I didn’t even need to glance at him to know he was smiling and enjoying himself immensely. But I did need to look at him to make sure he completely understood what I was about to say.
“You know I don’t. Now wipe that grin off your face.”
He actually batted his eyelashes at me. “What grin?”
“The grin that’s telling Ian, ‘I’m up to no good with your partner, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ ’Cause I can guarantee you he will do something about it. Then I’ll have to do something about the two of you, and no one here wants to see that.”
“On the contrary, everyone here would love to see that, myself included. And now you’ve piqued my curiosity. We goblins are rather like your domestic cats in that regard. Once aroused, our curiosity must be satisfied.” The gleam in his dark eyes said that satisfying his arousal in regard to me had nothing to do with curiosity.
That was Ian’s problem.
Tall, dark, sleek, and seemingly made for sex, goblins had a reputation for . . . let’s just say they had a reputation. A well-deserved one. Add to that Rake being the owner of Bacchanalia, Manhattan’s most exclusive sex club, and Ian’s concerns were justified, as Rake hadn’t even tried to hide his interest in me. In fact, I think Rake had turned teasing me and antagonizing Ian about teasing me into his newest hobby.
I pushed my chair back and stood. Rake, playing at being the perfect gentleman, stood with me.
Ian needed to understand that I was a big girl and as such was totally aware of who Rake was and what he wanted. And he wasn’t getting any of it until when—or if—I decided I wanted it, too. Not that it was any of Ian’s business, which was another thing he needed to get through his head.
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
Rake smiled fully as he took his seat. Anyone watching saw an unwholesomely handsome man giving his date a dazzling smile. I saw all of that plus a pair of fangs. I was a seer. It was a rare ability that enabled me to see through wards, spells, shields, and glamours that supernaturals used to disguise themselves from the humans around them. Only about half the people in Café Mina were human; the rest were a mix of supernatural races.
So I knew exactly what Rake Danescu was, in more ways than one.
“I shall eagerly await your return,” Rake all but purred.
I sighed. “Yeah.”
I started across the restaurant, to the accompaniment of Rake’s low chuckle.
Ian’s date glanced up from her menu with a quick grin that, in the language of girlfriends everywhere, said: “I’m so happy for you!” Or if expressed in a single sound—“Squee!”
Ian was not happy—for me or anyone else—and he most certainly was not fighting back an urge to squee. The only urges Ian was fighting were violent ones, and he didn’t appear to be fighting very hard.
“Stop it,” I told him.
Two words. One directive. I didn’t believe in beating around the bush.
“I haven’t done anything,” he said. The “yet” was unspoken.
“Neither has Rake.”
“He wants to.”
I resisted rolling my eyes. “So does every other red-blooded man with any woman they’re attracted to.” I left “yourself included” unsaid. I paused. Goblins had red blood, didn’t they? For the sake of my argument I’d go with yes.
“Every other red-blooded man hasn’t enthralled you,” Ian noted.
Kylie did a combo groan and face palm.
“Enthralled? I’d ask you to please tell me you’re kidding, but I know you’re not.”
“Rake Danescu is a dark mage, one of the best.”
“And I’m a hick from the North Carolina mountains ripe for the pickin’.”
“I did not say that.”
“Oh yes, you did.”
My first night on the job, Rake had magicked himself a look inside my mind. It hadn’t been personal, merely business. Okay, maybe it had been a little personal. From what I understood, it’d be easier the next time. I’d been with SPI for well over a year now, and Rake hadn’t tried it again.
The combativeness went out of Ian. “Mac, I’m simply worried that—”
A man screamed.
An immaculately groomed guy in a really nice suit who’d just come back from the men’s room was staring in total and complete horror at his waiter. The guy was human; his waiter was not.
I could see that. The man shouldn’t have been able to.
The two other suit-clad men across the table from him were staring at this guy like he’d lost his mind. They looked like a trio out for a business lunch. The screaming guy had a tablet next to him on the table. Yep, business lunch. If those were his clients, the screamer wasn’t making a good impression.
Everyone else in the restaurant saw the waiter as what he wanted them to see—a hot-beyond-belief, twentysomething, out-of-work actor waiting tables to pay the rent. I saw what he really was—an incubus.
Somehow the businessman, who’d now progressed from screaming to babbling, saw what I was seeing.
The incubus’s features were vaguely humanoid, but more closely resembled a creature out of a bad 1950s horror movie, with translucent skin and a slit suction cup for lips.
The man stood so quickly his thighs hit the table, nearly knocking it over on the two men with him, who scooted back to keep from taking soup in the lap. One guy wasn’t so lucky with his drink, shouting a word people generally tried not to say at a polite business lunch as he grabbed a napkin and blotted the front of his pants.