I don’t remember moving them, but my hands circled around him and clutched at his back. I soundlessly moaned into his mouth and when I did so both of his hands moved to cup my exposed cheeks. He kissed me a moment longer then let go and stepped back.
He sighed like a big, lazy cat contented at the moment but looking still slightly starved yet wanting to save and savor his caught prey. Because let’s be honest, if we were playing cat-and-mouse, we both knew which one of us was the cat and which one of us was the mouse. Even now, a low thrum of strong, masculine power quietly hummed about him.
“That,” he spoke low and hotly, “is only a fraction of what I wanted to do last night. But like I said, I would have been an ass for doing it. I’m trying to be decent, but that has never been one of my finer qualities. I’ll see you later and you can either choose to forget last night and this moment or not. I’ll go along with whatever decision you make.” He stepped in close to me again but this time he didn’t kiss me like he did before. He took my face gingerly between his hands and sweetly kissed my forehead. Then he pulled back and left without looking back.
I closed the door and leaned against it, needing a moment to catch my breath. I shivered and told myself it was just because of the early morning temperatures creating a cool draft in my apartment from the door standing open. I felt goosebumps break out along my exposed thighs and only then did it sink in that I’d just eaten breakfast with Chase and made out with him in the doorway of my apartment in nothing but a burnout Victoria’s Secret sleep tee and panties. I wasn’t too intoxicated to blush now and if I’d looked in a mirror my face would have appeared beet red.
I walked back to my bedroom and into the en suite bath. I turned the water to near scolding and got in the shower. A good, warm, shower was what I needed to calm my nerves, work the tension out of my muscles, and clear my head. I needed to study and doing so in my current mental state would be impossible. The hot water did what I wanted it to do. It relaxed my mind and washed away some of the tension in my body.
After I’d bathed myself and was rinsing off, I found my mind drifting to a Nephilim with eyes so blue they looked like sapphires and a charmingly wicked smile complete with dimples that would melt the panties right off of any girl. I thought about the kiss in my doorway and what I’d felt against my belly. I thought about the brief but intimate way he’d touched me and my body yearned for more. My hand moved of its own volition and started tracing the same path his had. It went from my hair to my neck and down the swell of my breast. It detoured to do what my hardened nipples had wanted to feel him doing. Rubbing them, teasing them, kneading them. I moaned into the steam. My hand continued on its path down my side, down my thighs and then it detoured again. It moved in between my legs to cup a far different place than my butt. My hand faltered out of sheepishness as what it was about to do. But the well inside of me was at its tipping point. It was filled to the brink and the liquid needed somewhere to go. I imagined my fingers were his and a shade of sapphire that I hadn’t seen exist anywhere else on Earth filled my vision. I inhaled a sharp breath then slowly exhaled. I inhaled sharply again then exhaled on a moan the second time. My thighs squeezed together, seeking to increase the friction against the space between them. The action sent a jolt of sensation to the sensitive bud encased within them and it was all I needed to send me over the edge. I moaned again and the release that rocked through me made the rest of the tension fade away.
When I got out of the shower I meant to change into sweats and a tank top. I meant to lay across my bed and study the flashcards I’d made. Instead, the plush towel I wrapped myself up in never left from around me. I laid across my bed, but I never reached to grab the flashcards. My eyes closed and I drifted back to sleep replaying the last words Chase said to me before leaving. You can either choose to forget last night and this moment or not. I’ll go along with whatever decision you make.
I slept the rest of the day. It was one of the reasons that when I drank, I was usually careful not to do so to the extent that I ended up puking out my guts in a toilet. The next day all I wanted to do was sleep and recuperate.
I woke up thinking about the same words I’d gone to sleep thinking about. I glanced at the digital clock on my nightstand. It read 5:00 p.m. I needed to meet Chase in Centennial Park in three hours.
You can either choose to forget last night and this moment or not. I’ll go along with whatever decision you make.
He’d left the choice to explore whatever was budding between us, be it lust or something else, up to me. The rational part of me and the emotional part of me were at odds.
First, I didn’t know him. Not well anyway. He’d appeared suddenly in my life five nights ago in Five Points after a Brethren had tried to drain the life out of me. He claimed to have transferred to Atlanta from Orlando to deal with an influx of Brethren in the city, and he was also supposed to be a part of some special sect of Nephilim specifically handpicked as special by the Archangel Michael himself to track down and kill them. Regardless of what he claimed, he was still a complete mystery to me.
Which brought me to my second reservation, the last time a guy suddenly appeared in my life I got involved with him things ended badly. Really badly. The twins had ended up dead because of my naivety.
I had not trusted anybody since…a name I forbade myself to even think crept into my mind, breaking out of the cell, within the mountain, beneath the ocean I kept it locked away in. Darius. Bile rose in my throat as fury blazed in my skull and pain lanced through my chest. I took a deep calming breath then forced the name and the memories that came with it back into their cell. I slammed the door shut on them both.
That was all I needed to come to a decision. Last night and the moment in my doorway was already forgotten. When I met up with Chase in a few hours I would tell him the same thing I’d said at the Fox after our kiss. We would forget about it and act from that point forward as if nothing ever happened.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Brutal Reminders
Focusing long enough to get any amount of meaningful studying done proved to be beyond impossible. After a full hour of unproductiveness I gave up. I changed into a pair of black tactical pants, a fitted black t-shirt and a lightweight black leather jacket. I pulled on a pair of black boots and left the house. Clearly, I was in an all black sort of mood.
Instead of taking the train or getting an Uber like I normally would have, I made my way down to the parking garage beneath my building. I straddled my silver Streetfigter and smiled when I felt her come to life beneath me. I eased her out of the garage and onto Rock Springs Road. When the light changed at the intersection of Briarcliff I revved her engine and sped off down the stretch of street, weaving in and out of the cars that were in my way.
Testing the limits of the Ducati’s odometer was one sure fire way to lighten my mood. There was something about racing against the wind and feeling it beat against my face that made certain synapses in my brain stop firing, bringing all conscious thought to a standstill. I drove without a destination for a good hour then headed in the direction of headquarters.
I went straight to the training room on the basement level when I arrived. The room was more packed than usual, and almost every one of its rings and mats were in use. I tried not to see Chase when I passed a mat he kickboxed with Tyler on. I did not notice his blue eyes glancing in my direction and I didn’t notice that he was shirtless either.
I stopped next to a ring where two girls, one from my training class and one from a training class a couple of years before mine, were sparring in. The older girl was Tara. She used a roundhouse kick to knock the girl from my training class, Nicole, on her ass. She did not immediately get back up. She tapped out on the mat then stood and limped from the ring. I could only surmise it was her night off. Otherwise, it was suicide to take a beating like that before going out on patrol.
Tara stood in the ring looking around for a new opponent.
I tightened the band tied aroun
d my hair and slid my leather jacket off, dropping it on the floor. “I’ll take next” I said grabbing the ropes and jumping into the ring.
She smirked at me in response. “You sure you want to get your ass kicked Alex? I might mess up that pretty face and then those photos that get splashed across page six won’t look so flattering.”
Tara routinely gave me shit for what my last name was and who my grandparents were. The twins used to tell me to ignore her and that she was just jealous. I usually did, but today I was spoiling for a fight.
“How about you let me worry about my own face.”
She responded by coming at me with the move I’d just seen her finish with. Her right leg shot out in a powerful roundhouse kick that would have taken a grown man down. I ducked beneath it and came up swinging with a strong uppercut to her stomach. She exhaled loudly and doubled over. I saw it for what it was, a fake out, a few seconds too late. I spun away from her left hook so it didn’t hit me square in the eye, which she aimed for, but it did catch me in the temple. Ringing bounced back and forth between both of my ears as my vision blurred from the water the blow produced in my eyes. I blinked three times in rapid succession and shook my head, like doing so would rid it of the ringing noise. It helped a little but not much. She moved in with a right hook to accomplish what she’d failed to do before.
Oh hell no, I thought. She would not land another blow to my head. I brought my left arm up blocking the punch, and allowing my forearm to take the brunt of the blow. I swiped out with my right foot and took hers from underneath her. She went down hard on the mat and I dropped to the mat with her. I should have put her in a submission hold and forced her to tap out. But the bitch had aimed for my fucking face. If her fist had connected with my eye it would have left it black and swollen and nasty-looking for who knows how long. My temple throbbed and the ringing in my ears had yet to fade and it was beginning to make my head feel like it was on the verge of splitting open. Saying I was pissed would be an understatement.
Which is why I did what I did next even though I knew it was twelve different kinds of taboo. My frayed nerves made me cross a line I wouldn’t normally cross.
I pinned her down with one arm as I gripped the throwing knife inside my boot. I pulled it free then pressed it to her throat.
“Seems to me like you should be worried less about my pretty face and more about your delicate throat,” I spat down at her.
I didn’t drag the knife across it even though visions of doing so sinisterly whispered inside my head.
It was like on T.V. when you have a little white angel on one shoulder and a little red devil on the other. Luckily for her, I considered myself a decent person and listened to what the angel would have said instead of the devil. Although after my encounter with the Archangel Michael the other night if there really was an angel and a devil on my shoulder then the angel might have counseled me to slit her throat too.
I pressed it’s edge into her throat just enough to make her wince and to draw a small drop of blood. “Yield.”
She glared up at me with death in her eyes and I knew I’d have to watch my back with her from that moment on, fellow Nephilim or not. “Yield,” she hissed.
I rocked back on my heels, moving the knife away from her throat, but still palming it in warning.
“What in the actual fuck is going on!” Bennett’s voice thundered through the room right before he climbed into the ring. “Tara, go find somebody to heal you.” He waited until he came close enough to me for our noses to touch if he wasn’t towering over me before shouting directly at me. “Alex, have you lost your goddamn mind!”
“Maybe! The bitch aimed for my face!” I snapped at him. I didn’t know why I did it. I knew I was the one in the wrong but something dark and out of control and still spoiling for a fight was bubbling up and out of me.
His eyes flashed dangerously and then he took a couple of steps back from me. He walked to the edge of the ring and removed the button down dress shirt he wore, draping it over the top rope. He unsheated a viciously curved blade hooked to the belt at his waist. “You’re in a mood today and want to blow off some steam. Fine. Let’s go. Keep your knife or pick another. I promise you it won’t matter what weapon you choose in the end.”
I swallowed hard. Oh shit. Bennett was really pissed at me. The times that he were came few and far between but when I made him flip his shit, it was always ugly. It was his one failing or maybe his greatest strength as both a parent and a leader depending on how you looked at it. When you pissed him off, he taught you a lesson that ended with you learning the error of your ways swiftly and brutally.
I was scared shitless even though the rational part of me knew he wouldn’t actually hurt me. The darkness reared up in me again at the challenge. It twisted the anger radiating off of him into malice and it growled an answering response within me.
I threw the throwing knife down on the mat and brandished the twin Kerashis, deadly serrated daggers made especially for throwing and slicing into things, that I always kept at my sides. They were capable of doing as much damage as his curved blade was. I would know. I’d personally been on the receiving end of one before.
When he stalked towards me with it, I didn’t see his hand holding it or his face behind it. I saw a different predator altogether holding it. Raw fury spilled out of me and I launched one of my daggers at him, intent on not letting him get too close. He raised the curve blade and used it to deflect the knife with ease. He took two more steps towards me and I panicked. My lungs felt like they were filling with water and I threw the second knife. That one was deflected just as the first one was and he kept coming. My knife was on the floor. I didn’t have time to bend down and pick it up. I’d thrown away my other weapons capable of doing the greatest amount of damage and holding up against the curved blade in blind panic entwined with rage.
“Fuck you,” I hissed so low and under my breath that I’m not sure anyone besides me and Bennett heard it.
A look of surprise then hurt colored his face then understanding. I saw regret and sympathy flash over it but it only lasted less than a millisecond. He shut his emotions off and looked at me with a face that had turned to stone. Even his eyes went cold.
I yanked a small knife from its place inside my left boot and struck out with it.
Bennett knocked my hand aside with as much effort as he would use to swat at a fly. He swung his arm out and in a wide arc. The curved blade moved towards my neck on a trajectory to cleave my head from my body. He turned his hand in and his elbow out at the last possible moment and jabbed his elbow into the side of my neck instead. Pain rang out from the spot and I struggled to catch my breath. His legs swept mine out from under me in a move identical to the one I’d pulled on Tara. The curved blade came down on my neck just forcefully enough to draw a thin strip of blood along its edge.
“Pull your shit together,” he whispered low and for my ears alone. “You are letting your emotions get the better of you and it is making you sloppy. You let them make you lose control and you might as well slit your own throat. You are as good as dead anyway. When you fight angry, you stop thinking rationally and you become an easy kill. Lock it back up. Put it the fuck out of your mind. If you can’t do that then you don’t patrol. You take your ass to class, you go the fuck to the heavily warded house in North Fulton, and you do whatever it is normal people your age do. You got it?”
I would have nodded, but the blade still cut delicately into my skin. “I got it,” I gritted out against the pain.
He pressed the blade harder against my neck, not enough to do any real damage, but enough to increase the sting. Then he withdrew it and leapt to his feet. He left me to my own devices to haul mysely to mine.
“I could heal you, but I’m not. Yet. I’ll do it tomorrow before it begins to scar. Until then, let the pain be a reminder.” The words were spoken loud enough for everyone to hear. They were for me as well as everyone else within earshot and even those who were not. If
anyone healed me before he did, there would be hell of the worse kind to pay.
I would have laughed if my throat didn’t feel like it had been doused in gasoline then had a lit match thrown on it. His threatening words were a waist of breath. No one would go against something he did anyway. The twins would—
NO! I yelled inside my head. Bennett was right. I didn’t know why things that were better left buried kept trying to creep into my thoughts. Like Bennett said I needed to put them the fuck out of my mind.
I climbed out of the ring and glimpsed Chase standing beside it as I did so, his expression dark and feral. I ignored it and him. I walked by him without acknowledging him and headed for the locker room.
I used a wet cloth to gently dab the blood away then stared at my reflection in the mirror above one of the sinks.
The person looking back at me was someone I thought I was finally leaving behind for good. She was the Alex that was born twelve years ago and the Alex who reemerged two years ago. She felt alone and scared and angry and traumatized and was completely fucked up in the head all at the same fucking time. I thought about encountering the Brethren in the alley a few nights back and how close things had come to turning out differently. Even though I got away, if Chase hadn’t been there I would have bled out in the middle of the street or the Brethren would have found me unconscious once he recovered and finished what he started. Either way I would have died. I found a part of me wishing that night did end differently. I’d never actually attempted suicide and I never actually would, but the thought of death did hold a certain allure, a certain promise of freedom, of eternal numbness and permanent weightlessness.
Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel Page 10
