Para briefly made a face, but continued to smile and chuckle. “So you practiced being a good boyfriend on your sister?”
“Don’t make it sound like that! But yes. I suppose I learned a bit of what women want from researching Amara over the years.”
“Ah. And what do you think she would say about your brothering skills?”
“Well,” Thornton said, pausing for a moment to consider that. “I don’t think she wants me dead, at least.”
Not without being tortured first, as dad would say, Para mused to herself as she took another swig of champagne. “Impressive, Thorn. I believe that’s more than can be said about most sibling relationships.”
“Oh, Mr. President! Yoohoo!” called out a booming female voice from across the room.
“Shit,” Thornton said softly, as a gigantic blimp of a woman made her way over to him.
Para and Asher both laughed at the horrified look on his face.
“Handsome CEO of Kalgren Technology! Come and dance with me, baby!” The woman’s accent was thick and foreign, and she extended an arm that was heavily encrusted with diamond bracelets.
“Sakra save me,” Thornton muttered, straightening his bow tie. “Ash, please take care of Medea for me. Don’t let anyone steal her. Business calls.” Throwing his arms out amicably, he gave the woman a large fake smile. “Why, Duchess! What a pleasure to see you again!”
Para and Asher both laughed riotously at Thornton’s misfortune as he was swept up onto the dance floor by the drunken giantess. After several minutes of breathless chuckles, Asher was able to calm himself and smirk at Para.
“So, Medea. I think this is our chance.”
“Our chance?” she asked him in a conspiratorial tone.
Asher extended his arm in a gentlemanly manner. “You promised you’d save a dance for me.”
She smiled and placed her arm in his, deftly disposing of her champagne glass. “How wicked of you, Ash. Thorn asked you to keep anyone from stealing me, and you decided to steal me yourself.”
He guided her onto the dance floor, and swept her up into the music with a carefree Burnson grin. “How could I resist sneaking in a dance with the most gorgeous girl here?”
She smirked at him playfully, but her nostrils were assaulted by the strong scent of cigarette smoke on Asher’s clothes. After a few seconds, she was able to ignore it and she allowed him to lead her across the floor in a dizzying and romantic dance. She found herself laughing and feeling lightheaded, and she remembered that she did very much enjoy dancing.
“I don’t care what Thorn says—I think you have an amazing way with women.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” he cautioned. “Sometimes it’s best to let Thorn think he’s winning whatever the competition is that we’re in. He takes it much harder than I do when he loses. I’m used to losing to him, anyway.”
Para reached up and idly pushed a lock of dark hair away from Asher’s brow. “But if you keep letting yourself lose like that, you might eventually forget that you’re just as good as he is. Maybe even better.”
The song ended, and the couple stopped dancing and just stared at each other for a moment. Asher’s eyes burned into Para’s questioningly, as though her words had been more insightful to him and meaningful than she could imagine.
She smiled when he gently lifted her wrist and kissed her hand. He looked at her sincerely before speaking. “Medea, I’ve been having the crappiest of crap evenings. But it was worth it to come here tonight just to get the chance to dance with you. Thanks for saving this night for me—I didn’t think my mood would ever be improved, but you turned it all around. Thank you.”
“Aw, Ash,” she said, smiling at him affectionately. “You’re too sweet.”
Para felt a strong urge to kiss him, followed by the disappointment of knowing she couldn’t do such a thing so publicly. It’s not time yet, Mara, she inwardly told herself. But to satisfy her yearning to get close to him, she moved to place a brief kiss on his cheek.
“Thanks for the dance, Ash,” she said softly. “You’ve made my evening better too. Can you promise me one thing?”
“Anything,” he said earnestly, enjoying the intimate feeling of whispering to her in the center of the ballroom.
“Please stop smoking,” she asked him quietly. “It really hurts me to see—or rather, to smell—that you’ve been smoking. We haven’t known each other long, but I care for you a great deal.”
He nodded slowly. “I will try my best. I just needed it for stress relief earlier tonight.”
“There’s always an excuse,” she told him, “but you don’t really need any of the things you think you need. Especially if they cause harm to you.”
Thornton chose that moment to interrupt them, with a deep frown and an angry whisper. “At least you two got to enjoy yourselves! I was practically suffocating in the immense mounds of flesh resembling breasts which belong to the duchess. I don't even remember what exactly she’s the duchess of; I just know that she’s important and rich. Why does my life have to be this way?”
“Poor Thorn,” said Para in a teasing voice, rubbing his shoulder in mock consolation. “Your job only consists of going to a big party, and still you complain.”
“When you put it that way, I sound spoiled.”
“Thorn, spoiled? He was only born with a platinum spoon shoved up his ass,” Asher joked, clapping his friend on the back. “You guys enjoy yourselves. I’m going to go grab some refreshments—and maybe check out the snack bar. No point in being here unless I take advantage of the catering.”
* * *
“Vince! You’re never going to believe this.”
“What is it now, woman?”
Rose had returned to the ballroom quickly, and she was out of breath and looking terrified. Despite the fact that her two-hour hairdo was all coming undone, and that her gown had slipped off one shoulder, Rose’s voice was calm as ever.
“Do you remember that syringe we found Medea using in the bathroom?”
“Yes.”
“She accidentally left it here in her rush to leave, and there was a single drop remaining in the container. I sent it to the lab to get it tested.”
“Hm,” he grunted with interest. “She said it was a painkiller. Was it?”
“No.” Rose screwed up her face. “Well, not in the traditional sense. I was trying and trying to identify it for so long until...”
“Get to the point, Rose.”
“The point is—oh, I don’t know how to tell you this—she was injecting herself with… elephant tranquilizer.”
“What?”
“Elephant. Tranquilizer.”
Vincent stared at his wife speechlessly for several minutes.
“It’s called etorphine, or M99, and one drop of it is enough to kill a person,” Rose explained in a rapid whisper. “One drop, Vince. One drop of that liquid would have killed me, or any human being in this room.”
“Meaning what, woman? Was she intending to kill one of us by putting that in our food or catching us unaware?”
“No,” Rose answered softly. “I considered that, that she was an assassin of sorts. I had them test the insides of the syringe, and the needle. They found residue indicating that the syringe had been completely full of that poison, and they also found residue of blood. Vince! That girl injected the whole damned—”
“Lower your voice,” said Vincent, in a quieter tone than she had ever heard him use.
Rose took a deep breath. “She injected the whole syringe filled with etorphine into her bloodstream. Any human, or any creature I know of, would be dead. She’s—she’s not human, is she?”
“No,” Vincent said in a hushed tone. “That much is clear. She can’t possibly be human.”
Rose stared at her husband in fear for a moment, reaching out to touch his hand. “Honey, is she this threat that you were so worried about? What are we going to do?”
He squeezed her hand gently in his, running his thu
mb over her fingers gently. He exhaled. “First of all, we need to evacuate the compound. Pull the fire alarm; get all these innocent people out of here. Second of all, I’m going to gather all the devas, and we’ll confront her. We’ll figure out who or what she is, and what exactly it is that she wants. We’ll do this tonight.”
“Oh! The fire alarm. Must I? But my lovely party. These people paid so much…”
“Rose!”
“Alright, alright, fine,” she said, throwing her hands up. She headed into the building to pull the fire alarm from a secluded location.
When the sirens started roaring loudly enough to make everyone want to flee the building just to save their ears from the deafening ringing, Vincent gazed at the ‘Medea’ girl who was escaping the room hand-in-hand with his son. He spoke in a calm, collected voice, which was drowned out in the frenzied ringing of the fire alarm:
“And third, I’m going to kill that little bitch.”
Chapter 20: A Comfortable Rhythm
“Do you think there’s really a fire?” Para yelled in confusion. She was trying desperately to read minds to lock in on the reason for the disturbance. She frowned when she heard many of her family members wondering if Pax had started the fire—when she was younger, she had been prone to pyrotechnic accidents.
“Of course not,” Thornton yelled back in response. “Even if there was, this building is state of the art and it would be contained in seconds.”
Para raised her hands to her ears, her doubly sensitive deva ears, which were ringing in pain.
“Come on,” said Thornton, taking her by the hand and leading her in the opposite direction from the flow of the crowd. “Let’s go and relax upstairs until this calms down.”
“What?” she asked. Over the earsplitting noise of the fire alarm, and the rowdy, panicked thoughts of everyone around her, Para couldn’t concentrate at all.
Thornton, seeing that she was in distress, put his arms around her and quickly blurred into the air and out of the crowd. He was upstairs in his bedroom in under a second, and no one had been able to see him move.
“You can’t hear it in here,” Para mused, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Nope. My own little moonlit sanctuary,” he joked, moving over to the bed and plopping down on it. The room was not only quiet, but it was also dark—only the dim moonlight from the window streamed in to illuminate the shapes of the furniture.
“That sound was so shrill,” Para complained again, wincing and rubbing her head. She had no idea why her head ached so much—she figured that it must be her telepathy going haywire. She had been on the delivering and receiving end of dozens of deafening explosions in her lifetime, and none had ever given her a headache like this fire alarm.
“You must still be hung over,” Thornton said with sympathy. He stretched out his arms to her. “Here, come lie down with me. I’ll hold you until the headache goes away.”
“What girl could resist an invitation like that?” she asked him with a smile, before launching herself at him. “Oh, boy. It’s difficult to cuddle in this gown,” she immediately noted.
He laughed, and encircled her body with his hands. “I’ll give it a try anyway.”
Para rested her forehead against Thornton’s chest. She closed her eyes and exhaled in bliss. It was the first serene moment she’d had since entering the ballroom. Thousands of thoughts from thousands of people had inundated her and screwed with her telepathy so that she had been unable to focus on the people she truly wanted to hear. She had unconsciously done everything in her power to temporarily turn off the telepathy altogether. It had been challenging as Amara, but even harder as Para whose mind was more sensitive and capable.
Now, all she could think about was how much better it felt to lie here with Thornton than anything else she had done lately. She could have stayed there all night, forever even, but she only had a few more minutes of being whole. It was torture to think that she was never allowed to rest. I suppose that means I’m truly wicked. As she breathed in his scent, she felt a sense of exhilaration; she was exactly where she wanted to be. She was exactly who she wanted to be, and with whom she wished to be. He was still everything to her. She was entirely too weak to enjoy being with him when she was Pax, but as Para, she felt strong enough to love without fear. She didn’t care about getting hurt, because she knew that she could not be hurt. Each half an hour period gave her a new birth; she felt like an unblemished newborn. A badass newborn. She could experience love as though it were fresh.
“Medea,” Thornton said softly against her ear. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
She tried to read his thoughts, but it only caused more pain inside of her head, and she immediately stopped trying. I guess I need to communicate in the old fashioned way until this headache goes. That’s what I get for lying about being hung over! A real headache and broken telepathy!
“What did I say?” she asked, nuzzling against his neck.
“Earlier today, when you were drunk, you said that I was treating you like you were second best in comparison to Pax. I realize now that you were right.”
“Oh, that was just drunken rambling,” she said lightly, running her fingers down the folds of his lapels. She smiled inwardly. It was immensely comforting to know that the only person Thornton would betray her for, this time around, was herself.
“No, you were right,” he said, moving his hand to the back of Para’s neck and gently caressing the skin there. “I realized it tonight during the ball. Pax was here earlier, and we had a dance together. Then she left. She just walked out on me, when I needed her most. She knows that I hate these types of events!”
Para felt guilt tickle her conscience. Yes, she had known that. She had known that very well. Thornton had always been a total wreck before and after company social events, and she had done all in her power to keep him together.
“You hate these types of events?” Para asked him, pretending to be innocent of the fact. “You really seemed to be enjoying yourself.”
“At least I fake it well.” Thornton removed himself from her side and rose to his feet. He walked to the window of his room and stared down at the crowd gathered on the lawn. Everyone was shouting and pointing at the building, still dressed in their finery. There was mass chaos and panic about the fire alarm. He placed his hands on the windowsill and leaned forward slightly. “This is not me. This job is not who I am! Pax is the only one who understood that, the only one who truly knew me. And she just walked out on me. I was all alone for hours in there. Every year, she’s always been beside me.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the ball sooner,” Para said softly. “If I had known you were so miserable I would have tried.”
“You made it here in the end. You’re here with me now. That’s all that matters.”
Para gazed at her brother as he stood despondently by the window. The moonlight illuminating his silhouette made him seem even sadder. She felt compelled to go over to him, and when she stood behind him, she put her arms around his middle and hugged him gently. She rested her cheek on his back, listening to his strong heartbeat. “So who are you, Thorn? You said your job is not who you are. Then tell me who you really are.”
“I am a warrior.”
She closed her eyes and blissfully basked in the simplicity of his answer and how it resonated within her. Of course, she could not tell him just how much and how deeply she understood. She could only listen.
“No one expects this much of the other men,” he said gruffly. “My father can disappear to a distant planet and just practice his techniques for weeks. Raymond and Gordin can abandon their daughters and disappear to the mountains of India. But I’ve got the fucking company. My mom needs me to do this, but I can’t take the pressure anymore. I can’t turn it on and off when necessary. I can’t flip back and forth from human to deva as per request. I need it all the time to feel alive.”
“Then seek it all the time,” she encouraged. “You shouldn�
��t allow others to determine your identity.”
“It’s hard, Medea. I would disappoint so many people, and disown so many responsibilities. I would have to leave everything behind, including you.” Thornton inhaled deeply and exhaled again, and Para felt his diaphragm expanding and contracting under her hands.
“Maybe certain responsibilities are more important than others.”
“That’s what she would have said. I don’t know. I haven’t had a very large circle of friends in my life for this reason. I need to be able to be honest with the people closest to me. So when something goes wrong with one of those few people who I consider family, it hurts like hell. She just walked out on me.”
I’m right here, Thorn. Can’t you feel that it’s me, silly? A small smile came to Para’s lips, and she nestled her cheek against his shoulder blades. “Maybe she had a good reason.”
Thornton turned around very suddenly, and locked eyes with Para. “Medea, do you know where I’ve been all week? I spent three days traveling through a wormhole to get to Titan because Pax and my father were training there, and they’d beat each other half to death.”
“Titan?” Para asked in confusion.
“It’s one of Saturn’s moons. If I hadn’t gotten there when I did, they both would have been dead. I saved her life. And yet she walks out on me.”
That’s an exaggeration! I am sure that we were only on one of Jupiter’s moons. Don’t make it seem like you went so much farther to help me. “I’m sure that if your life was at stake, she wouldn’t have let you burn either,” Para said slowly, upset by the implication. “Maybe Pax just didn’t think that supporting you at the ball was a life or death situation.”
Thornton shook his head. “The truth is that I was not good to Pax. I cheated on her. I cheated on her because of my stupid job. But I tell you what. She abandoned me. She continues to abandon me every time I reach out to her. And that’s got to be just as bad as what I did.” He raised his voice angrily. “I would never abandon someone I love!”
Thirty Minutes to Heartbreak Box Set (Books 1-3) Page 85
