“The beauty of our way of life is that you will still be a mother. Each child is your adopted son or daughter. Please, Ms. Haines . . .” He leaned forward across the table, and his warm thumb swiped a tear from under my eye.Shoot. I’d gotten so good at holding tears back. And oh, my gosh. He’d touched me.
I shivered and looked at him. He had gone still again as he watched me. We stared for a long, tense moment before he sighed and sat back, looking away in thought. I downed the rest of my wine and wiped my mouth.
“Thank you for dinner.” As much as I knew I should take advantage of our time alone together, I was not in the mood.
He tapped his bottom lip. “Do you like riddles, Ms. Haines?”
I gave him a questioning look. “Sometimes.”
“Let’s see if you can figure this one out.” He sat up and cleared his throat. “Epare-pray or-fay ar-way.”
I snorted a laugh. “What?”
He repeated it for me twice more, a look of mild amusement on his face. I rolled the nonsense around in my head. All of the–ay sounds at the ends triggered a memory, which I thought about for a minute before blurting, “Pig Latin!”
A slow, tight grin came to him. “Very good, Ms. Haines. Now, tell me what I said.”
I rearranged the sounds, still smiling as I told him, “Prepare for . . . war.” My smile slowly faded. The Senator nodded, thinking, his jaw grinding as my abdomen suddenly tightened with awareness.
What had I just done?
“Smart girl,” he said softly.
Oh, no.Oh, no.I pulled my shaking hands into my lap. Where had he heard that? He’d tricked me! Whose communications had he intercepted?
“It is all right, Ms. Haines,” he promised me. “You have nothing to worry about. Just a riddle.”
I forced a smile and nod, though I knew I had just helped him with something he wasn’t supposed to know. My hands trembled fiercely without my permission, and my chest struggled to contain my short breaths.
“Look at me, Ms. Haines.” The Senator’s voice rubbed my anxiety like a balm, calming me immediately. A breath slowly released my lungs like a sigh, and I met his eyes. His passion-filled eyes.
“Tell me how my voice makes you feel.” The nerves in my body were frazzled, having gone from one extreme to another. The soothing sensation of his voice sent a rush of warmth to my core, like a massage to my soul. My inhibitions shattered and fell like rubble.
“I feel safe when you talk to me like that,” I told him. “And . . .”
“And?” He leaned forward.
“And turned on.”
His eyes sharpened, and his hands gripped the chair handles. We stared at one another so long that my sense of serenity began to wane, and cool awareness crept back into my head.
Holy . . . he was using that voice command with me!
I broke eye contact with a gasp, looking down and trying to catch my breath.
“W-why?” I stuttered in a broken breath.
“I have always been curious exactly how it affects a human. If it hurts or . . .” He shook his head. “I should not have done that.”
“I’m fine,” I said, sitting up straighter and feeling a streak of boldness coming on, spurred by some pissed off aggression. I wanted to punish him mentally, the way he’d done to me tonight. I gave a coy smile. “It’s a good thing I’ve got a room to myself now, isn’t it, Senator?”
The look on his face as he processed that was priceless.
“Thank you again for dinner, sir.” I stood, putting my napkin across my plate. “Good luck with your riddles.”
He sat very stiffly and made no attempt to stand like he usually did when I left. But that was okay. After tricking me, then mind-screwing me, I had no qualms about leaving him sitting there with his own temporary paralysis of sexual tension. He deserved it.
