Most of Adina's attention was spent focusing on her job, but a part of her mind traveled to something else: Marcus, who seemed to get what she was doing and tried to help her out by carrying the conversation when she was too annoyed to come up with another question. He wasn't like the rest of these vain assholes. Everyone she seemed to meet irritated her. Sure, she was prejudiced towards disliking stars. But she was prejudiced for a reason. Yeah, yeah, they all said the same thing: “Well, I'm just lucky to be here. Everyone's been so nice,” blah blah blah. She knew better. She knew what was under there: a bunch of vain, entitled brats who were willing to turn on each other at the first sign of trouble. She picked it up over and over and over. Even the coffee guy who came by and brought people drinks had a frustrating little ego thing to him, like he thought he was a badass for working in Hollywood. She got it. She really did. Some people liked the high life. Some people were stupid. Marcus fascinated her because he didn't put off that vibe at all. It felt like she could walk up to him in a grocery store and have no idea that he was famous. No big ego. No big drama. What she saw was what she got. She didn't pay much attention to him because she was pretty sure he hadn't mauled himself and put himself in the hospital, but the whole time they were talking, his words went along with what he felt. If he was annoyed, he sounded annoyed. If he was cheery, he sounded cheery. Blunt. She liked that. No games, no wordplay, nothing. Just a blank canvas.
The more she spoke with other people, the more attention she paid to him. Alex may have noticed. That was just fine. He was her coworker, not her father. She was perfectly allowed to look at whomever she wanted, and look she did: a quick glance here, a quick glance there. Nothing obvious. Nobody would be able to tell she was thinking about him and forming an opinion about him. She knew how to play her cards and look interested in everyone else, too. But deep down, where it mattered, she was only really listening to him. She'd had a nice enough interaction with him a couple of times, but during the night, she'd convinced herself here and there that she'd misread it. She didn't want to face the possibility that he was as real as she thought. What if she got to know him better and he turned out to be a real ass-hat like his costars? She'd finish the job, sure, but nothing past that.
He passed silent test after silent test with flying colors.
Not only was he as likeable as she'd hoped, he was genuine. Kind. Friendly. One time, Alex got unreasonably excited about the appearance of a certain star on the show from afar, much to the amusement of everyone else, who saw his delight not as charming but as childish. Adina had felt, really felt, Marcus feel bad for him and he stepped in to take some of the heat, saying that he, too, was excited when he first saw everyone. He didn't have to do that. He could've sat back and said nothing. Would've been easier. No, she knew he wanted to help, and that was a rare enough trait that not enough people had. People didn't stick their necks out that much, especially in front of their friends, for total strangers. Alex was a great guy and she liked him well enough, but he wouldn't have done the same if their roles had been switched. He was the jealous type. Optimistic as hell, but jealous—the curse of a double-edged sword.
Marcus was the real deal. She kept occasionally testing him to see what he was doing or feeling, but every time, she was impressed. For someone who could quite literally read his mind, that wasn't a luxury she was afforded too often. As the time passed, she caught herself not paying much attention to the other people at hand and smiling a little too long at what he had to say, making eye contact with him a little more than she did with everyone else. Rare, for her. She didn't have "crushes". They tended to fall from fantasy to reality in a moment whenever she got the chance to get up close to them.
Even when they got the chance to break off and the two of them went off to his trailer, she found herself enjoying his company. He was funny, poised, genuine. He had no idea about her powers. He wasn't hiding anything. It was just the real deal, all the way through.
The real deal, all the way through, took her over to the parking lot where he'd been attacked and gave her the grand tour at her request. She meant the important bits, like where he'd been attacked, where the attacker came from, what he'd seen, but he went a different way, one that she enjoyed far more.
"There's my trailer," he said, pointing at his trailer.
"Right, right," she murmured back with a very serious expression on her face, arms crossed.
He pointed at the back of his trailer. "There's the back of my trailer." His voice had a fun, teasing tone to it.
"Right, right." Again, super serious.
He pointed to the side of his trailer. "That's the side of my trailer."
"Ah." She didn't resist the urge to smile. What the hell. He was being up front. Why shouldn't she? Besides, even if she was on the job, that didn't mean she wouldn't be having a good time with a good-looking, funny guy, right? "And that there," she gestured to the door. "That's your door?"
He grinned at her. "You catch on quick."
She smiled back. It felt good. "Can we go inside? You said something about your manager being there before the attack."
His eyes sparkled with a playful light. "You wanna go in?"
"Nothing would please me more," she said dramatically, thoroughly enjoying this. She didn't get to just relax and enjoy someone's company too often. It was mostly work. With Marcus, she felt comfortable to be herself and goof around even though they'd only known each other for a short while—something she almost never got to enjoy. And hey, if he just so happened to be a handsome, rugged man with a good set of shoulders and that wonderful head of hair, that wasn't something she could change, now, was it? And if she just so happened to notice how handsome he looked while smiling, that wasn't necessarily a problem, now, was it? And maybe, just maybe, if she happened to be thinking how much she'd like to be held in those muscular arms, that wasn't something she could be blamed for, now, was it?
He cocked an eyebrow. "Nothing?"
And then, she did it.
She touched him on the shoulder playfully.
The thing that most people didn't know about her power set was that it worked on a couple of different levels, a bit like Wi-Fi. If she was just reading someone from afar, it was like connecting to a wireless signal: it could get stronger and weaker. It got the job done, but physical contact was like plugging in an ethernet cord and going wired. Boom! Tons of connection, faster speed, better everything. This meant, for the purposes of her job, that she got to read people better and she had a better chance of picking up particular themes, like the difference between hating someone and wanting to cause them physical harm, an important distinction that could usually only be made by physical touch.
Or, in the case of what happened there, she could see the innermost desires of a man she was flirting with.
His hormones hit her like a bus. Startlingly clear, vibrant ideas flowed through him to her, ravenously passionate ideas that took her breath away with their intensity. He wanted to take her, to kiss her then and there, to passionately push her against the trailer and take her, to make her moan and not care who heard. She didn't mean to hear his thoughts, but there they were, filling her and rushing around her head as she made eye contact with him and knew damn well all the naughty things he wanted to do with her. She froze, startled and stunned by the ideas she picked up. The ideas weren't the problem. She read loud and clear that he wanted to take her, a few flashing fantasies of kissing along her neck and plunging into her as she moaned in uncontrollable ecstasy and pleasure, an image or two of her fingernails digging into his back as they made love out in the open with anyone to see.
The problem was that she loved the ideas.
She stared, dumbstruck, into his eyes as his fantasies flew through her. She could have gotten it to stop. She could've pulled her hand away, could've shut her powers down better, could have focused on other things, but she didn't, mesmerized by the images and stunned that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. More than that, she realized with
horror that he somehow knew, he knew her desire. Probably smelled it somehow, if he was becoming a werewolf, or maybe he was just clever enough to see her lust in her eyes. Whatever it was, she faced the realization that she was an open book to him in that moment: bare, exposed, vulnerable in a way she hated to be.
Neither one of them responded for a moment, and she realized he was as taken aback as she was about the whole situation. They'd been simply talking, and she'd thought he was cute, likeable, sweet, attractive. Now, she felt turned on, and he knew. No matter if she tried to hide it, he knew she wanted him, too. No hiding. No playing it coy or close to the heart. Without meaning to, both of them had put their cards on the table for the other to see.
Adina panicked.
The girl in his visions wasn’t her. Physically, sure she was. She'd recognize herself anywhere, even if her body looked better in how he saw her than how she saw herself. But deep down, in her mind, she wasn't that girl. She wasn't this sexy goddess that he needed to pleasure and worship, this girl that would bring him to completion and who felt completely comfortable in her abilities.
Without her permission, she spoke and chose what to do next. "Maybe you, um, have some fan mail to show me." Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! The moment vanished and he was clearly as disappointed and embarrassed as she was, even if he hid it well. She kept hearing herself talk. "Sometimes, attackers tend to be, um, stalkers and they write fan mail. Maybe there's a clue in there somewhere." Stupid! Fuck her, that was stupid. She'd blown it. She didn't know what the right choice was there, but there had to have been a middle ground between getting him to whip it out right there in the parking lot and getting freaky against a trailer, and giving an unrequested history on the mindset of stalkers.
He put a smile on his face and tried to pretend, for both of their sakes, like that hadn't just happened and that they were regular business partners: him a client, her the freelancer. Nothing more, when in reality both of their hormones were a'flowing, their hearts pumping, their libidos up and running with no release other than disappointment and regret. "Yeah, um, hold on. I'll grab the box." He awkwardly scooted past her and went into the Airstream. She wanted to slap herself. What the hell was she thinking? What was he thinking? What the hell had just happened, and why was she so disgusted that it had turned out the professional way?
She couldn't remember a time that was more awkward. She'd been in some weird positions, been in strange places, but sitting ten inches away from a man she knew wanted to pleasure her passionately, with him knowing how much she wanted that, but with her having turned him down... it took the cake. It was too late now, of course. The moment was gone, and besides, what would she do to bring it back up? Just tell him, “Hey, so you remember how you want to fuck me senseless? Well, I'm actually kinda down.” As far as he was concerned, she'd shot him down and he was going to do the right thing and respect her wishes. Damn him and his good person ways! She, herself, was way too anxious to bring it up. That woman in his mind had been someone totally comfortable with a roll in the hay, and although she'd love to be that person, that simply wasn't her. A big, handsome guy like him probably had tons of experience. She'd look like an idiot and he'd be just disappointed in her if that was what he thought she'd be able to do. She'd spent enough time in the mirror to know damn well that her breasts weren't quite as impressive as he seemed to think, her eyes not that seductive, her body not that sexy. She wanted to bring it up and give it a second chance and make the other choice this time, but what would happen if she did? And at this point, it would just be awkward for her to do that, and with every passing second it only got more so.
She'd missed her chance.
It was an unpleasant few minutes half-heartedly scouring letters for a clue.
10
The Agent
After half an hour of excruciating small talk mixed in with long bouts of uncomfortable silence, Adina was beginning to believe she'd gone to hell.
That was it: she'd actually not been saved by Gregory. Instead, her wounds had been too severe and she'd died. Everything else had been a weird fever dream until now, sitting right next to Marcus after the awkwardness that had just happened, nobody broaching the subject but both of them thinking about it—she had finally descended into hell itself. She wanted to say something, but the other part of her wanted her to shut the hell up and let him say something, but he must have been doing the same thing, because both of them said nothing and shuffled through piles of fan mail without even so much as a cough to break the silence.
Hell.
This was what it was.
H.
E.
L.
L.
It wasn't so much the silence. She liked silence most of the time. The problem was the reason for the silence: the situation, the fact that she was sitting close enough to him to pick up his emotional signals even though he was doing a decent enough job hiding them, and the fact that she didn't know where she stood on the issue. He was still attracted to her. That much was pretty obvious, even if she couldn't feel his hormones continue to course through him. She was attracted to him, but how? In a "wow, God did a good job on that one" kind of attraction simply because of his looks and charm, or the sort of attraction that would lead to naughty things? She just didn't know. By the second, she flip-flopped between the ideas. On the one hand, he had a lot of the features that she liked in a guy. On the other hand, the more menacing hand, she'd had relationships before and all of them had ended in crashing, burning disaster. She was incapable of carrying a healthy relationship with her powers, but was a quick romp in the hay too much to ask? Was she just sitting too close to him and the ideas of what he wanted to do to her turned her on more than he did? Was she only thinking she liked him to justify the signals her body was putting out?
She just needed some time to think, to process everything and hopefully come up with a good answer on the other end. She tried to convince herself that she'd made the right choice. She was semi-successful. The only good thing about the situation was that Marcus had enough fan mail to take a long time to look through it all. He had prime-time, Netflix-original sort of fame. Instant fame. He had boxes and boxes of fan mail, almost all of which were from girls who were gushing over how awesome he was. Then there was that to think about, too—was she just getting her feelings mixed up in the craze over the phenomenon that was Marcus Pierce?
Why did everything have to be so complicated? When she'd set out to found the agency, she'd expected some dicey situations, but not like this. She didn't expect this sort of unpleasantness. She expected the sort of unpleasantness that went with guns and things that go boom. She'd take guns and things that go boom over emotional complexities any day. At least they made sense. Pull the trigger, and the bullet comes out. Boom. Simple. Logical. She could fire a gun a hundred times and realistically expect the same result. She had one hot moment with Marcus, just one, and all of a sudden, she had no idea what was up and what was down. Part of the weirdness of the whole situation was that she really didn't have that sort of emotion that often towards someone. She saw through people. Charmers, silver-tonguers, "good" guys, they all had their secrets, and without wanting to, she got to look inside them and what she found generally turned her away. To even make it this far with a crush was nothing short of extraordinary for her, especially since she'd seen his deep, dark, primal side in terms of the bedroom and wasn't sure if she loved it or was afraid of it.
Finally, though, it became clear that there were no more letters in the box. Adina cleared her throat. "Are there any—" she started off with a weird sound to her voice. She tried again with mixed results. "Are there any other boxes?" Anything was better than being in there like that. It was like a steam room of emotional angst. Hell, he could direct her to the nearest Arby’s for all she cared and she'd be happier than in there. The more they sat there together, the more they both had to be thinking about it, and the more uncomfortable it became.
"Yeah," he said, too quickly. He see
med to catch himself and tone it down. "Yeah. Come on. I'll give you the inside scoop on where to find them." Ah, there it was: the somewhat failed attempt at humor, something that had come so easily to him before but now was painfully forced.
The inside scoop ended up having to be cut short, because at that moment, someone knocked on the door. "Marcus, Marcus, you in there?"
Marcus's emotions cascaded to relief like a tidal wave. Adina understood. Having someone, anyone else there with them would certainty break it up at least a little. He stood up in a hurry while obviously trying to avoid showing that it was in a hurry and opened the door. "Ashley, just the man I love to see." He opened the door to reveal a small, adorable little man that looked like Alex, if Alex wasn't all that good-looking and was a little goofier-looking with a distinctly older appearance, but he had a delightful grin plastered across his face that assured Adina that this was a man she'd like.
"Ashley," Marcus said, introducing them, "this is Adina, my detective. The detective. The detective I hired. Adina, my agent, Ashley."
After hearing Marcus stumble over how to introduce her, Ashley remained as smiley as before, taking her hand and giving it a warm shake. "Any friend of Marcus's is a friend of mine."
Friends. Right. He didn't need to remind her. This Ashley fellow had to read into the cloud of strangeness over the trailer. Anyone with a remote ability to read people could tell something was off. Someone who was a successful talent agent in Hollywood, a people-driven person with social skills out of the wazoo, had to be able to. If he did, he played it cool and waved his hand at the strewn letters across the cabin. "What's this? Doing a little investigation through the mail, are we?"
Marcus - Precinct 12 Page 8
