The Taking (Seven Deadly Sins #3)(5)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Next you’ll tell me it’s my sister watching over me,” she hissed, suddenly angry. She didn’t need this, not when she was already so close to the edge, anxiety her constant companion. This was just bullshit power of suggestion, taking advantage of people’s emotions for profit.

But he shook his head slowly. “No. No, that’s not what I am going to tell you. Your sister died an innocent child, and she is at peace. You, however, are not. Death is harder on the living than the dead.”

That wasn’t news as far as she was concerned. The feeling of being touched moved down her arms, as if she were being rubbed in a gesture of comfort, and Regan’s eyes went wide. She had the craziest goddamn feeling that it was him touching her. But that was absolutely impossible. He was over there, and she was here, and his hands were on the table in clear view.

The air around her shifted, and she turned to her left for no apparent reason, instinct telling her someone should be standing there when of course they weren’t. “What…” The word died on her lips, goose bumps racing up her arms as the invisible embrace came at her from the front, like a hug.

Regan’s chest swelled in and out rapidly with the frantic tenor of her breathing. She didn’t move, afraid to reach out and feel nothing, more frightened still of reaching out and feeling something that wasn’t visible. The tendrils of touch went up and down lightly between her shoulder blades, and somehow she recognized it as a man’s touch, physically intimate. It wasn’t the touch of a relative or a friend, but that of a lover.

It was that ridiculous thought that launched her to her feet. How in the hell could the touch that didn’t exist be qualified? If it didn’t exist, how could it be so distinct as to belong to a lover?

The chair she’d been sitting in fell backward from her sudden movement, smacking to the bricks with a bang. She thrust her hand out. “My ring, please.”

He rose to his feet as well, but slowly, and she was appalled to see what sitting had hidden from her view. Not only was he attractive in the face, but when he uncoiled to his full height, it was evident he was a fine specimen of male perfection, toned and tall and broad-shouldered. His soft worn jeans hung just right as he reached out, her ring in his hand.

“Just remember, if you’re going to wear it, wear it of your own free will.”

She had no answer to such a cryptic remark and she held out her hand. The ring dropped from his palm to hers, its weight heavy, the stone cutting into her flesh as she closed her fist around it.

“Thanks,” she said, turning to leave, righting the chair she had knocked over.

Regan had taken three steps when he said softly from behind her, “You’re welcome.”

Pausing, she turned, realizing that for all her striving for social perfection since she’d been old enough to say “manners,” she had committed the cardinal sin of a first meeting. “I’m sorry, what is your name?”

“Felix Leblanc.”

A name as unusual as the man. “I’m Regan Henry Alcroft. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Though pleasure wasn’t exactly the adjective to describe it. Confusing, a little scary, maybe even a tinge electric. Arousing.

“The pleasure is mine.”

It wasn’t suggestive or flirtatious, yet she felt the unmistakable jolt of desire between her thighs at his words, his voice. God, she needed to go. She crammed her ring back onto her finger and headed for the door, the lights and laughter of the party spilling out into the courtyard.

“Watch your step back in, Regan Henry Alcroft.”

Feeling like there was more to that comment than the straightforward meaning, Regan chose to pretend that she hadn’t heard him. A sick churning in her stomach, she swiped her eyes free of tear remnants and steeled her shoulders to navigate the party, and the life she had chosen.

Felix watched Regan wipe under her eyes, smooth her hair, and enter the main room of the restaurant, immediately swallowed up by the crowd.

He sank back into his chair, flicking at his tarot cards with his fingers. He should have given her a generic reading, made her smile and laugh with his charm and entertaining predictions. That was what he was good at, making women feel better about themselves, amusing them and lightening whatever load of burdens they were hauling around. It was both his gift and his curse. Both what he had bargained for and what he would give back with no hesitation if he could.But he hadn’t done that with Regan Henry Alcroft. He had been intrigued by the paradox she presented. There was something so edgy and powerful in her eyes, the glossy vehemence of a snake about to strike, yet she carried herself with uncertainty. Her simple black dress, her traditional pearls, her pin-straight rich brown hair would be elegant on some women, and he supposed they were on her as well. But mostly they were wrong. They didn’t match the essence of her person at all, and he found it odd that her best features, those chocolate brown eyes and full lips that would be the envy of any actress, were features she chose to ignore, not highlight. She’d worn muted eye shadow and lipstick in neutral beige, and while Felix was no makeup artist, he did know that a pop of rich red on those luscious lips at a cocktail party would be more flattering.

So he had told her what he had really seen in the cards, what he really thought.

In couched terms, of course.

But she had resisted the truth, as mortals always did. And she clearly had no idea what her wedding ring was, or its power.

Or who she was married to.

It wasn’t his place to tell her.

Let Regan walk back into the party and do whatever she intended to do. If he had learned anything after more than a hundred and fifty years of life, it was to resist the temptation of a woman with pleading in her eyes.

It meant nothing but trouble, and he had no intention of watching another woman die. Not that Regan was Camille, but she shared the same yearning, unhappy quality, and that was a dangerous combination for a man, an immortal, like him.

And Regan belonged to Alcroft.

But that hadn’t stopped him from touching her, had it?

Two women in their fifties came into the courtyard, arm in arm, looking at him with a mixture of nerves and excitement. Felix pasted a smile on his face. “Would you like a reading, ladies?”

Regan’s appeal was irrelevant.

He was never going to see her again, and that was the way it had to be.

He was a demon servant, and this endless existence of casual relationships and peddling hope to paying customers was what he had condemned himself to for eternity.