Primal Call Read Free Page A

hire a makeup artist. And a trainer. And a body double for the sex scenes.
    “Oh, stop it, you silly woman. He’s James Wilde.”
    James Wilde was—he was James Wilde, that’s who he was. He’d probably forgotten about her even before he walked out the door and into the camera-wielding crowd waiting for him. And there was no reason he shouldn’t. She was an obligation fulfilled for the publicity department of the movie he was working on. Just another part of the job.
    And truth be told, meeting him was an obligation of hers as well. One she’d fulfilled for the publicity department of her publishing house. It was all just business, even if it did leave her all hot and bothered for the moment.
    Tomorrow she’d head home to the reality of her land, to the stress of working on a manuscript that was due in three months, to her large, loud, nosy family. Tomorrow everything would be back to normal.
    Tonight. Well.
    A girl could dream.
    For a few moments, just as their gazes first met, there had been an electric connection between them. Hadn’t there?
    “Hollywood magic,” Thena muttered. “My imagination.” She sighed. “But a girl can dream.”
    Or, a girl could get out of the shower before the water turned her into a prune and get on with dinner and a good night’s sleep. She had an early flight to St. Louis in the morning, followed by a long ride home after that.
    She called room service, then got into pajamas and dried her hair and did all her other pre-bedtime rituals while waiting for the food to arrive. She sat on the bed and brushed her hair with thoughts of James Wilde running through her mind, and her body.
    This has to stop, she thought.
    It’s only beginning for us, she thought she heard James Wilde answer.
    She dropped the brush. It thudded onto the thick carpet just as a knock came on the door. Thena jumped to her feet. Her heart raced. For a crazed moment she thought James had come to her.
    “Oh, for—!”
    It was room service, of course.
    Thena took the tray from the young man at the door, tipped him, and set her dinner down on the room’s desk. She was aware the whole time she did these simple, ordinary things that she was shaking. Her strong reaction to her own imagination scared her.
    Maybe it’s not your imagination.
    All right! That did it!
    There were candles decorating the room, and Thena had an aunt who’d taught her how to use them for meditation. Her aunt was a psychic medium, the sort who worked with the police, solving crimes with her visions. She had ways of keeping those visions at bay when she didn’t need them. Thena had had the occasional run of nightmares when she was a kid, and seen and heard things that didn’t make any sense to a kid. Aunt Maria had taught her how to block the weird thoughts and feelings. As an adult, Thena used her imagination to earn a living, but knew right now she needed to use Aunt Maria’s training to get her imagination under control.
    Thena gathered a trio of candles on the desk, sat down before them, lit them, and cleared her mind.
    She concentrated on the flames. She concentrated on building a wall of fire around herself. She concentrated on building a wall of crystal around the flame wall. She concentrated on—
     
    ###
     
    “No! Don’t do that!” James shouted, both inside and outside his head.
    A hand landed on his shoulder as the words came out of his mouth. The awareness that it was another Prime touching him completely broke his concentration on Athena for the moment.
    He bounded to his feet, ready for combat, before he remembered where he was, and recognized the other vampire male standing in front of him.
    He was in the VIP lounge of a popular club. The other Prime’s bulk blocked anyone else seeing James’s claws and fangs. But it was very much a Bad Thing to show his true self in public. Especially in front of the bondmate of the Matri of the Los Angeles Territory. The Shagal Clan ran the area, as an outsider he lived in their