by Tori Smith
All four of them wore panicked expressions, ones the majority of my co-workers and I experienced in front of our superiors. Keyword being—superior.
Not Derek.
But they were answering to Derek. They were and his hands up, he told them they could proceed but only—after they got him his morning coffee.
“Of course. Of course,” they stated bowing profusely. They passed us. “And welcome to the division.”
Wait… What?
But what they stated I clearly heard, the four exiting the hallway and going out into the chaos that was Nova Aesthetic Magazine.
“You work here?” I asked blown away. I mean, what the fuck, and Derek, he only smirked—smirked at me with his cute little dimples and perfectly pouty lips. He brought his hand over the trimmed whiskers of his beard.
“For years now, Arden,” he said, my eyes flashing that not only did this man know me, know my name, but worked here in the same vicinity as me. I would have noticed him, wouldn’t I?
Yes, you would have.
His arm crossed the width of the hallway again, so tiny with him in it.
“Just not necessarily in this division,” he went on, again circulating the hallway with his gaze. I had no idea who or what he was looking for but something had him on edge, his throat jumping.
He stared at me. “Nor on this floor or even in this building half the time. I’m only here for a few months out of the year. My primary base is a satellite office.”
Which made sense… I supposed. I mean, that explained why I’d never seen him.
“What do you do here?” I asked and he actually stumbled back at my approach like I had leprosy—curious, but I went with it.
He pushed a hand over the wave of his hair, that cool flip that sprung right back.
“I’m an editor,” he detailed, stating my worst fear. If he was, he might have some pull around here and I was already in hot water with my boss.
“Anymore questions or can I go to my next meeting—”
“Actually—”
I caught him just as he made his way back out into the circus, my hand on a firm bicep that shifted and moved beneath his dress shirt.
And he was not having that.
His quick maneuver around forced me to lose my grip on him and closing the distance, he was up on me again, but this time he wasn’t shy about putting me in a corner in front of everyone.
He just did it right up against the wall, full on and in my personal space and for whatever reason, stopping him hadn’t crossed my mind. What crossed were so many other things. Things like how his gaze fell on me when he looked at me, studying every jump and tremor I made in his presence. Things like his smell that called to my memories, sweet yet rough like that bed I’d been in that morning.
Had it been his?
I didn’t ask him, staring at him and like I said, he did the same. It was almost like he forgot what he was going to say, his throat making a sizable jump above his skinny black tie.
He moved in, getting closer and when he licked his lips I closed in this time.
I closed in on him like it was the most natural thing to do.
Grabbing me by the arm, he stopped me before I could even make sense of the thought, dark lashes coming over his eyes like he’d come out of a deep trance.
Panning, he finally realized we weren’t alone in that busy hallway and when he let go of me, we both stopped on the single onlooker who actually happened to be paying attention to us. Everyone else was moving right along, one had to around here, as people generally had other things on their mind in this competitive environment.
Which made my boss staring at us kind of weird.
Marcine truly had better things to do and, honestly, didn’t even notice me when I was standing in front of her let alone in a hallway with a guy I was trying to figure out. Hair silver and cutting across her cheeks, she showed true fascination with her gaze, her aged eyes narrowing in my direction and when she reached into her bag for something, Derek grabbed my arm.
He dragged me, back into the intern hallway with my arm that was suddenly… on fire.
On fire again. Like last night again.
My head swam.
You burned yourself. You burned yourself.
No.
I fought those memories, the existence of them so foreign they tasted putrid in my mouth. It’d been as if they were forced in, forced on me and I shook them away, fighting for the truth. Derek, his voice rising above everything in my head, pulled me out of the mental battle. He lifted my arm.
“Show it to me,” he kept saying. “Arden, show me your mark.”
My… mark. I didn’t understand, but Derek didn’t give me the moments to. He was pulling at tape, my bandage, and working it away, he revealed no burn.
But something that lit the hell up.
Literally an exuberant light filled the entirety of the intern hall the moment unleashed, the burning sensation radiating and now, I saw why.
The raised flesh, the mark, whipped and weaved, nowhere close to the makings of a burn but almost a distinguished symbol, an extended part of me and its blinding light forced a squint into my eyes. This wasn’t a burn and reaching for it, my head flooded with so many thoughts and so quickly I nearly passed out at the influx of them. Headaches took on a new meaning with the pressure, migraines nothing compared. It caused my eyes to cross, nausea erupting, and a heavy bile chased its way up my throat.
This wasn’t a burn. This…
The memories washed over me like a new discovery, and soon, I saw Derek, his arms underneath me.
His arms lowered me to a round bed.
He took me out of the one I’d been in, and he’d been angry. He’d been yelling over my nearly comatose body. I saw Lucas then, Lucas ashamed and…
“Who are you both?” I shook now, falling back from Derek. He had his hands out, coming toward me, but with no aggression in his eyes.
If anything I saw fear, terror that widened them and caused a jump into my own heart. I didn’t understand. Why was my arm marked and with this insanely bright light?
And why did I remember him from last night?
He looked at me like he’d faced the question before. Like he faced my internal questions even, but before I could scream, run, do anything, he had me in his arms again. He cradled me, raising his palm and from beneath his shirt a peculiar light took my attention. It was dull as most of his vest covered it, but I still saw it.
His pec was lit up too.
“I’m so sorry, my queen,” he said not making sense, and when a purplish blue light cast from his fingertips, the world went dark for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.
Four
Arden
This room was different than the one before, darker.
And this time I was in chains.
Like old-fashioned chains with a thick metal and a rusty smell that blasted sickness into my insides. Feeling the wave of it, I touched my back against what seemed to be a valley of bookshelves. The spines could just be made out via the dimmed wall sconces, the desk in the room and the carpeted floors indicating some kind of study. It was the exact opposite of the room with all the light and windows I’d been in this morning. It had no natural lighting at all and I assumed I was either underground or a place where someone chose not to install any windows.
I worked at the bindings, forcing a whimper out of my throat as I tried to both squeeze my hands out of them and at the same time keep them quiet. I assumed Derek brought me in here. Maybe even Lucas, as he was associated with him.
No thoughts to the reason why, I moved to my knees, my hands burning and raw from my attempts to force my hands out of the chains. I ended up by my shoes, which lay haphazardly to the side. They’d been there when I’d woken up on the carpet, completely off-kilter like Derek had taken me straight from work.
What’s going on?
No one was in here to answer my internal questions, but outside the door voices drummed as
they had this morning, two people in particular. Again, so similar to this morning and neither one could get a word in edgewise.
I scrapped with my chains trying to get closer to the sound.
“This is mind-boggling,” a male voice said, deep but with a melodic rasp to it. The hum sent my mind to traveling places, my thoughts warming of things I didn’t understand, things that put me at ease, things that felt… familiar to me when everything in this moment was the polar opposite.
What’s with me right now?
“Her Majesty’s being treated like she’s done something wrong when all that’s happened is the pair of you screwed up.”
“Okay, shut that down for like five seconds, Elia.”
The last voice had been Derek’s and I held myself, my stomach and chest equally tight. He was obviously out there too.
“She’s awakened,” he said, a heavy sigh in his voice. “For whatever reason she has and I don’t think that has anything to do with us. We reasoned at first it was the guy who assaulted her and took her purse. If she thought she was in danger she’d naturally give herself protection, but it obviously wasn’t that. The mark would have gone away by now and definitely not have ignited. It’s something else, but it wasn’t us. Lucas and I haven’t touched her, not like that.”
Not. Like. That.
Whatever he referred to had me shrinking, my swallow hard in my throat. What had they done to me and what were they going to do?
My hand went to the weird mark that had bubbled up. It no longer lit up but was still there, almost like a scar. Touching it, the curving indentation held no burn. It was almost cool to the touch.
Hazy, my memories still tried to tell me I burned myself, but I hadn’t. This mark appeared another way, another way on the night all of this began. It’d been the evening I met Lucas of that I was sure.
I just couldn’t remember the details.
Had they done something to me, so I couldn’t remember? Unsure, I listened in to the guys for clues.
“We were careful,” Derek went on. “Careful not to… touch her, but she awakened anyway. You know what that means.”
“Actually, I don’t,” the other voice chimed in, less agitated but not much. A breath sounded. “The threat hasn’t presented itself in the entire twenty-four years because of us and like you said, any danger she felt the mark wouldn’t have ignited. It had to have been something with you or Lucas.”
Silence moved through my small room, no sounds from Derek or the other guy.
“And yet it wasn’t,” Derek eventually pushed through. “I said neither of us have touched her and what’s worse is you know that? You know, but you’re doing this, ignoring all this anyway when we need to be looking at the bigger picture as a unit. That’s why Lucas and I called you. Not for any of this accusation bullshit.”
He followed the statement with a few other choice words, but the door to my essential prison cell opened and I shot back into the books at the light, the maneuver making some spines fall and hit the carpet near my feet. I brought my legs in. They rubbed against the carpet and the figure before me filled the entire doorframe, a wide and never-ending silhouette.
The lights brightened but I had no idea how. I saw no switch turned on, but the wall sconces rose in illumination anyway, and turning from them, I took in the sight of the man who saved me last night.
And the man who apparently held me captive today.
I thought I might have fainted if I saw Derek, but Lucas’s presence wasn’t far off from what my reaction to Derek’s dark eyes might have been.
Hitting the bookshelf again, I shielded my eyes when two more books fell, and quick Lucas sprinted over.
“Your Highn—” he started with, much like this morning. His bearded jaw working, he chose to revert, picking up the books one by one and making them look minuscule in his mighty hands. The man was at least three of me. I was sure his strength not far off.
Placing the books off to the side, he lowered to a knee.
“Are you okay?” he asked, ironic as I so was not okay.
I said nothing, gathering my chains in my lap. The metal clanked their heavy sound and I stiffened at Lucas’s approach.
He held back.
“I don’t feel the chains are necessary,” he said, pulling a key out of his pocket. He held it up. “But I’ll have to put them back on if you try something… like run.”
Run… How would I even escape with him as an obstacle? Again, this man was three of me, his friends not far away making four and five. I didn’t stand a chance with these guys and their potential sizes and I was sure he knew that.
“How far would I even get?” I mumbled turning away from him. I held out my wrists. “And what exactly would I try? It’s not like I could hurt you.”
I honestly expected no response, let alone the small smile he waved in my direction. It’d been hella handsome unfortunately and reached his blue eyes.
He inserted the key into one of my wrists’ locks.
“You’d be surprised,” he said, then his lengthy hair brushed along his shoulders with his headshake. His lips closed automatically, his hands working on my chains. Once away, I rubbed at my wrists, happy for the relief.
Lucas stood there, squatting in front of me.
“I don’t know if you caught it but I’m Lucas,” he said and I wanted to laugh, the sound muted but I couldn’t hide the lift of my eyes to the ceiling. Yeah… I caught it, his name.
He swallowed a little.
“I guess you knew that then,” he stated sliding the chains off to the side. They hadn’t rested there long before Lucas took my side.
I jolted. “What are you doing?”
Had the moment come when he’d… hurt me? I didn’t want to wait for it and instinctually, my body urged to run, scooting away on my hip and Lucas stopped, his hands lifted.
“I’m just going to sit with you,” he said, then proceeded in doing that very feat. He didn’t sit on the other end of the room from me, no. He sat right next to me, like we were friends or something.
And I didn’t stop him.
The moment wreaked of something so similar, situations with Derek and my lack of resistance of those incidents and the ones now disturbed me, how each of them being close felt a whole lot better than them being away.
How Lucas sitting there had been far better than the moments spent by myself.
I cradled my head.
“Why?” escaped my lips, my internal question.
Lucas moved.
“Because you’ve been by yourself a long time,” he said answering my question. He must have believed it’d been for him. He lifted his leg, resting a thick arm on his knee. “And you shouldn’t be, at least not anymore.”
Not. Anymore…
He chewed his lips, staring away.
“They’re also probably going to be a while,” he said, tossing his head in the direction of the door. He’d left it open, his comrades’ voices blasting through. They were still in the midst of their argument but had clearly moved to another part of the house, as their voices weren’t as clear as they’d been. I couldn’t really make out anything they were saying not that it mattered.
Nothing they said before made sense to me anyway.
“Figured you’d want some company,” Lucas added, tossing his hand through his fine hair. From here, his casual smell nearly overwhelmed me, the soap scent thick and meaty as his big body. It couldn’t be comfortable for him to sit here with me on the floor, so much bigger than me.
“We seem to always end up this way, you and I,” he said, giving me pause. His eyes flashed. “I just mean that you and me, it’s what we…”
His fidgets replaced his voice and for some reason, I felt the urge to prompt him.
“What we what?” I asked, hesitant but I had a feeling, his reservations rang the same, his gaze traveling the room before finding me.
“What we do,” he said and almost more to himself than me. His hair mussed when he took hi
s fingers through it again and I figured that for a nervous action—ironic.
“Anyway, yeah, I’m here to keep you company,” he said. “You don’t have to talk to me or anything. I just figured you were lonely down here.”
And obviously I wanted his company, one of the men who’d clearly taken me?
My hand pushed along my legs, my brain a knotted mess and back and forths with him didn’t make it any better. If anything, him speaking proved this whole situation to be just as much of a cluster fuck as my last twenty-four hours had been, a valley of confusion I found myself more and more buried in each moment passed.
“What do you want with me?” I asked him, truly wanting to know. “Why did you say what you had about… About you and me? What is it ‘we do’ exactly and why would you say that?”
Why would he feel he could say that, a man I’d never met before?
Lucas proceeded to look away from me, leaving me in wonder during the moments he stroked his full beard.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he stated dropping his hand. “And I don’t want anything from you.”
I found that hard to believe. He’d taken me after all.
“Then why am I here?” I asked, the ultimate question and one that had me all but shaking. I pushed my arms tight around my legs, not expecting an answer, and when Lucas reached out I all but jumped away from him.
He cringed.
“Please, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, showing me his palm. “I just want to give you your answers.”
His gaze took to my arm; the one with the strange mark.
The last I recalled of the indentation on my arm, it’d been hurting. It’d been glowing but both no more. The skin raised and bubbled up, it looked normal and almost hinted at a scar. It’d been a scar I never remembered getting.
“How did I get this?” I asked him and his expression saddened. He simply directed my attention to his open hand again, still waiting for a response from me.
“Please, Arden,” he stated, and though I assumed he knew my name from Derek, hearing it still unsettled me. He looked at me. “Let me show you. It’ll be easier.”
