Since I Saw You (Because You Are Mine #4)(33)
Author: Beth Kery

“You were able to find the woman who is watching Kam’s dog?” Lin asked.

“Yes. I made arrangements with her,” Maria said, holding up a pad of paper with neatly written details on it. “I was about to call and arrange for a courier service to pick up the dog and take it to the airport.”

“Can you fill me in on the all the details?” Lin asked impulsively. For some reason she very much wanted to see Kam’s reaction when he realized his dog had become an international traveler and was there to make him feel a little more at home in Chicago.

•   •   •

Kam glowered at the doorman, the unlikely guard for Lin’s luxurious, supermodern high-rise. The middle-aged man puffed out his skinny, concave chest.

“I’m sorry, sir. Those are the rules. I can’t let up anyone up onto the resident floors unless the owner gives permission. Ms. Soong isn’t even home. She’s never home at this time of day, anyway,” he said, his patronizing manner amplifying Kam’s annoyance. Kam checked his watch.

“It’s going on seven. How late does she work?”

The doorman rolled his eyes. “You obviously don’t know Ms. Soong very well.”

He leaned forward menacingly. “Listen you puffed-up little—”

“Hello,” a man said next to him in a French-accented, stuffy-sounding voice.

Kam glanced aside distractedly and did a double take, recognizing the face smiling back at him.

“Richard St. Claire,” the dark-haired man said, ending with a nasty-sounding cough. He transferred an obviously used, crumpled tissue to his left hand and extended his right for a handshake. Before Kam had a chance to give him a you’ve got to be kidding me glance, Richard’s face quivered as though a sudden pain had come over him. He turned and sneezed loudly.

“Damn flu,” he mumbled hoarsely, wiping his nose.

“You really shouldn’t be out of bed, Mr. St. Claire,” the doorman said disapprovingly.

“I know, but I had to run out for some Tylenol.” He focused watery eyes on Kam.

“You’re the guy from the restaurant the other night. Lin’s friend,” Kam said.

“That’s right. I assume you’re looking for her?”

“Yeah. I’ll try her office,” Kam said, starting to move past Richard.

“You won’t find her there, either.”

Kam glanced back.

“It’s Friday. The one and only day Lin ever leaves Noble Enterprises before eight,” Richard said.

“And where would she be then?” Kam asked with sarcastic politeness when Richard didn’t continue, just studied him with a smug smile.

“If I tell you, you won’t do something to make me regret it, will you?”

“Do I look like someone who is out to cause trouble?”

Richard’s gaze dropped over him, a glint of admiration in his eyes. “That’s exactly what you look like.” He sighed when he noticed Kam’s frown. “But I suppose I can use the excuse of a fever if Lin calls me on it. Besides, she could use a little trouble in her life,” Kam thought he heard him mutter under his breath. “She’s at the Community Arts Center on Dearborn and Astor. Two blocks west of here. She goes for dance lessons every Friday. Main auditorium.”

“Merci,” Kam muttered.

“Je t’en prie,” he heard Richard croak amusedly behind him as Kam stalked to the glass door.

When he entered the community center a few minutes later, the entry hall was empty. He found Lin by following the music he heard in the distance—a methodical composition of plucked string instruments, flutes, and gongs. He opened a door and let it shut quietly behind him when he saw the movement on the stage, pausing just inside the threshold.

Lin was the center spoke in a wheel of five other dancers. He knew her immediately, not just from appearance. He recognized her harmony: that smooth, supple, exquisitely controlled movement of her body. All of the dancers typified control, but none more elegantly, nor with such apparent ease, than Lin. That ease was an illusion, Kam realized as he slowly walked down a flight of steps, mesmerized by the dance. The amount of muscular control and balance required for the movements and postures would fell a trained athlete.

All of the dancers, including Lin, wore everyday workout attire for the practice—body-hugging cotton pants, shorts, and T-shirts. Their only concession to a costume was a sort of jacket of purple silk that included sleeves that extended several feet past the dancers’ hands. Every time they moved in unison, they did so in perfect synchrony. Not only their limbs were identical in movement, but also the twirling and twitching of the long sleeves. The overall effect was hypnotic.

He came to a halt fifteen or so feet before the stage. The houselights in the auditorium weren’t on, so he was cast in shadow. Still, he knew the moment when Lin became aware of him. Her dark eyes fixed on him as she continued the dance without pause, her gestures and movements incredibly precise, so graceful . . .

. . . so fucking sexy, it blew him away, but not in any way he’d ever before experienced.

As the center of the moving wheel, Lin was the only one who occasionally danced separately from the others, then blended seamlessly with their movements as the dance progressed. She wore only a pair of form-fitting black shorts and a cropped white T-shirt along with the long costume sleeves. Her feet were naked, a living poetry of graceful movement and strength. He couldn’t take his eyes off her pale belly and gliding, shifting hips. It called to mind the strength and precision of her counterthrusts to his when he was inside her.

A pleasant tingling sensation started in his lower spine and transferred to his cock, swelling the flesh. He couldn’t unglue his gaze from her.

Her hair was pulled back from her face in the front, but the rest was unrestrained. With her back to him, she slowly arched her spine until her long hair hung like a drape less than a foot from the stage, her arms weaving a spell. She made eye contact in the impossible position.

His flesh tingled like an electrical charge had gone through it.

She was like a carefully controlled conduit of pure sexuality. Just being in her vicinity made the hair on his arms stand on end and his blood race.

The last plucked note sounded, and Lin gracefully lowered a long leg and her extended arms. The women all relaxed their poses and began chatting to one another, some of them walking over to gym bags, the spell of the dance dissipating.

But not vanishing, Kam thought as he watched Lin walk toward him. She shucked off the long-sleeve jacket and agilely leapt off the stage.