Wall Street Titan (Wall Street Titan #1) - Anna Zaires Page 0,93

look away, but not before a betraying flush crawls up my neck and covers my face. “To new friends,” I repeat, staring into my cup as if I might see my fate written in the tea leaves. I’m not sure I want Yan to know about the effect he has on me—though he probably already does.

I’m not exactly at the top of my game tonight.

“Yes, to new friends,” Yan murmurs, his large hand landing on my knee and squeezing it lightly.

Startled, I look over at him and see him tipping back the beer, his strong throat working as he swallows. It’s a strangely sensual sight, and my insides clench as he lowers the bottle and meets my gaze, his eyes darkly intent as the hand on my knee moves a couple of inches up my thigh, closer to where I’m wet and aching.

Oh God.

He knows.

He definitely knows.

“Ilya,” he says quietly, still holding my gaze. “Make us a couple of sandwiches, will you? I think Mina here is hungry.”

“She is?” Ilya sounds confused as he stands up, and I look up to find him frowning at us—specifically, at my thigh, where Yan’s hand is resting so possessively. Slowly, tension permeates his big body, his hands flexing at his sides as his gaze swings to his brother’s face.

“I don’t think she’s hungry,” he bites out, his voice low and hard. His eyes cut to me. “Are you, Mina?”

I swallow thickly, unsure of what the right answer is. If I’m reading this right, Yan has just staked some sort of an exclusive claim on me, one that I would reinforce if I admitted to this made-up hunger.

Is that what I want?

To send away the brother who’s been nice to me, so I could be alone with the man who proposed dumping my body in the river?

“A… a sandwich would be nice.” The words don’t seem to belong to me, yet it’s my voice saying them, even as my brain scrambles to figure out the implications. “That is, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

Ilya’s mouth thins. “Fine. I’ll see what we have in the fridge.”

And turning around, he stalks off, leaving me on the couch with his brother.

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Excerpt from The Girl Who Sees by Dima Zales

I’m an illusionist, not a psychic.

Going on TV is supposed to advance my career, but things go wrong.

Like vampires and zombies kind of wrong.

My name is Sasha Urban, and this is how I learned what I am.

“I’m not a psychic,” I say to the makeup girl. “What I’m about to do is mentalism.”

“Like that dreamy guy on the TV show?” The makeup girl adds another dash of foundation to my cheekbones. “I always wanted to do his makeup. Can you also hypnotize and read people?”

I take a deep, calming breath. It doesn’t help much. The tiny dressing room smells like hairspray went to war with nail polish remover, won, and took some fumes prisoner.

“Not exactly,” I say when I have my anxiety and subsequent irritation under control. Even with Valium in my blood, the knowledge of what’s about to come keeps me on the edge of sanity. “A mentalist is a type of stage magician whose illusions deal with the mind. If it were up to me, I’d just go by ‘mental illusionist.’”

“That’s not a very good name.” She blinds me with her lamp and carefully examines my eyebrows.

I mentally cringe; the last time she looked at me this way, I ended up getting tortured with tweezers.

She must like what she sees now, though, because she turns the light away from my face. “‘Mental illusionist’ sounds like a psychotic magician,” she continues.

“That’s why I simply call myself an illusionist.” I smile and prepare for the makeup to fall off, like a mask, but it stays put. “Are you almost done?”

“Let’s see,” she says, waving over a camera guy.

The guy makes me stand up, and the lights on his camera come on.

“This is it.” The makeup girl points at the nearby LCD screen, where I have avoided looking until now because it’s playing the ongoing show—the source of my panic.

The camera guy does whatever he needs to do, and the anxiety-inducing show is gone from the screen, replaced by an image of our tiny room.

The girl on the screen vaguely resembles me. The heels make my usual five feet, six inches seem much taller, as does the dark leather outfit I’m wearing. Without heavy makeup, my face is symmetric