I nodded. “I saw a few pictures last night. Her hair was green.” I hadn’t seen her face—there was only one shot of it, most were of her side and back. She was wearing huge black sunglasses that covered most of her features in that picture, though. She was tiny just like me, her shoulders barely reaching Noah Bennett’s chest, and she had been wearing a short dress like this, too, only hers had been completely white.
“Wig,” Sandra said. “Pixie hair doesn’t hold dye.”
I groaned. “Trust me, I know.” I had tried for two weeks straight, every single day, and I never found a dye that held.
“She has a lot of them, though. She was spotted with a blue one, too, once. There’s no reason to change the color of your hair—it’s so pretty. I’ve never seen a pink pixie before.” She smiled at me adoringly, like I really was a doll—her favorite doll.
“They’re not exactly common,” I said with a flinch. In our clan, only I and Mr. Rover were pink. The St. Mases—our next-door neighbors—had given birth to a pink daughter just before I left home, but Mom told me her color had deepened within a few months, and she was now as purple as her parents. The rest were all some shade of purple.
“The girlfriend’s eyes are purple, though. So, if anyone asks, you’re wearing contacts to match your wig. Or magic,” Sandra said, then stepped behind me, and raised her arms over my head. A long silver chain was in her hands, complete with a large round pendant with a big clear stone in the middle. “You’ll have this on you at all times, even when you shower.” She clasped the necklace around my neck, then gently pulled my hair over it. “It’s a real diamond, so the ODP boss would really appreciate it if you didn’t lose sight of it.”
“Oh, wow,” I breathed, touching the large stone with my fingertips, attached to petals made of silver, like a flower. Cold and smooth, and it reflected the light around us perfectly. “Is this supposed to be the flash drive?”
“It is, indeed. It’s an exact replica of it,” Sandra confirmed.
“It’s beautiful.” Possibly the most beautiful piece of jewelry I’d ever worn.
With her hands on my shoulders, she planted a kiss on the top of my head. “You’re ready, sweet girl.”
The assistants had already gathered all their things into the plastic cases and made for the door.
“Thank you, Sandra. I really appreciate it,” I said, and she beamed with pride. But when her assistants left the room, she put a hand on my arm and stopped me from following.
“You’re brimming with tension, Theodora,” she whispered, the black of her eyes suddenly deepening. “It buzzes on your skin, and God help me, I’ve done my best to ignore it today. I give you my word that I haven’t consumed even a tiny bit of it.”
At that, she closed her eyes and sighed, as if that was the most difficult thing she’d ever had to do in her life. My mouth opened but I found nothing to say.
“Your partner is the same. A word of advice?” She didn’t wait for me to reply at all. “Do not resist temptation. The body needs pleasure the way it needs air and sunlight and water. Give it what it wants, and it will reward you. Otherwise, I’m afraid it’s going to lead to disastrous results. It always does, believe me.” She winked. “I know what I’m talking about.”
At that, she turned around and left the room, almost floating in the air like a mermaid does in water.
Oh, God. She could smell how desperate I was to get laid?
No, no, no.
Chocolate. That was what I needed. And as soon as we walked out of this room, I was eating some cake. Or some pudding. Or some anything with chocolate in it.
By the time I made it out the room myself, the cute pink purse in my hand, I was pretty sure my cheeks were bright pink—and not because of the blush.
But then I looked across the room, and I saw Dominic wearing a baby blue shirt, currently fixing the cuffs of his sleeves. His eyes instantly found mine, and I could have sworn I became pink from my head down to my toes.
His hair was combed back, but not smoothed down. It was messy still, but a stylish kind of messy, a sophisticated version of the just-rolled-out-of-bed look. The shirt he had on hugged him in all the right places, and the dark wash jeans gave me a side view of his ass like I’d never seen before.
Was this the tension that Sandra was talking about, the one that gathered into a lump in my throat, the one that weighed down on my chest, and lit another of those greedy fires deep in the center of me? Because I couldn’t breathe right now. Not when he looked at me like that same fire was burning him, too, and when his lips parted, I heard the sound of his voice in my mind, the way he’d said my name that morning.
So, not only was I getting turned on by sniffing shirts now, but from imagining a guy saying my name, too.
“Here you go. Drink up.”
Sandra was in front of me, cutting my view of Dominic completely. Air returned to my lungs as if by magic. Did she know how big a favor she’d just done me? I took the bottle of water she offered and drank without thinking. Water was good. It wasn’t chocolate, but it was good.
“Are we ready?” I said, looking at the other agents, at everyone other than Dominic.
“Yep. You got your necklace?” one of the agents said, and his eyes lingered just a little too long on my chest before they traveled down my legs and up to my eyes again.
Would you look at that?
I felt nothing.