Chapter One

The late summer heat of the San Fernando Valley threatened to suffocate Melody. It was past sunset and still sweltering. Her air conditioner had strained at the heat all day without providing any relief, so she finally gave it a rest. She couldn’t afford the power bill as it was.

She wandered through her small apartment, opening all the windows and hoping for a breeze to cool the place off. The aroma of fresh Thai food wafted up from the Boulevard, along with a breeze that was barely even a whisper. She closed her eyes, imagining she was standing on a beach in Thailand with her toes in the sand.

The fantasy only lasted long enough for her brain to trip into wishing mode, then planning mode, making a mental tally of how much money she had in the bank. Even with her new job and a nice bump in salary, it would still take six more months of saving like mad before she would have enough to pay for herself and her favorite person—her mother, Julia—to take the trip they’d always dreamed of.

As a testament to her desires, a ragged map of the world graced the only wall in her apartment big enough to accommodate it. Melody had stuck pins in all the places she’d visited so far. The collection was depressingly small, with only a few major U.S. cities sporting colored nubs. As a flight attendant, she’d forced herself to stick to domestic airlines so she could have a solid home base and continue her education in between—something she’d promised her mother she would do.

So far, Los Angeles was the farthest she’d come since leaving the tiny little Appalachian town she’d grown up in. Even that distance had taken four years to achieve, but she’d known back then that she’d never earn the money to fulfill her mother’s dream—~her~ dream—if she stayed put.

Once she earned enough, she wouldn’t go back home until she’d traveled far enough west to come full circle. Los Angeles would hopefully be her launching point in a few months. By then she’d be able to buy her mother a ticket to California, and they would leave together. Fly to Hawaii first, then from there, keep going west.

It had been several weeks since she’d spoken to her mother, which she regretted. Things had been tense between them lately—they always were this time of year. It was the end of summer, which was when the man she’d thought of as “Daddy” had left them years ago.

Even after almost two decades, her mother still held onto hope that her old lover, Alec, would return.

“Sweetie, when you find a love like ours, you know better than to let go without a fight,” she’d said.

But it wasn’t much of a fight if the other party forfeited.

The truth was, Melody still missed the only father she’d ever known. She absently rubbed her shoulder, reminded of the day he’d given her the silly magic tattoo. The sharp scent of her markers was just as fresh in her mind now as it had been on that day. Almost as vivid was the confusion and despair she’d experienced only a little while later.

Her memory was limited to vague images now—of a phone call during supper, Alec speaking to her mother in a low voice, strained with emotion, followed by her mother’s adamant refusal to accept whatever it was he’d told her.

They’d both looked so sad. Her mother was crying, and it made Melody cry too.

“You shouldn’t wait for me, Julia,” Alec had said when he kissed her goodbye, “but I will be back.”

And then he was gone.

A few years after that, Melody had made her promise to her mother. Alec had always planned to take them traveling around the world when Melody was old enough. She hated him a little for making a promise he couldn’t keep. But she always remembered how dreamy her mother would get, asking about the places he’d been. It seemed like he’d been everywhere, too.

So Melody resolved that she would be the one to give her mother that gift. On her tenth birthday, she’d made the pledge, telling her mother not to buy her a present, but to open a bank account instead, so she could save money to that end.

The kind of trip she wanted to take her mother on had evolved over the years, and the itinerary she’d settled on wasn’t cheap, but she persisted. She became a flight attendant right after high school, believing the job might give her some advantages and allow her to achieve her goal more easily. The perks were very nice, but mostly it meant fending off the advances of countless men.

Some of the offers she got were tempting—plenty of obviously wealthy passengers took an interest in her, but she always demurred as tactfully as possible. Becoming romantically entangled was not part of her plan.

Falling in love just led to abandonment and heartbreak.

Giving up that job had been a mixed blessing. She’d truly enjoyed the job itself, both in spite of and because of the patrons. The catalyst for the change still puzzled her, even though it had been months since it happened.

During her last cross-country flight to Los Angeles, Melody had encountered one first-class passenger who’d grown exceedingly agitated. During takeoff, the woman had clutched the armrests so hard Melody swore she’d left permanent finger-shaped dents in them. And every time Melody walked past, she thought she heard the woman grinding her teeth.

“Ma’am,” she whispered, laying a gentle hand on the woman’s shoulder, “if you have an anti-anxiety prescription in overhead, I’d be happy to retrieve it for you once we’re at cruising altitude.”

The woman shook her head. “No,” she said tensely. “Drugs do no good. What’s your name?” She peered up at Melody with the strangest eyes—gray but flecked with red motes that almost glowed.

Her gaze had latched onto Melody’s so directly it startled her. Something about it reminded her so starkly of Alec that she nearly blurted out, “Daddy?” She recovered quickly, took a breath, and pointed at her name tag. “Melody.”

The sun shone through the window and into the woman’s eyes at just the right angle to make the red flecks glow even brighter.

“What a lovely name. Call me Nancy.”

“Would you like a pair of headphones? Listening to music might help relax you.”

The woman clutched Melody’s hand and squeezed, her grip strong but shaky.

“No, thank you. Just come by and talk when you can. You are a truly blessed young woman, you know.”

Melody went about her business, stopping by to speak with the woman whenever she could steal a moment.

The similarities to Alec lingered, though Melody could never quite put her finger on what it was that captured her attention. The woman looked nothing like Alec, with her long, red hair and pale skin.

It wasn’t a visual similarity, Melody had thought, but something in the woman’s bearing. Nancy was almost majestic once the plane was finally at a level altitude, as if she actually took pleasure in flying.

As Nancy disembarked a few hours later, she paused, clasping Melody’s hand and thanking her. The woman’s face glowed with some odd light none of the other passengers had and Melody let out a gasp, tightening her hands on the woman’s fingers.

“You see us, don’t you?” Nancy said. “It isn’t a mirage, if that’s what you thought. Not a hallucination.”

Melody glanced around the cabin. The other patrons seemed to be stalling, as though they were still waiting for the plane to land.

“What are you?” Melody asked.

Nancy shook her head. “That you can’t know yet, but know you are Blessed. You belong in a higher place than the one you’ve found. Here …” She handed Melody a business card that felt way too warm in her fingers. “There’s a place for you with us, Melody. One meant for you.”

Melody had taken the card, perplexed by the woman’s cryptic words. The card itself was a curiosity, stark black with only the letter “M” in light gray on one side. On the other side were two lines: “Magnus Securities. Los Angeles” followed by a phone number. She’d already considered moving to the west coast, and planned to spend the week before her next flight apartment hunting. But the card distracted her to such an extent that she found herself itching to call.

The rest had happened so fast, her mind still spun a little from it. That had all been close to six months ago. She’d been hired as executive assistant to the corporation’s CEO, with the expectation of serving as personal flight attendant on the rare occasion he needed to take the corporate jet for business.

That had happened only once, and the aftermath was what ate at her now, threatening to derail her entire plan. The job description itself seemed tailor made for her, the perfect combination of stability and opportunities to travel. She just hadn’t counted on winding up with a boss as sexy and inaccessible as Kol Magnus.

Melody turned from the window and headed for the bathroom, peeling off her tank top and shorts on the way. She ran a cool bath, waiting for the tub to fill. When she finally slipped into the water, she sighed. Slowly, her body temperature sank back to a comfortable level, but her thoughts continued to blaze.

Her boss’ face kept springing up. Fucking Kol Magnus. Every inch of the bastard lit her up in so many ways. The worst part was that he was married, and to a woman every bit as scintillating as the man himself.

His wife, Hallie, wasn’t like the bombshell trophy brides the other execs at the firm flaunted. Hallie was a purely sensual woman: beautiful, intelligent, down-to-earth, and entirely comfortable with her sexuality.

~God, I want to be like her~, Melody thought.

It was her secret, the thing she’d never speak lest she give credence to a desire that ran counter to her greatest wish: the wish to discover her world before she let herself get attached to a man. It didn’t help that she could never have him—thoughts of Kol still compelled her to slip her fingers down between her thighs and spread her legs a little wider, making her bathwater slosh over the side of the tub.

The fantasies were always just a little different, but in all of them she saw herself as the pet of a man like him—a bird in a gilded cage, kept for his enjoyment. The fantasies rarely involved his face, however. The sheer, sexual presence of him was what held sway over her in her mind, but the man who took her in her fantasies could have been anyone, as long as he aroused her passion the way Kol had.

She thought about the day she’d served as flight attendant on the Magnus private jet only a few weeks earlier. It was the first time she’d been asked to fulfill that part of her job description.

It had promised to be an easy cross-country flight between Los Angeles and Boston with just Kol and Hallie as passengers. That is, until she’d caught the two of them on the verge of sex even before the plane had taken off.

After working as a flight attendant for years, she wasn’t exactly a stranger to passengers misbehaving. But seeing Kol and Hallie fooling around had been the first time she’d had the urge to join in.

The thick, ropey bulge of Kol’s hard-on had been unmistakable at the front of his trousers when she’d told them to strap in for take-off. She walked away with her mind fixated on getting a glimpse of him in all his glory—he was such a beautiful man. All he had to do was ask, she told herself. He was her boss, after all. The gold pendant she wore at her throat was the symbol of her loyalty to him—and a reward for completing her ninety-day probationary period at his firm. Only a handful of employees were privileged enough to receive one of the gold medallions. Each one had a carved onyx emblem of the company’s serpentine symbol set in the center. It had come with a token raise, too, but she’d promised herself she’d save most of it for her trip with her mother.

Melody gripped the medallion with her free hand while the other did its work between her thighs. She imagined the connection the pendant gave her to him. Her fingers were a poor substitute for Kol’s tongue, but they did the trick. She’d never imagined he would actually ask. But he did. More than that, he had ~commanded~ her to undress and touch herself in front of him, and then he had ~commanded~ her to spread her legs across his face.

~“I’d like to taste you when you come. To have my tongue on that pretty clit of yours.”~

She’d been able to see every glorious inch of his body after Hallie had undressed him. Hallie had been the only one to tend to Kol’s enormous cock, but the mere sight of the massive trunk of flesh between his thighs had been a little intimidating. Not the least bit intimidating to his wife, though. Even as Kol’s tongue sank into Melody’s aching pussy, Hallie had taken his thick length entirely into her slick and waiting depths, then leaned forward over Kol’s torso to pull Melody into a kiss.

Melody couldn’t pinpoint the moment when she came, only that the sensation of Kol’s tongue between her thighs had changed. He’d slipped the length of it into her, and the pleasure that followed had been so mind-crushingly perfect she’d lost control.

As much as she tried after that, she’d never been able to replicate the sensations, either with other men or with toys. Lying in the tepid bathwater with her fingers desperately working her clit and her feet up on either side of the old, claw-foot tub, all she had was the memory. It was enough for now. She cried out when the spasms took hold and clamped her thighs around her hand, pressing deeper to try to ride out the pleasure for as long as possible.

How could one man’s tongue have ruined her so thoroughly? She needed more of him. Or she needed to get the hell away from him before the proximity drove her mad.