by Gaja J. Kos
But if Aric was so adamant to keep me out of his life, then fine, we could do that, too.
It wasn’t as if that hadn’t been an option from the start.
I reached for the handle, but before I could tug on it and get my ass out of the apartment, a breath of wind shoved against my back.
Aric’s hands fell on my shoulders. I tensed but was no match to his smooth strength as he spun me around, then pinned me hard against the door.
Chapter 8
Aric’s scent overpowered the stale blood, the heat of his body a scorching fire that licked at my already burning skin. Hotter. Fiercer. And when our breaths mingled in the too-intimate slice of space between us, all that hurt, all the fury that had been bubbling through me like an unstable brew, erupted in an outpour that refused to be contained.
“Let go of me,” I snarled, staring up at Aric’s face. “I’m done with your lies. Done.”
My breaths came out hard, and my whole body buzzed, a stark contrast to the statue-stillness of Aric as he kept me caged against the door. But his eyes—they blazed.
Time glitched, and, like in that alley behind Drei Palmen, the sphere made of our energies that ensconced us seemed to detach from the rest of the world.
The charge built up.
As did my pent-up frustration.
As did Aric’s own demons, locked up tight somewhere in the dark for far too long.
The fuse sparked, and there was no stopping it.
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, the words rolled on repeat through my head as my breaths deepened. Aric’s gaze swept down to my lips—
I wasn’t sure who moved first.
But as that charge went off like a supernova, Aric and I surged into each other.
Our mouths and bodies collided with a need that became its own primal force. The ground-shaking magnitude of the detonation only fueled us further. We turned into each other’s centers of gravity, our energies shielding nothing of our inescapable pull toward each other, but mirroring all the depths—even those we might have wanted to keep concealed.
But this hunger, this desire… It refused to let us be anything but our raw, unfiltered selves.
My back hit the door, and Aric ground against me.
The demanding press of his body coaxed a moan from my lips. He stole it away with his tongue and teeth, kissing me so fucking hard I was pretty sure the very foundations of reality were about to unravel. I groaned and wound my fingers through his hair.
Spurred on by my action, Aric brought one hand to my butt, then followed the curve to my thigh, right to the hem of my dress, and yanked me even closer to him. I hooked my leg around him, matching him grind for grind.
Fangs nicked my lips, and that scrape, that edge of roughness wrought of primal lust, set off another detonation.
We clashed as if we were two vortexes granted release after an eternity of oppression.
Aric tore away from my lips and kissed down the side of my throat. My nails dug into his back, his grip on my thigh bruising as he rammed us harder against the door. The steel of his arousal dug between my legs. I flicked my hips, seeking, needing more.
Reclaiming my mouth, Aric slid his hand up the side of my body. When his fingers skimmed the curve of my breast, my breath hitched.
With a husky exhale of a laugh, Aric traced his fingertips along the low neckline of my dress.
Fire roared through my veins.
This was everything I’d been craving. Everything that, in my unwillingness to let it happen, had been clawing me from the inside out, thrashing in protest that only became louder the more I resisted.
I reached for the waist of his black jeans, and Aric exhaled softly into my mouth.
As I traced a finger along the inside, feeling the smattering of dark hair across his smooth skin, my body lit up like a fucking pyre, and I—
I froze.
“Mnnhh.” I jerked my head away, freeing my lips, then disentangled from Aric, who took a step back. “No, no, no. I’m not playing this game with you.”
My breaths were coming out as hard and as labored as Aric’s, and the sight of his fangs punching from beneath his lips nearly made me reconsider what I was about to do.
I lifted a hand like a shield between us. “I want this, Aric. I want you. But until you start being honest with me, I’m out.”
This time, when I reached for the handle, Aric didn’t try to stop me.
I all but ran to the elevator that took way too fucking long to gets its ass back up here, then blasted out of the building like some sort of wraith. When I reached the ramp, my phone started blowing up, but I didn’t dare pull it from my purse. Even if it wasn’t Aric but Finn, bugging me for updates, no one was getting between me and my gin.
Berlin blurred around me as I rushed down its night-blanketed streets.
Holy shit, I’d kissed Aric.
I’d kissed Aric again, and… I shook my head as the memory of his cock digging into me through our clothes hijacked my mind.
I did the right thing walking away.
Right?
Cursing, I pushed my pace to punishing levels. This didn’t just call for gin. I needed an expert.
By the time I arrived at Kerstin’s place, I was a wound-up bundle of regret, excitement, and anger. Kerstin opened the door, thankfully still awake despite the late hour, although judging by the post-mask glow of their skin and their ginger hair neatly rolled around soft curlers protected by a silk scarf, I’d been cutting it close.
They took one look at my sorry form, blinked, and ushered me in. Without a single word, they grabbed a bottle of gin and two glasses, then led the way into the living room.
It was only when they handed me my drink and we curled up on the cozy couch, each in our own corner, that they said, “Spill.”
“I saw Aric.” I guzzled down the gin, then grabbed the bottle off the club table and poured myself some more. “I went to the Drei Palmen show. Didn’t mean to, but Finn basically shoved the ticket in my face and told me I was being immature.”
Kerstin’s silence could only mean they agreed with the warlock. Wait until you hear the rest of it.
“I had no intention of going anywhere near Aric.” I twisted the glass in my hand, watching the gin slosh toward the rim. “But he caught up with me afterwards.”
Kerstin sipped her drink while I downed my entire glass. They reached for the bottle and refilled my messy ass.
“Did you talk?” They capped the bottle but stashed it against the backrest of the couch between us instead of the table.
Wise move.
I’d need the extra spirit given how my internal one was currently fucked. The more accessible, the better.
I sucked on a tooth, then said, “We talked. No, we didn’t. Not really. We got into a fucking fight, then we kissed.”
Maybe it was just the agent in me talking, but it didn’t feel right to share the whole message written in blood ordeal with Kerstin. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them, it just wasn’t my shit to tell.
I swallowed another mouthful, hardly feeling the burn of the booze. “He’s playing me, Kerstin. I know he is.”
“You sure you aren’t spinning theories in your head because you’re trying to protect yourself?”
Though the question came out leveled, there was a drawling undertone to their voice.
Could I be—
I shook my head. No, the only thing I was protecting myself from was blundering carelessly into a mess that would leave me broken.
“Aric’s being a cagey-ass vamp, Kerst. I mean, I told him that unless he started telling me the truth, we were done. And you know what?” I lifted my glass with enough of a jerk that I damn near spilled the gin. “We’re done.”
Kerstin snorted. “As if that could ever be so easy between the two of you.”
I groaned and sank into the nook between the back and armrest, drawing my feet up, and drank some more.
“See, you know I’m right.” Kerstin poked my
knee. “I can tell something else is going on, and you don’t have to say what, if you don’t want to. But even without the deets, Gina, this isn’t where it ends.”
“Gods, he’s just… He’s so godsdamned hot he drives me out of my mind, you know?” I raised my glass, but the gin was already gone.
When had that happened?
Wordlessly, Kerstin filled me up.
“Like”—I sipped—“sometimes I can’t even conceive how someone like him can exist. Every line of his face, his energy, the way he moves, speaks, laughs… I can’t think straight around him.”
“Straight is overrated.” Kerstin saluted me and winked.
I tumbled out a laugh. “The bottom line is that I know better than to get involved with someone who’s hiding shit, but it’s so fucking hard to stay away. Maybe if Finn hadn’t slapped me with that ticket…”
“You’d just find another way to torture yourself,” Kerstin said simply, and the truth of their words made me drink some more. “Gina, you’ve had the hots for Aric for too many years to get over him just because you decide to.”
I drew my legs into a shabby lotus position and straightened, the room swaying. “I wish I’d kept my crush firmly in the fantasy realm.”
“Do you really? Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me you regret knowing what it’s like to kiss Aric Sutter?”
And feel the hardness of him through his jeans.
“Oh my gods, what?” Kerstin slapped my arm.
Shit, had I said that out loud?
“You said you kissed him, not—”
“We didn’t have sex.” Tiny droplets of gin sprinkled my skin when I raised my hands in surrender. “Things just got…a little heated, that’s all.”
“Mm-hmm”—they arched an eyebrow so high I felt its calling out power drill into my very soul—“dry humping heated. Gina, damn! Go on, say that you regret any of it.”
I grumbled, “Fine, fine. I’m just…fucked.”
I thought I heard them say “almost fucked,” but when I looked up from my gin, there was nothing on Kerstin’s face to confirm that hunch. They tucked themselves against the backrest, and their eyes softened.
“Aric will come around,” they said. “If he’s wanted you for basically as long as you’ve wanted him, he could be messed up about everything too.”
The wave of their hand at my bedraggled state definitely delivered the emphasis.
They set their gin aside, then pried mine from my fingers and took my hands in theirs.
“Gina, you have a front-row ride to how it is when the things you believed were daydreams, when the feelings you tried to pretend weren’t as strong as they were, suddenly manifest with the ferocity of years upon years of new moon wishes. I don’t think there’s just a good chance Aric’s going through the same. He’s confessed how he struggled with his attraction to you, yeah? With you being a fan and him not wanting to make a move because of the power dynamics? With him not even being sure you really were into him like that?”
Damn, Kerstin really decided to lay it on thick.
Worst yet, all I could do was grumpily agree even when it was the last thing my gin-addled brain wanted to do.
“Plus,” they went on, “I get the feeling that the core of your issue is something else entirely.”
“Oh, really?” I asked dryly, but Kerstin wasn’t deterred.
They softened somewhat—without slipping into pity territory, which I was grateful for.
“Self-worth, Gina. I think your issue is self-worth.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I scoffed.
My self-worth was just fine. I reached for the gin, but Kerstin caught my hand before I could get my dose.
“You know I love you, right?” they said. “But, Gina, when it comes to Aric, a whole other part of you comes up. A part that I’m not used to seeing. You’re a fucking badass werewolf agent who pulled through a fuckload of shit in her life. A person I admire because she knows who she is and isn’t afraid to show it.”
A tingle of a blush warmed my cheeks, but knowing the true point of Kerstin’s speech was yet to come, the sensation faded.
“And you’re trying to tell me that I lose myself around Aric?” This time, when I reached for the gin, Kerstin didn’t stop me.
“Maybe not yourself, but your worth, definitely.”
When I stared at them, frowning, Kerstin added, “You keep perceiving your entire relationship with Aric as this power dynamic. Now, don’t get me wrong, consensual power dynamics can be hot as fuck, but this, you thinking of yourself as lesser… That’s just messed up, Gina.”
A part of me wanted to rip free and argue. The other went still under the weight of Kerstin’s words seeping in.
They reached for my gin-free hand and interlaced our fingers. “You’re deserving of Aric’s love, Gina. You really fucking are. And just…humor me and try to approach your relationship with that mindset, will you? See if it clears things up?”
It was obvious they believed the answer to that would be a resounding yes, and maybe my intuition agreed. Maybe it whispered that all my overthinking, my volatile moods and emotions—all of it stemmed from knowing what I desired, yet at the same time believing I was fucking unworthy of any of it.
But there was one piece of this whole story Kerstin hadn’t touched on.
“Doesn’t change the fact that he’s keeping things from me,” I pointed out.
They released my hand and reached for their glass with cool elegance. “As if you already told him everything there is to know about yourself.”
“Hey, not fair. If he’d asked—”
“Gina…” The gentle weight in Kerstin’s eyes stopped me short. “You know some subjects are harder to talk about than others.”
I sucked on the inside of my cheek. “Yeah. But no one’s writing threats in blood on my apartment floor.”
Kerstin didn’t latch on to the info my loose fucking tongue had just spilled.
Instead, they said, “Tell me about the concert.”
Reluctantly at first, I dove into recapping the night. The longer the narrative went on, though, the more my soul seemed to overpower my brain. I found myself hashing out the details and gushing over all the good stuff as if I’d never shook open the crevice between myself and what had once been. The gin flowed, my excitement right along with it, and when the bottle was dry—or was it the second one already?—Kerstin called me a cab to get my boozed-up ass home.
Cologne assaulted my senses to the point of frying them when I climbed into the taxi, but the chat with Kerstin had left me in a good mood, so I ignored the stench worming its way into what felt like my very brain and watched Berlin roll by instead. Halfway to my apartment, when a welcome calm started to take shape beneath the tipsiness, I dug my phone from my purse.
Dead.
I stifled a laugh. Maybe it was a sign from the godsdamned universe not to communicate with anyone until I got a good night’s sleep. I stashed the phone back in my purse, snatched the keys, then paid the driver once he pulled in front of my building.
His cologne continued to adhere to me like a cloud not even the now somewhat more brisk night could dispel. I wrinkled my nose. A shower was definitely in order before I crashed.
I let myself into the building, then took two stairs at a time up to my floor. The overhead lights flicked on. I rounded the corner to my apartment, keys jangling—
I froze.
The door was shut, but a marginally larger crack ran along its length, as if it didn’t quite fit…
My fingers tightened around the keys.
Someone had broken in.
Chapter 9
Shoving away the remnants of the gin haze, I approached the door. The damn taxi driver’s cologne continued to cling to my nostrils, and no matter how hard I tried, my senses failed to push through the fog.
Or at least I thought they did, because that scent I was picking up on…
It couldn’t be.
But it was the scent I didn’t trust—the impossibility of it that slashed a stark contrast to what my less and less fried nose was picking up on.
There was just one way to get to the truth, and it wasn’t by standing on the threshold.
Adjusting my grip on the keys I’d been holding in my free hand, I eased my way inside.
The white noise of a running shower hit my ears, but other than that, nothing stirred in the shadows of my apartment, touched faintly by the light radiating from a single lamp I’d left on by the record player. Not a single thing inside looked disturbed, though with that scent now so clear I couldn’t delude myself into thinking it was some kind of illusion, I knew this wasn’t just some regular B&E.
I almost wished it were.
Bracing myself, I tiptoed across the living room and into the bedroom.
Cold whisked over my exposed skin, and the glacial wisps only intensified as I approached the not entirely closed bathroom door. I pressed it in with the pads of my fingers.
A fully clothed figure slumped under the shower’s spray, and even presented with all the evidence, my mind resisted to accept the irrefutable reality. The hairs on my arms rose. From the glacial air, from the sight, I didn’t know. But the chill seemed to slice down to my very bones.
“Dominik?” I whispered.
My brother raised his head, shivering, the cold water streaming down his face. “I can feel it.”
As if his words snapped something inside me, I rushed forward and knelt by the cabin. My brother’s teeth chattered, and he was shuddering so badly he was beginning to blur a bit. Though there was a fair chance that was the echoes of the gin talking.
Cautiously, I reached past him and turned off the icy water.
Dominik moaned, and I touched a hand to his shoulder. “What do you feel, Dominik?”
