courteous nod. “Do you have any other terms of agreement we need to go over?”

“My fee.” I state at him, all business again.

“I’ll pay what you ask Katelyn.”

“So what? I can just name my price up front?” He thinks about it for a nano second.

Tarin tilts his head as he looks back at me. “Yes but I won’t be taken. But you seem rather smart Katelyn, so I’ll negotiate if I truly have to.” He makes it sound like negotiating is a time waster.

“With an expense account on top of that –Agreed?” Tarin looks back at me with a wide smile flashing a hell of a lot of fang at me.

“You do want to do business with me, don’t you Katelyn?”

“I do.” I reply holding out my hand for him to shake.

“That’s not how I seal a deal.” I raise an eyebrow at him. He slaps my ass then, so it makes a resounding smack. “Well, it’s getting late, and we will sign off on this tomorrow when we meet back here, I’ll have my driver deliver you, your mobile phone and collect you for our meeting. And we’ll go over the finer details of the actual job itself.” He lifts me up by the hips and I stand up over him, before removing myself. I’m being dismissed.

But not before seeing he is still pressing hard into those jeans. I’m not sure I get Tarin. What a crazy night this is turning out to be. Crazy and lucrative for me, so who am I to argue with him?

I accept that our business for the night is done and agree to meet with him the next day to plot our course of action once he has more information to give me. His driver takes me home and I go to bed, for the first time ever in my life, utterly, sexually, frustrated.

7

I don’t sleep well that night. I try masturbating it isn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d like it to be. And it isn’t like I can go out and find a john to fuck me, because I’ve agreed to not do that, with Tarin. Although, technically, we haven’t signed all the paperwork yet on my new job, so to speak. So I am free for the next few hours. But what would the point be? No john I’ve ever met has interested me in sex for pleasure.

I groan and glance across at the shelf near my bed and the new, mobile phone that sits on it, charging away, brightly in the night time space of my bedroom.

Tarin’s driver, man servant, whatever, has gotten me set up on a mobile phone that is programmed with Tarin’s phone number in it, before I’d even got home. I’ve never really bothered with mobile phones before. Never really saw a point. After all, they are for keeping you in touch with people and as Tarin had so succinctly put it, at they’re beck and call.

I don’t have people I keep in touch with. I don’t have people. I don’t have friends and I’d long ago left my family. There is just me and my daily interactions as they play out, wherever I happen to be. That is my life. My clients find me directly, one way or another and we deal with communications, as needed when doing dealings.

I’d played around with the phone earlier on for awhile and discovered it did things other than make phone calls. It wasn’t called a smart phone for no reason at all it seemed. It seemed simple enough to use. I picked up the phone and looked at it, willing Tarin to call me on it. It gave me nothing and did nothing. I sigh and put it back on the shelf and pull the covers up over my naked body and try again for sleep.

How is it that it my mind drifts back to Tarin Armadel? What is it about him that has me focussed on him? It’s probably the job, something about the job, I decide. After all, why hadn’t we signed off on the preliminaries tonight? That doesn’t really make much sense to me.

What kind of businessman asks for your services to hire you for a job, discusses the details and then lets you walk away without completing, the transaction so to speak? I look up at the high roof of my warehouse.

But really, had we discussed details? There wasn’t all that much that he’d told me, now that I thought about it. Tarin the elusive was back in control of the situation when he’d given me some information, but not all. I don’t even know what type of event it is that I am going to be accompanying him to, as his lover.

Why hasn’t he just said girlfriend? Partner? Maybe he isn’t too concerned with labels. I’m not. But again, it is a small thought that strikes me as odd. But then, Tarin Armadel didn’t strike me as in anyway ordinary. Which is kind of nice, for a change, actually. Even if he did leave me high and dry after I got him off.

I thump the pillow next to me, as I turn onto my side. I have an aching need inside of me. Being around Tarin had stirred something I wasn’t sure I’d ever truly possessed before, a sex drive. Lusting after someone just isn’t the normal thing for me to do. Sure, I find attractiveness in bodies, in people. But wanting that connection for me to latch onto their skin and feel them within me, that’s like an annoying itch that needs scratching. Repeatedly.

Romance was not a notion I subscribed to. And the term love making is completely alien to me. As far as I am concerned people fucked and they had sex, they mated and they had intercourse. That was about it.

Which leads me to wonder if Tarin is having as hard a night sleeping as I am and if he is touching himself, thinking of me, like I have been thinking of him. I found myself hoping so as I turn back to look at the mobile phone before closing my eyes.

“Why are you so fucking cock struck? Go to fucking sleep Katelyn.”

8

When I walk into Tarin’s mansion the next evening at the appointed time, I am not escorted through the house by anyone. Either the butler, man-servant slash driver – Rick, as I found out his name is, leave me to my own devices once through the front door.

Tarin is not there to greet me and I wonder if he cares to keep up the niceties he’s shown me the night before now that he knows, I’ll take the job he wants to hire me for.

I look up at the wide staircase and decide, he can wait a bit longer if he isn’t going to show me some good old fashioned manners and be at the door to greet me. After all he knows I am due here, because he’s sent Rick to collect me and Rick had texted my new mobile phone, when he was ten minutes out from my residence.

I’ve never met a client as elusive as Tarin. Whilst most clients are secretive to an extent, I can accept that things are on a need to know basis. That is part and parcel of my business dealings. But Tarin seems to go above and beyond that.

After all, if he doesn’t want to make an impression on me, if he just wants to get my business and get it done then he didn’t have to invite me to his place of residence. He didn’t have to have me for dinner followed by amazing foreplay. Even though we’ve justified that by testing our chemistry for our pretend relationship. Which we will have to portray at this event to give the wrong people, the wrong impression of us, so I can conduct my business, for him.

I walk over to the first room I spot on the ground floor and open the door and hit the light switch. It leads out to the undercover garage. Boring. I turn off the light and close the door again. Looking around me and heading opposite to the room on the other side of the foyer.

The room is a library. Walls are packed with books, lots and lots of books, everywhere, from floor to ceiling. There is no window in the room. There is one antique looking chair in there, a reading chair I realise. A small table next to it, also antique looking of mahogany wood. Beside that is single cabinet table with a record player on it. An honest to goodness, record player with vinyl records stacked in the compartment underneath it, ready to be slipped out and played to create a mood while reading.

That makes me smile, I’m not sure why. But it humours me to think of the god of heavy metal, as I viewed him last night, sitting here, reading and listening to… I look at the record cover left out and on top of the record player’s plastic protective hard top cover. Nina Simone.

Good choice, from one intense moody diva to another. I move to the antique chair and have just sat down in it when the diva of the hour, appears in the library doorway, making me spring back out of the chair like my bottom is on fire.

“Katelyn,” Tarin greets me with as he stands in the doorway. His eyes glancing over my outfit choice. I’m wearing a white, black and blue chequered cowgirl looking shirt, and another short skirt, this one black and pleated with ankle boots.

My brown hair is un-brushed, and wavy and hanging down past my shoulders. There is only so much you could do with hair, when you’re having a bad hair day. I’ve given up getting it past the “I’m frustrated you haven’t fucked me, you prick tease.” look

“Tarin.” I reply, thinking how he looks far too well rested. My eyes glance down the front of his again, a plain black shirt, half undone, leather pants, and not seeing a monster erection or any form of tenting. He is again barefoot. His blonde hair over one of his shoulders. He looks amused by busting me in his reading room. Damn him, I bet he slept just fine.

“Shall we?” He suggests sweeping a hand outwards, back into the rest of the house. I flick my own loose hair over my shoulders and walk towards the doorway with him in it. I brush past him and we head back up to the dinning hall. “Hope you’re hungry” Tarin says as we take the stairs together.

“Sure.” I reply. I had expected dinner given the time of our agreed meeting. I walk into the dinning room and see another mini feast for two on the table again. With two plate settings.

“Would you like a drink?” He asks playing the perfect host for me, again.

“Sure.” I reply standing with my hands together and watching him go to a wine rack on the wall before turning to face me.

“Everything alright?” He asks causing me to look at him surprised.

“Sure.”

“That’s the third sure, you’ve said and the only word next to my name you’ve said since you arrived here.”

“Oh.”

He turns back to the wine rack wall and looks at it. “At least you’re expanding your vocabulary.” He said holding up five fingers “Fifth word you’ve used. Are you sure, everything’s alright Katelyn?” Tarin persists as he reaches for a bottle of red wine and again turns to face me. “Would you prefer red or white?”

I frown. I’m not sure I understand Tarin. He is throwing me for a loop with the manners and everything. “Let’s just cut the crap Tarin and get on with business shall we?” I blurt out annoyed at him.

His eyes narrow on me a little. “This is how I conduct my business and wish to conduct my business with you Katelyn.” He walks over to another wine rack on the adjacent wall and pulled out a white wine bottle. “Refrigerated wine rack, genius.” He says walking back over to the table and putting both bottles down next to our feast.

I am ready to start pacing around in circles. I feel restless being this close to him and annoyed at his utter calm demeanour and my lack of ability to pick up much of anything on him. If I could at least get a read some of him, I could feel somewhat in control, and in my element. I could feel, confident. But again, Tarin shadow-ness is like an instant block to my ability.

“I’m afraid if you can’t tell me what is troubling you Katelyn that your mood doesn’t lead me to believe we will work well together.” Tarin says looking back at me.

Is he kidding? We’d all but signed the paperwork last night! “I uh, um.” I stumble to tell him what is troubling me, because it is a little difficult for me to articulate it all and not sound insane. I sound insane to myself, because I am rather new to everything I’m feeling around him.

I run a hand through my tangled hair and get it caught. Crap. “I didn’t sleep well. I’m just, you know, tired.” Tarin watches me closely and I can tell he doesn’t believe my answer, not fully. He nods his head at me and holds out his hand.

“Come.” I take his outstretched hand and walked over to the table, but instead of directing me to the chair I sat in the night before he pulls out the head chair, the one at the end of the table. He pulls it right out and clear of the table. Directing me to stand in its place. I look at him and he turns me to face the table. “Bend over.” Tarin husks in my ear, as he sweeps my hair back from it.

I put my hands on the table and lean forward and part my legs for him. Tarin’s leather clad leg, complete with hardening cock press against my upper thigh and backside.

“I didn’t sleep so well, either. Wonder why?” He mutters as his hands raise my skirt up over my hips. Only to be greeted by no underwear what so ever. “I may have to make this a stipulation.” He says running a hand over the naked curves of my ass, until his fingers cup my wetness. “So wet.”

“I don’t think I stopped being wet after I met you last night.” I say in a low soft voice that doesn’t sound like me at all. “And left me highly charged when I went home.”

“That was rude of me, I apologise. To take and not give in return.” He says and I hear the zip on his leather pants go down. I wonder if he is going to rub his cock up against my ass, jerking it off against my ass cheeks this time. I close my eyes and concentrate on trying to not give into the frustration I feel at his teasing of me. Tarin is used to being a top, being in control, getting his way, of being the boss. He is the boss of me now, well, will be, once we settle our business arrangement.

“But you see,” He says his lips against my ear. “No female has done that to me before.” I open my eyes and turn my head, to look over my shoulder at him and he plants small kisses behind my ear as I do so.

“No female, at all?”

“I’ve had females do what you did, but not with the same result.” He kisses my neck. “I’ve never reacted that way to anyone else before.” He kisses down the back of my neck, keeping my hair brushed off it. I let out a heavy breath, So I’m not imagining the chemistry thing between us then. Not quite as insane as initially thought.

His fingers have started to lightly stroke me and I find myself wanting to move against them. “I really should return the favour.” He murmurs into the back of my hair.

“It would be the polite thing to do.” I mutter huskily back at him. Two fingers slip inside me and I sigh with relief that he is finally inside me.

“It’d be my pleasure, Katelyn.” He says starting to fuck me with his fingers. “Do you want my pleasure Katelyn?”

I press my palms down into the table and try to remind myself to breathe as he picks up the pace on my needy body. “Yes.” I growl back.

His lips kiss my neck and the crook of it before he comes across the barrier of my shirt. Screw him, I’m not taking it off until he damn well asks me to. Tarin starts adding a little twist to the end of the finger fuck to me and I gasp at the action.

“By the way,” I pant heavily, trying to look back at him. “I could’ve called your bluff on not being able to do business with me.” I keep panting heavily as he builds me up.

“Really?” Typical Tarin, a question for an answer.

“Yeah,” I gasp. “I’m kind of a big deal. How many truth-sayers you know around here?” I look away from him and pant loudly, as the sensation he is driving into me, grows more intense. Unlike werewolves and shape shifters, I’ve never come across another one of me, anywhere nor heard of another truth sayer, anywhere.

His response is to finger fuck me harder and I turn my head to the right, trying to see through my hair to wonder what he is doing with his free hand. I see movement and know exactly what he is doing, he is masturbating himself at the same time he is making me peak. The idea that he is being turned on as much as I am, by this makes me bite my lip so hard, I’m sure it will draw blood.

Just when I think I can’t take it anymore, when I am sure I will shatter from the exquisite feeling swirling through me. He pulls out. His fingers leave me. I slap my hand down on the table hard in utter angry frustration.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I turn around on him sharply, my voice loud with anger. My hair splaying out behind me in a wild arch. But I instantly want to take back my words, when I see him pulling on a condom over his rock hard cock. I look from it to his face. He smiles back flashing those big ass fangs, that I am sure, he knows I like. “Oh.”

“I’ll give you an O, Katelyn. I promise. A deals a deal.” He says putting his hands on my hips and raising me to the edge of the table, my hands push the crockery and things away from behind me and my hands found themselves undoing his shirt hastily as he will let me.

Tarin yanks it off himself quickly when I am done and I tear at my own shirt, to get off me. Tarin looks at the plain black bra housing my breasts and groans in appreciation. A single finger flicked open the front catch on it and my breasts spilled out.

“Don’t you agree?” He hisses and stepping between my legs. I am shucking the bra off me when he thrusts up and into me in one hard, jolting, movement. I grab his biceps tightly, digging my fingers in as he starts moving, thrusting in and out of me wildly.

“Yes.”

Tarin’s hands grip my hips so he can drag me onto his cock, and lift me off the edge of the table repeatedly. I raise my legs and wrap them around his hips, pushing his leather pants further down off him. I don’t think its possible, but he sinks deeper into me. Until we are fully joined together, my lips find his and I start to kiss him, my lips press into his heavily and my tongue seeks his out as we fuck on his dining room table.

Between kisses and gasping for air, I pant heavily. The feeling of him inside me, intensifies and I squeeze him unable not too. My orgasm finally comes roaring through my body to make me pull myself onto him and hold myself there as I come and Tarin, follows a few seconds later, raising his head back to cry out, before aiming those razor sharp fangs downwards at me.

My eyes widened as I watch him plunge them into my flesh, just under my collar bone.

My mouth drops open to cry out and nothing comes out, as I adjust to the initial pain of my skin breaking and muscles piercing as his fangs dig into me before Tarin’s mouth starts sucking automatically on the spot he’s just buried his fangs into. He sucks and those fangs, like his cock, throb inside of me as he empties himself and drinks me down at the same time.

It is the height of everything I’ve never known I wanted to feel before. It is years of unleashing and passion awakening for the first time. My body feels like it is on fire in a cool blue flame. I shake as my muscles twitch and contract. It isn’t like I’m a virgin and this is my first time, but it may as well be for all that I’d ever lacked or not known about sexual intimacy and true pleasure.

Tarin makes me forget anything outside of the sensation of his lips sucking on my blood, those fangs tearing a little with each movement at my fired up, sinew. I want nothing more than to hold myself to him, to be joined with him, as long as we both can stand it.

Not that I think my body would be able to obey me as my legs, slowly unwrap from his hips and drop, lowering to the ground. Tarin’s hands, go to my ass and drag me closer, keeping me joined to him. He wants what I want, to be, utterly together on a level neither of us has ever known. Was that the thought that flickered through me, had it come from him? Was I reading him?

Slowly he pulls his fangs out of me again and lick at the puncture marks on my skin. His fangs snapping away, disappearing from his mouth like magic. As his lips kiss their way up my throat, to the edge of my jaw, to my face.

It feels like he wants to say something to me, when he looks at me, his hand cupping the side of my face. But I see the hesitation in his eyes, something about what we’ve just done is new to him too. There is something between us now.

Instead Tarin surprises me, by resting his forehead against mine tenderly and looking down into my eyes, as our bodies stayed joined together, enjoying the dying ebbs of our afterglow.

He stands there with me balancing precariously on the edge of the table for what seems like a long time, before eventually, pulling out of me. I hate the feeling. The first time I’d not wanted a male to pull out of me.

My heart races and I feel giddy and tired, probably from the blood loss, I realise a little too late as Tarin scoops me up and carries me in his arms out of the dinning room and into a bedroom.

“Sleep Katelyn, we’ll talk when you wake.”

9

Awaking in an unfamiliar bed in an unknown room, and I feel rested, that’s another first.

Not at all as sexually angst charged as I had earlier that morning. I blink and focus my eyes on the bedside table. There is a silver bucket, filled with ice and a chilled bottle of white wine in it. A serving tray with a closh over it and a box of condoms next to two wine glasses. I can feel my complete nakedness under the bed covers. I turn back around to the other side. Tarin is beside me in bed, presumably, as equally naked going by his glorious, bare chest on display for me.

“How are you feeling?” He asks me, drawing me into his body again. I soften to fold into him as he pulls up against him. I rather find I like, being held by him. His long blonde hair spread out on the dark pillows behind him. Making him look rather stunning, like his hair is in flight, flowing behind him.

“Fine. How long was I asleep for?”

“About half an hour. It’s a pretty common side effect, to feel tired afterwards from a bite, especially when you’re not used to it.”

“First time I’ve been bitten.” I reply back at him as his hands settled on my hips. I can feel him semi-erect again under the covers. Does the man ever stop having sex? Maybe he just thinks about it all the time.

“First time you’ve been bitten?” He repeats back at me surprised by my revelation, eyebrows raised. “You must not hang around to many paranormals then.”

A frown forms on my forehead. “What makes you say that?”

“Katelyn, you’re far too tempting to pass up.”

“I don’t really hang around anyone, I tend to keep to myself. Always have.” I reply as he brushes some hair back from my ear. My fingers reached up and trace over the feel of the puncture marks on my skin. I figure it will hurt, but it doesn’t. Even though I remembered the sensation of him plunging into me with all of his body. I close my eyes at the memory of mixed sensation. I’ve never experienced anything like it before.

“It should be healing already.” He states at me and I open my eyes again to hold his gaze. “The saliva works to start the healing process, there should be no marks by morning.” The thought that there will be no evidence of what I’ve experienced, when I looked in the mirror later, makes me sad. This is a memory I wanted to hold onto. Tarin has made sex something that is all new to me again and I am rather enjoying it. And enjoying wanting it.

“I had dinner brought in here, in case you actually felt like eating some time while you’re here.” He chuckles at me. Its a nice sound and odd to hear coming from someone who strikes me as rather serious most of the time. I laugh back at him.

“Decadent bedside manner dining, I like it.”

“I haven’t been able to come up with a guest list of who’s who at the party, but I’ll keep digging around to see if I can’t get something that might help us plot our way through it a little better. I guess the more information you have, the better to guide you with.” Tarin says going back the business of our business, again.

“So it’s a party where going to?” I ask looking back at him. He seems quite content to laze there with me, in bed. How un-Tarin like of him. “So what exactly am I extracting from this mark, once we figure out who the hell it is?”

“A real estate deal that’s going to take place soon. I need to know where, when and who’s in charge of it. As much information as possible that you can get me about it.”

“Real estate.” I mutter. Well it isn’t quite the most boring thing I’ve ever had to retrieve, but it is second to boring. He pulls me closer to him so my breast brushes against his chest.

“Yes, it’s a rather lucrative deal and I want to be the only one who gets to have it.” He kisses me then, throwing me for a little loop of giddy joy. Our lips met and I feel the hunger in him, press through those lips, in the eagerness of his tongue to do more, far more than just kiss. I wonder if he wants to bite me again. I wonder if I could take it, again, so soon, twice in one night.

We break for air panting and looking wide eyed at each other, this thing between us is heating up beyond all recognition and neither he or I were expecting it. “It won’t be like you’re going to a real estate agent’s party. So it won’t be easy. They’ll be a fair amount of powerful players there and possibly one or two who don’t fancy running into me in a hurry.”

“So are we going across into enemies lines then? Or are we crashing this thing?” My hands started skimming up his chest. “Am I working on a deadline here or what?”

“No, I have been invited so time shouldn’t be an issue, unless of course we happen to get busted by the mark and they’re reaction isn’t at all good. But I don’t perceive that happening. From what I understand, what you do, it’s practically undetectable, is that right?”

“Yes. I haven’t met a mark yet who knew what I was doing.”

“Impressive.” He replies drawing circles around my areola.

“My client list is impressive. But I can’t tell you about that, because of confidentiality.” I reply as he pulls at my nipple playfully.

“I don’t want to hear about your other clients.” He mutters throatily in a way that suggests jealousy. But surely I can’t be reading that right, what does Tarin Aramadel have to be jealous of, especially when it came to me, his newest employee? “How does it work?”

My hands find his hair and trace it back on the pillow behind him in a smooth repetitive motion. I shrug my shoulders loosely. “It just does and you’re going to need to trust me on that.” His hair is silky soft and golden like rays of sunlight. “I’m hungry, we should eat.”

“What you or dinner?” He smirks at me.

The idea of Tarin between my legs, his mouth between my legs, is making me squirm in anticipated delight. “I think I need replenishment first, you took a lot out of me.”

“My apologies, I got a little…carried away. I usually know when to stop and am not like some horny little teenage without some sense of control.” That makes me laugh at him and earns me a smack on my rear.

10

The party where I am to do my espionage, is two days later. Tarin and I do not meet before it, and I have a thought of the groom seeing the bride in her dress before the big day.

Tarin has managed to figure out who is catering at the event and in doing that has gotten a hold of the menu, which didn’t really indicate to us who will be there, what type of paranormals we might be mingling amongst.

So I am going in blind, so to speak. A first time and I feel the need to repeat this over and over to Tarin, just to ensure he understands how much harder that makes my job.

“Katelyn, if you’re worried about the money, check you’re back account, it’s considerably obscene at this point in time.” He says to me as I hold my mobile phone up to my ear. I knew it is, I’ve already checked it out and re-checked it three times, just to make sure I’m reading it right. Because it is far more than I’ve asked for.

“Look, I just want you to be very aware of that this is a odd circumstance for me to be working from. Usually, I have a base of information and a targeted mark that is known to both me and my employer. We’re behind the eight ball here even before we’ve begun and I’m not sure you’re going to feel at the end of it that you got you’re money’s worth if I walk out of it without what you want.” God I hated the sound of my own voice. I’m usually far more confidante than this. I am in fact, practically smug when it comes to doing this stuff, like it is routine for me.

But Tarin’s job was making me think it would either be a complete fucking bust and waste of time or like doing a gauntlet to get to the intended mark. “Tell me you got a dress.” Tarin says ignoring my rant of sensibility and nervousness.

“Of course I got a dress, told you I would. And some shoes and accessories. It appropriately says come hither lover.” I say drolly down the line at him. The dress so wasn’t me which was why it probably looks so good on me and why I hate it at the same time.

I’ve basically just put my trust in a sales assistant to do what they are actually hired to do and apparently did, every day of the week. Dictate fashion to the masses. I have zero interest in clothes shopping, which has almost sent the young twenty something assistant almost into apoplexy when she heard it.

For god sakes the colour of the dress we settled on is called blush. Which I was bound to do at some point. Yet I know I’ve made the right choice, after all, it makes me look incredibly feminine and soft. In other words about as unsuspecting as I could put out there.

“Looking forward to seeing you in it then.”

I pick up a shoe from the shoe box, on my bed holding it by it’s long heel and looked at it. It’s a five inch high heel, when I put it on I’m practically six foot and all legs. It isn’t exactly a bad look on me. Even if the shoes are called nudes. Since I’ve made Tarin fork out for my expenses, separate for my bank account, I’d ensured that I’d gotten some overpriced, designer ones. Maybe I could re-sell them later on. They were plain patent leather and that was it and they’d cost over a thousand dollars. I didn’t get it. But the sales assistant had insisted on them.

I hadn’t snapped them up because of the designer name or the price tag, which the sales assistant had clued into when she’d tried to sell me another pair that might have also worked with my outfit and were a bit more daring by comparison. I’d told her not to push it. My mandate to her for my outfit had been demure, feminine and everything I currently wasn’t. I need to look, dare I say it, virginally innocent.

“Right, anything else that we should attempt to not know about before we go into a fully loaded party and expect me to pull off some kind of miracle for you?” I ask.

Tarin sighs down the line, annoyed at me. “I’m sure you can think on you’re feet, Katelyn. After all you come from the streets. You can handle anything right?” He says giving me a little pep talk that sounds more like patience wearing thin than anything else.

“Of course.” I throw the shoe back on the bed.

“Then we’re good here and I’ll see you at seven as agreed.” And with that he ends the phone call. I listen to the click on his end and look at my mobile phone. Well my nerves aren’t settled and my mind is racing. This is a weirdly new situation for me to agree to put myself into. I am actually unsure of what I can do, given circumstances.

I look at all the items laid out on my bed and pick up the underwear. I’ve gone all out with the theme for my paranormal espionage debut. My underwear colour is called seashell and I’ve picked up a simple g-banger and that is it since wearing a bra with a backless dress isn’t an option. I am practically a walking buffet of femininity and boring pastel and skin colours. Who could resist that?

Since Tarin hasn’t really been able to give me an information advantage, I figure I will have to work my feminine charms and this was how I plan to do it. By disarming all who see me with the complete opposite image of what I am.

The only thing he’d told me without being aware of it, was that the guests we were going to be amongst, were players that appeared to be the type who would like nothing better than to usurp what was his. Or steal it.

So my plan was I had to present like his lover, girlfriend as a delicious human little treat for some big, bad, powerful paranormal to notice and want. Then they could work some angle on me, that I supposedly couldn’t see coming and drag me away from Tarin. But in doing so, what they would actually be doing, would be playing into my plan and giving Tarin and I exactly what we were after. Free access for me to work.

My brown hair was brushed straight and I teased the front a little to brush and raise it backwards, with the rest of my hair down my bare back. I took great effort in applying my make up perfectly. Unlike my usual look, of either none or heavy, I again, had to play my part in being perfectly boring and oh so human looking. So I went for natural shades of everything. I had that whole natural beauty look, happening. When in fact there was nothing natural about spending three hours putting make up on and ensuring it wasn’t caked on like a book cover.

Instead of my usual red lipstick which suited me beautifully, with my dark hair and dark eyes, I used a peach lipstick called of all things, cream-pie, that I hated with a passion and added lip-gloss. I looked at my face, it looked clean and perfectly toned and without any type of uneven imperfection, my eye-lashes were dark and long, curling at just the right angle. They made my eyes stand out.

Moving away from the mirror I slid on my g-banger, why I’ve no idea. Such a flimsy scrap of material, it already felt like it was barely there, I picked up my light pink, no, excuse me, blush coloured chiffon layered dress and stepped into it.

It was a halter neck, that the collar of which was beaded with silver crystals and gems that extended to the edge of the dress towards my arms. I clipped it around my neck and watched the rest of the mini dress fall into place. Just as it had in the shop I’d bought it from.

It clung to my form and complimented it perfectly, soft layers of chiffon ruffles dancing with every movement I made, and stopping at the top of my thighs. I turned around to check the other view. The back of the dress was, my back, it scooped down low to stop just before the top of my tail bone. Exposing my entire back in a simple, sexy display of flesh that no one could ignore looking at if greeted with the sight of it.

It was perfect. Everything I wasn’t.

I’ve moisturised my legs so they had a satin sheen to them and slid my feet into my nude high heels. I pulled out my regular hoop earrings and exchanged them for long, drop pearl and crystal earrings and slid a crystal beaded bracelet over my right wrist. Before re-assessing myself in the mirror. I was rather shocked by what I saw.

The female staring back at me, wasn’t me. I could’ve come from some fortunate family in south Yarra and fitted right in. It was weird to look at myself and think I was pretty. Pretty in blush pink. I shook my head and turned away. I should know better than to think like that.

Being around Tarin was doing something to me. Making me more aware of myself than I’d ever cared to pay all that much attention to before. It made me feel things, I hadn’t thought I could before. My security door intercom buzzed right on seven o’clock. I pressed the button back

“Be right down.” I replied into it and scooped up my mobile phone and some condom packets and dropped them into my clutch purse and trotted down stairs to meet my date for my evening espionage.

The doorway to my place was a thick metal sliding door, once you got past that, there was a locked screen folding door that you could see through, but I had to unlock it for entrance, there was a slightly covered entrance on the other side, that opened out into the lane way that the warehouse backed onto. A lane way you could park a car down, but only get out on one side of the car from, it wasn’t terribly wide.

Tarin stood on the threshold under the covered part, his head down, looking at his shoes, shuffling around, his hands in his pockets, his silky blonde hair, was braided down his back. I wondered who had put their hands on all that silky sunshine and gotten to feel it, in doing his hairstyle. He wore a plain black fitted suit and white shirt with black bow tie. Classically elegant and stylish beyond reproach. He was smoking hot, basically.

He lifted his head as the security screen door folded back at my behest. He looked me over then, and again. Tarin’s expression was priceless, he was utterly stunned by my presence. That much I could tell. His mouth actually dropped open and he wiped his hand across it and then dropped it to smile at me. “Katelyn, you look…”

I waited for the rest of it. I had to know that out of everything I was up against, that my chosen weaponry for this job, was right on. That I’d read that much right before we even got there. Or I might just loose all my god damn confidence and arrogance in being able to pull this thing off. I did not need to head fuck myself before even beginning this job.

“Beautiful.” He finished.

“Wait till you see the back.” I smirked at him, still standing in the open doorway.

Tarin lifted his hand and held up one finger and moved it around in a circular motion, indicating I should do a slow turn for him. I obliged and turned around, even going so far as to throw him a flirtatious glance over my bare shoulder as I showed him my back. I actually heard the intake of breath from him as he saw my back and only just covered, ruffle, chiffon, derrière. I turned full around to face him again.

He looked at me then and I saw that look I’d seen the first night, back at his mansion in his eyes. “Oh hell no, we do not have enough time in the world for me to redo the make-up and keep this outfit pretty, Mister.” I said half turning to pull the metal door closed and then the security screen door which I padlocked into place.

Tarin smiled, flashing fangs at me. A genuine cheeky grin of mischief. “Well then, we better get you to the party, the sooner, the better for you I’m afraid.” We walked down the cobblestones to the limo parked towards the entrance of the laneway. “Cause you look like far too much to pass up at the moment.”

“Try not to get distracted from the job.” I threw at him with another bright eyed look as he opened the limousine door for me. He looked down the length of me again and rocked on his feet.

“I don’t think you realise how hard that’s going to be when I keep imagining those legs wrapped around me.”

I ducked my head and slid into the back seat of the limousine. Tarin slid in next to me but this time, did not sit so close to me as he had the first night he’d picked me up. He closed the car door with a thud.

“Guess, it wouldn’t help to tell you then that I’m only wearing a thing, scrappy, bit of material for a g-string underneath all of this then.” I said watching him hold himself tightly for a moment. “Or that the dress is only held together on me by one, click and press, stud, button.” I said emphasising each word to him. I laughed and looked out the back passenger side tinted window at the evening unfolding around us.

11

The party was to take place in another mansion. Only this one was about five times the size of Tarin’s suburban palace. Two mansions in one week, this was turning into a world of firsts for me.

Tarin didn’t spoke to me the whole ride over to the party. He didn’t even look at me. I knew because I kept stealing glances at him. I wondered if he couldn’t trust himself to not touch me, as he’d indicated earlier on.

Whatever, it didn’t bother me. As I was trying not to think too much about what I was going to do once we got inside the party. Looking the part was one thing, being the part I needed to be and carrying off my whole innocent butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth look for a girl who was used to putting cocks in her mouth, was another thing. Some people were freakishly good at spotting fakes and I felt utterly unlike myself and fake.

Tarin adjusted himself as he helped me out of the limousine, before he took my arm. Part of me hoped I’d given him reason to be a walking, harden-on all night. I slid my arm through his and we walked together into the party, Tarin producing an invite to flash at some host like person. We like most others arriving, were right on time. There was a lot of movement, and a lot of people.

I looked at a few guests. From the outside they looked like people, but then that was what paranormals did. It was how we blended so well into the world without being ostracised from it for being so different from those that apparently ruled it. Of course, not all the guests looked completely human, or apparently tried to.

Tarin caught me people watching and I nodded my head at one male in particular. He was also in a dining suit but I could see his hands and a bit of a sheen of colour on his neck, his skin was odd looking, not scaly as such, but like well worn leather with a tinge of green and blue to it amongst the brown of his skin. He had aquamarine eyes and blonde curly hair with distinctly aboriginal features.

“Dimkek.” He muttered to me softly. I looked at him blankly so he explained in more detail what he meant. “Rainbow Serpent.”

I looked back at Tarin. “For real?”

“Not one to be messed with easily.” So I guess I was hopping he wasn’t the mark then.

We moved into the main throng of guests. There was a lot of bodies in a crowd that seemed rather endless, I wondered how we were going to sort through them. My whole plan had been to draw attention to myself, to get those who might be interested in messing with Tarin come to us. But what if those we needed to see never even saw us because of how many guests were at the party?

Tarin and I stood together, scanning the crowd. “You need to parade me.” I said at him. He turned to look at me with a smirk, it was like something between lust and pride on his face. “Let’s walk around until we find out where you can get me a glass of something bubbly.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” He asked me in a low voice as we watched a pale skinned woman in a striking red gown, glide past us like she was floating on air. I couldn’t be sure though, her gown hid her feet. “Vampire.” Tarin muttered in soft annoyance. “And being obvious about it. Yawn.”

I chuckled at his obvious dislike of her and her kind. “Why do you not like vampires so much?” I asked him as we began walking.

“What exactly is there to like about them? Ever think of that?” Tarin replies to me in typical Tarin fashion.

I shrug my bare shoulders loosely. “I don’t know. They’re usually pretty and sophisticated. Well they do a good game at pretending to be more highly sophisticated than I’d guess most of them actually were. They dress to impress…” Tarin looks at me drolly.

“They give us shadows, a bad name by being so spot light fucking hungry for attention and adoration, they’re addicted to it. And humans tend to think anyone with fangs is fucking vampire vermin.” He grumbles back at me.

I ensure my leg strides are full of hip swing and I smile the whole time. Let the world eat my charm, I think as I receive a few glances of jealousy and appreciation. Its hard to tell if it is aimed at me or Tarin himself. He doesn’t exactly appear ugly, rather he looks dapper with his hair braided down his back and his handsome face, of high cheekbones and blue eyes and clean shaven, jaw on display.

We’ve almost completed a full circle of the room when we find a floating waiter and Tarin reaches for a champagne flute for me.

“Would sir care for some vintage blood?” The waiter asks Tarin as he signals another floating waiter with a bucket in hand, that houses what looked like various bottles of wine. But I’m beginning to doubt that is the case. I glance at Tarin and I caning see him look at me from the corner of his vision.

“No.” He states and reaches for a glass of red wine as the waiter dismisses the second waiter with the bottles of blood quickly. We stand watching the crowd mingle and start to move, as if in a dance.

I wonder why he didn’t accept the blood. After all, I know he drinks it. Well I know he drank my blood. But does he drink other blood? Of course I have no idea how often he drinks it or why he does.

“You didn’t have to do that.” I say quickly before sipping my champagne and watching those in front of start to swirl around into some sort of unified dance of suits and ball gowns as music filters through the room.

Tarin turns to me stiffly. “I felt like red wine.” He says and I pretend I believe him as we then kept scanning the room.

“Well, if you don’t feel like red wine, I’m okay with that, okay?” I whisper back at him, not looking at him.

“There is only one way I drink blood and it’s not cold and it’s not in a wine glass.” He states back at me sharply. “You should know that.”

I feel myself heat up at his words. Oh, he fucks and drinks at the same time. That is so dangerously dark and appealing to all the hormonal parts of me that I need to get a grip on.

I notice, I amgetting quite a few interested looks, particularly from by not exclusively from males in the room.

“In that case, try not to ruin the dress.” I mutter back at him. I feel Tarin relax slightly beside me. I’m glad to have alleviated the tension between us.

I sip my champagne. Compared to most of the females in the room, I am practically, tastefully, naked and on display. There are a lot of evening gowns and necks, gripped in bling with arms and wrists dripping in diamonds and other sparkly jewels. It is decadence to be jealous of, if you went for that kind of thing. I didn’t.

Besides, I have an obscene bank account at the moment, so who am I to care? It isn’t like I couldn’t afford diamonds if I want them. Not that I saw a point to wanting them. Actually, I don’t know how much diamonds cost, so they may still be out of my price range. I don’t look over done, but I look expensive all the same. So to one extent, I do fit right in.

“Oh good.” Tarin mutters sarcastically under his breath.

“What?” He nods his head towards our left and a small group of what looked like people moving across our side of the room. There is a male with bright blonde hair like Tarin.

“Atweye.” He sighs heavily before sipping from his glass. I don’t recognise the language he is using and look back at him for more information. “My family is here.” He answers my look with. Before I can ask him if he means his family, or something else, maybe gangster mob related, we are face to face with a woman and a man.

The male is six foot six tall, strapping and solid with short blonde hair, that is too long in front and keeps falling across in front of his eyes. He has baby blue eyes and an angular, clean shaven jaw. The female with him, is my usual height when I’m not in heels and she is. She has red hair, blue eyes and is wearing a strapless, emerald green gown with some beaded work on the right side of her waist, where the gown gathers in lines to come into. Around her neck she houses, a upside down V of multilayered bejewelled necklace with both her arms displaying ample amounts of layered jewels wrapped around them.

Tarin pulls me into his side, rather quickly so I teeter momentarily on my overly high, heels.

“Tarin,” The female says without smiling or much warmth it seems in her voice.

“Peyton.” Tarin replies cordially. Peyton looks from him to me. But Tarin is looking at the male now as I am.

“Katelyn this is my brother Shaye, and my sister Peyton.” Tarin says by way of introduction as Shaye sticks out his hand to shake mine. I take it, he has a firm grip and he smiles back at me, no flashy fangs, just a regular human, dental teeth smile. His eyes hold mine and I think I smell sea spray on him mingled with citrus.

“Didn’t expect to see you here.” Peyton breaks in and Shaye and I stop shaking hands all together. I look over at her as she addresses Tarin. “Where have you been hiding out anyway?” She smiles, trying for sweet at him but we all know it is insincere. “Tell us all his secrets Katelyn, where have you been keeping our brother?”

I look at Peyton. She has a powerfully in your face attitude, no holds barred. There is absolutely nothing quiet and meek about her. “What have you done to him, made him civil or just kept him chained up all this time?” She keeps on.

I go for my best, angelic looking smile that I can muster. Tarin’s sister is a bitch but he probably already knows that, given how stiff he is next to me. I want to tell him he doesn’t have to play nice with her for my benefit. But I refrain.

I lean forward towards Peyton and watch her stiffen and her face drops dramatically to ill conceived disgust as I get close to her and cup a hand around her ear and whisper. “He’s only just recovered from me royally fucking his brains out. We had to have him do rehab on the basics like how to walk again.”

I straighten up and slid my free arm around Tarin’s waist and kept smiling like I’m a bimbo who doesn’t know how to do anything else. My cheeks are going to hurt from this.

Peyton glares at me and throws a disgusted look at Tarin. “Really Tarin? A human? You’re standards have officially slipped. Enjoy the party.” She says at him before gathering up her dress and walking away from the three of us.

 

We all watch her leave. When Peyton is out of earshot, Tarin turns to look at me. “What did you say to her?”

I shrug my shoulders and sip my champagne again. “Just girl talk. No idea what she could’ve found so offensive.” That makes Shaye burst out loud laughing at us. “You do not know Peyton, clearly.” He says to me. “Back me up here Tarin, she has a wicked temper.”

“It’s true.” Tarin remarks.

“You do not want to be on the receiving end of, ever.” Shaye finishes as he calms down again and just kept smiling at me, shaking his head and wiping at his eyes. “Oh that was brilliant. Thank you.” He says grabbing a beer bottle of a circling waiter with drinks. We hold up our drinks and connect them before downing a mouthful as Tarin looks at me suspiciously. “Well brother, Katelyn,” Shaye says nodding his head at me “Do enjoy yourselves, I know I intend to.” And with that, he walks away, leaving just me with Tarin again.

I look at him, he seems rather tense again. “So does this change anything about the job?” I ask him. He gives me a hard look of annoyance.

“Why would you ask that?”

“That wasn’t the happiest family reunion I’ve ever seen. And you seem to be a bit thrown by it. Are we good here or do we need to abort?”

“There is no backing out here Katelyn. This is my best shot at getting everything I want. It has to be tonight. We just have to, wade through the interactions of things like that to get it.” I sip my champagne and watch couples dancing like they are in a grand ballroom of old. A thought occurs to me that I’ve never really considered until now.

“Are you sure what you want will be here tonight? I mean, you said to me you don’t even know who it is.” I ask in a low voice at him.

“Trust me, anyone who is anyone in our world, is here tonight.” He says returning a wave at another man across the way who waves at him. “And this is rather important, so there is no way those involved in it, won’t be here.” He finishes his red wine. “And if those involved in it are here, then it’s highly likely they’ll be some talk between them. And that my dear Katelyn is where you come in.” He says with his hand lightly on the small of my back. “Let’s mingle.” He says as we walk over in the direction of the man who has waved at Tarin.

12

I abandon the rest of my drink and we headed towards Tarin’s friendly face. The man who appears to be in his late forties or early fifty’s is Birnie Seacombe Tarin informs me. Whilst he is also dressed appropriately for the black tie affair, he has a pot belly and a warm, charming face. He is flanked by three women. Each of them hovering off his arm. “So what is Birnie?” I ask Tarin as we get closer.

“Bunyip. If he’s here, then you can guarantee there’s something regarding land exchange going down.” Tarin says quickly before I can ask if he is serious. Of course he is serious. His whole body language and sudden pick up of our pace in walking towards Birnie is serious.

I am valiantly trying to keep up with his strides in my ridiculous heels and keep smiling even as I practically ran along with Tarin’s strides until we reached Birnie.

“Tarin Armadel!” Birnie says heartily shaking off his dates and throwing a hard hug onto Tarin before he knows it. I move out of the way quickly as Tarin is slapped on the back hard.

“Birnie Seacombe, how long has it been?” Tarin states as they break apart from their manly greeting.

“A few years, at least.” Birnie says before noticing me and turning towards me. “Hello.” He says in a different kind of voice. Like the voice of someone who has just target locked me as a gift to steal out from under Tarin’s nose.

I try to look brightly at him, like I am just the damn sweetest, sexiest woman there and aren’t offended by his seemingly lecherous nature that I pick up on just from the one word he’s said at me. “Who do we have here?” He asks reaching forward to shake my hand as he glances over at Tarin.

“Birnie, this is my uh,” Tarin pauses for a moment, he either doesn’t want to say lover or had forgotten my cover story.

“Girlfriend,” I state putting my hand out to Birnie who encased it in two of his own, warmly. One on top and one underneath. “Katelyn.” His skin temperature is luke-warm and kind of almost sweaty but light and reminds me of something like a pond or a swamp.

Billabong, the word comes to my mind and I ensure I kept looking at Birnie and allow him to hold my hand as long as he damn well wants. I am already reading him, ready to gather my notes for Tarin.

“Katelyn, what a beautiful name for such a beautiful….” He widens his eyes and raises his eyebrows at me.

There is something about Birnie that is deeply hidden. The way he is perceived by people and the nature of what he actually is, a wave of consciousness raises up to me and drops with an answer. They are two very different things. Everyone sees him as a fat, jovial, personality. No harm, no foul.

“Human.” Tarin states filling in the gap for him. Birnie, still holding my hand, now patting it on top, looks at Tarin.

Birnie doesn’t know how open his language, his body was to me. He isn’t a guarded personality because there is something strong in him, that tells him he doesn’t need to be. He is more than secure in himself and his abilities, despite how he outwardly appears. There is an inner ferociousness to him that is there for a reason. He feels he’d earned it because he’s lived up to it.

“Human?”

The thing about me being a truth-sayer is, that it is hard to detect. I don’t really give off paranormal vibes and my appearance doesn’t change like say werewolves or shifters, or appear outwardly obvious like the Dimkek we’d seen earlier on.

As if being rare is lonely enough, my type aren’t too widely known in the paranormal community at large. Clearly Tarin has then gotten some other basic information off Henry, like what I looked like, my name, or where he’d picked me up for business and the rest, I guess he’d pieced together. It wouldn’t be too hard to do. I might not be heavily involved in society but I wasn’t living off the grid either. Not entirely. I just kept to myself.

“We haven’t been dating all that long.” I add on as Birnie pulls me in closer to him.

His three dates, hover around him pouting and whining at him for their attention. He throws up a hand dismissing them. “Go dance for awhile.” He states at them. “I have to catch up with my good friends here, Tarin and Katelyn.”

Birnie, crooks his arm and slides mine through it, so suddenly I am hanging off his arm instead of my date’s. What an old smooth operator he is. I can see the annoyance on Tarin’s face, but he lets Birnie get away with it because we need it. This is our opening to finding out what we’d come here for.

“And he bought you here!” Birnie says loudly as he laughs through his words.

I have to get past the feelings of self worth in Birnie, but that is harder than it seems. Because unless you can guide a mark to where you want them to be, it means digging around so to speak and working through complexities of feelings that run rampant through all of us. And digging means time and time tends to make things obvious to the mark in question.

“At least it isn’t a first date.” I throw back at him, completely charming Birnie as he smiles longingly at me. I have to somehow trigger the conversation we need to get his mind to consciously offer up a path to where I am likely to want to go. Either that or I have to somehow signal to Tarin that he needs to start talking business with Birnie.

“I just can’t believe Tarin Armadel is well, dating..” Birnie keeps looking at me. “It’s not his usual style you know. You must’ve really caught his attention.”

“I am right here Birnie.” Tarin says back at him signalling a floating waiter towards the three of us.

“Tell me,” Birnie starts as he waits for me to pick up a glass of the waiter’s tray, I chose another champagne. Birnie, like Tarin takes a red wine. “How did he come to get on your radar, young Katelyn.”

“He stalked me. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.” I say effortlessly, since it is the truth. Birnie laughs heartily and loud, his belly wobbling obviously at our enjoyment.

“That sound’s like the Tarin Armadel I know.”

I look over at Tarin. “He kept turning up outside my workplace and trying to get a date out of me. I guess in the end I just kind of admired his persistence. It was too hard to ignore, especially when he rocked up in a limo. Sometimes a girl likes to experience style.”

Tarin sips his wine and I think I see some recognition in his eyes. Hopefully he is understanding what I need him to do.

“Oh well then I’m afraid Katelyn you might in fact be with the wrong man. For whatever Tarin Armadel is worth, I am worth ten times the amount. I could put a young lady like yourself in style, every day of the week for the rest of her life if she so wished it.” He says looking at me expectantly. I blink a few times. Did Birnie really just come onto me directly in front of my supposed date?

I look over at Tarin utterly surprised by Birnie’s boldness. “That seems about right.” Tarin states looking from Birnie to me. “Birnie made his fortune in real estate. His investment portfolio is quite impressive.”

I looked back at Birnie, smiling smugly at Tarin. I sense he’s screwed Tarin out of more than one of those investment properties over the past years they’d known each other. But Tarin still goes back to Birnie when it came to land deals because Birnie knows how to wheel and deal and he seems to always have the best up to date information on what is hot and what is worthwhile.

“Birnie always has something up his sleeve and on the go, don’t you? He is the man to go to if you’re looking to get into real estate. There is no one better.” Tarin says buttering him up for me and sipping his red wine with a smirk. “I bet you’ve got something on the go now. Birnie doesn’t know the word stop. Do you?”

Birnie’s pride and arrogance swell. That is a truth. An absolute truth as far as he is concerned, his perception of himself and the perception Tarin has just told me, match up like serendipity in him. He hasn’t been expecting a compliment like that tonight and it opened a doorway for me.

Vanity is the key to Birnie. But it has to feel genuine, like he’s stomped all over his opposition for them to finally express their respect and gratitude to him being better than them. Despite his age and appearance. He wants to flaunt his greatness in Tarin’s face, but he refrains for some reason. It isn’t clear why.

Its hard to tell if it is a warm smile Tarin is expressing or a taunt of some kind, that is just how Tarin comes across. Were they friends more than they were enemies, or was it the other way around? Whatever the case, Tarin wont break up our gathering with Birnie until I have done all that I can to check him out.

“What kind of properties do you cater for?” I ask him as if seeking a business opportunity of my own.

The doorway turns into a path within him. He wants to impress me, to make me coo at his feet with his knowledge and skills. I wander further down the path. He wants me to know how sharp he is in dealing with the business of land ownership, but the reality is, Birnie is ruthless. Not something he wish’s to give away to me. To anyone who might be interested in doing business with him.

“There are no limits for me. I prefer not to only look at a specific area of the real estate game. If someone comes to me and says Birnie, I am interested in this type of property what do you have for me? I do a bit of recon if I don’t have anything. Mixing it up is the way to go, otherwise business gets stagnate I’m afraid.”

There is something in that statement that catches my attention wholly. Birnie isn’t opposed to under the table dealings or screwing someone over to the highest bidder if he can get them. The path in him is practically lighting up for me now.

I nod my head as if actually paying attention to his words of wisdom, not his sales pitch. “So do you buy property first and then flip it?” I ask him. As Birnie explains to me that he has started out that way, but is less inclined to do that these days, he continues to give me what I think I want from him.

He is in fact more inclined to go for the rare properties, scouring all over for the land deals that not necessarily now but years into the future, would reap dividends. He is all about quality, not quantity. Which leaves the clientele he dealt with to only, a select percentage of the world.

“What’s the most outrageous deal you’ve ever earned a commission on?” I blather on, like I’m hooked on his potential sugar daddy-ness to me. Tarin drinks his wine watching us in silence, with boredom.

That path glows bright for me. Birnie would love to tell me about an upcoming deal to end all deals. It’s a highly prized and sought after deal by a few who knew of it’s true value and worth. But to tell me about it would jeopardize all it’s value.

Tarin pays attention too as Birnie animatedly tells us about some deal with a seventies celebrity icon who had more money than sense and how he’d been jerked about too many times by the celebrity to want to play nice anymore.

Inside the path it flickers slowly, I’d felt it before, its anxiety. I can tell that Birnie doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of anger from any one of the four of his clients that had been circling him for the deal. Especially since they wouldn’t hesitate to rip him apart in a public display like at this party if it pleased them. After all it had taken him and his resources, decades to truly track down this remarkable piece of land. All because he’d never thought to look in his own backyard, in Australia.

The path shuts down, I realise why. His three dates have came back to step in front of Tarin who steps back from them, and they glare at me.

“Birnie, we miss you.” I slip my arm out of his and take a step back.

“Ladies, please, manners, remember where we are.” Birnie says giving me an apologetic look like we’d been busted doing something more intimate than talking. I move around to Tarin who puts his hand on the small of my back again.

“Birnie, it was lovely to meet you.”

“But we really should be a bit more social,” Tarin adds on as he starts to direct me gently away from Birnie and his harem. I ditch my untouched champagne glass on a nearby waiter’s tray and Tarin and I walk further away from Birnie into a darker corner of the main ball room. Tarin looks at me expectantly.

“Maybe we should get some fresh air.” I suggest to him and he takes my hand leading the way out to the back of the Mansion and into the large, lush, green landscape that apparently passes as a backyard these days.

“Did you get something?” He asks me once we’d cleared the Mansion and are out on the back patio, that overlooked the rather beautifully lit up back grounds. There is a long lap pool in the centre of the land and a white path all the way around it, surrounded with large sculptured shrubs in white large, oversized pots.

“There are four people interested in his latest deal. They’re all here, at the party.” I say to him in low voice as we walk down the back steps, towards the bottom lit up pool of blue. Tarin helps me down the stairs carefully and slowly.

“You sure?”

“Yes. He practically wanted to shout out loud about how great this deal is. It’s the biggest thing he’s ever done in his entire career, his entire life.” I start as we walk the smooth stoned path. “But he can’t because bragging about it will loose it’s value and piss off his clients in the process.”

Tarin nods his head as we walk slowly side by side together around the pool. I hold my clutch purse in both hands and Tarin walks with his head down and his hands in his pockets listening to me. “Which is weird right? I mean the more you advertise how big a deal it is, the more likely you are to get more interested parties and you can start a bidding war for the highest bidder, right?”

Tarin tilts his head to the side. “You could or you could get the wrong kind of attention in the process.”

“Like what? I’m lost.”

“Look around at where you are Katelyn, paranormals don’t want attention, the wrong kind of attention, it just never serves us well.” Tarin explains. I glance back at the big mansion. At a private party, all these paranormals can be themselves. Or if the wrong people knew there were this many paranormals here in one place, they might make a good opportunity to take out, grab, kill, whatever was your flavour, to them.

I return my thinking back to the job I’ve been hired to do. “If Birnie is as big a deal as you make him sound, then this thing he is holding onto and wanting to tell me about, then I think it’s the real deal you’re interested in. His thoughts and feelings around this were intertwined and stronger than anything else when you asked him about what he had on the go. I could tell how badly he wanted to flaunt this in your face. A deal that you weren’t in on and that is somehow, crucially important to him, his portfolio or something.”

“Interesting.” Tarin muttered in thought as we reached the far end of the pool. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” I smile at him as we turn to walk the narrow head of the path around the top of the pool. “The location.” I say looking at him. Tarin’s interest snaps on me with his full focus. “It’s in Australia.”

13

We turned again at the top of the pool to walk down the right hand side path next to the pool between it and potted over sized hedges. “Can you be more specific than that?” He asks.

“Not at this stage. I’ve only just gotten to that piece of information when his harem returned to interrupt us.” Tarin lifted one foot and then the other slowly as he thought about what I’d just told him.

“Do you need more time with Birnie?” He asks me, somewhat with concern. Which doesn’t make sense to me, I might gather that Birnie thinks of himself as a threat. But that might be wishful thinking and false bravado to want to be the big man completely.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to get him back onto that path again without pushing him and coming across as obvious. See the way this works is, its easiest and most direct for me if we can make whoever, think their way to this central thought that all these others spring off, naturally. If they’re kind of not, you know, aware of it or able to control it.” We were instep slowly walking around our heads down in conversation.

“It’s like the repository for subconscious, illicit knowledge floods open.” Tarin looks at me perplexed like I’m speaking any language but English at him. “We do things everyday, without thinking about them. Without consciously thinking, I have to make an effort to open my eyes, or I have to breathe. The body just does these things automatically because it’s been trained to do them and do them well. So the notion of being told not to look or don’t think of something. The first thing the body does is trigger to an automatic response. Wether you want it or not.”

I glance up ahead of us. There is a male figure on the back patio area looking out into the back gardens and he’s smoking, a white puff of air leaves his shadowed face. Tarin looks at him also, we are still quite far away from the mansion’s back patio and the smoker.

“When I first spoke to you about this Katelyn, you made it sound like you didn’t know how you’re ability worked.” He looks over at me and I wait like I am supposed to either apologize or elaborate for him on my behaviour and action to with hold the utter truth of what I know I can do.

“Most people don’t ask for specifics.” I smirk at him.

“I’m not most people.” He snaps back at me, making me wonder if I’ve offended him.

“Yes, I get that.” I reply dryly. “I mean, taking a human girlfriend to this party? We’re practically a social scandal.” That makes him chuckle and glance over at me.

“You like that don’t you?”

“Maybe a little.” I smile as we get to half way down the pool path and looked back up at the outside smoker.

“So do I. Especially where my family are concerned. Sorry about Peyton by the way, she’s always like that.”

“I think she’s just jealous she knew I had the better outfit and didn’t look overdone, like she did.” I laugh causing Tarin to chuckle with me.

“She hates to be one-upped.” Tarin says. We walk the rest of the path in companionable silence side by side and head back towards the mansion, the smoker has finished his smoke before we got to the back steps.

Tarin holds out his hand to me as I walk up the steps, before placing it on the small of my back again and gently guiding me back into the Mansion’s party that is now, in full swing.

We’ve barely stepped back inside the Mansion when Shaye joins us again. Standing beside his brother. I look from one to the other.

“What is it?” Shaye asks me catching me checking out one brother against the other. I am honestly looking at the similarity in features between them, but he makes it sound more like I am up to something.

“Uh, just wondering, who’s the younger or older brother?” They point at each other instantly.

“Older.” Tarin says pointing at Shaye.

“Younger.” Shaye says pointing at Tarin in unison.

“What about you Katelyn? Got a sister for Tarin to set me up with?” Shaye asks as we all observe the dance floor of the ballroom again from the outskirts of it.

“Just me.” I answer him looking at the fancy, swirling gowns going around in blurs of elegant colour. Everyone seems to know the exact pace to be at and has great rhythm and stature in their dance holds. They all look like utter professionals. A couple swirl out close to us and move back in. I step back one step.

“Tarin’s so rude. He should ask you to dance.” Shaye says looking across his brother at me. Tarin turns his head to silently and probably death glare his brother. Shaye chuckles and continued to observe the dancers, his hands behind his back . “Well I could dance with her if you’d,” Shaye doesn’t get to finish his sentence as Tarin grabs my clutch purse and hands it to Shaye. Well, shoves it in his chest hard whilst at the same time, taking my hand and walking me out amongst the swirling masses onto the dance floor.

I panic. “Oh um, I can’t do that. Do this.” I stammer at him as we stand still on the floor and couples manoeuvring around us. “Can’t dance.”

“Nonsense Katelyn.” Tarin reprimands me with as he positions me into a perfect dance hold.

“No, really Tarin. I’ve never learnt how to dance. I am not elegant like these women. I know you want to think it’s nonsense because you want it that way, but really, I can’t dance for shit.” He holds my gaze and I feel the air currents around as clothing rustles and bustles past us to the music and whatever the dance that everyone seems to know is.

“Anyone can dance.” He says looking at me. “Even you.” His grip on my hand and a small amount of pressure on the hand at my upper back shoulder blade are firm. “Now, all we have to do, is move.” I keep glancing at him.

“That’s just it, I don’t know how to move, like that!” I hiss at him. He pulls me slowly forward towards him and rocks us back towards me. I feel awkward in my high heels and shuffle forwards and back slowly with him, all the time wondering how couples manage to avoid colliding with us, since we were so stationary out there.

“Eyes on me Katelyn and me only.” Tarin commands and I look at him and we sway back and forth, more smoothly this time. “I want you to concentrate on holding my attention on just you. You do that quite well most of the time, now, think of doing that now.” He instructs me and I kept looking into his eyes.

“This isn’t really my scene, Tarin.” I grumble at him.

“You’re with me Katelyn, that should be all that matters.”

“Be sure to tell you’re brother that.” I mutter and notice a flash of controlled anger go across Tarin’s face.

“He puts a hand on you I’ll break it.” Tarin grounds out through clenched teeth.

We sway to our rhythm and I feel my own body loosen and relax slightly more too except that we we’re now moving in time to the music, but setting our own pace as everyone around us blurs. I am so focussed on Tarin it never occurs to me not to follow how he moves.

“Shaye’s got nothing on you Tarin.”

When Tarin turns us on an angle by doing one step back to the left, I compliment the action on my side of our routine. Slowly we move around, in a circle, back and forth gently.

Just as I think I’m getting the hang of it, I start to look down at my feet.

“Eyes on me Katelyn or I won’t fang fuck you tonight.” Tarin says getting all of my attention again.

Damn, there is incentive to concentrate. I am dancing with a guy who makes passion course through me, easily and without much effort. I’m not really willing to forgo that yet, if I have the opportunity to have it. No sooner have I fallen into our rhythm again with my head held high looking solely at Train when another male, cut in on us from the left, moving Tarin effortlessly out of the way.

I’ve barely had a chance to realise the cut has taken place before he’s taken up the same exact hold Tarin had on me as I’m kept in motion. I look wide eyed at Tarin as he stands next to us on the dance floor. Glowering at the intrusive male.

“Have fun.” He says to me and nods his head at my new dance partner who only has eyes for me. I gather the look and head nod Tarin gave me before walking off means I should pay some attention to my new partner. Maybe he is one of Tarin’s friends, or an enemy or a player we needed to know. Its hard to figure out what from a look of displeasure on the man who proclaimed he’d only fuck me if I kept my focus on him.

I watch Tarin walk off the dance floor back to his brother, who is laughing at him, as he walks off the floor completely. I focus back on my new dance partner and doing the same thing I’ve been doing with Tarin as my new partner keeps up the momentum, slowly picking up our pace a little. He is young, maybe Tarin’s age and he has black hair with gorgeous smoky grey eyes and he is wearing a grey suit.

“Good Evening, my name is Owen Kelly, of the Brolga Darling Riverine Plains flock.”

“I’m Katelyn, um, Tarin’s date for the evening.” I say back at him. “From Melbourne.” Owen smiles brightly at me with a magnificent smile that is infectious to me.

“It’s great to meet you Katelyn, you’ve got everyone at this party talking about you know.” Owen offers and I get a sense of mischief from him wanting to be unleased but he is holding back out of politeness.

“Oh why is that?”

“Well for starters, in case Tarin hasn’t actually told you this yet, you’re absolutely stunning and that dress is not doing you any harm.” Owen says with a wink at me. I can tell he doesn’t mean it to be anything less than the genuine compliment it is.

Unlike Birnie, Owen didn’t work on sleaze and think that women are oblivious to it. He works on charm, and flattery, because women, are not oblivious to it. They recognise it easily with him and he counts on that. Because all women, he believes, want that kind of happy recognition bestowed upon them.

“Thanks.” He makes me feel as though my feet aren’t so much scrapping across the floor as they are gliding a lot more effortlessly than before.

“Secondly,” Owen continues still smiling at me. “No one seems to know who you are and Tarin’s a bit of miscreant anyway.” We move around faster and I feel my hair fly out behind me. Again his words weren’t said with malice or intent to harm or shock. There is some sort of history between Owen and Tarin of that, I can tell. But what type it’s hard to say, his thoughts are guarded.

“And you’re not?” I reply needing him to open up more to me. Maybe dancing is easier with a faster pace when you don’t have to think about it so much as just feel it. Or maybe I am feeling the charm of his come into effect. He moves our hand hold over to in front of his mouth and holds up a finger. As if to indicate it is secret.

“Well, let’s put it down to his influence then, shall we?” I feel Owen’s guard drop without realising he’s left himself a little open to me taking a walk through his subconscious.

“Um okay,” I reply trying to be naive for him. “I don’t really know him well enough to say yet. We’ve only just started dating recently. So Tarin’s still rather new to me.” I explain to him and the guard rolls down even further and ripples with laughter inside. But I didn’t know if it is laughter at my expense or with some sort of hidden memory he enjoys.

“Well I’ve known Tarin since we were both kids. And I tell you he’s the reason I got into a lot of trouble as a kid.” The laughter spread out into a sensation of warmth that lightens Owen for me. It is a form of truth for him, but not a certainty, it might only be a partial truth or belief that is what he recalls when thinking of his childhood and Tarin Armadel.

“Are you sure he wouldn’t say the same of you now?” I smirk at him playfully. The lightness in him spreads open and I find a walkway wide and circular within Owen. I wonder if his childhood with Tarin is a big part of his life experiences, that was it looks like to my senses.

Owen laughs at me and keeps me moving without effort. It actually feel like I can dance. Who knew I had it in me?

“Tarin doesn’t usually appear so socially with female company.” Owen says at me and I see a change in the lightness in him, there is colour in a path, but I can’t see what it is, but I can tell it is colour. Since it is different to the other sensory information he is unknowingly giving me, I head towards it while looking at my dancing companion continuously.

“I’m not sure what to make of that.” I reply honestly.

“I apologise. I meant nothing ill conceived of it. You are a pleasant surprise at this event, that is all.” Another colour springs up and again I do not have a visual of it, rather a sense of touch that it is there. As odd as that is. It’s like a subtle shift in form. But it’s not touch. Which means his perception is shifting.

I somehow have to find a more core subject central to where I needed to be. I look over towards the wall I know Tarin and his brother have been waiting and watching against. As I twirl around, I catch sight of Tarin and he looks back at me. We really needed a system for signalling one another for these types of situations.

As it turned out, that’s all I need to do, because Owen’s internal focus shifts as does his external one. The shift registered with me things dropping away and others lighting up in the circular pattern within in him. Its thoughts and memories of Tarin.

I look back at Owen again and keep dancing with him. “Do you know anyone else here besides Tarin and me?” Owen asks me I guess just to be able to keep up conversation of some kind.

“Well I know you, his brother Shaye, his sister, and Birnie Seacombe. Of course, I only meet all of them, tonight. And well, a few hours ago. So…” I trail off. The trigger word that showed me the path that chequered the circle in him happened when I spoke of Birnie Seacombe.

“What did you think of Birnie?”

“Charmer, for sure.” I reply noting that only one square of the chequered path in him, pulses. I focuses on it. There is a strong connection between Birnie and Owen and not all of it good. It is far more obvious to me that there is a strong sensation of anger, frustration and something verging on hatred for Birnie.

“That sounds like Birnie. Just don’t let him get all, hands on with you.” Owen sounds like he is telling me something I don’t need to know but there is a serious caution in his words.

“Don’t think Tarin would stand for it,” I say nodding my head back in the direction of the Armadel brothers general vicinity. “He can barely stand you dancing with me.” We both smile at one another. A section of the pulsing square goes dark and I realise he feels guarded, defensive again. Is he aware of what I am doing to him?

I don’t think so, as surely his reaction of recognition on it would at least, momentarily be displayed for me, a facial change, a spike in temperature, twitch in grip, something, it might only be in a second, but I could pick up on that if it were there.

We stop dancing anyway. As Owen slows us down. Maybe I’ve just stupidly shut down the open line of dialogue between us because I haven’t do enough small talk or socialising in my life and feel like I’m getting a rushed life lesson in all of this. That and the music has stopped. We drop hands.

“Please save me another dance.” He says bowing at me and looking up and giving me a wink.

“I will, if I get back on the dance floor again.” I notice Tarin walking over towards us. “But don’t wait on my account, that was pretty much my crash course in dancing.” Tarin holds out his hand to me and I take it. Fanning my face with my other hand, the room is as warm as I was.

“Childhood friend huh?” Tarin rolls his eyes at me.

“What grievous lies did he tell you about me?” I gather my clutch purse back off Shaye who then proceeds to head off in the opposite direction to us.

“None. Just said you were a, what was the word he used? Miscreant.” I pant. I look around us and see a women in pairs of two heading in one direction. “Excuse me I need the powder room and I will be right back.” Tarin stays where he was whilst I located a rest room trailing the pairs of women I’ve seen. I looked at my flushed face in the mirror. A light film of sweat on my skin. I splash some cold water on my face.

I’ve never had to read someone whilst doing something that physical before. It took all my concentration to figure out how to move like that and still keep up the pretence of talking and socialising with Owen whilst internally investigating his feelings on every matter we talked about.

Splitting my skills three ways and being equally aware of all three components of what I’m doing is tricky. The truth is a complex web to get through with a still target, a moving one who then layers their own thought pattern, is a challenge.

I have a small headache forming and my feet are aching in my brand new heels. I dread taking them off as I’m sure I have blisters now. I hadn’t counted on dancing or needing to. Next time I attended a party like this I’ll remember the footwear should be not so pretty ridiculous. I mean it isn’t like I can even walk fast in my heels.

Walking back out I found Tarin where I’ve left him. “Let’s eat, they’ve just called dinner.”

“Great, I could do with a sit down and some cool air.” I said fanning my face again. “Kind of worked up a sweat out there, more than I ever thought I would.”

Tarin looks at me with concern. “You’re not quite the horrible dancer you seem to think you are, you know.” He says as we follow a throng of guests headed to the evening’s feast. “Why don’t you head outside and get that fresh air and I’ll arrange to get us some food for dinner and meet you out there.” Tarin offers.

“Thanks.” I find my way back outside into the cool night air and suck in deep breaths of it.

14

Back outside on the grand, large patio of stone overlooking the picture perfect, and eternally, lush green grounds, I look around. There is no garden setting of tables and chairs to sit around on. There is nowhere to sit, other than on the large steps that I’d had Tarin help me down earlier. My feet really do want some relief from standing in such skyscraper heels for so long, so I decide steps it is then and walk over to the top one and lower myself onto it, with my feet on the next one below it.

Blowing out a heavy breath I lift my hair off the back of my neck and felt the cool night air, caress the sweaty heated skin there. It feels better. My headache stays a distant, little thump. The sound of footsteps walking across the stone patio register with me and I wait for Tarin to sit down next to me with food and drink.

But it isn’t Tarin who sits down next to me, I know that before I even look up at my uninvited guest. The footwear is different. The male who sits down beside me, joining me on the top step smiles at me and says “You’ve got the right idea being out here.” I arch an eyebrow up at him in response. “So much effort to work the room.” I look away from him.

I sense a little hostility in his words. Has he clued into what I am actually doing there? Well it is time to throw him off that scent. “I’m here with my date, perhaps you know him? Tarin Armadel?” My male companion snorts softly and looks out at the grounds with the pool in front of us.

“And he left you here, alone?”

I stick out my hand for him. “Katelyn.”

“Josh.” He replies shaking it lightly. Instantly there is a target area within him, I headed towards. Tarin’s name has opened up all memory and thought on him, past and present.

“Yeah I know of Tarin.” He says looking across at me. That sounds like a loaded statement to me and makes me wonder if Tarin actually has any friends at all. It seems to me that everyone I’ve run into at this party feels rather offended or put out by him. I can’t help but wonder why.

“That doesn’t sound good.” I say honestly hoping for some more leeway with him and find I get it as he holds my look. A hardness in the area of Tarin’s name association forms and softens and forms and softens. I can tell it represents mixed feelings of conflict. So maybe this guy is actually one of Tarin’s friends?

He shrugs his shoulders loosely. “I’m sure you will form your own opinion of Tarin, otherwise you wouldn’t be dating him right?” The conflict dances up and down within in him.

“Right.”

“I lost out to him once, a girlfriend that’s it.” He says to me with a little smile of bitter sweet feeling.

“Oh.” I say trying for shock. The thing is, I wouldn’t put it past Tarin to steal another man’s woman, I could see him doing it quite confidently and without a sense of guilt. The conflict in Josh settles to a resigned softness. He is letting go of the bad feelings he has towards this thought and Tarin.

“It was a long time ago.”

I step into the softness of his thought. We sit together in utter silence for some time. And whilst we sit there on the steps not saying anything, I trace my fingers around the softness I see in him until I get a small feeling like an ant walking over my skin from an ending of a finger print in there.

Its small but my mystery guest is having thoughts in the present about Tarin. There is a connection to his future. I just have to ensure it is the connection I am after and not something else misleading. Again, I have to think up how to jump into an area of conversation that is not in anyway related to the party or for all I supposedly know.

I lift my feet and moan lightly, stretching my legs out in front of me briefly off the stairs. He glances across at me, his eyes running down the length of my legs. “I am so not used to these things or dancing in them. I feel kind of crippled, not sure how my feet will hold up after I have to stand up again.” I explain to him as if he’s asked for an explanation.

Josh chuckles at me. “I do not envy being a female.” He says and looks again at my shoes and feet as I lower them to the step. “Here,” He says and reaches for my ankle, “Maybe this will help.” Its on the tip of my tongue to object about what he’s about to do. But I need the connection to get further into that finger print’s path.

He slides my shoe off my foot. I groan in appreciation of the feeling. “That already feels like heaven.” I say truthfully as his hands starts working along the base of my partially numbed toes. Returning feeling to them. “Now if I close my eyes and picture the landscape here, and the feeling returning to my feet, I could almost imagine I am in heaven.” I say choosing my words carefully.

There’s an internal reaction to the three words, landscape, here, and heaven, from him and I trace its ascent towards the present thoughts surrounding Tarin. There is something with Tarin but it just isn’t clear to me. It’s more a feeling of right. He thinks of it like righteousness something hallowed in the earth. I didn’t know what that means, but I store it away to discuss with Tarin.

“How’s that?” He asks me as I open my eyes again and look down at my foot in his hands.

“Divine.” I remark. Which is true, and it has allowed me the strongest, easiest connection for access to him. I need more. I look across at my other foot still in its shoe. He chuckles and reached for my other foot.

“Don’t you dare tell Tarin I did this.” He says. I put a finger up to my lips as if to shush him. His fingers worked the arch of my foot and heel, giving me circulation of blood flow again.

My companion, now with my other foot in his hands, relaxed and working on the job at hand of touching my skin and liking the feel of it. He wouldn’t have minded doing more than rub my foot, I get a strong wave of lust from him but it isn’t what I’m after. I ignored it and continue to go for the ant like tickle of a path in him.

“Tarin need not know, ever.” I say dropping my finger. The thought I’ve been on within him, about righteousness hallowed into the earth has disappeared. Its important, somehow, not just to him, to others too.

I watch his hands work my toes one by one and sigh. His touch is truly like a gift, as I felt the warmth of my sore feet go away again. I have no idea what the information I’ve just gathered off him means. But I’m sure Tarin will know.

“That should do it.” He says lowering my foot gently back down as I reach for my shoes to slip them back on and do them up.

“Thank you, they feel much better, already.” He smiles at me.

“What else would you expect from a medicine man.” He says clasping his hands together.

The world of paranormals is a vast one and from what I know of it, it seems, barely skims the surface of interesting. I am aware of the common paranormals around but this party has shown me, those ones, are the underlings of a vastly ancient world.

Another set of shoes on the stone patio sounds nearby and we both turn to see Tarin approaching with two waiters behind him. My male companion pushes up off the step and stands up as Tarin approaches us.

“Josh,” Tarin greets him with coolly as they shake hands.

“I was just keeping your date company so the likes of Birnie Seacombe couldn’t latch onto her again, you really shouldn’t leave her alone here man. Far too hard to ignore.” Josh says before walking around Tarin and back towards the house.

I can still feel the warmth of Josh’s handiwork on the tips of my toes. I watch the two men exchange small talk.

Josh doesn’t want Tarin to know about the hallowed earth. Because Birnie Seacombe is somehow involved. This is it, the real estate deal, that Tarin is after. And Josh, has an interest of some kind, in. Whatever it is, it is a big deal it has significance.

Tarin indicates to the waiters to lay the two trays, one with food and cutlery for us both on it, next to us on the patio floor, the second tray houses liquid refreshment, wine and water. I reach for the water as Tarin dismisses the waiters with a snap of his fingers.

Tarin folds himself down to sit where Josh had been moments earlier. “You two seemed friendly.” He says to me. I wonder if he’s seen the foot rub. I wonder why I care if he has.

“Are you jealous Tarin?”

Tarin takes my glass out of my hands and pours me water into the wine glass provided. “I don’t like the way every male here wants to touch you and so far you’ve been touched by quite a few.”

I take my water off him and drink from it thirstily. “Four by my estimation. Well that was the point, wasn’t it, the reason I got dressed up like this.” I say indicating my dress. “To make them want me.”

Tarin’s eyes narrow on me as he puts the water bottle back down. “I’m not sure you realise how easily you make men want you Katelyn.” His hand reaches out and he cups the side of my face as his mouth slants across mine and he kisses me hungry for the feel of my mouth on his, our lips moulding and tongues stroking a passion that is on the rise. I feel his fangs pop out and I lick along them quickly between kisses causing Tarin to moan into me. My free hand stroking the erection I feel along his pants.

I’m not about to play games to try and make him jealous on purpose. That isn’t my style. I feel as in need for his contact as he does of mine. I can feel anger in Tarin’s kiss as he grabs me and lifts me up, pulling me onto his lap as we kept kissing. My legs widen as I straddle his lap and his hands cup the soft material of my ass.

We break for some desperate air and I am left panting and looking back at him wide eyed and a little bewildered. This is after all, just a job, right? Nothing more. And yet, earlier on he said he fang fuck me tonight. His kiss says more than he otherwise lets on. It’s passion is desperate for me. Tarin is one big mixed message I have yet to unravel.

“I hate holding out.” He mutters frustration showing. “If I could, I would fuck you senseless in front of all of them.” He says breathing slowly and closing his mouth. He is getting control of himself again. “Put you right on display for them to desire and want. Look but not have. I’d let them know, you were mine and mine only.” He says looking down, not willing to look me in the face.

“If you’re worried about our agreement Tarin, don’t be, I’m going to honour it. I tried to tell you, this just isn’t then normal way I do my work. It’s rather, unique and a little surreal if I’m honest with you.”

“Josh isn’t one of the ones that you really need to charm.” Tarin said looking back up at me. “I’ve been watching Birnie’s interactions all night, and have a few more faces that might be of some value to check out.” His fangs had disappeared again and he seems calmer. In control again. I move off his lap.

I readjust my dress over my lap. “Don’t let the mild, manner, doctor guise, fool you.” I say eyeing the food on the plate and reaching for a strawberry from the small fruit section he’s provided me with.

“What?” Tarin asks stunned.

15

“Well in terms of the information you are after, Josh is one of the ones you need to watch. He’s a player.”

“Josh.” Tarin says surprised. “Are you sure?” We both ignore the cutlery beside the piles of food on the tray and pick at various bits and pieces with our fingers. “Josh isn’t a power player. I was lead to believe the powerful were connected to this.”

“So you’ve been holding out on me.” I say to him, feeling a little surprised. “You already knew there would be power players connected to this.”

“It’s not like I knew names of who they were. People consider power to be different things. So your perception of who is a power player, could’ve been tainted and I might have been misleading you if I’d said that to you.” I pour myself another glass of water and drink from it while I think.

“Well by your own admission Tarin, you have a blind spot. You don’t see Josh as a power player. You’re ignorance of what you’ve just said to me, is a downfall. You need to expand your mind.”

“What Josh knows versus actual involvement, I’ll need to see for myself.” Tarin replies picking up another piece of food.

“Okay, let’s start with what I do know about Josh. You were friends once, a long time ago and whilst he doesn’t hate you, he doesn’t entirely like you either. I guess he just cordially tolerates you.”

“That sounds about right.” Tarin mutters pouring himself a wine.

“Do you have any friends here? Or does everyone hate you? What did you do in a past life to them all?” I blurt out at him.

“I have some friends, I’m not completely without benefits or appeal.” He mutters back at me focussing on his food. Tarin really doesn’t like talking about himself, at least, not his past history and not to me. I can understand it, I am the same. Talking about myself is uncomfortable at the best of times, and my past is my past for a reason. Because I want it to stay there.

“So what’s so great about Josh that he makes you think he’s important.” I stare at Tarin. “In all of this.” He says waving a hand around to cover himself.

“Jealousy really does not sit well on you.” I mutter before sipping more water. “Just as he was leaving, he had a particularly strong, thought. But I can’t make out what he meant by it.”

“Tell me, maybe I will know.”

“It was about hallowed earth. It flared up when you guys shook hands. Which means it’s somehow related to you.” I shrugged my shoulders. “That would be it.”

“What else?” He asked me as I finish my water glass.

“Owen.” I stated. “He’s not exactly friendly with Birnie. But I don’t think he’s involved. I couldn’t really get that much out of him. It was a bit tricker trying to read him while I had focus on something I’ve never done before, like dance, in high heels and in time.”

“God forbid you should dance out of time.” Tarin jokes at me with a rare smile.

“Hey, you said I danced well.” I said poking his arm. We ate until all the food on the tray was gone. And drank until the red wine bottle was empty. We left the remains of our outdoor dinner treat where they lay. Tarin taking my hand and leading me back into the Mansion, to the bustle of the party and party-goers, that were still going, after the few hours we’d already been there. The party-gathering, showed no signs of slowing down or dying any time soon.

We were barely back through the doorway, when a woman walked over to us, in a two tone grey and blue strapless ball gown her blonde hair curling like a movie starlet’s at her shoulders. Her eyes matched her dress and she held out her hand towards Tarin, as if he should not so much shake it or greet it, as kiss it. Her arm was high and extended and her palm flexed downwards, showing off some sparkling rings.

“Tarin,” She cooed at him as if I wasn’t there. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to.” Tarin’s hand never left mine, even as he bent to kiss the hand extended to him, his eyes levelling with the overly friendly woman in blue.

“Alexandrina, this is Katelyn,” Tarin said raising his face again and looking from her to me. She finally glanced at me, with faux warmth. They broke contact and she studied me.

“Charmed.”

“I’m sure.” I muttered back at her softly. Two could play the boredom game of niceties at this. Then she did a double take and slowly looked at me again and my eyes widened. I was on the verge of asking what it was, when she seemed to relax and laugh lightly and looked back at Tarin.

“Human, right? Since when did you start banging humans Tarin?” He smirked back at her and I raised an eyebrow. I was after all, standing right there with them and clearly wasn’t included in the conversation taking place, or wasn’t meant to. And wasn’t it a little rude of her to know more about Tarin’s sexual preferences than I did and say that much in front of his date for the evening? Even if I was only playing at being his date? I wondered how she could tell, how any of them could tell I was just a human. Did I smell bad?

“Alex is a Selki.” Tarin said to me. “They’re rather renowned for they’re sexual charms on males of well, almost all breeds.” Well that might explain the female jealousy vibes coming off of her and being directed at me. She looked rather proud at his endorsement of her kind.

“Well you can say that because you should know, first hand.” The lack of shame or tact on Alexandrina was enough to make me want to do something to her other than play dumb, innocent and nice. So I did.

I reached forward quickly and let my fingers trail over the pendant hanging off her collared necklace around her neck, my fingers tracing a bit of her skin as I touched it. My touch was subtle, like a whisper.

“Nice necklace.” I muttered letting it drop back to her skin. “Wonder how much that cost.”

The necklace was nice, but it was just a diversionary tactic for me and it worked like a charm. Her shock at the touch, let me all the way into her. She wasn’t expecting a female touch, and so she was open for me to view her true self. So I did, while Tarin and Alexandrina continued to chat if I didn’t exist.

He wasn’t wrong about the Selki. She thought about sex a lot, and it was flowing through her, the nature of her skill and her being and she liked it. She especially liked it when she was thinking of Tarin. They’d shared more than a few encounters together. What not a shock that was, giving her abrasiveness towards me being the female with him.

She wanted nothing more than to steal him away for sex now. Maybe take him down to that pool she’d seen outside and do some wild, naked, skin on skin out there. Maybe even ruin the ball gown and let it float out and around her, making her look rather ethereal while he lost himself in her. She liked the beauty of the image of her and him and how good they’d look, wet and wild together.

I didn’t lay claim to Tarin, this was just about business for us and if there was a little fucking on the sidelines, then so be it. Fucking Tarin for me, was just a damn good bonus.

There was nothing else to read on her, the truth was, all she really wanted out of him and most of life, was exquisite sex and adoration. And by spending time with her, having Tarin look at her and talk to her with respect, he was feeding her what she wanted most.

I focused back on the now and wondered how to interrupt their conversation without seeming like I was doing some jealous, petty girl thing. I glanced around the room and it’s busy inhabitants, merriment was everywhere and I felt completely out of place. Was it any wonder? I’d never known half of these paranormals existed, knew nothing of them.

Shaye Armadel came into view and I turned to Tarin. “I’m going to talk to Shaye.” I said letting go of his hand and moving before he could say anything. Tarin looked at me with an intense stare. I wasn’t sure what it meant. It might have been that he was pissed at me.

I turned to Alexandrina, “You got a little bit of drool.” I said pointing my finger to the corner of her lip, looking at her as I brushed past her shoulder. I heard her gasp at my audacity or as it actually was, petty immaturity. Yeah, I was beginning to get tired of the “human” downgrade tag I was being labelled with.

Shaye saw me coming and turned towards me and smiled. “You know, if I were you I wouldn’t be walking around this party by myself.” He says as I approach and he snags a wine glass of a passing waiter.

“Why’s that?” I ask accepting the wine off of him.

“Why Katelyn darling, you’re the talk of the party.” He says drinking from his own beer. I frown. He has to be kidding me, there are at least a hundred people here, why would anyone be paying attention to me, other than perhaps that I am with Tarin and from what I could figure out, he hadn’t been seen in these social circles for quite some time.

“You’re kidding right?” Shaye smiles and laughs, shaking his head.

“Nope, honest to goodness, truth. You’re the gossip of the evening.” I look at him and without ruse, I put my hand on his wrist, two fingers over his pulse. He looks from my hand back up to me, raising an eyebrow.

“Just checking if you’re lying.” I state as I count the beats in his pulse before dropping my hand away. His pulse is normal as far as normal goes, it isn’t racing and elevated and you don’t have to be a truth-sayer to figure out elevation equals lying in the context of our interaction if it had been racing. Basically, Shaye is telling the truth. What a novelty.

“You feel uncomfortable about knowing you’re the centre of attention.” He replies looking at me.

“Yep.” I sip my wine.

He glances me over and looks away, back out at the party crowd. “You dressed like that, to not get noticed?”

“Can’t a girl look nice these days?” Shaye looks at me then, full wattage charm in his smile.

“You’ve been hanging around Tarin too long, answering a question with a question. Yes, you are entitled to look nice, but you look more than nice Katelyn, and that kind of attention to detail just isn’t going to go away.” I hold his gaze and wonder if my inept social abilities, mean I was understanding Shaye Armadel correctly.

“It’s all fake.” I smile back at him. Should I read him to be sure that I am hearing his message right? He isn’t an intended target and the idea of reading him, somehow seems, kind of wrong. Hell, Tarin hadn’t even known he’d be here. Him or his bitch sister.

He laughs but continues on “Especially given you’re the only human here, and that’s, uh, kind of rare at these events, in the capacity of being one’s date for the night. Given these parties tend to have a no humans allowed silent rule attached to them.”

Wasn’t the whole point to how I operated to be low key, under the radar? And yet we’d gone on the premise that I’d need to draw attention to me, to snag the real targets for the job. Had I fucked up somehow? Getting a few heated glances of interest and lust was one thing, having an entire party buzzing about the only human there, was something else entirely, unwelcome.

“So humans don’t get invited to these, shin-digs. So how come no one told Tarin that?” I look around the room, Tarin and the Selki woman have been joined by some other people.

“He knows the rules Katelyn.” There is a warning there, of some kind in his words. I wonder if he is telling me to back off from his brother, or if he just doesn’t like so many people here, approve of Tarin hooking up with a human like me.

I drink another mouthful of wine and know I probably shouldn’t. I can feel the beginning of it affecting me kicking into my system. But I am getting pissed off with these people and playing nice is getting harder to do.

The whole job is turning out to be a lot more complicated and unpleasant than I’d thought it would be. Most of my jobs, are in and out kind of affairs. I can sit beside some weak willed soul at a café and read them while having a latte.

“So no humans allowed. How very elitist of you all. What you normally do with them if they come along, human sacrifice?” I bitch back at him undeservedly. Shaye laughs at me and keeps watching the party around us.

“Maybe they’re all just jealous that Tarin has you and they don’t.” He smirks.

“Really? You think that’s it? Given they all appear to think so lowly of me being just a human.” I reply sipping my wine and looking back at him. The look Shaye gave me in return could have sizzled my dress right off me.

“Not all of us.”

His eyes scan over my skin, of which I suddenly became aware of. There is a lot of it on display. As tasteful as I’m dressed, I suddenly felt very exposed under the look of lust that is coming from him. He takes his time looking me over before dragging his gaze back up to my face. It isn’t sleazy and I’m not uncomfortable with how he is looking at me. I’m used to that kind of look. He doesn’t need to say anything more. I get the point but I’m here with his brother. I shove my drink at him in silence and wander off. I don’t need to see that on the guy who isn’t either my date or my boss for the evening.

Heading to where I know the female restroom is I regroup and focus on my job. And how the hell I am going to continue to stand in my new high heels for the hours still to come, now that I know I am considered some kind of item of taboo there. I am going to shake the notion that Shaye Armadel looks at me in a way only his brother, has before him, I do not need further complications to this job.

16

As it turns out, we aren’t there all that much longer. It is Tarin who pulls me away from the bustle of the party which is slowing down. Is it poor form to hang around a party until its died completely. Or is that just the sign of a good party guest?

We headed towards the limousine and I note the queue of vehicles to leave the Mansions grounds. Rick the driver goes to open the door for us, but Tarin waves him away and opens the door for me instead. Bending down to move inside, I glance over my shoulder back at Tarin. He is staring at my rear end, my dress having risen with the movement of me getting into the car. His eyes flash over to mine. I step into the limo and have barely sat down when he moves in beside me, the door closes heavily behind him.

Tarin pulls me into him and within the second that it takes for him to draw us closer together, he’s undone the one button at the neck of my dress, that holds the light, flimsy, material over my body.

It slides down my body effortlessly and pools around my hips. Tarin’s mouth descended on me, he leaves a trail of tongue strokes from my neck to my breasts, where he took great time in sucking on my puckered nipples. Teasing them as I pant to the warmth he is fast building in me.

My hands ran along the blonde braid of his hair that descends down his back and I tug on it, till I have the end of it wrapped around my hand. His hands moved to my hips as his mouth comes back up my throat, to my lips and we both tug at the dress, until it slides down my legs and off me completely.

I unwrap his hair from my hand and began, hurriedly to undo it. Rough and fast. I wanted to see all that sunshine yellow flowing about him, like a lion’s mane. When his hair is free he flicks it out of his face with a shrug and I raise a shoed foot to my hand, grabbing the heel of the shoe.

“Leave them on.” Tarin instructs. “They make you’re legs look incredibly lean and long.” He mutters into my skin as we continue to kiss and his hands ghost over the only remaining piece of clothing on me. Tarin stops to look down at the flesh covered g-string. “This is all that separated me from you all night? This tiny bit of material under your dress?” My hands are on his shirt, unbuttoning it, so I can feel the smooth hard flesh of his chest underneath.

I want to laugh at him. Has he really been so damn eager to undress me and take me all night long? I thought he’d been very civilized during the duration of the entire party.

“Yes.”

“Hmm, the enemy must be taken down.” He mutters and begins ripping the material off my body eagerly. He throws away the scrap of material and grins, proud of himself, displaying his fangs as his nostrils flared to inhale the wet scent of me.

“Katelyn, Katelyn, Katelyn.” He mutters softly as he slides down my body till he is kneeling on the floor of the limo, between my thighs. He pulls me forward with a yank of my hips. His mouth descending on me as his tongue delves into me immediately and I buck up into him.

I gasp unable to stop myself at the feeling of him lapping me up so eagerly. This isn’t a type of pleasure I receive often and of the few times I have received it, it hasn’t been nearly this good.

Tarin has a touch that sets my body into high alert mode. It knows there will be pleasure to be unbound and it begins searching for it, as his touch, his tongue, lips, mouth, work me towards it. My body races to reach for it’s climax and I try to grip the seat, to hold his shoulders, to touch something to keep me anchored so my body can rise up and receive it’s just rewards.

My hips have a mind of their own and start to move against him, determined to make the madness of waiting come sooner rather than later. Tarin’s talented tongue makes me reach my orgasm fast, I doubt the limo is even off the Mansion grounds yet.

My hips buck up and I lift off the seat as he grabs my ass and drinks every last bit of my arousal down. My legs, in their high heels still on the limo floor, straining every muscle inside them as I arch to enjoy every minute detail of my climax.

When my body has milked me and I begins to feel soft again, slouching naked against the backseat in the limo, the job is done. We are leaving the party, now all there is to do is to debrief and part ways.

So despite the fact that I am tired and feel tiredness tugging at me more and more, I refuse to give in to sleep when I can have one last fling with Tarin. I can’t help but entertain the thought that maybe, we might continue the sex part, after the job has well and truly ended. On a more regular personal basis. I can see it happening.

“I’ve had to watch you all night with those others.” He says to me, his eyes roaming over my naked, supple form. We both move to the seats and I pick up my discarded dress. “Don’t.” Tarin says looking at me through hooded lids, his fangs still out on display. I raise an eyebrow at him. He looks rather thoroughly dishevelled and there is a monster erection tenting in his pants, waiting to be unleashed. I wonder what I look like by comparison.

“So I’m just supposed to sit her, butt naked and dripping wet all over the leather?”

Tarin moans deep in his throat. “Yes.”

I put my dress beside me so I am sitting on the seat naked save for my bracelet , earrings, and shoes. “What if I get cold?” I tease him.

Tarin shrugs off his suit jacket and holds it out to me. I slip it on and wrap it around my naked form, tucking my legs up on the seat beside me. I look back at him and his eyes darken and he draws me into his side quickly, a hand slipping underneath the jacket to cup and feel the breast he can see from the way the jacket gapes.

“Katelyn Phoenix.” He mutters softly. “It has been a great pleasure doing business with you.” He smirks at me. I blow a bit of loose hair out of my face.

“Oh the pleasure has been mutual Mr Armadel. But you still owe me. He smiles then. A full wattage, fangs and all smile, it makes him look young and full of mischief.

“I know I do. But I think we should discuss the rest of the info you gathered for me before I bite you and tire you out.”

I think that sounds fair, given how tired, I truly feel. Reading multiple people, standing around in heels for hours, splitting my concentration three ways while reading someone’s truth, it is more than I’d ever done when it came to my abilities. It have pushed myself and I have just soldiered through the evening doing what I had to, didn’t know if I couldn’t, so I did what I could. I’ve gathered Intel on those Tarin wants it gathered on.

It was only after I’ve finished talking about the last person I’ve read at the party that I realise, the car ride is taking longer than I remember. Either that or I am getting more tired and losing track of time. I try looking out the tinted windows but its pitch black outside, without a building, house or cityscape of light to be seen.

“Where are we?” I ask confused, as he keeps his arm wrapped around my dinner jacket covered side.

“I thought I’d take you to a place you can see the stars clearly from. No pollution hiding them.” Tarin replies looking out the window beside himself.

“As surprisingly romantic as that sounds, I have to say I’d rather just get home. Reading more than one person in one night, so thoroughly has really wiped me out.”

“But Katelyn,” He practically purrs at me all seductive heat and want. “I still have to fang fuck you yet.” I lick my lips. “So I thought we could do it under the stars.” He makes it sound amazing. And I know it will be amazing, because I’ve already experienced it and honestly want to experience it again. But my body is beginning to relax and I can feel the fight to keep my eyes open, begin. It has to be going into the early hours of morning.

We’ve been up all night, and his sexual appetite is persistent. Like the man himself. Which means we’ll be up for a few more hours of fucking if I am lucky enough.

“Don’t get me wrong. I do want that which you owe me, but I’m” I didn’t get to finish the sentence as Tarin moves swiftly, undoing his pants. I feel myself caught up in the moment because my want for those fangs inside me along with his cock is great.

I pick up my purse and pull out a condom for him. He snatches it out of my hand and puts it on. No words are exchanged and none are needed. It isn’t like either of us didn’t know where this is going.

Besides, it is the last time I’ll get to enjoy the delights of Tarin Armadal’s sexual prowess before we go our separate ways again. Tarin doesn’t seem like the I’ll call you later type.

Tarin doesn’t wait, I am already dripping wet from the mouth watering orgasm he’s delivered to me and so he pulls me down off the seat, right onto him. He slides into me, filling me to the hilt as we sit, me straddling him on the limousine floor. He pauses with me on him, arching back to look at him, jutting my breasts out at him as the dinner jacket opens.

“I don’t want to be slow, I don’t want to be nice about this at all.”

“Then don’t be.” I reply.

Tarin starts thrusting into me hard and fast and my body knows no better than to go with the motion as I try to remember how to breathe myself through him fucking my brains out. I ended up on my back on the floor of the limousine, my legs around his neck as he drives home his cock into me, repeatedly. Growling as he becomes faster and faster, until his fangs slid down and out of his mouth. I watch them in fascination. Good god, I realise I’m a fang-banger, maybe that is why sex has never ‘done it’ for me previously.

Throwing back his head, Tarin releases himself as he buries his cock till it is balls deep inside of me. His mouth arches down and his fangs pierce my skin, skimming past my collar bone as he buries them into my flesh, tearing it apart and sucking on the blood that flows from me to him.

My own orgasm soars to life at the sensation of being so filled by him. I can feel his fangs throbbing in my body, my flesh humming as his cock pounds into me and builds me from one end to another.

It is like experiencing an all over body orgasm. I wonder how I will survive the multiple intense waves of pleasure pounding through me. Tarin keeps sucking and the waves keep ebbing me on and I began to cry out from the exquisite sensation of him so thoroughly in my body. Noisy sex really isn’t my thing. But now I found myself unable to stop my mouth from making noises because of the affect he is having on me.

I start to feel a tingling in my body along with the continual sensation of orgasm, although it seemed less intense. Like the orgasm is dying and the tingling, like pins and needles is increasing. My toes, my finger tips tingle and I wiggle under Tarin whose hands smooth their way over my biceps, spreading my arms out, and above my head on the floor. His hips kept moving, slower now, as he presses further into me, bearing his weight on me and I frown. It is kind of uncomfortable. If he falls asleep on me he’ll be like dead weight for me to get out from under.

I start to get worried when Tarin began to press down on my wrists and keeps sucking on me, even as my orgasm starts to fade rather rapidly and the tingling increases.

“Tarin,” I say quickly. “Tarin, enough.” I get out as his lips latch onto me harder still. I try to kick my legs out from under him, but he had me pinned completely, we are locked into each others bodies. Tarin is on top of me and lost in blood lust. “No!” I croak as my legs began to feel like lead. Tarin presses harder and that was when I know I am in trouble.

Tarin tries to bury his fangs into me even more. Panic rises up in me and I try to push my arms up and move my body, despite our joining. I try to make more noise and it occurs to me if I can I might get the attention of Rick the driver who can help me. But then I have almost the same instant thought that it was Rick who under instruction from Tarin had driven us out to the middle of nowhere. As Tarin hadn’t spoken to him or communicated with him in anyway during our drive, I have to assume Rick is in on the plan to do this to me.

I try to buck against him, want him to get out of me, desperately. Tears well in my eyes and I feel vile rise in my throat. I try to not loose myself to upset feelings, I need anger to fight him off of me.

Anger will power the adrenaline I need to get him the hell off me. I try to shove Tarin with my chest. Try to raise it and throw him somehow. But I just don’t have the advantage of space or freedom to move.

I can feel him draining me, drinking down my blood combined with how tired my body was prior to our sex, it is just too hard for me to dig deep enough to rid myself of Tarin Armadel. I am in serious trouble.

A tear slides down my face as the slurping off Tarin’s blood sucking registers with my ears and I feel my eyes flutter continuously. He is going to drain me dry and kill me. I hope that Tarin will realise at the last moment that he has taken our sex too far and realises he needs to stop. But some part of me knows, even as my legs twitch and my feet curl and uncurl again and again, that Tarin knows exactly what he is doing.

There is a reason I’ve never been able to get a clear read on Tarin Armadel. And it is because this is what he was. He might have looked like a good guy, a bit eccentric or self-involved, but there is so much more to him than that and he’d kept it utterly hidden from me, on purpose, just so he could do this to me. Because he knew, before we’d had sex, he was going to do this to me.

Even as I lay sprawled naked on the floor of the now stationary limousine, dying by his doing, I concentrate on reading him. I pick up on bits and pieces of it. He loves the taste of my blood. It’s like a fix of some kind for him.

I close my eyes, no longer wanting to see the top of his head or anything else since I have no choice but to continue to feel him, take my life from me. To feel him inside of me. My legs slacken and my eyes grow heavier, and blackness becomes my friend and I silently thank it.

17

My eyes feel like they are glued with dirt and my body is heavy and lacks any sort of impulse for strength. I feel arms under my arm pits

“It’s a shame Katelyn. I liked you, I thought we could’ve done quite well together. And you tasted so damn light and sweet.” He mutters dragging me backwards towards him. “But you’re too big a threat, even if you didn’t know it. You would’ve eventually. I knew it the minute I saw you.”

The sound of something clicking is obvious to me. I process it as the door handle moving. Presumably the limo car door is being opened and I am being dumped somewhere obscure. There are plenty of places within forty minutes’ drive of Melbourne to do a body dump. Criminals do it all the time. Commit the crime itself in Melbourne and then by the time police had turned up to search the initial area, the criminal is already in their secondary location, with no police or anyone around to stop them.

My fate is sealed and I know it. “Get her feet.” Tarin says, presumably to Rick. Seconds tick by and my body feels lighter, like it is floating. Probably because they are carrying me. Where I have no idea, but it is probably better to just play dead anyway, given Tarin’s intention to kill me is now, rather clear.

“Are you sure she’s dead?” Rick asks Tarin.

“If she isn’t she’s camping out on its door step. The night, elements and animals will finish her off if we leave her out for them.” I have lost feeling and sense of time. There is just an abyss taking me further down into nothingness, taking me away from everything as Tarin and Rick’s voices, sounds, fade away again.

18

The thing about truth-sayers is, that’s what we’re called now. The modern day version of what I am considered to be. But it’s not really all that accurate a description of me. My bloodline isn’t mine and it’s strong. It’s been around for over 40,000 years. That’s before the birth and foundation of Australia. It is built on a time when time was beginning. When paranormals were far more prevalent on this red earth than they are now. That’s why I’m so fucking hard to kill.

Not that Tarin clearly knew that. If he knew anything about me, he would have known not to try and kill me. He would have known that by attempting to kill me, all he’d done was unleash me. The real me from it’s mortal coil that is Katelyn Phoenix’s body.

I felt her rise and push at me. Push at my insides, at my skin. She kept my heart pumping when it should have stopped. She kept my body warm enough to cope with the night chill when the drop in temperature should have killed what little my weakened body could cope with. She made me open my eyes hours later when light flooded the land around me and I saw through the shrubs, twigs and leaves that covered me. She helped me remember what had happened to me.

She helped me remember how to move my limbs and crawl onto my side. She made me taste the dirt and grass that greeted my mouth as I tried again to move from the shallow grave I’d been put into.

She helped keep me breathing and keep breathing and moving. After what seemed like a small eternity I got my arms flat to the ground, my elbows bent and push pulled myself along the ground. Pulled myself from my own grave. She knew exactly how to do that, all I had to do was give myself over to her, completely. Let her out of her Katelyn cage.

There was usually a reason I didn’t let this side of myself out. Because bad things tended to happen. Very bad things. “Okay,” I uttered hoarsely to the sound of silence around me. “You win. Tarin fucking deserves what he gets.”

I collapsed down on the ground again and felt my lineage rise up through every fibre in me. Her strength flooded me with her anger and we were both pissed.

19

It took forever to get back to civilization. One car drove by eventually. Taking in the appearance of the naked female, covered only by a dinner jacket, dried blood on me, dirt and twigs all over, they took me straight to the hospital and called the police.

I worked myself out of Katelyn’s mute state using her knowledge I told the police her story.

A story about how I’d been out on a date with a guy I’d only just started to see and how he had a vampire fetish and during sex he’d gone total Dracula on me and I couldn’t fight back. It wasn’t so far from the truth and given the scaring they found on my neck and blood on me and the rest of my dishevelled, traumatic looking state, they bought it.

My police escort saw me home. Pulled up into the alleyway and stopped the car. We both stared out the front window, there was a male figure sitting in the doorway of my warehouse entrance. On an upside down, green, plastic milk crate.

“That him?” The female police officer called Murphy asked me.

She killed the engine and we both got out. Murphy hadn’t been in on the interview, she’d just been given instructions on me to get me home safely. Looking down the alleyway the male drumming the green plastic milk crate he’d been sitting on, stopped and stood up. I searched through Katelyn’s memory banks.

“No. Not him.”

“Katelyn?” Shaye Aramadel greeted me with as police officer Murphy stood in front like a territorial guard, her hand resting over her side arm. I wondered if he could tell if it was Katelyn or not or if it was just some sort of generic, general, human greeting he was giving me.

“Can we help you?” The officer asked him as we walked up.

Given the lack of dress Katelyn’s body had been found in, the hospital had donated hospital scrubs to wear home. The blue pants and square top were about as unflattering as it got. The police had taken Tarin’s dinner jacket and the bracelet, I’d been wearing and were keeping them as possible evidence.

“What’s your name?”

Shaye Armadel looked past the officer back at me. I knew I had to get rid of the police officer if I was to ever go about rampaging all over Tarin Armadel. I flicked through Katelyn’s memories. “Oh it’s okay officer, I know him.” I hoped he would take the universal silent code for shut the fuck up and follow my lead. “This is my friend Shane.”

Shaye broke into a big, warm, smile. I’d seen one like that before, on his brother. On Tarin. “Shane.” He said sticking out a hand to shake to the police officer who ignored it and continued to eyeball Shaye suspiciously.

“Got some ID?”

Shaye looked from me to her. He looked a little tired, like he’d been waiting out there for quite some time, maybe all night. Except he wasn’t in his suit as Katelyn last remembered him, so maybe not all night and I seriously doubted he could top the night that had been for me and Katelyn, so I really didn’t give a shit.

“Uh, I don’t have anything on me, it’s why I came around to see Katelyn. I lost it last night at the party. Wondered if you got my messages and had my wallet?” Shaye said looking from the officer to me again. I walked past her and went to unlock the padlock folding screen door and realised I couldn’t.

“Son of a bitch.”

“What is it?” Officer Murphy asked me.

“No keys.” Katelyn’s purse and shoes were probably with Tarin.

“You’re probably going to have to call a locksmith.” Murphy said to me. Shaye looked at me again from head to toe. He looked like he wanted to ask what was going on.

Instead he produced his mobile phone. Looking at the outstretched hand with it and back up at him, expectantly, his face faltered. His brother had tried to kill us, granted he was probably only aiming for Katelyn, but…the least he could do was call the fucking locksmith himself. He took the phone back. “I’ll uh, look up a locksmith in the area.” He replied trying to escape the hostile look I threw at him.

“I’m going to stay with you until I can check out inside your place. We want to make sure the perp isn’t inside or hasn’t ripped you off.” Murphy said looking serious beside me. “If he has access to your place, you’re going to need to change your locks anyway.”

“Perp?” Shaye said unable to stop himself. “What happened to you?” He said in a low voice.

He actually sounded surprised, looked surprised at Katelyn’s state of appearance. But then again, maybe he wasn’t expecting her to be alive either. I had to wonder if he was in on what Tarin had planned for her. But it was possible he didn’t know about Tarin trying to kill Katelyn. It was a slim shot, but it was possible. As soon as officer Murphy left us alone, I was going to find out, first hand.

20

Officer Murphy checked out the warehouse, there really wasn’t all that much to see. There was clearly a reason my host, Katelyn lived alone and coveted space. Shaye Armadel was looking at that reason right now, at me, only he didn’t know it.

The warehouse had partially fitted out was a split level dwelling. Kitchen, bathroom and along with a lot of space. There was a boxing bag hanging down in the far corner of the room and upstairs, a bedroom and space for whatever upstairs. Simple. Officer Murphy left once she was happy the warehouse was perp free, but not before throwing Shaye another suspicious look.

Shaye stood opposite looking at me. “What’s going on?” He asked me. “Are you alright Katelyn?” I could see him trying to see behind my eyes. Maybe he was more clued in that I’d given him credit for.

“Why do you ask?”

“You’re in hospital scrubs, a police officer escorted you here, and you called me Shane, need I go on?”

“Sure you don’t know Shaye? Haven’t you spoken to your brother lately?” I watched his eyes narrow on me. He was definitely trying to figure something out about me.

“Not since I said goodbye to you two last night. What did Tarin do?” He asked softly. “Jesus, did he hurt you?” It looked like real concern mixed with anger in his expression. I laughed at him then. “Why, does he try to do that often to women? To his dates? To his business partners?”

“Oh shit, you were doing business with Tarin? Not just dating him.”

“We were never dating. It was a ruse, for our business dealings, only Tarin, double crossed me.”

“Shit.” Shaye muttered his hands going to his hips. “What did he do? Please, tell me Katelyn. I want to help.”

“He tried to kill me.” I pulled back the scrub top to show him the scar tissue of the bite marks he’d left Katelyn’s body with. Unlike the apparent first time he’d bitten her, I thought as I riffled through Katelyn’s memories, Tarin hadn’t thought to seal the bites with saliva, or hadn’t meant to. So this time, the bite remained visible for all to see, healing at a substantially slower rate.

Shaye was silent for a moment. “Did you come here to finish the job off? Is that the plan? Or where you just clean-up crew, get what you could before someone else found my place and settled in? Because if he’s after the money he paid me, it’s already been moved.”

“No, of course not. Katelyn I’m so sorry. Are you sure, he was trying to kill you? I mean he might have gotten lost in the blood lust. Maybe he took it further than he meant to.”

Tilting my head to the side I studied him. “He drank till he thought he’d drained. Then he and his driver buried me in a shallow grave in the country side. Pretty sure he tried to kill me.”

Shaye sighed heavily. “It’s his demon nature, it’s to seduce and deceive, it’s what he’s driven to do. I was hoping to warn you off him today.” He waved a hand at me.

I froze on the spot. “Demon?”

“You didn’t know, he was a demon?”

“He said shadow. Forgot to mention the demon part.”

I don’t like hurt. Who does? Especially the emotional kind of hurt. It does something to the body. Leaves marks on your soul. It weighs on you and damages part of who you are, in tiny fragments that sometimes heal, but forever leave a scar. It doesn’t feel good and it takes too long to make sense of and get over. Even when you have forever. Who needs a lifetime of that luggage to deal with?

Shaye frowned at me. “Yeah, shadow demon.”

The thing is, some people, are brilliant at emotional hurt. They can manipulate and deceive and impact that thing on you that will cripple you badly. They’re the ones who like hurt, hurting others.

Humans can never wrap their head around the logic of that motive. But the reality is, it’s like a sensation, a high, a good feeling, a normal impulse for them to hurt others.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need to be wrapped in cotton wool. I’ve never really lead a charmed life. It’s been rough all over and if all you know is rough, then all you know to do is roll with it, survive it. Which is what Katelyn’s been doing for thirty years. She’s been doing the best she can. Anyway she could. Anyway that suited her and helped me and got me what I wanted out of this life.

Hurting a truth-sayer, who’s talent, gift, ability whatever you want to call it, it’s more than hurtful. It’s more than a passing thing if it’s done right. It’s damaging. Blindingly damaging. It’s like taking all your feelings, and perceptions and everything you have at your disposal and putting them off line. It changes your insides and remakes you. But it’s a slow change. Like a creeping poison.

It’s why she’s always been a loner. She learned long ago, that she couldn’t do her thing, use me, to read people, get their truth, if they ruined parts of mine. It’s why she’s never had a real relationship. Never allowed herself to feel all those things, that so many people take for granted in being human. Love, passion, desire, want and need, trust and companionship. She’s a smart girl, Katelyn, which is probably why she’s so damn strong at containing me.

Those sins, desires are the downfall of someone like me. They counter more than they feed. I don’t want to lose a part of myself to that, because it happened once before when I was young and it wasn’t good, it was bad, very bad, and not just for me. The truth can hurt, and it can set you free, but at what expense?

People don’t know where that saying came from and it’s probably a very good thing, because if they saw what I could be set free, from within her, from my truth, they’d be beyond scared. They’d be cowering before me.

Katelyn knows what lies inside her and it’s me and I’m not good. Not by her definition of the word. Nobody can see it, because nobody knows to look for it. To think of it. Because the truth is, what you make of it and nobody makes much of her, because that’s the way I like it. Guess that’s a form of deception, an odd thing for a truth sayer to do. Maybe I’m not as pure as my abilities might make me seem. After all, Katelyn uses them by giving them to the person who’s willing to pay the right price. Does that make her or me an honest soul?

I open my eyes and stare back at him. “You’re right, you’re too late.” I said glowering at him, I felt the power of my blood line seep out of me and I controlled it so it is slow. I shove Shaye in the chest and watch him fly backwards.

“Katelyn?” He couches his back hitting a wall. That wasn’t even a finger nail of my raw power I’ve used on him. That was me just being pissy.

I saw the moment he recognised, I wasn’t all there. That he got a glimpse of the real me. He takes an intake a breath and puts a hand to his mouth before dropping it away and continuing to play cool.

“Katelyn?” He asks again.

“You keep calling me that.” I mutter at him walking over towards him as he pulls himself up to a sitting position against the wall.

“What should I call you then?” He asks wincing a little.

“Like you demon, have a right to call me anything, it’s impressive that I’ve let you be in my presence, let alone allow you to talk to me and look upon me.” I reply back at him as Shaye gets to one knee, with a hand on the ground. I squat down in front of him.

“What do you normally call gods?” His eyes flicked up to me and I see him take look for differences in Katelyn’s appearance.

“Oh shit.” He kneels on both knees before me then. But he is not filled with fear, not yet. But I get the sense that Shaye Armadel understands the hierarchy of power and those more powerful than himself, so maybe bowing and scraping are more a survival instinct than anything else. “You’re an Asha Vahishta.”

“Tarin thinks of me as merely a truth-sayer. Clearly doesn’t know his paranormal history or believe in doing background checks on those he plans to screw over and kill.” I say back at him. “But your smarter than you’re brother. You know not to go toe to toe with a god, don’t you Shaye? Or are we going to have a problem here, shadow demon?”

“No problem. Asha.” He mutters softly his head still bowed so his blonde hair hides his eyes from me.

“Asha, I like that. Which is good, because I’m going after your brother.”

Shaye looks up into my face then. “I’ll help you.”

“I know you will. Because I know you’re nature demon.” I say smiling back down at him. He looks a little stunned at my words. “If you hurt Katelyn, all bets are off, are we clear?”

“Yes, my goddess.”

I stand back up straight. “You have no idea, shadow demon, how strong a person Katelyn Phoenix is. Of how strong she has had to be mentally, spiritually, emotionally. If you come at me you will have to deal with her and if you come at her, you will have to deal with me, are we clear?”

“Yes.” Shaye says softly still kneeling reverently before my feet.

“Good, cause I need to clean up and get out of these paper thin rags. They’re really not very becoming of someone of my stature.”

“May I be of assistance to my goddess?” Shaye asks looking up at me his head still bowed down. I can see the desire emitting from him. He is as bad as his brother when it came to truth-sayer’s.

I smirk. “Pretty sure I can find a use for you.”

More of Tarin, Katelyn and Shaye in Shadow Games: Book 2

Being a Truth-Sayer has its moments.

For Katelyn Phoenix it would most notably have to be when the man she found herself falling in love with shadow demon, Tarin Armadel tried to kill her.

Katelyn doesn’t want to see Tarin’s face again as she reverts to truth sayer form, as a demi-god named Asha to protect her heart from Tarin’s emotional betrayal.

But Katelyn finds out that the broken hearted don’t get to time out to hide out from life, when paranormal beings think you’re a threat of to them and want you dead. Time won’t stand still for her to figure out if Tarin’s even telling her the truth about how he feels about her.

Forced to team up with Tarin in order to get to the bottom of who wants her dead and why, Katelyn finds out that the paranormal world of Melbourne, Australia is far more sinister than it seemed. And that the shadow demon might be the least of her problems when it comes to her reclaiming her life.

Breukelen Girl novels available at Smashwords

Werewolf Storm

I guess you could say I was having the day from hell.

Well, it didn’t exactly start out that way, and I may have caused a little of the trouble myself, when I managed to ditch the protective detail of werewolf bodyguards who were assigned to me. But beyond that, the rest of my day, was well and truly outside of my control. Which was a bit like my life as a Breukelen pack werewolf.

Meeting shape shifting doctor, Megan Marisini from the Neiwe Teme Pack in New Jersey, New York, kind of blew my mind well and truly open. Nothing like discovery you’re not who you thought you were for your whole life, to change your day. That and say a super storm. I didn’t know about the warnings and couldn’t evacuate in time to before the storm hit and tilted my world on an axis I never saw coming.

Alpha

Bodil Sommers has never been one for attention, but as the lunar week approaches and the moon rises high in the night sky, she’s going to get a lot of it, from various werewolf males. Doesn’t help if you’re the leading pack alpha’s daughter and every werewolf in the tri-state area wants a piece of you. And not necessarily in a good way.

Two of the males pursuing her are from her own pack and proving more than a enough to keep up with. Nick Olsen an alpha and Boden Jennings a beta werewolf who are always fighting one another. They’re supposed to be the better option, than giving herself over to another pack’s alpha male or having to win her right to date, through dominance fighting.

But Bodil finds her paws full when neither male will back down and she can’t figure out what she wants, let alone who she wants, as well as having to stop an impending turf war with another werewolf pack, all before full moon. Who new dating was so complicated?

New York, leave it to the wolves.

Beasts of Burden

Bg Sommers is in Seattle to catch up with her good friend, and fellow beta werewolf, Sonny Charleston. As usual, a night out on the town wouldn’t be a night out if trouble didn’t follow them and bring Bg more attention than she can handle when the dangerous looking alpha werewolf, Paris D’arenberg sets his sights on her.

Bg’s heart knows it’s in trouble, even before the end of the night. As thoughts of her relationship with her pack mate Conall Wakely back home fade, she realizes her heart is willing to be taken and not by just anyone.

Returning home to Brooklyn after her mind opening weekend away, Bg comes face to face with all aspects and werewolves, of her love life. In order for her to find true happiness, she has to make some personal decisions and risk herself in the process. Is she a fearlessness werewolf to truly try and unburden the beast that is her werewolf heart? Conflicted she must conquer what her heart truly desires and understand that it is okay to seek love and to love fully.

Wild Life

Addison Harrington is used to leading a pretty wild life. After all, you don’t get to be a werewolf and be normal, as such. As an alpha werewolf and second in command of the Manhattan Maen werewolf pack, he’s very much used to living the werewolf way of life. He’s up to his neck in werewolves, daily, nightly and at all times.

So when he finds himself face to face with Cassidy Owens, a non-werewolf female at a pack party, he becomes a little intrigued in the human species. Even if he is somewhat unsure of what to do, other than have some fun. But can he have fun with a human woman? His version of fun? After all, Addison’s never been one for human companions, or relations as such.

As the lunar week approaches, Addison finds himself drawn to Cassidy. But his werewolf lifestyle could spell trouble, for the both of them. Before Addison can figure out how to break it off with Cassidy, she is dragged, kicking and screaming into the werewolf world at large. Addison finds he must save Cassidy as much as he must save himself by confronting his own feelings for a human. Feelings he thought he’d never have.

Lunar Night Stand

A Side Show Story related to the full length novel The Pack.

Gabby Colton is cool, calm and very collected, most of the time, she has to be, she’s an alpha werewolf from the Manhattan Maen werewolf pack. Which means living by expectations and pack rules and standards. But having Conall Wakely turn up unexpectedly on her doorstep during a lunar week, throws the alpha female. But then Gabby sees an opportunity worth taking.

There is history between Conall and Gabby and it isn’t at all good. So what good could come from these two meeting up without anyone to pull them apart? Then again, Conall Wakely’s never been a model good guy. So why not indulge in his bad boy behavior? Besides, the worst an alpha female werewolf could possibly do to him, other than break his balls?

This is what happens when young Breukelen beta werewolf, Conall Wakely decides to pay a house visit to Manhattan Maen’s fiercest alpha female, Gabby Colton.

The Pack

On an irregular lunar week in Manhattan New York, odd things are happening. The Werewolves of New York City are acting up. And it seems everyone is affected, even Manhattan Maen pack leader, Paris D'arenberg.

 

But does Paris see the chaos around him or is he used to it? His pack mate Bg tries to warn him that something is coming. But what would be brave enough to come for an alpha werewolf? Especially a pack leader like Paris. Or is Paris not the real target of these strange events?

 

As the lunar week unfolds, Bg and the Manhattan Maen werewolf pack will have to face something unexpected and unprecedented happening to them. Which will require making the hardest decision of Bg's life. How can her love for Paris survive, if he doesn't?

Perception

At the age of fourteen I was attacked by a pack of wild wolves, at the age of fifteen I found out there were wolves attacking humans in my home town of Brooklyn. This was the beginning of my relationship with Booker Parish. A lycan. A big no-no in the werewolf world.

 

One I couldn't resist.

 

Growing up Werewolf

I was fourteen years old once. I was a naive pup. Waiting for my shape shift to happen for the first time. The thing with a first time is it’s always the time you remember. The one that you carry with you always in the back of your mind. You think you know what to expect, but you never do. Especially if you don’t see it coming and it’s nothing like you imagined. Nothing you’ve been told before. It can’t be undone once it’s done.

Once you become a werewolf.

Lunar Nights

A short collection of werewolf erotica in bite size pieces.

 

Revenge

What happens to a werewolf on a lunar eclipse? Well, one werewolf in particular. The follow on from Reasons. Gabby and Bg sort out a few differences between them.

Reasons

Everything happens for a reason, right? And everybody's got their reasons for doing what they do, right? So explain to me, Breukelen Girl, why an Alpha female werewolf hates my guts enough to try and kill me.

This is the story of what happens when two female werewolves, one Alpha - and one Beta - from differing packs, do not get along and animosity grows into hatred and hatred becomes, an action that in unavoidable. For either werewolf.

Lycan La Vida Loca

My love life is complicated. Because I'm a werewolf. I think it's always been complicated. In part due to my first serious romance. Because he's my alpha pack mate's friend. My pack mate doesn’t know this. To make matters trickier, my first true love is a lycan. Werewolves look down on lycans. So how would my pack mate look at me, if he knew I'd given my virginity to a lycan?

 

Werewolves do not like to think of lycans as equals to them. So to fall in love with a lycan would be considered bad for a werewolf like Breukelen Girl. But to fall in love and then make love to a lycan, would be considered the worst thing a werewolf could do.

 

Especially for a werewolf like Breukelen Girl, from the leading pack family in Brooklyn, New York.

Of Wolf and Male

My love life is complicated. Because I’m a Werewolf. I broke up with my boyfriend, he’s from the same pack as me. He doesn’t appreciate me going out with an Alpha male from another New York Pack. Males, wolves, I swear they’re all the same. They just want to claim something as they’re own. Namely me.

 

Two male werewolves, one beta, one alpha and one female. An ex boyfriend, a new boyfriend, two different packs. Somehow all the trouble that involves the female wolf at the center of their interest, comes down to who slept with her first. Who she has given her virginity to.

 

It'd shock both male wolves if they found out it was neither one of them.

Shadow Aspect: Book 1

Katelyn Phoenix leads a low life. She’s never had a life full of privilege, prominence or affluence. But she’s always been able to see the truth in other people; it’s always been her gift. Because Katelyn’s not your average human female. She’s a truth-sayer and being one of those is rare and highly, valuable if you want to commit personal espionage on others.

Katelyn’s never had a problem with what she does, it’s not for her to question the ethics of it. Because nobody ever questions her, when she gets them what they want to extort over others. If they’re willing to pay the right price for her services.

Tarin Armadel is more than willing to pay the price for hiring Katelyn Phoenix. Because in the supernatural world of Melbourne, Australia, Tarin’s not what he seems at first glance either. He comes from the shadows of a cold Melbourne night, to make a proposition to Katelyn that’s too good to refuse. Especially when it involves the mysterious, Tarin in it.

Katelyn finds herself entering the supernatural world she’s only ever been on the fringes of before, and falling deeper, and deeper for Tarin in the process. But she’s unable to read Tarin, which is something of blessing and a burden. How is she supposed to know what she’s getting into with him? He’s everything she’s never had before in her life and there’s probably a very good reason for that. If only she could get to the bottom of the truth to find out before its’ too late.

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