“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 house-lights 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.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hi,” he returned. He suddenly felt very hulking and clumsy next to her sleek, contained beauty. For a few charged seconds, they just looked at one another, but then she glanced away. The hint of shyness in her manner fascinated him.

“How . . . how did you find me?”

“I went to your condominium looking for you, and someone pointed me in this direction.”

“Who?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Someone who thought I should find you, I guess.”

“I didn’t realize such a person existed.”

“Besides me, you mean?”

Her small smile fell at that. He noticed her pulse fluttering at her throat. Acting purely on instinct, he reached out and placed his hand on her neck. He closed his eyes briefly, focusing on the vibrant pulse of her strong heart.

She was so beautiful. Inside and out. Only true beauty could dance to the heartbeat of the universe so effortlessly. He opened his eyes. She looked up at him slowly, and again, he felt himself stir.

“I’m sorry. About last night. It seems I’m doomed to keep screwing up and then apologizing to you for behaving like an animal,” he muttered.

He felt her throat constrict as she swallowed.

“You’re not alone in this, Kam.”

He studied her still features searchingly. “Why can’t I stop wanting you?” he muttered. Her pulse leapt beneath his fingers like a tiny, trapped creature.

“Why can’t I stop wanting you as well?” she whispered, her desperation and longing an echo of his tone.

He found himself staring at her mouth, his nostrils flaring to catch her scent.

“Let me get my things and we’ll walk back to my place,” she said.

He just stood there. His anticipation was just beginning to build, and yet it had already cut him to the quick.

They entered her condominium, and Lin led him to her living room. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable. I’m just going to take a quick shower. Can I get you anything to drink?”

He just shook his head, feeling awkward yet again in the midst of her luxurious living room with her formal manner. He wanted to tell her not to shower—he’d rather taste the efforts of her dance on her smooth skin—but maybe she hadn’t even asked him back to her place for sex.

She left him. He listened for a second to the bathroom door closing and pictured her peeling off her tight workout clothing. Again—he experienced that delicious ripple of sensation along the shaft of his cock. His body had never been more finely attuned to a woman, his cock never more sensitive to every nuance of her movement. He heard the shower turn on. She’d be naked now, jets of warm water beating against her smooth skin.

He removed his coat impatiently. The living room was like Lin herself: effortlessly elegant, expensive looking, and more comfortable than he would have thought at first glance, he conceded as he slouched down on a deep, soft couch. His gaze narrowed on the luxurious, raw silk, taupe-colored curtains with sheers on the windows. They were the precise ones Ian had recommended Kam buy for Aurore Manor for a majority of the downstairs windows. Removing the mildewed, heavy velvet curtains that had obliterated sunlight and replacing them with the sheer curtains and lightweight silk panes had made a world of difference. That, and the simple changes of new paint and a hard cleaning had altered the mood of the manor almost immediately. The decrepit mansion had been transformed into a home, and he had Lin’s impeccable taste, in large part, to thank for that.

Of course Ian hadn’t been the one to expertly choose those curtains or the sophisticated, yet comfortable, furnishings and bedclothes for the bedrooms. Lin had. Kam had realized that almost immediately after observing how Ian operated. She’d never even seen Aurore, she’d never even met Kam, and yet she’d clothed both his house and his body in a way that innately appealed to him.

Why can’t I stop wanting it, too?

We’ll walk back to my place.

The memory of Lin saying those words as she watched him with liquid brown eyes scored his consciousness. Was he supposed to have read them as an invitation? His body had considered it as such, but his mind continued to doubt.

He cursed quietly, stood and walked down the hallway toward her bedroom. His interpretation didn’t really matter. Staying away from her was an utter impossibility.

As he neared the closed bathroom door, he heard the water shut off and the glass door of the shower click open. He rapped softly before he put his hand on the knob.

Almost the second he opened the door and saw her standing in the shower, he knew she wasn’t surprised. She’d been waiting for him to come—or at least some part of her had. She stood very still, her beautiful body sheened with moisture, water droplets clinging on her bare breasts and thighs. He’d never seen her completely naked. His body hardened in a second, aching. He stepped toward her, vaguely realizing that the spell she’d woven as he watched her dance had fallen upon him again in full strength. How she did it was a mystery, but he was beyond wondering.

He was only feeling.

He reached for one of the towels on the rack without looking away from the vision of her. As he approached, she stepped out of the shower to meet him. He partially wrapped her in the towel, holding her stare as he lightly chafed her supple back and buttocks and thighs, drying her. She felt small in his hold, firm and feminine. His hand opened over a stretch of shower-warmed, moist back and lowered over her ass.