Elijah Ingram was a decent, hard-working man. A man who knew the dangers of taking money from the damned.
* * *
Her standing arrangement with the Eldar to open for her at ten o'clock in the evening whenever she came to her Atlanta home and requested it had cost her a fortune, giving the proprietors the not unjustified impression she was obscenely wealthy. As a result, the staff acted with the appropriate deference. Not overly chatty, attentive to her moods. They'd always been careful not to surprise her with the unexpected.
For that reason alone, Lyssa knew she should turn on her heel and walk back out. The man who stepped into the foyer to meet her was not Max.
However, she didn't turn around and leave. In fact, she brushed away the warning to do so the way she'd impatiently push a cobweb aside as she passed into a darker, deeper cave where unknown things—possibly treasure—awaited her.
This man did not look the least bit like her manicurist. For one thing, he was blatantly, solidly heterosexual, a condition easily detected by a person with her heightened senses.
His body was a feast. An absolute feast.
Men scoffed at hose, because in the Industrial Age they'd become associated with women's wear only, but she well remembered the way men had looked in them when they'd been the fashion. She'd favored the short tunics of the Renaissance period, particularly in Italy. They'd allowed a full view of the leggings from calf to groin. When men strode down the cobbled street in them, their swords at their hips, the air ringing with the flowing speech of a language meant to seduce… There was no woman who wouldn't have felt a. stirring in her loins at such a virile sight.
This man wore such a garment easily, without self-consciousness, though she suspected he'd worn street clothes to the salon. He'd chosen a modified version of the hose, no codpiece, so his heavy cock and testicles cambered intriguingly beneath the tan fabric, framed between the columns of his muscular thighs. The top of the hose was rolled down so it rode low on his hips, low enough she could see his hip bones, the diagonal slope of the muscles above them that formed a Vee as they arrowed toward the genitals. His feet were bare. Since he was drying his hands on a towel, the motion drew her attention to the solid, compact muscle of his bare upper body. The man was a fighter, a cross between an Irish boxer and a medieval knight.
His fair, reddish brown hair had copper highlights from exposure to the sun. Loose, it fell to his shoulders. A neatly trimmed moustache and short beard following his chin outlined his firm lips. Set well on either side of a nose that had been broken at least once, his blue eyes had fine blond lashes with the same hints of copper. His skin was pale but ruddy, too Celtic to tan.
He'd executed a short bow when he stepped into the foyer, but he'd not yet spoken. His overly firm grip on the towel revealed some tension. When she registered the steady thud of his heart, smelled his heat and the life pulsing through him, a response rippled through her. She countered it with irritation, trying to force herself to be sensible. Careful.
"Are you mute?"
"No, my lady. I would never speak before you gave me leave."
Despite her intention to remain inscrutable, she couldn't help the way her interest rose when he spoke so formally. "Tell me who you are," she said, giving him a mental nudge to ensure a truthful answer.
His broad shoulder twitched, a corner of his mouth curving up. "There's no need to use compulsion, my lady. I'm Jacob Green. Thomas sent me."
At that shocking statement, he slowly raised his hand, making it obvious he intended no threat. From one of the display tables, he picked up a small envelope embellished like a suitor's calling card, complete with a red wax seal and a curl of gold ribbon.
Emotion flooded her chest at the sight of it. For a moment she couldn't speak, could do nothing but look at something Thomas had touched, recently.
Jacob stepped forward. Most men were taller than she was, and he was no exception at a little over six feet. "He died at peace, with great regard and affection for you until the end."
Taking the envelope from his hand, she felt the warmth of his skin even though she made sure their fingers did not touch. Somehow she felt reassured by that heat, by him standing so close. Not improperly, just close enough to feel his support, an unspoken offer of assistance. That was what it felt like to have a human servant, to go to ground during daylight and know he was nearby. Watching over her.
She shrugged off the unexpected thought. Turning the envelope over and over in her hands, she suppressed the sudden need to crush it as if she could absorb the essence of the man who had sent it, feel the way she'd felt when Thomas had been with her. Not completely alone.
He'd been her companion for a hundred and fifty years. Then, after all they'd been through together, she'd abandoned him to die alone.
Aware of her audience, she got a grip on herself and broke open the seal.
* * *
As she bent her head over the note, Jacob fought the urge to reach out to her, touch the rippling satin of her straight black hair. Thomas had shown him sketches, a portrait. He'd described her with the emotional eloquence only a dying man could conjure, but he'd admitted nothing would come close to meeting Lady Elyssa Amaterasu Yamato Wentworth in person.
He'd pictured her taller, likely because Thomas had told him vivid, heart-stopping tales of her battles with other vampires during the early territory wars. But she'd been born a vampire, and her Asian mother had apparently given her the petite build. Lady Lyssa was considered one of the most powerful and ancient vampires still living, fully in command of her faculties and abilities, not a common occurrence for any vampire over five hundred, much less one over one thousand years old.
Even while cursing the memory of her dead husband, Rex, Thomas had attributed a portion of her uncanny aptitude for survival to him. An aptitude that had grown exponentially in the last fifty years due to the lessons Rex had taught as well as inflicted upon her.
She looked barely out of girlhood, a young woman in her early twenties. That impression vanished the moment Jacob looked into her eyes, a startling jade green rimmed with a solid black line around the irises. Generation upon generation of women were there, layered like rock strata. The energy of it emanated from her, mingling with her other-than-human power to influence and destroy. Despite that, the man in him noticed the bow of her lips, touched and glossed in burgundy, the way her soft black sweater clung to her upper body.