While Nottingham went to pick up the papers and other things his contact had falsified for her, Lilianna got ready to go to the club. She knew how to dance, it had been one of the things Jarod had made sure was part of her education because it was something he hadn't learned until he was out in the world.
She was much more nervous about facing her parents for the first time. Considering Nottingham's past with her mother, it was foolish to even hope that she wouldn't confront them at some point during the night. Would the Witchblade tell Sara who she was? Was she ready to tell her mother what she must?
When Nottingham came back half an hour later, she was fully dressed. She stood for his scrutiny and slowly turned. She was wearing the black dress, and when the Stones of the Blade glowed, it brought out the metallic threads in her dress all the more. When she once more faced him, his eyes burned into hers, and he smiled. A tingle ran up and down her spine and she looked away, blushing.
"Are you sure we shouldn't go get a different pair of shoes for you to wear? I know you like those. You don't want them to be destroyed if you have to wear the Witchblade, do you?"
"No, but the Witchblade never wrecks my shoes, it just forms over them."
"Then why didn't you have shoes on when we met?" he asked, clearly puzzled.
She blushed again, "When Glory attacked me I was in the middle of getting dressed, and I hadn't put my socks on yet, let alone my shoes. So when the Oracles took me, I was just in the Witchblade. I borrowed the sweats I had on from Derek, another one of the Pretenders, but no one had shoes my size."
He nodded and handed her a stack of papers. On top was a birth certificate with the name Angel DeCarlo and a birth date of April 25, 1977. It was the month and around the day she thought she was born, but twenty-four years in the past from now, making her chronologically the same age she really was.
"Why Angel?"
"I picked it while you were sleeping."
Their eyes met and held. They had only known each other for a very short time, but she had been more intimate with him than with anyone else in her life. Was it the same for him? She looked away first.
"And DeCarlo?"
"My contact picked that out. There are social security papers there as well as a background and resume, just in case you need it. I gave you a background as a private investigator and bodyguard, much like my own. Since you're a Black Dragon, too ... "
He let his sentence trail off.
She nodded. "What about ID for the club?"
He took his wallet out of a pocket and handed her a plastic card, a state of New York driver's license. She had never seen a picture of herself before, and for a moment it was disconcerting. He held out his hand and she gave it back.
"We didn't get you a purse, and it would be more of a hassle than anything else, so I'll hold onto it."
Nottingham detached the chain from his belt loop and his wallet and set both the wallet and the chain on the counter. He went into the weapon room and came out with slacks and a dress shirt, still on hangers. When he disappeared into the bathroom and she heard the sound of the shower running, she sat down on the couch to read through the background he had made up for her. She knew it as well as her own life when he came out twenty minutes later.
He was even more stunning than usual and she couldn't understand why he wasn't crawling with women. She wasn't sure when she had first realized it, but she knew now that he was as inexperienced with women as she was with men, maybe even more so since most of the Pretenders in her program had been male. Then she remembered the waves of danger that rolled off him no matter what he did, and she realized that it might scare a lot of women. It was one of the things about him that had initially drawn her, and it was now such a part of her perception of him that she didn't really notice it unless she tried to see him from another person's point of view.
Grabbing his overcoat from a chair, he draped it on her shoulders. They both got in the elevator and rode down to the car in silence. The ride to the club was also quiet and Lilianna wondered what he was thinking about. She herself should have been thinking of ways to keep her parents apart without hurting either one of them, but all she could think about was him. Would she remember him when she was gone? Would her life ending make her cease to exist in every way? She hoped with all her heart that no matter how painful it was, she would be able to remember her time with him. She had no doubt that he would remember her, though with what degree of fondness she couldn't be certain.
Nottingham pulled into the parking lot and Lilianna looked at the building in surprise. It had at some point been a small warehouse, now just a nondescript two story building with high windows that were blacked out.
"This is it?"
"Yes, it doesn't look like much from the outside, but that's the in thing right now. This place will only be in business for another month or so, which is part of the reason there's no security on the outside that was able to stop the previous killings."
"And the other part?"
"The outside is large, and the owner is a cheap bastard who happens to be cashing in on the killer."
"Cashing in? I would think people would stay away when they knew what was going on."
Nottingham shook his head slowly, an air of sadness in the gesture.
"There are a lot of strange people in this city who find it thrilling to be somewhere that something gruesome happened, and more that simply refuse to acknowledge their own mortality. They feel that nothing like that can ever happen to them, no matter how close they come to it previously. The club has reached celebrity status because of the killings, and when they stop, the club will be out of business in no time."
Lilianna nodded, disturbed, "Let's go put them out of business then."
There was a hint of a smile on his face when he opened her door a few seconds later. She stood up and took his overcoat off.
"I don't think we should take it in with us, just in case we need to leave in a hurry."
"You won't be cold?"
"I went through X-Temp conditioning."
He nodded, remembering weeks of surviving through sudden shifts in extreme temperature, ranging from below freezing to the blazing heat of the desert at midday. It was the reason he could get away with wearing layers of clothes, even in the midst of a summer heat wave. And though there hadn't been a lot of call for him to be bare and exposed in cold weather, he knew he could if he had to. They made their way across the parking lot, he had parked on the far side on purpose, and stopped at the end of the line of people in front of the entrance.
They both spotted her parents at the same time. Sara Pezzini and Jake McCartey were about five couples ahead of them in line. Lilianna stiffened and Nottingham put a comforting arm around her. She leaned into him for strength. Her own seemed to desert her every time she saw either of her parents. He supported her extra weight easily, glad that she felt she could rely on him. He only hoped that his strength added to her own would be enough to get her through the night and any confrontation with her parents that might result from it.
Five minutes later, Sara turned around and looked at them. She must have sensed them staring at her. Frankly, Nottingham was surprised it had taken her as long as it had. At first Sara only saw him and she threw him a dark look, probably a warning not to get in her way. Then her eyes lit on Lilianna leaning against him with his arm around her, and her brows drew together in confusion and not a small amount of shock. He turned slightly and placed a kiss on top of Lilianna's head and sent Sara his own look that told her to leave his date alone. She inclined her head slightly once and turned back to once more face the door with Jake.
Lilianna looked up at him and smiled softly, thanks shining in her beautiful blue-green eyes. Nottingham smiled back and they both moved forward when the line started to enter the club. Lilianna froze again when she saw the man and woman doing pat downs just inside the door, but Nottingham tightened his hold on her slightly for just a moment.
For only her to hear, he said, "Don't worry, the only weapon on me is my katana, and they won't find it."
She relaxed. When it was their turn to go in the door, he handed over both of their IDs. They both stood with feet spread and arms up to be checked for weapons. Both of them moved away as quickly as possible from the unwelcome touch of unfamiliar hands. When he had paid the cover charge and they moved into the interior of the club, she reached for his hand and sighed with relief when it slipped easily into her grasp.
They had to walk past a bar to get to the dance floor, and Nottingham asked, "Do you want something? I don't drink."
Lilianna shook her head and her nose wrinkled slightly, "Jarod told me about the first time he had alcohol. If I ever do try it, it will be someplace where I know I'm safe and it doesn't matter if my judgment is impaired."
He felt a small surge of jealousy at the warmth in her tone when she spoke of Jarod, but he swallowed it. Jarod was her uncle, more like a father to her than anything else. And that was one role he did not want to fill in her life.
When they reached the dance floor, it was his turn to freeze.
She looked at him, "What is it?"
"I know ballroom dancing and other partner dance styles, but I've never danced on my own before."
Lilianna looked at the people on the floor. Most of them were separate entities as they moved, but there were couples who danced with their arms wrapped around each other.
She subtly pointed at one of them and assured him, "We'll just dance like that."
Effortlessly they turned one toward the other and moved into each other's arms. They moved fluidly through the other dancers until they were in the middle of the floor, each able to see a little more than an overlapping half of the club's interior over the other's shoulder. Lilianna watched her mother dancing with her father, keeping him on the other side of the dance floor. Sara looked at her every time she and Jake turned, a puzzled look on her face. After a few songs, Jake noticed the direction Sara was staring and said something to her. Sara shook her head, but Jake took hold of her hand and started dragging his partner toward Lilianna and Nottingham.
Jake smiled as he reached them, "Hey, Mr. Waters, right?"
"Call me Jonathan," Nottingham extended a hand, keeping Lilianna pressed to his side.
"This is my girlfriend, Angel DeCarlo."
Jake shook Nottingham's outstretched, gloved hand, and gestured toward Sara, "This is Sara, my..."
He stopped and looked at his partner, and despite the situation, Sara smiled at him.
To Lilianna and Nottingham, she said, "His girlfriend."
Jake offered to get them all something, but Sara and Nottingham politely refused. Lilianna asked shyly for a water, and Jake walked away toward the bar smiling.
Sara looked uncomfortable for a full minute before finally saying, "You look really familiar to me, Miss DeCarlo. Have we met before?"
Before Lilianna could reply, Nottingham answered for her, "I don't think so, she just came here from Delaware two days ago, and I don't believe you've ever been to Delaware, have you, Detective Pezzini?"
Sara shook her head. "Still, there's something..."
Jake showed up just then and handed a water bottle to Lilianna, "It was nice meeting you, Angel, Jonathan. Maybe we'll all run into each other again some time, but I'm sure I speak for us all when I say we'd like to get back to our dates."
Jake and Sara walked away to another part of the dance floor, and Lilianna turned back to Nottingham, "Why didn't you let me just tell her?"
A muscle in his jaw jumped and he answered, "As soon as Sara knows who you are, she won't let me anywhere near you. I'm not ready to give you up yet."
Lilianna nodded and relaxed. She had met her mother face to face and nothing had happened. She could stop worrying, at least for now. She turned back into Nottingham's arms and concentrated on him, the bottle of water dropped and forgotten. With their arms and bodies wrapped around each other, she felt right, completely at home, for the first time. She wondered if he felt the same. The warmth in his eyes as they danced let her hope, and she concentrated on enjoying being with him for a few hours. By midnight, she knew his body as well as her own from being pressed to him more and more intimately as time passed. She had long since stopped caring about what anyone else was doing, wrapped up completely in him.
Nottingham nuzzled her cheek with his and dipped his head to bring his lips equal with her ear. If he had not been holding her up, if she had not been straddling his powerful thigh, she would have melted to the floor in a puddle. He whispered in a rush of air that fanned over her neck, "Pretend to kiss me."
She pulled her head back slightly and stared at him with passion-glazed eyes. "Why pretend?"
"We have more than one audience, and your mother is too busy staring at us again to realize that we've been selected as the next victims. But we'll only keep his attention if we appear to be a couple. It would be better for us to be in the line of fire than two innocents."
She felt a flare of anger, and inwardly cursed at the unfairness of this situation. She wanted Nottingham. Wanted to kiss him, to be with him, with an intensity that frightened her. But he wanted her to pretend to kiss him, to pretend to love him, so they could stop a serial killer. The problem was that though he might be able to pretend, she didn't need to. She was already desperately in love with him, and it terrified her. Closing her eyes to hide her feelings, she reached out her senses with the Witchblade to find the killer. He was watching them, and, just as Nottingham had said, his attention seemed about to waver. She opened her eyes to look into Nottingham's.
"I've never kissed anyone before," she brokenly confessed. "I wouldn't know how to pretend."
The fire in his eyes flared brighter than ever and he moved one hand down to cup her bottom and bring her tighter against him.
"Then we won't pretend."
She gazed at him with a question in her eyes that he wasn't sure how to answer. He kept his left hand on her firm bottom, keeping her pressed as intimately against him as was possible with the layers of clothes between them. Her feminine heat was pressed high on his thigh where she straddled him, and his arousal was straining against her hip. She gasped at the sensations flooding her all the way to her core. She was now pressed fully against his rock hard body from thighs to collarbone.
He lifted his right hand from its place at her waist and gently thread his fingers through her hair, cupping the back of her head. He tightened his hold just a little to tip her head back. Her eyes drifted closed and her lips parted slightly. He lowered his mouth over hers and she made a soft sound of need. He moaned against her mouth in answer and swept his tongue over the parted seam of her lips. A flood of overwhelmingly pleasurable sensation made the room seem to spin. When she gasped and writhed slightly against him, trying to get closer still, he somehow knew that she had felt it too.
His tongue entered her mouth slowly and she went a little wild, raking her nails down his muscular back. He had no doubt that if he hadn't had his shirt on, she would have broken the skin. As it was, he would probably have faint marks.
He pulled away from her then and placed a chaste kiss on her forehead when she moaned in frustration.
He found his voice enough to say, "Let's go."
Confusion and pain warred in her eyes, but she nodded and they made their way through the crowd. Nottingham kept her hand in his, hoping the trap they were setting wouldn't backfire on them. They passed Sara and her partner on the way to the door, and it was Jake who noticed a minute later that they had been followed.