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Finally, I get it under control, panting with the release I haven’t felt in hundreds of years.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
Chapter Four
Tammy
I sit in the rear stock room after hours, cataloging the various antiques with the special care my boss, Angelica, impressed upon me the day I started working here. Chipper sits in his blanketed nook at the rear of the room, his chin resting on his crossed paws and snoring softly.
I’ve worked here four days and still haven’t seen a sign of Torsten, which of course makes sense. As I carefully wrap a Victorian spoon in protective packaging – moving my gloved hands with glacial slowness – I reflect that Torsten Haroldsson probably has much more important things to do than come visit some girl he played Good Samaritan with.
As I work, I let my voice fill the space quietly, singing wordlessly as I often do. I like to work out the different notes without the need for lyrics getting in the way. I like to ride the wave of my voice, to try to listen past my own singing and imagine what it must sound like to other people, even if the notion of singing in front of other people makes me want to scream in anxiety.
I glance at Chipper and see his legs twitching in his sleep, lost in doggie dreams.
I smile and sing and work.
Even if I never see Torsten again, at least he was kind enough to give me this job. That’s the message I try to drum into my mind. But the idea of never seeing that silver-haired, mysterious alpha male again causes more anxiety to swirl through me.
The days are okay, but at night when I close my eyes, I can’t help but picture his intense blues gazing into me, or feel the sudden warmth of his hands roaming all over my body.
My womb quivers when I let myself imagine silly, impossible things, like Torsten pushing me onto the hood of his Jaguar and burying his face in my neck, kissing, biting, teasing.
My voice quivers and my song cunts off when I look across the room to see him standing there.
Wearing a suit as dark as night, his eyes glint in the semidarkness of the lamps. One hand is trembling and the other is clenched into a fist as he gazes at me.
“Torsten?” I whisper.
“It’s true,” he says huskily.
“What’s true?”
He opens his fist and in a blinking moment the room floods with deep red light, every corner of it lighting up, but it’s a soft, warm glow, and somehow soothing. I stare at the crimson jewel as wonder crashes over me in unstoppable waves.
“Fancy stone,” I whisper, barely hearing my own voice, I’m so captivated by it.
He closes his fist and steps forward. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I was listening to your singing. It’s beautiful. It reminds me of the way the bards would sing in the old days. You have an ancient quality to your voice, Tammy, an eternal note to it. You’re incredible.”
My head swims.
Bards.
Old days?
Is this six and a half foot rugged CEO a LARPer or something?
“Thank you,” I murmur. “I don’t usually sing in front of other people.”
“You should,” he says with passion flaring in his voice.
He stalks across the room until he’s standing over me. Heat radiates from him, fiery tsunamis of it, crashing over me, making me want to catch it, to steal it, to savor it.
“You have a sensational voice, and I’ve heard the very best this world has to offer. Is that your dream, Tammy, to become a singer?”
“It’s a pipe dream, sure,” I murmur, but the sarcasm in my voice flags, hard to sustain under his unflinching gaze. “What is that, Torsten? That jewel?”
“I don’t think you would believe me if I told you,” he mutters.
“Try me.”
He smirks and then stares intently at me.
“Perhaps I could show you,” he says.
“Um, okay?” I murmur.
“Watch me closely. Don’t look away. Okay?”
I never want to look away from you, Torsten.
I stamp down on that silly thought and nod.
“Sure.”
I stare at him, tracing his features with my gaze, the cut of his jaw, the blaze in his eyes, the way his black suit seems barely able to contain his goliath’s body.
And then—
What the—?
I let out a whimper of shock as I turn to find him on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall.
“Try not to panic,” he says.
And then—
Seriously, what the actual fuck?
He’s on the opposite end of the room, leaning casually against the wall as though he didn’t just teleport there.
Chipper looks up, head tilted, as confused about this teleporting billionaire as I am.
Again, he flashes by, a blur of movement and a whoosh of papers on the desk the only sign that he’s even still here, that he hasn’t disappeared.
He blips in then out of existence, leaping around the room, seeming to just vanish and blip into existence.
