Seducing The Dark Prince

Chapter 4

Lucien’s phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. He’d been out on a job all day and had turned his ringer off. He took it out and glanced at it, surprised to see a voice mail notification from Theia Dawn. And annoyed that it seemed to make his heart beat faster.

Theia’s message was brief: “We should talk.”

Somebody else had talked, obviously. From the tone of her voice, he could tell she was better informed about the Smoks than she’d been yesterday. Lucien lay on his back on the Berber rug on the floor of his penthouse suite while he returned her call.

He grinned when she answered. “I knew you couldn’t resist me.”

“I can resist you just fine. It’s your company I find intriguing.” There was a pause as she apparently realized how her word choice sounded. “Your firm,” she said quickly, followed by an adorable, mortified gasp.

He put her on speaker and crossed his arms behind his head. “So what can my...firm...do for you, Ms. Dawn?”

“I thought we were going to talk about what I can do for your...” She swore softly at herself in the background. It sent a little shiver down his spine to know how flustered she was when he wasn’t even standing in front of her. “About the job. With Smok Biotech,” she hastened to add. He wondered how flushed her skin was right now. With the chocolate-brown hair bobbed sharply at her chin and those little points of cherry red at the ends, it would make her eyes seem even larger.

“You want the job at the lab.” He spoke lazily, imagining her large gray eyes blinking at him.

“If the offer’s still open. And it depends on exactly what the job is.”

“The offer is most definitely still open. Why don’t we meet for dinner tonight to talk over the specifics?”

“Tonight?” Her voice went up slightly at the end, a little squeak of surprise.

Lucien smiled. “Is that a problem?”

“It’s almost eight o’clock.”

“Too close to your bedtime? I’m sure I can accommodate that.”

“No, it’s just—it’s short notice. I wasn’t planning on going out tonight. It would take me a little while to get ready.”

“It’s just a business dinner. You don’t need to impress me.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Her tone was clipped.

He loved getting under her skin. Lucien grinned at the thought. He’d like to get deep under it. Or inside it. In a manner of speaking. Lucien shook himself out of his little daydream. That wasn’t going to do him any good.

“Why don’t we meet at Cress at L’Auberge in an hour? Is that enough time?”

“Are they open that late?”

“They will be for me.”

* * *

The last time he’d seen her, she’d been dressed as a bridesmaid in a bloodred chiffon dress that swung around her hips when she walked. Undeniably flattering, but he’d suspected it wasn’t the sort of thing she normally wore. Neither was what she had on tonight—a conservative navy blue pencil skirt with a cream-colored blouse buttoned up far too high. It was an interesting look, perhaps something she thought a scientist would wear to a business dinner. The one departure from the conservative style was the pair of red crushed-velvet heels that drew attention to her fantastic legs.

“You really didn’t have to dress up for me,” he said as he pulled out her chair at their al fresco table above the babbling Oak Creek.

Theia sat almost suspiciously, like she wasn’t sure what he was doing. “I didn’t. I mean, this isn’t for you. It just didn’t seem like Cress was really a jeans and Tinker Bell T-shirt kind of place.”

He smiled, picturing her in a Tinker Bell T-shirt. That seemed a lot more her style.

“It’s whatever kind of place you want it to be, darling. Seriously. They know me here, and you may have noticed the place is empty.”

Theia’s eyes narrowed. “This doesn’t impress me, you know.”

“Of that I have absolutely no doubt.” Lucien laid his napkin in his lap. “I hope you don’t mind that I’ve ordered ahead. I should have asked if you had any food allergies, though. Is filet mignon all right?”

“No. I mean, yes, filet mignon is fine. No, I don’t have any food allergies.” She was gripping her water glass tightly.

“You don’t have to be impressed, but there’s no need to be so tense, either. Would it help if we dive straight into business?”

“Yes.” She’d answered almost before the words left his mouth. He was really enjoying how flustered he seemed to make her.

“Okay, so to start, I take it you spoke to your brother-in-law about us.”

Theia took a sip of her water as if trying to buy time. “I got some information from him, yes.”

“So you know what it is we do. Outside the lab, that is.”

A questioning look appeared on her face for a moment before she masked it. “I do.” She didn’t. But she knew something. Something that was making her very nervous.

“As you know, there are two main divisions of Smok International: Smok Consulting and Smok Biotech. Let me explain how the consulting side of things intersects with the biotech business. Part of cleaning up other people’s messes is dealing with what triggers those incidents in the first place.”

Theia nodded, pretending to follow. The first course had arrived, and Lucien paused to try the bacon-wrapped lapin.

Theia’s face lit up as she took a bite of hers. “Wow. This is fantastic.”

“It doesn’t suck,” he agreed with a wink. “There are some perks to having too much money.”

“Do you?” Theia took another bite, visibly relaxing. “Have too much?”

“Me personally?” Lucien shrugged. “I don’t have any, as a matter of fact. This is all being expensed.” He smiled at her dubious expression. “Still unimpressed? My inheritance is all held in trust, and it’s dependent upon a few conditions I haven’t met yet, so I get to represent my father’s business, but everything I have belongs to him. Or to the company.” He indicated the suit he was wearing. “This thing? Expensed.” He flicked some mustard from his fork onto the jacket.

Theia laughed, the laughter obviously surprised out of her as she tried to cover her mouth, still full of rabbit. He liked seeing her laugh. It changed her whole face, like she’d let him in for a moment and let down her guard—something that was in place not just because she didn’t trust him but a guardedness that seemed ingrained in her.

“You said something about triggers.” Theia tried to go back to her frosty demeanor, moving beet curls around her plate. “What kind of triggers were you referring to?” She was obviously trying to get him to explain more about what she was pretending she already knew. He figured he’d oblige.

“Your brother-in-law, for instance—Rafe Diamante. I noticed that the uninvited guest at his wedding reception—the other uninvited guest—triggered a partial transformation. Strong emotion is often a trigger for such things. Most shape-shifters learn to control when they shift. Or to adapt, if the trigger happens to be out of their control, such as a full moon.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about Rafe.”

“I know an awful lot about everybody, darling.” He noticed her visible flinch at the familiarity, and he tried not to react. Part of being able to indulge in his extracurricular activities depended on making sure people saw him as a spoiled brat who’d never grown up. And part of him was a spoiled brat who’d never grown up, so it wasn’t all that hard to pull off. “I know a lot about a lot of influential people with unusual problems, I should say.”

The waiter arrived to take their starter plates and replaced them with calamari salad. Theia picked up a set of little tentacles, holding them up in the light.

“Not a fan of squid?”

“Hmm?” Theia had popped the calamari into her mouth, and she chewed for a moment before responding. “No, I love squid. I was just admiring it. I love it when they include the tentacles instead of just the rings. They’re the best part.” She took another bite, this time with her fork. “So these unusual problems.” She paused to chew and swallow. “Shape-shifting.” She’d lowered her voice on the word. “It’s actually fairly new to me, so I’m not used to people talking about it so openly. Are there really a lot of them?”

“More than you’d suspect. The job of Smok’s consulting arm is making sure no one does suspect. Sometimes it’s literally cleanup—which I don’t do.” He showed her his hands—no calluses, manicured nails. “We have crews for that. People who don’t mind getting their hands dirty and who can be counted on to be discreet. We had a crew out to your sister Dione’s house a few months—”

“Ione,” Theia interrupted him with her mouth still partially full.

“Sorry?”

She swallowed and wiped her lips with her napkin. “She goes by Ione. It drives her crazy when people pronounce her name wrong, like you just did, so she dropped the D.” Theia paused, apparently only just registering what he’d said. “You were at her house?”

“Not me personally. Like I said, I’m not big on cleaning things. But we sent a crew at Rafe’s request to do some repairs after a certain dragon demon stomped around in her living room. And I understand his trigger was, well, fairly intimate.”

Theia reddened slightly. Dev’s transformation was reportedly triggered by sex and blood.

“My point is that responding to unwanted supernatural activity, whatever the trigger, by cleaning up after the fact may be lucrative, but it’s inefficient. At Smok Biotech, we develop technologies to suppress unwanted transformations. Among other things.” He figured any more information would just overload her if she’d only recently learned that shifters were real. “And people will pay a lot of money for that kind of control. Particularly people in the public eye. Entrepreneurs. Actors. Politicians. Imagine how the public would react if the president turned into a poison-spitting were-newt in the middle of a White House press conference?” Lucien glanced up with a smirk. “Bad example. He’s clearly not bothering to use our tech.”

Theia laughed again, her nose wrinkling. He definitely liked making her do that.

The main course arrived, and they were distracted for a bit by both the presentation and the flavor, truffle and fungus in wine sauce drizzled over the top of the perfectly grilled steak and an artful swirl of béarnaise surrounding mashed root vegetables with edible flowers on top. Lucien found he liked watching Theia eat food that delighted her almost as much as he liked making her laugh. But not quite as much as he was sure he’d like tasting her mouth the way she was tasting that filet mignon.

Lucien focused on his own food for a moment, trying to think more appropriate thoughts.

“So what is it you’d want me to do?”

He glanced up sharply, nearly choking on a mouthful of mashed turnip as he inhaled at the wrong moment. It would really be something if she had to return the favor from the wedding reception by performing the Heimlich maneuver on him.

“At the lab,” Theia clarified, eyeing him suspiciously. “Why do you need me?”

Managing not to choke, Lucien set down his fork to take a drink of mineral water. “We have an excellent staff of researchers but only a handful of lab techs who know the full extent of what we do. I thought it would be good to have someone on staff that I don’t have to hide things from.” Not those things, anyway. He’d gotten used to hiding everything else. “And you’d be well compensated,” he added. “In case that wasn’t clear.”

“You want me to be a lab technician?”

“More than just a lab technician. I mean, that, too. But...” He hadn’t really thought about how he was going to broach the subject of her gift. They’d talked around the reputation of the Carlisle sisters, but he hadn’t actually mentioned clairvoyance outright. “Someone with both technical and esoteric knowledge would be invaluable. Someone who could make...educated predictions of the likely outcomes.”

Theia’s body language had loosened up significantly over the course of the meal, but in an instant she was back to being stiff and tight and on guard.

“Sorry, did I say something wrong?”

“What exactly is it that you think I can do, Mr. Smok?”

Oh, crap. He was Mr. Smok again.

“I...understood you had oracular powers.”

“Oracular.” Her forehead creased with irritation. “You think I can see the future. That I can just look into my little crystal ball and tell you how Smok stock is going to do tomorrow.”

“Well, not exactly—”

“Who told you I had these oracular powers?”

Lucien was beginning to feel uncomfortable under her gaze. She might not have oracular powers, but he was starting to think she could burn a hole in his family jewels with those eyes.

“It’s common knowledge in the community. The magical community.”

“And the magical adjacent, of course.”

Lucien shrugged helplessly. “Sorry. I’ve obviously stepped in it here, and I’m not really sure how.”

“Let me ask you something, Mr. Smok.”

“Fire away.”

“Do you and your kind think my sisters and I are some kind of magical Pez dispensers? Is there a creep board out there on the internet somewhere, some ugly little masculinist corner of the deep web where you guys swap stories about how to hit on magically gifted women?”

Lucien nearly choked again at the word masculinist.

“I’m not sure what you think my kind is, but I think you’re taking my interest the wrong way.”

“So you don’t want to sleep with me to get your magical rocks off.”

Something in her words made him snap, like a percussion grenade had gone off inside him. “Listen, sweetheart, if all I wanted to do was sleep with you, I wouldn’t have wasted the company money on a fancy dinner. I would have just done it, and right about now is when you’d be gathering your clothes and making your exit so I could roll over and go to sleep.”

Theia pushed back her chair and stood, her napkin falling to the floor. “Thank you for the dinner, Mr. Smok. Enjoy rolling over and sleeping next to your hand.”

Still suffering the effects of the mental percussion grenade, he wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, but it was both delightful and painful to watch her walk away in those heels and that skirt.

Chapter 5

Theia ordered a car on her way outside, and in fifteen minutes she was back at Phoebe’s ranch house yanking off the skirt and kicking off her shoes and grabbing a startled Puddleglum for a forcible cuddle in the papasan chair by the picture window.

Who the hell did that asshole Lucien Smok think he was, anyway? God’s gift to women, obviously. Showing up at Phoebe’s wedding trolling for Lilith blood was bad enough, but making up a job offer to get into her pants was pathetic.

Her phone rang underneath Puddleglum, and she ended up accidentally answering as she wrested it from under him before she saw who was calling.

Lucien’s voice carried from the speaker as she stared at it. “I didn’t think you’d answer.”

“I didn’t. It was my sister’s cat.”

“Her...cat?”

“His butt. Some people butt dial. He butt answers. Goodbye.” Her finger was poised over the button.

“Wait. Please hear me out.”

For some reason, she did.

“I’m calling to apologize. I screwed up.”

“Ya think?”

“I really did ask you to dinner to talk about the job. There was no ulterior motive. I’m sorry I handled the topic of your gift badly. I didn’t realize it was a touchy subject and maybe not for public consumption. And I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’m not sure why I overreacted. But what I said was inexcusable.”

Well, damn. That was an unexpectedly sincere apology. But maybe this was part of his game. She wasn’t going to be stupid enough to fall for it twice.

“Okay, well, thanks for calling. Have a nice evening.”

“Theia?”

Something about the way he said her name, almost a plea, made her hesitate.

“Are you still there?”

Theia’s thumb hovered over the button. “Sort of.”

He laughed softly. “Sort of? Listen, the job offer was genuine. I realize I made assumptions, but I think you’d be an asset to the enterprise, gift or no gift. Is there any way we can start over and discuss it?”

She did need to learn more about the Smoks, and the whole trigger-suppression concept was intriguing.

Theia sighed. “I’m not a psychic, I don’t read people’s fortunes and I don’t perform on command.”

“Of course. That’s perfectly understandable. Can I ask...” There was a rustling sound as he changed position. “Can you tell me how it does work? If it’s none of my business, that’s perfectly cool.”

Theia hesitated, and Puddleglum jumped down to wander to the kitchen, offended at no longer being the center of attention. “I’ve been known to have dreams. Visions. But honestly? I don’t even know if they’re anything.”

“I think you underestimate yourself.”

“How would you know?”

“Just a feeling.”

Theia smiled despite herself. “That’s usually my line.”

“Why don’t we put the feelings and intuitions aside then? I’ll be at the lab tomorrow around two o’clock. Just come by and take a look around, see what we do. If it doesn’t interest you, no harm done. You can walk away. And if you do get any impressions of a possible prophetic nature, I’d be happy to hear those, too. But no pressure.”

“No pressure.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Let’s not go that far.”

Lucien gave her that soft laugh again. “I get the feeling you doubt my sincerity. Suppose I can’t blame you. So will I see you tomorrow?”

The word tomorrow seemed to float before her in brilliant blue letters. Synesthesia wasn’t unusual for her, but it was often a precursor to a waking vision. Either way, it seemed to indicate that tomorrow was significant. A sign she should heed. Interpretation, of course, was always the tough part. Was her gift telling her she should go tomorrow? Or stay away?

“Theia? You still there?”

“Yeah, sorry. Tomorrow it is.”

The same brilliant blue haunted her sleep. Not letters or words this time, but blue in the form of a small dragon. Like the cockatrice she’d dreamed of before, it had webbed, bat-like wings, the joints ending in sharp claws, and stood on two legs, the head and barbed tail the classic shape of a dragon from fantasy—the sort Rhea had collected as figurines when they were kids. But there was something wrong with this dragon. It dragged itself along the desert floor the way a wounded bat might, using its winged forelimbs to “walk.” And above it, the shadow of the carrion-eating cockatrice circled as before. And it was growing closer.

* * *

She forgot about the dream images by the time she’d finished grading papers from her Friday morning class and headed over to the lab.

Smok was using the university biotech labs while a larger, permanent facility was being built off campus. Theia already had an access card for her own research, though she’d never been in the biotech section.

Lucien greeted her in the atrium, looking almost surprised that she’d actually shown up. “Theia. Welcome.” He squeezed her hand like they were old friends. “It’s nice to see you in something more comfortable.”

She’d worn ruby plaid skinny jeans and a black fitted T-shirt—not exactly something she’d just thrown on, but she wasn’t trying to look good for him. The words of Violet Bick from It’s a Wonderful Life popped into her head: “This old thing? Why, I only wear it when I don’t care how I look.” Theia, of course, couldn’t pull off the sassy hair flip.

She just wanted to feel confident, and looking exceptionally cute made her feel confident. So did the approving look he gave her as his eyes lingered over her curves for just the briefest moment. Not so long that it was obtrusive and objectifying, but long enough that she knew she’d chosen well. And as much as she hated to admit it, that little feeling of breathlessness was back.

She’d tried to ignore it at dinner the night before, tried not to think about how his arms had felt around her, like he was protecting her from the world—or like there was no one else in it but her. But every time she’d looked up from her food into those depthless ice-blue eyes, her lungs had tightened like when she was a kid and had felt an asthma attack coming on. She’d had to chew very carefully to make sure not to end up in a repeat performance of the moment they met.

Today, of course, she’d gone with comfortable black cotton Mary Janes instead of the velvet heels, which made Lucien seem exceptionally tall, though he was probably just under six feet. She’d been wearing heels both times they’d met before, but now she was at her full height of a whopping five foot two.

Beside Lucien, an older woman in a lab coat held out a clipboard. “Before you go in, we’ll need you to sign a standard confidentiality agreement.”

Lucien gave her an apologetic smile and a little shrug.

Once Theia had signed it and returned the clipboard, Lucien led her into the Smok wing of the lab, which required a special passkey. “I can have them add the access code to your existing card right now if you like.” He held out his hand as if expecting her to put her card in it.

Theia kept her arms crossed. “I haven’t agreed to your offer yet.”

Lucien smiled. “You will.”

Researchers were hard at work despite the lab only having been in operation for a few days. The equipment—and presumably the technology behind it—was cutting-edge. Theia had microscope envy.

Lucien seemed pleased by her reaction. “This is our pharmacogenomics division.”

“Pharmacogenomics?” Theia wondered if she’d heard wrong. “Not pharmacogenetics?”

“Nope. Genomics. That special project I told you about is particularly dependent on genome-wide study. Smok is currently trying to pinpoint variations in a single nucleotide within the genome to understand the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic effects for our newest drugs in development.”

Theia’s heart skipped a beat at the way the words rolled off his tongue. Most people’s eyes glazed over when she talked genetics. She was starting to see Lucien in a new light.

Encouraged by her interest, he gave her a little smile and went on. “The market for this drug is unique, as you know, and every patient responds differently. Understanding the epigenetics involved is crucial.”

Epigenetics. Now there was a term that was near and dear to Theia’s heart. The Lilith blood phenotype she’d postulated was epigenetic in nature, not caused by changes in the DNA itself, but by changes in gene expression.

“Have you been able to isolate the autosomal mutations responsible for the...condition?”

“We have, indeed. We’re well past that stage.” Lucien looked thoughtful before moving toward an isolated room at the rear of the lab. “Let me show you something.” He used his key card once more on the door. “Another access code I’ll provide you with. This one’s highly classified, since it has to do with our special research.”