He swallowed. “Atlanta.” It was the first ancient city that came to mind.
“You don’t sound southern,” she said. She licked her lips and Sean’s eyes locked on to the sight of her moist, pink mouth. He wondered how they would feel against his.
He shrugged as casually as he could. He’d had a lifetime to practise suppressing his libido and he could surely continue to do so now.
“Do you have any family back there?” Her voice was soft, the timbre alluring.
“No, I’m on my own.” That much was true. He had no one here, or in 2743, either. “What about you?”
“Just Drew and me,” she said. “He’s all I’ve got.”
Something in her voice jarred him. If he was not mistaken, it was the sound of complete and utter devotion. She would do anything for her child.
And Sean felt the strangest yearning to feel that kind of dedication. To be the one she cared for.
He pressed his hands against his thighs and tried to focus on the problem he faced rather than the fierce attraction and confusing emotions that were flooding his body and mind, but failed miserably. He wanted to know what it would feel like to touch Erica Gibson-Booth, to link with her in the primal way of humans – body to body, soul to soul. So much for controlling his libido.
“Why did you take food to that man on the street?”
“Poor guy is homeless,” she said. “It’s not his fault he got his legs blown off in the war.”
Sean gave a short nod and realized he had just seen, first hand, a not unusual result of the mid-world wars that had plagued the planet for decades. His era’s info-discs had not demonstrated the human losses so dramatically.
Nor had they exhibited any of the kindness that had been shown by people like Erica, who cared.
Four
He was looking at her as though he wanted her for dessert, but not in the creepy way that the patrons of the Purple Moon Club ogled her. She reminded herself not to scorn those clowns at the P.M.C. too badly, because it was only because of them that Erica was able to pay her bills, and Drew’s asthma meds were expensive.
Her body hummed with awareness of Sean Dugan. He might want her for dessert, but she couldn’t stop thinking of him as the main course. He ran his big hands down his thighs, his discomfort at their proximity palpable.
He was attracted to her, and he hadn’t even seen her dance.
Erica took a deep breath. Dugan was hot, but no matter how strong her urge to lick him all over, she wasn’t going to fall for a big, dumb-ass bodyguard, just because he had a pretty face and a body that could make a virgin beg. She was only a dissertation away from finishing her doctorate in neurobiology, and as soon as the economy improved and she could get some student financing, she was going to quit her sucky job and finish the degree.
And then maybe she’d meet someone – the right kind of someone, and not just some loser who hung around strip clubs.
“Hey, I appreciate Mitch bringing you in,” she said, turning away from his chiselled jaw and that mouth that was made for sin. “I’ve never had a stalker before – that I know of.”
He nodded. Not big on small talk, she’d noticed. And he kept his eyes glued to the road ahead of them.
“Most of P.M.C.’s patrons are pretty harmless,” she said. “Or at least, none of them have ever tried to follow me home.”
“And this . . . stalker?”
“He’s been hanging around the stage door for the past week, and then I saw him near my apartment two days ago,” she said. “He scared the daylights out of me.”
He looked at her as though she’d spoken in another language and she decided he must be new to the bodyguarding gig. Or maybe it was strip clubs in general. That would be something new.
“You don’t look like a typical bouncer.”
“Uh, it’s my first time.”
She looked over at him, her mind opening to a few possibilities. “I guess I’m not the only one trapped by the bad economy. What did you used to do?”
“I’m . . . was . . . a temporal-spatial physicist.”
“Really,” she said, fascinated. She’d known he was no typical bouncer, but a scientist? “I’ve never heard of your field before. Did you lose funding?”
