Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel

by Davenport, Nia

  “Look who’s talking,” she smirked at me. “Molest watermelons much?”

  I swallowed the fruit and stuck my tongue out at her. “Did you go out with Jaron again?”

  “Eww no,” she said wrinkling her nose. “He is so last week. I’m on to bigger and better things. Like the fine track guy I told you about.” She paused to fan herself. “Alex, I’m telling you, you missed out. I’m pretty sure I’ve never come so hard in my life.” She gave me a knowing look then smiled a little too widely. “Well, maybe you didn’t. Your new partner is twice as hot and it’s impossible to have a body like his and not know what to do with it in bed.”

  I groaned out loud. “I’m not going there with you today.”

  “That’s fine. Because you will be going there with him tonight. I want details, chick. All of them.”

  I thought about launching a piece of fruit at her face. I bet that’d wipe the smirk right off of it. I folded my arms over my chest instead. “There will be no details to give because nothing is going to happen. I hate to burst your bubble, chick, but be prepared to make early morning coffee runs every day for a month.”

  “We’ll see. Just so you know, I’ve already stopped washing. I have enough clean clothes to last me until you take over my laundry. I normally wash my clothes on the gentle cycle and dry them with low heat. Underwear go in the top dresser drawer, t-shirts in the second one, and shorts and tank tops in the third. I’d advise you not to venture into the bottom one unless you want to be permanently scarred for life. It’s where I keep all my personal toys. Everything that looks businessy, dressy, or clubish, you can hang in the closet.”

  I finished off my last muffin and the rest of the fruit lingering around my plate. “I love how you’re so confident that you’re going to win. It’s going to be funny when you don’t.”

  “No, what’s going to be funny is when you lose. Although I won’t feel too bad about you doing my laundry. It’s going to be a sweet win for me but an even sweeter loss for your ass.”

  I rolled my eyes at what that implied. “I’m assuming that garment bag I saw hanging in my closet this morning contains that ridiculously expensive dress my grandmother said she’d have sent over.”

  “Yup. And the plain black box below it contains a pair of red bottoms that match it.”

  I hopped off the counter and rinsed my plate before placing it in the dishwasher. “I’m morphing into a hermit crab and locking myself inside my room for the rest of the day. I have an O-Chem test on Thursday that I need to study for. I barely made a C with the curve on the last one, so I need at least a B on this one and all future ones.”

  “Alrighty,” Whitney said picking up the remote from the coffee table in front of her. She flipped from one movie channel to another. “I honestly don’t even known why you’re bothering with a Pre-Med course load. You’re already loaded, and even without your trust fund The Society pays you more than generously. And since you’re obviously not planning on not being an active member of The Society anytime soon, I just don’t see how you are going to find time to hunt daemons and go to med school.”

  “My dad did it,” I said more defensively than I meant to. In her own way, she was just being concerned for me.

  “Still, it’s a lot for you to take on. Even now as an undergrad. If I were you, I’d switch to an easier major like Communications, or English, or hell even Political Science would be easier than Pre-Med. Your life is stressful enough as it is.”

  I didn’t offer a verbal response to her assessment. I turned off the kitchen light then crossed the space from it to my bedroom. “I’ll be in my room if you need me,” was what I said instead.

  I pulled my textbook and spiral notebook with my notes from class out of my book bag and lay across my bed with them both. Instead of cracking them open right away, I stared at their closed covers for a moment, thinking about what Whitney said. She was right. Some people chose to be Pre-Med for the same reason others chose to become lawyers or engineers or business professionals. They were careers that came with a guaranteed high figure salary. Even if I didn’t have a trust fund worth millions that I could cash in the day I graduated from college and never have to work a day in my life, the stipend provided to active members by The Society was more than enough to live more than comfortably on.

  But for me, as I suspected was the case with my father, my chosen major was about more than money. Yes it would be hard and I was placing unrealistic demands on myself and would be spread thin between med school and patrolling, but it was still something I had to do. People had died because of me. Despite my power to heal, I’d been completely helpless to save Deacon and Danielle. I’d been in as much agony as they no doubt had been— beaten, ripped into like a piece of meat, then discarded like scraps leftover from a meal. But by some stupid twist of fate I’d been left alive and they hadn’t. Again. Just like with my parents. I’d been powerless to save them too. If I was alive and they weren’t, if people had been irrevocably harmed because of my actions, then the least I could do to atone for my mistakes was to spend the remainder of the life I had to live but they didn’t, healing other people and helping them to live.

  I reasoned that if I made it through the hells of undergrad and med school that once I started practicing I would be okay. I could go into general medicine and open a practice of my own where I sat my own hours. I could easily fit working as a doctor during the day and patrolling at night into my daily schedule then. What it boiled down to was me just needing to buckle down and manage my time better until then. I’d gotten a C on my last test because honestly, I kept finding other things to do when I should have been studying. I had a teensy problem with procrastinating when it came to the monotonous task.

  My self-pep talk turned mope session turned self-pep talk helped me clear my head enough to semi-focus and get down to the half-hearted business of what I’d come into my room to do. I pulled a highlighter and stack of index cards out of the nightstand drawer beside my bed. Then I opened both my textbook and the notebook that lay beside it.

  Two hours into making then reviewing flashcards over the functional groups in organic compounds and the reactions they can undergo, I found myself dozing off on my bed.

  “Alex, there’s Chinese in the living room if you’re hungry.”

  I woke up to Whitney’s voice along with the delicious smell of fried rice and pepper steak floating into the room. Yum.

  I sat up on my bed, stretching my arms above my head as I did so. “What time is it?” I yawned.

  “Almost three.”

  Good I didn’t sleep for too long. I had enough time until my grandmother’s charity ball to eat, study a bit more, then shower and get dressed.

  ******

  A knock sounded at my apartment door and I still wasn’t ready.

  “Shit,” I cursed under my breath. My makeup was done but I couldn’t figure out what to do with my hair. It hung freshly washed, blow dried, flat-ironed, and limp around my shoulders. I hated my hair. It refused to hold a curl or even a kink. Trying to curl it with an iron would be pointless, the curls would fall in two seconds flat.

  “It’s not Chase!” Whitney yelled from the living room. “But it’s six forty-five so he should be here any minute. Hurry up and get your butt out here. What’s taking you so long to get dressed? Usually I’m the one lagging behind primping in the mirror and you’re waiting on me.”

  “I’m coming!” I yelled back through the partially closed door. “It’s my hair. I don’t know what to do with it.”

  “Since when do you care about your hair? Just throw it into a pony tail or pull it up into a bun like you usually do for these things. Your grandmother is used to it by now.”

  She was right. Why did I care indeed? I never do. My appearance at my grandmother’s social events was normally the least of my concerns. I didn’t even want to be at them. Why would I bother getting all dolled up?

  I grabbed a brown hair tie off of my sink and gathered my hair into a so
mewhat messy ponytail, using the hair tie to hold it in place.

  My door bedroom door creaked open and Whitney walked to stand beside me. “Here, let me,” she said as she tugged the hair tie off.

  She picked up the still warm flatiron lying on the sink’s countertop. She’d put a couple of spiral curls into the top layer of my hair when another knock sounded at the door again. For some reason, the second knock made my heart speed up even faster than the first.

  “Kellen, grab the door for us!” Whitney called into the living room.

  She put a few more spirals into my hair then stepped back to admire her work. “Perfect.”

  I looked at myself in the mirror and had to agree. She’d managed to make my lifeless hair spring to life with a handful of well placed curls. The top layer was in spirals while the bottom layer remained bone-straight beneath them. It gave my hair a pretty voluminous effect. “It’s…nice,” I said still looking at my reflection.”But it won’t last.”

  “Oh it will last. I got skills.” Whitney grinned at me in the mirror. “What would you do without me? You’re welcome by the way. No need to thank me though. You’ll more than repay me for my services when you wash my dirty clothes for a month.” Her grin grew wicked. “I’ll go entertain our dates while you put on your dress. Hurry up. The faster Chase sees it on you the faster he can take it off.”

  A couple of minutes later I stuck my head out of my bedroom door. “Whitney,” I said before even looking around to see that she was not there. “Oh…hi,” I greeted Chase. My words came out about ten types of awkward.

  Sapphire eyes met mine. “Hey.” Dimples flashed at me as he spoke. “The car arrived a minute ago so they went downstairs ahead of us.”

  Of course it did, I muttered to myself in my head. My damn roommate was setting me up again. Only, I really did need her. The zipper on my dress was stuck and I couldn’t reach around my back to get it all the way up. I felt my face heating up before the words I were about to say were even out of my mouth. “Would you mind helping me with my zipper?”

  Chase’s answering smile was roguish. “I suppose I could be troubled to do so.”

  I pushed my door open wider and turned presenting my back to him. The dress was strapless so I had to hold it up in the front until it was zipped, unless I wanted to flash him my top half. His fingers brushed the bare skin along my lower spine sending tingles racing up it. He pulled up on the zipper and his hand came to a stop in the middle of my back. It lingered against my bare skin for a second, the spot beneath his touch warming on contact.

  “Thank you,” I said suddenly feeling a little out of breath.

  I turned to face him and met eyes that blazed with the heat of a blue flame. I swallowed hard then shouldered passed him. “Are you ready to go?”

  He held his arms out in a sweeping gesture. “Lead the way.”

  A long, sleek black limousine idled on the curb outside of my apartment building. I shook my head as the driver held the door open for me and Chase. Of course the car my grandmother sent would be a limo instead of a much more practical town car.

  “I bet you’re loving this,” I said to Whitney who was seated across from me beside her date.

  “You know I am. Are you yet?” Her eyes indecently roved over Chase as she spoke.

  She unabashedly and very overtly visually molested him in the back of the limo. I couldn’t blame her for it though. He looked good in jeans and cotton tees, but the relaxed look also afforded him an air of lightness, of casualness. In the serious black, slim-fitted, tuxedo he was downright gorgeous, but he also emanated a dark, possibly cruel beauty that I’d neglected to notice before. It screamed raw masculine power that would cut you down just as easily as it would swallow you whole. He looked like dangerous temptation at its worst and was all the more sexy for it.

  I wonder if he fucks as powerfully as he moves. Whitney’s previous words floated through my head. With them came an image that made my stomach coil tightly about itself. A warming sensation flooded my core and I bit down hard enough on my tongue to draw blood in response. I inwardly winced at the pain, but it had done its job. My senses focused on the throbbing pain at the tip of my tongue, effectively cutting off an ache at its head that had started to blossom elsewhere.

  “Do I ever enjoy myself at my grandmother’s events?” It was a rhetorical question. One that essentially ignored the question behind the question Whitney had asked.

  The ride from our apartment near Emory to the Fox Theatre in Midtown was a short one. We arrived less than fifteen minutes after we’d left the apartment. The driver pulled up to the curb in front of the historic theatre. He opened the door for us and we stepped out onto the red carpet.

  Obviously my grandmother’s pretentiousness knew no bounds.

  Chase offered me his arm and I all but blanched when he did. I was still grappling with the absurdity of him accompanying me this evening.

  A photographer waited for us near the theatre’s entrance. We paused and I stood rigidly while he snapped several pictures.

  A burly, security looking type in a suit stood erect outside the entrance’s closed doors. A thin white wire hung from his ear and he held a tablet in his hand.

  “Name,” he half requested, half demanded without looking up from the tablet.

  “Alex Sinclair plus three.”

  He touched the tablet’s screen and typed in what I assumed to be my name. He looked up at our group pasting the type of smile on his face that people who knew they were hired help and were well aware of who wrote their checks bestowed on the people who did the writing.

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes.

  “Have a good evening Miss Sinclair,” he said too cordially as he opened the door for us.

  As much as I did not want to be at the Fox that evening, I had to admit that its Egyptian ballroom was beautiful. Its lavish decorations complete with sweeping columns and ornamentations that paid homage to its name were breathtaking to behold. As much as I hated attending the events my grandmother held in the ballroom that was a favorite of hers, I always enjoyed looking at its interior design architecture while I was there.

  “Alexandria. Whitney.” My grandmother spotted me the minute I entered. Knowing her she’d instructed the security guy at the door to have her alerted the second I arrived. I swear the woman was like a shark scenting blood.

  I winced at her use of my full name. “Grandmother,” I greeted her with a sugary sweet smile returning the favor.

  She eyed Chase and Whitney’s date. The scrutinizing look on her face communicating that she was unimpressed. “You both brought guests,” her tone was as condescending as her facial expression.

  My smile widened. Maybe Whitney inviting Chase along wasn’t such a bad idea after all. My grandmother clearly disapproved of him as my escort and anything that annoyed the hell out of her was whipped cream with a cherry on top for me.

  “It is nice to meet you Mrs. Sinclair. My name is Chase Vincent. I work with Alexandria. Thank you for the invitation.” Chase gallantly introduced himself making every attempt to be charming.

  It was wasted effort. My grandmother couldn’t be charmed by anything but status and money.

  She pursed her lips into a thin line, then curtly nodded her head. “Technically, I did not invite you. Alexandria did…”

  “Where is Granddad?” I cut her off before she could really get started.

  “He was called away unexpectedly on business. He is in New York until next week.”

  Great. So he got out of this but I couldn’t.

  My grandmother’s attention diverted to the ballroom’s entrance. “The Monahans have arrived and I saw Richard and Celeste walk in a little while ago. Come Alexandria. Let us greet our guests.”

  You mean your guests, I wanted to mutter but I held my tongue in mixed company.

  “After you Grandmother,” I said instead.

  Before turning away dismissively from my guests she deemed to inform them that there were cock
tails and hors d’oeuvres and the table with the number one marker was reserved for us. Her tone portrayed the picture of southern hospitality.

  Twenty minutes later I joined Whitney, Chase and her date at our table which was blessedly by the bar. After nearly half an hour of rubbing elbows alongside my grandmother with Atlanta’s finest I needed a drink.

  I covetously eyed the crystal glasses already at the table. “Looks like y’all got the party started without me.”

  “We did. But we also got you one too,” Whitney grinned at me. She pushed a half full glass in front of the empty seat beside Chase.

  “Have fun?” He said giving me a knowing smirk as he stood and pulled the chair out for me.

  I sat down. “Yeah, about as much fun as having a root canal.”

  Whitney rolled her eyes at me. “I just saw you talking to the Mayor, the owner of the Falcons, the Governor, and several movie stars. Some people have all the luck and don’t even appreciate it.”

  “Well next time feel free to be paraded around in my place.” My fruity cocktail drink tasted good going down but after the last twenty minutes I’d spent at my grandmother’s side I would have preferred to be knocking back a shot of tequila. I eyed the open bar, briefly toying with the idea of doing so then dismissed it. My grandmother would blow a gasket and while I lived to irk her, I had enough manners to do it in private and not in public.

  The live musicians playing on stage changed the tempo of their tunes from boring elevator music to something a bit more lively and better fit for dancing.

  “Kellen,” Whitney turned to her date with a smile that meant she was up to no good. “I want to dance. Come on.” She stood up pulling him with her. “You guys should join us.”

  “N—“ I started to use any excuse I could come up with on the fly, but Chase beat me to it.

  “Sure thing.” He stood up and offered me his hand.

  I didn’t miss the conspiring look he and Whitney exchanged.