Ash froze, caught between hiding under the table and leaping to his own feet. He was sitting barely six feet from her. If she turned her head, she’d see him, right there in plain sight. She’d be utterly furious.
But at least she’d know that he was there.
Turn your head, part of him willed, despite his better judgment. Look at me. See me.
But she was deaf to his mental plea. She never looked around as she headed for the bathroom.
Left behind, her date slouched back against the back of his seat. He scratched his crotch absently, then took out his phone. His eyes scanned the room—skipping straight over Ash—as he dialed.
“Hey,” the man said into his phone. His voice was pitched low, but to Ash’s shifter-sharp hearing he might as well have been yelling into a megaphone. “It’s me. Listen, I have to push back delivery.”
A pause, then, “Nah, no problems.” An unpleasant smirk spread across the man’s face. “Just picked up a hot piece of ass.”
Ash clenched his jaw.
“Pussy so wet she’s practically on my dick already,” the man said, unaware of how close he’d come to making headlines as a mysterious and tragic case of spontaneous human combustion. He lowered his voice even further, eying the nearest waitress cautiously. “Promise, the stuff is all safe. It’s in my car now. I’ll just be an hour or two later than planned, okay?”
Ash’s instincts pricked up at the man’s furtive air. He hesitated, wrestling with his conscience…but only briefly.
Closing his eyes, he opened himself to the man’s soul.
His most feared power was the ability to burn thoughts and memories. What few people ever realized was that meant he could see them as well. He couldn’t skip at will through someone’s head like surfing TV channels, but he could examine their mind and weigh their very nature. See the way experience knitted together to form patterns of personality. And then, if he chose, he could alter them with flame.
He only
did that in direst need. It was one thing to quietly remove his own image from people’s surface thoughts, and quite another to transfigure someone’s entire personality. He generally tried to avoid even looking into other souls. He valued his own privacy too highly to casually breach that of others.
He didn’t do it casually now. Even so, part of him whispered that he was just allowing his own feelings to override his ethics. But if there was the slightest chance that Rose’s date might not be all he seemed…
Ash reached out, sinking into the man’s mind.
And what he found there…
Opening his eyes again, Ash exhaled, slowly. When he could trust himself, he slid out from the booth.
Pausing only to leave a twenty for the waitress, he left.
In the safety of the bathroom, Rose stared down at her phone. She bit her lip, wondering if she was being over-dramatic. Mack had been coming on a little strong, but perhaps that was her fault.
She had been laughing at his outrageous stories. Too loudly, too enthusiastically, to cover her awkwardness. And he must have caught her staring at his sculpted forearms with their swirling black tattoos, and the breadth of his shoulders under his well-tailored shirt. No doubt he thought she was checking him out.
She had been checking him out. Looking at his undeniably attractive physique, the sort of body any straight woman should desire…and wondering why he left her utterly cold.
A handsome, charming man was flirting with her, and she didn’t feel even the slightest flicker of interest.
She knew that he was interested in her. The hungry anticipation and sharp-edged lust she kept sensing from him was unmistakable.
The intensity of it made her uneasy. She couldn’t shake the feeling that his dark-tinged, predatory anticipation could easily turn to anger. Especially when she told him no…
She was probably being silly. She hadn’t dated anyone since…well, ever. She wasn’t used to being looked at with desire. Perhaps Mack’s emotions were perfectly normal.
Not our mate, hissed her swan again.
It had said the same thing about Ash, of course. But not in the same way. Her swan’s rejection of him had always been tinged with strange, wistful regret. He’d never made her inner animal nervous.
Not like Mack did.
Rose found her thumb hovering over Ash’s name in her contact list.