Soul Bound by Luxie Ryder Page A

row of seats, crawling
ever closer to me.  I tensed; sure I could almost feel its approach. 
But it didn’t land on me, not straight away.
    “Will it be you, Madam?” Nathan said to the audience member
sitting to my left.  The edge of his mouth lifted in wry humor when the woman
shook her head so vigorously, my seat wobbled beside hers.
    His gaze shifted to the man on my other side.  “How about
you, Sir?” 
    My heart beat once, maybe twice, before Nathan's stare found me,
as I knew it would.
    “Or will it be you...Jess?”
    Pinned against the back of my seat by no more than the intensity
of his gaze, I didn’t react at first to the sound of my name on his lips. 
Seattle seemed a million miles away and high school almost as many years ago,
and he had no reason to remember me the way I did him. 
    Nathan strutted to the edge of the stage, the shape of his long
legs outlined in almost obscene detail by black leather trousers.  The
shift and roll of the clearly defined muscles shaping his torso and abdomen
told me his feet were actually on the ground but, with the dry ice
swirling around his shins, I could swear he floated towards me like some errant
spirit.  A tangle of silver crucifixes, gothic charms and skulls with ruby
eyes, suspended from thick chains around his neck, swayed hypnotically across
his alabaster skin as he moved.  His face creased into one of the half
smiles I remembered so well and I knew he was coming for me.
    I swallowed hard when he crouched to put a hand on the floor of
the stage and leapt to stand in the aisle in front of me in one fluid, catlike
movement, his stare never wavering.  He stalked towards me and reached for
my hand before I had time to let out the breath I'd been holding.
    He leaned over my seat, blocking the glare from the gaudily lit
stage and sending his large frame into near silhouette.  Yet his
kaleidoscope eyes still sparkled, their dark blue flecked with gold and brown,
reflecting the soft glow of the house lights. 
    I experienced a moment of déjà vu.  If I had the power to
look away, I wouldn't have been surprised to find I was still a sophomore,
sitting next to that empty seat in English class, waiting with pounding heart
and baited breath for him to walk in to the room. 
    Nathan's dark, shoulder length hair fell forward when he reached
down for me, casting his pale, almost Messianic features, wide mouth and high
cheekbones into stark relief.  His touch on the back of my hand sent a
sizzle up my arm, kick starting my brain into action and my heart into a
sprint. 
    “Pick someone else,” I hissed at him, trying to warn him off with
the kind of stern look that worked on the perps back home.  Except here, I
didn't have the uniform, my gun and a shield to back it up. He simply smiled,
and wrapped his palm around my wrist.  I resisted the pull but his fingers
gripped tighter, gentle yet firm, and I had no choice but to comply.  I
stumbled and put my free hand against his chest to steady myself, snatching it
back when Nathan's hot, slick skin burned my palm.
    “Don’t you trust me?”  
    The deep, honeyed tones of his voice still had the power to
mesmerize and before I could gather my wits and repeat a plea to be left alone,
he turned to the audience.  “Come on, Ladies and Gentlemen, give her some
encouragement.”
    The Vegas crowd, already very impressed by Nathan’s brand of New
Age magic, and high from too much sun and free booze, erupted into rapturous
applause.
    This is what you came for, stupid!
    I tried to ignore the taunts of my inner, angst ridden teenager,
the one who had never gotten over the loss of Nathan – the one who had taunted
me into coming here tonight with a plan to seduce him.  The one who hadn't
allowed for the fact that Nathan's magnetism might have multiplied so much so,
that I would still feel like a gawky kid beside him. 
    The captain had insisted I take some time off until the shrink
said I was fit for duty.  I should