BlindHeat by Nara Malone Page A

ordering.
    When the waiter left them, Allie’s confidence abandoned her.
She looked everywhere but at him. She fiddled with her dinner napkin, draped it
over her lap and from the movement of her shoulders he could tell she was
strangling it. He tried to ease the tension with humor.
    “I won’t molest you until after dessert. I promise.”
    She froze. Her gaze snapped up and locked with his. Her eyes
were a deep green that penetrated to a degree that startled him, reminding him
of Hella.
    It had been at the edge of his awareness from the beginning,
a sense that there was more to Allie than just an advanced human level of
intuition and perception. That she could be more like him than he knew. But,
just to start, those green eyes of hers, rare in humans, didn’t exist among
Pantherians of any tribe or subspecies.
    And if she were Pantherian she wouldn’t be living here on
her own. It had been a couple of centuries since Pantherian females were last
allowed to mingle freely with humans. Longer than that since they were
permitted to go about unescorted. There weren’t enough Pantherian females left
to risk short visits to human regions. No female had been formally allowed off
the island of Pantheria in half a dozen years.
    But even though Allie couldn’t be a shifter, she was not
your ordinary human. His instincts were firm on that point. What did that
leave? Psychic gifts? Mesmeric talents? There were layers to Allie he was going
to have to explore.
    “So you learned all about me at lunch,” he said. “Tell me
about yourself. Where did you grow up?”
    “I grew up in your average, urban-bighted corner of a city,”
she said with a shrug. “You?”
    “In a forest in Siberia,” he said.
    “Ah, I thought I detected a hint of an accent. I couldn’t
place it. So you were raised by monks?” She took a sip of water, watching him
over the rim of the crystal goblet. A spark of laughter glinted in her eyes.
Good. She didn’t believe a word he was saying.
    “By wild tigers actually. You?”
    Her answer was as flippant as his. “I grew up in what you
might politely call a brothel. My father was a high-end pimp. I didn’t know my
mother, but my guess is that she was a high-end hooker. What were your parents
like?”
    “Overprotective.”
    They sparred back and forth with their fantastical tales,
only his side of it was truth, however unbelievable. He knew she was making her
side up, but she delivered the story without hesitation and in unwavering
deadpan. He gave up trying to get the truth and ventured into safer
conversational ground—the weather and global warming.
    He tried sneaking in personal questions. She sidestepped
every one with a fantastical fabrication and turned the questions back on him.
Blocked at every new angle, he fell back on a trick that had served him well
across the centuries—mesmerism.
    He dipped his hand into his jacket pocket and plucked out
the prop he needed—a smooth white rock, oval and flat, with a faint tinge of
blue in the center to add to its sense of mystery.
    “Give me your hand.”
    Allie hesitated, then acquiesced. He could feel the faint
tremor move from the back of her fingers into his palm when he turned her hand
palm up. With one hand under hers, his other covering it, he called her attention
to the sound of the fountain just behind her, commenting on how soothing the
sound of the water was. He watched for the expected drop in her shoulders,
softening of the muscles around her full lips. When her gaze met his, her
pupils were wider, more receptive.
    “This is a moonstone.”
    Her eyebrows lifted. “From the moon?”
    He used his attention to lead hers, glancing at the floating
candle that flickered in a bowl of water and flowers at the table center.
    Marcus pressed the stone into her palm. Tapped its center
gently three times while he spoke in soothing tones.
    “No, not from the moon, from the ocean. But I found it
soaking up moonbeams on a black sand beach.”
    She nodded