by SM Reine
“It’s a useful skill in the public sector,” Nash said, totally straight-faced. Was he…joking? Did he actually have a sense of humor? “No, Summer, I’m familiar with your studies, and you’re the one I require. I need your unique abilities with…programming.”
Summer was a pretty solid B-grade student. She wasn’t buying it. “Where’s your entourage, anyway?”
“They have weekends off. All of my employees receive excellent benefit packages—including the interns.”
“That’s nice. I’m sure whoever you hire as an intern will be really happy to hear that,” Summer said, throwing open the back doors and stalking across the hill toward the data center. The rain had stopped, but the grass was still slick under her sandals.
“When you failed to arrive on time this morning, I came here immediately to arrange a transfer of funds. I donated three million dollars to break ground on the new computer sciences building an hour ago.”
She stopped walking. All of her good humor had suddenly gone missing in action.
“I don’t want a new building and I don’t want the job. You just—you don’t even have a fucking clue, do you? This is some weirdo come-on. I don’t know why you got it in your head that you need me, but you can’t buy me. Go bribe some other college student.”
He hooked a hand in his pocket, leaned his weight on one leg, and lifted his chin. It pulled his slacks tight against his hips, and that cocky look was simultaneously frustrating and arousing. “I don’t want just any college student to work for me. I want you to work for me.” Summer almost laughed again, until she saw how serious he looked. He slid his sunglasses down his nose and fixed her with the heat of his gaze. “I need you, Summer.”
It felt like the entire campus was spinning around her. That smoky voice, the heated gaze—it was hard to remember why she should find the whole situation weird and kind of insulting.
But was that a hint of vulnerability in his voice when he said that he needed her?
The maid, Margaret, had said that Nash had no family. His house smelled like he never had company beyond his staff. He had been distant from his own cocktail party, alone with his thoughts and an endless night.
Maybe Nash Adamson did need Summer, although not in the way that he thought.
“So this isn’t a come-on,” she said once she remembered how to talk. “You want a programmer. And this is just an internship—not a job—for the rest of the spring term.”
“That’s right,” he said, looking satisfied that she was finally catching on.
That’s bullshit.
Call it paranoia, but Summer wasn’t buying what he was selling. He had already invested in her—not just the creepy wardrobe of dresses, but by building an entire new building. He wanted her, and he wanted her bad. There was no way it could ever be “just an internship.”
But maybe when a man had spent his entire life alone, that was the only way he knew how to reach out for help.
She blew a stray curl out of her face. “Okay. I can be your programmer, but only for the semester, and with one condition.”
“Anything,” he said. It sounded like an invitation.
Summer grinned, knowing how disarming her smile could be. One corner of her lips lifted higher than the other, as if her mouth had been placed crookedly on her face, and it made her look less like a pretty college girl and more like an imp. “You have to buy me a coffee, first.”
six
After a lifetime of homeschooling, Summer’s freshman orientation at MU had been a shock to the system. The idea that so many people would choose to congregate in one area was absurd, but she had adjusted after a few weeks of claustrophobia and a lot of deep breathing exercises.
Now Nash was going through the same shock. It was funny to see the richest man in the world quietly losing his shit at the crowd in the campus coffee shop, which was extra-busy thanks to midterms. The place was packed. They had to shove their way to the counter to place orders.
“Pardon me,” Nash said, looking deeply offended at a student bumping into his shoulder. Summer smothered a laugh behind her hand.
“Do you have any preference?” she asked, gesturing toward the menu board.
His lip curled. “No.”
“Two large vanilla lattes,” Summer told the barista as Nash shot evil looks at the crowd. When was the last time he had been in public without the protective barrier of his entourage? “And double shots of espresso, please.”
Five minutes of waiting later, they found a recently-vacated couch and settled in. The plush leather loveseat sank in the middle, so Summer couldn’t help but melt into Nash’s side. He didn’t seem to mind. He looked like he was probably contemplating buying the whole building so he could bulldoze it.
“I had an assistant review the internship applications again,” Nash said. “Yours wasn’t among them.”
“I told you that I didn’t want the job.”
He sipped his coffee. “Forgive me if I find that difficult to believe. The prestigious position and accompanying scholarship is impossible to resist.”
“Not for me.”
“Then what bait would be more appealing to you? Lifetime supply of coffee?”
“I do want the scholarship,” Summer said. “Just the scholarship. And I want it in cash.” Ugh, it felt so mercenary to say that out loud.
She waited for him to ask why, but he only said, “Done.”
“Great. Now tell me who I’m working for.”
Nash frowned. “You know who I am.”
“Not really. I mean, I want to know you. Obviously, you already know way too much about me, but I hadn’t even heard of you before the interviews.” It was impossible to read his reaction with those reflective sunglasses. “And these need to go away.” Summer plucked them off his face and tucked them in his jacket pocket.
When her eyes met his without the safety of glass between them, his stare was much more penetrating. Almost like he could read her every thought.
“I think we both already know one another better than anyone else in the world knows us,” Nash said, leaning forward to set his latte on the coffee table. When he settled back, he turned to face her, and their knees bumped. His arm was hooked on the couch behind her neck. It was an awfully cozy position for someone who was supposed to be her new boss, but Summer didn’t want him to move.
“We haven’t met before,” she said, just to reinforce the concept.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know you.” The narrow line of his lips spread into a smirk as his bangs shaded his eyes. “You and I have something in common.”
“A sexual harassment suit waiting to happen?”
So much for that smile. “You’re a complicated woman, Summer Gresham.”
“I have no idea what you mean.” His hair was bothering her. She surprised herself by reaching up to brush it aside. As her hand fell from his forehead, she let her fingers stroke down the smooth line of his jaw.
Her eyes fixed on his lips, and Summer found herself thinking about what a terrible idea it would be to kiss him, and how much she wanted to do it anyway. They had both grown very still.
She was still staring as she asked, “Do you have a lot of fireplaces at your house?”
“A few. Why?”
“I thought I smelled smoke on your clothes.”
“What else do you smell on me?” Something about the way he phrased the question made it sound too intimate to be uttered in a public place. Summer’s cheeks heated.
“Nothing, never mind.” She shook her head to clear it—and to force herself to stop staring at his lips. “Let’s leave. It’s crowded in here.”
He offered a hand to help her stand up. She was already craving the touch of his skin again, so Summer decided to ignore it and get up on her own.
Nash put his sunglasses back on, and they walked outside together.
“Tell me about this internship,” she said as they strolled along the damp sidewalk. He walked so close beside her that their el
bows brushed on every other step. “Do you really want a programmer?”
“Yes. Building a new archaeological studies wasn’t mere philanthropy. I obtained parts of computers at a dig a few years ago, and I need someone who can reassemble them and read the data.” He tipped the sunglasses down and peered at her over the edge. “Someone I can trust.”
“Wait, you got computers at an archaeological site? Personal computers?”
“Indeed.”
“But they’ve only been around for three hundred years,” Summer said. “There isn’t any archaic computer your IT department can’t read. I mean, we still learn original machine code in class.”
“Three hundred years old. Are you certain?”
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “It’s kind of my major.”
“If it’s so easy, then you’ll get through the project and take your money home in no time, I’m sure,” Nash said.
Summer rolled her eyes. “Look, you don’t have to make up reasons for me to get to ‘work’ for you. You can tell me the truth.”
“And what’s that?”
“You’re lonely, and you need me,” she said, swirling her finger around the rim of the cup so that she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. “It’s okay to need people.”
Nash stopped walking. Summer knew that she must have struck a nerve, but his expression remained unchanged.
“You don’t know anything,” he growled.
Her response was interrupted by a sudden flare of gray light. It only lasted for an instant, but it illuminated the entire sky, and Nash’s skin glowed with it.
“Impossible,” he hissed.
A drop of rain plonked on Summer’s shoulder. She lifted a hand to feel for more precipitation. “Relax. It was just lightning. This storm’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”
“Go back into the coffee shop and stay there until I come back for you,” Nash said, grabbing her shoulders. When she opened her mouth to protest, his hands tightened. “Trust me.”
And then he was walking away at a fast clip, almost on the verge of a run.
“That guy must really dislike lightning,” she muttered, peering up at the hazy sky. That flash had been unusually bright. It must have been close. Yet the air didn’t have that scorched ozone smell that always followed lightning. She only smelled rain—and Abram.
The growing wind brought a cocktail of scents to Summer’s nose. She lowered the coffee so that it wouldn’t distract her.
She picked something up off of the gusts that came from the forest—something that made the hair lift on the back of her neck and all of her senses go on high alert.
It was definitely her brother, Abram. But his familiar smell was all tangled up with the iron tang of blood, and something frighteningly foreign. It reminded her of Nash, if he were to drench himself in kerosene and ignite his inner flame. A wildfire that was going to devour the world.
“Abram,” she whispered.
He should have been in the art department, elbow-deep in oil paint and turpentine. So why was his smell coming from the forest?
He’s in danger. She could feel it in her gut.
Her pace quickened. The coffee cup slipped from her hands and the ceramic shattered against cement. Summer’s feet slapped against the ground, clumsy in her shoes, and she kicked them off as soon as she reached the border of grass between the campus and forest.
Another gust of wind blasted her hair out of her face. This time, it didn’t just carry Abram’s smell to her. It brought a cry, too.
He was in pain.
Summer ripped off her shirt and flung it to the grass. The leggings would be too complicated to remove. She could only hope that the hems were weak enough to tear.
She didn’t step into her second skin this time—she leaped.
With a roar, the form of her beast ripped free of her chest, consuming her flesh in an explosion of blood and musky pheromones. Shreds of cotton tangled between her hind legs, but she kicked them aside, and all four paws connected with the ground. Her spine and skull continued to shift as she ran.
Throwing her head back, she loosed a howl into the forest that she knew her brother would hear.
I’m coming, Abram. I’m coming.
His scream responded to her wolfish wail.
The smell of blood and smoke grew thick until it felt like she had to swim through sludge to keep moving. Summer huffed to clear her sinuses of the damp leaves and sap, then breathed deep again. Abram wasn’t far.
His voice whip-cracked through the forest. “Summer!”
She yipped at him and plunged deeper into the trees.
This part of the forest was as familiar to Summer as her bedroom. She darted between a pair of boulders and circled around the hill as Abram cried out again.
Summer found him in the grassy clearing on the other side of the ridge. She couldn’t see any reason for him to be screaming. His back was pressed against the trunk of a tree, but there was nothing physical to hold him in place.
Yet his shoulders twisted and feet kicked as if struggling against a captor.
“Summer!” he shouted.
She sniffed the air. That smell of a raging fire was much stronger in the clearing. Her instincts said that there was an assailant nearby—maybe even two of them. But she couldn’t see anything amiss.
As she watched, a fresh cut sliced open on his cheek, as if the point of a dagger had been drawn from his nose to his ear. Abram thrashed, but jerking his head away didn’t stop the cut.
What the fuck is going on?
Pain flared in Summer’s ribs. She whirled, searching for the source of the attack.
Nothing.
Blood spilled from her fur, and the fever of rapid healing made her flesh crawl and shake. Her nose was filled with the scent of an enemy. But where was it? She snarled and snapped at empty air.
“To your right!” Abram called.
Summer jumped a moment too late. The next hit smacked her into the ground. Weight crushed her ribs, as if someone was sitting on her.
She bit at the air near her side. Her teeth sank into something soft, a foul taste filled her mouth, and shrieks shattered her eardrums.
The pressure vanished.
As Summer climbed to her feet, the trees whirled around her. Ground and sky inverted. There were clouds under her paws and a halo of rain-soaked earth.
When everything reoriented itself, Summer and Abram were no longer alone in the forest.
There were three young children with them, each no more than six years old. They had button noses, plump lips, and eyes framed by thick eyelashes. But there was no mistaking them for normal kids when shriveled wings hung from their backs and blood stained their claws. One of them even had an injured leg—an injury that looked a lot like a wolf bite. The other two held Abram to the tree.
Summer felt dizzy. What she was looking at should have been impossible.
Denying their existence didn’t make them vanish again.
“Can you see them now?” Abram asked.
She couldn’t respond without a human mouth, so she lunged at the nearest child and slammed her head into its midsection. It alighted, flapping its stubby wings, and didn’t fall. She snapped halfheartedly at its ascending feet.
Summer couldn’t bite a child. Even a child that looked like an unholy mix of raven and human.
The creatures weren’t nearly as hesitant to attack. A tiny fist struck the back of Abram’s skull, and he sagged, instantly unconscious. He fell when they released him.
He didn’t move when he landed.
The bottom of Summer’s stomach dropped out.
Please, just be unconscious.
That left all three of the creatures to focus on her. They buzzed through the air and swarmed around her with flashing silver claws. She wasn’t ready for it. All the play-fighting with Abram could have never prepared her for such an assault.
One of the creatures pinned her to the ground, knocking the breath out of her lungs. It was t
oo strong to buck, even for a shapeshifter. The others crouched by her head.
Claws descended toward her throat.
A low explosion rocked the forest. Summer thought that lightning must have struck nearby until she saw the dark shape hurtling through the clouds.
A man dropped from the sky and slammed into the dirt between the creatures. Rotting leaves and moss showered over them, the drooping branches shook, and the entire world trembled under his feet.
He straightened and swept his wings wide. Each was longer than he was tall and shone with internal light. Summer’s eyes watered from the intensity. She couldn’t make out his features, but she thought that he almost looked like Nash Adamson.
He slammed one of the creatures into a tree, then tossed another across the clearing as easily as though it were a sack of flour. The third raked claws down his bare, muscular chest, but there was no blood. He seized the creature’s throat and lifted it above him. “Balam,” he spat. The word was unfamiliar to her, but it fell from his lips like a curse. “You don’t belong here.”
It responded in a high, trilling voice that made Summer’s skull ache. That wasn’t a human language.
“If you hurt her again, I will shatter your bones,” the man said, and he hurled in against the ground.
The three creatures took to the air instantly, shrieking in a shrill chorus, and whirled away in an explosion of glossy black feathers. The wildfire stench faded instantly. It was replaced by a much more familiar smell—more like the comfort of a fireplace in a cold winter.
Summer tried to stand, but her legs weren’t working right. She was still bleeding.
How was she going to drag Abram to safety if she couldn’t even get her paws under her?
Her savior folded his wings against his back as he approached, dimming his radiant feathers. Her eyes adjusted quickly.
It was Nash. He was as shirtless as the night that she had seen him on the balcony, but the wings affixed to his back were new. She must have been confused from the blood loss. Or she had snapped and started to hallucinate. Or maybe both.
But Nash’s dry chuckle was definitely no illusion. “I thought I told you to go to the coffee shop.”
