Keeper of the Shadows - By Alexandra Sokoloff Page 0,52

with the heartbreaking eyes of Jack in Titanic.

“A little rougher?” Now she was walking alongside Russell Crowe, striding with the sexy bulk of L.A. Confidential.

Marlon Brando. Paul Newman. Robert Redford.

She was bowled over by the transitions. She was walking with a pantheon of the most gorgeous men that Hollywood had ever produced.

“Stop. Stop.” She was laughing, giddy, breathless.

Suddenly his hands were on her waist and he was looking down into her eyes. “What, then?” His voice was low and husky. “Tell me what you want.”

And Barrie looked back at him. “I want to know who you are. I want you to be you.”

He leaned down to her and kissed her, with all the color and neon of the Boulevard pulsing around them.

And as his lips feasted on hers, she felt all the sexy roughness of Russell Crowe, the dashing wildness of Johnny Depp, the innocent beauty of a young Leo DiCaprio, and the aristocratic charm of Cary Grant, all rolled into one endlessly fascinating, endlessly desirable man.

Heat flooded through her, from her lips to the very core of her; she felt she’d just burst into flame. His tongue was inside her mouth, tasting, teasing...and then plunging, sliding so deep she lost her balance. But he caught her, lifted her up and set her on the low wall of a planter, arching her backward so he could crush her mouth open under his. Her back was against the brick of the building, and he was pulling her hips forward against his, then cupping her breasts in his hands. Her nipples strained through the beaded silk of her bodice, into his palms, and now he moaned and lifted his head to kiss down her neck, biting, sucking, turning her insides molten.

Her legs curled around his thighs, and the huge bulge of him was pulsing urgently against her. She gasped in delirium as he kissed her cleavage, his tongue slipping inside her bra to lick her nipples, and she could feel him throbbing against her core, half-inside her even through their clothes. She felt herself opening from within, feverish to feel him inside her....

“God...oh, God...”

And suddenly he was pulling back, dragging her to her feet and holding her against him hard, but no longer kissing her. She could still feel the pulsing bulge of his sex against her thigh, but he’d ceased moving urgently against her, and she was reeling with desire and confusion. “What...?”

His fingers were strong on her back, and his voice was gruff and shaky, but resolved. “Our first time isn’t going to be in an alley. I want you in silk sheets and a proper bed and completely to myself.”

He held her close, and she stood pasted against him with her eyes closed as their racing hearts slowed... feeling his touch in every cell of her body as his fingers caressed her waist, and she breathed in the faint smell of cologne and the heady scent of pure male. He whispered her name against her ear, and she opened her eyes dreamily....

“Let’s go home,” he said huskily.

She turned in his arms—and froze.

Behind Mick, halfway down the block, a slim shadow was crouched down on the sidewalk. She stiffened against Mick and clutched at his arms. “Oh, my God...”

She broke away from him to run down the street, but in the few seconds she had taken to react, the figure had vanished.

She could hear Mick pounding down the sidewalk after her.

The mysterious shadow was gone, but there was a bouquet of flowers lying in the middle of the sidewalk. She stepped up to it slowly and looked down.

In a second Mick was by her side. “Barrie, what—” Then he fell silent, seeing what she saw.

They were looking down at Johnny Love’s star. Someone had placed a bouquet of flowers on it.

“I thought I saw Tiger,” she said to Mick softly. “But it couldn’t have been.”

She looked up and down the sidewalk. They were alone.

Chapter 13

For the first time in her life Barrie had species envy, wishing at least to be a different kind of Keeper, maybe an Elven Keeper like Sailor, so they could just teleport and be back at home, in bed. There were more kisses in the dark luxuriousness of the limo on the way home, deep, delicious, toe-curling kisses that set her ablaze again...but no matter how she teased and writhed and caressed, Mick kept deliberately moving her hands above his waist and concentrating his oh-so-skillful efforts on her throat and ears and mouth until she was