And with that the foremost thought in my mind, I followed the first and only man I’d ever loved back into the chaos of Valhalla.
2
I’d never been able to hide anything from Benjamin Traina. We met when I was in fifth grade and he in seventh, when our bodies had held more similarities than not. We had a common passion for kickball and tag, and an equally strong hatred for a bully named Charles Tracy, whom we mercilessly dubbed Upchuck, and made unrelenting gagging noises whenever we passed him in the halls. Though our friendship was instant, born of youthful energy and the childish faith that things and people could be divided into two groups—right or wrong, good or bad, black or white—romance didn’t bloom until four years later. An accidental meeting at the movie theaters found our hormone-crazed bodies—now very different, thank you—locked in a clinch even the onscreen stars couldn’t match. Only later did Ben admit the meeting hadn’t been exactly accidental.
There’s something about seeing an adult you knew in childhood that makes them marginally vulnerable to you, and vice versa. There’s also something comforting in thinking that if they made it this far, relatively unscathed, then maybe you didn’t turn out half bad either. So I settled across from this man I both knew and didn’t, and felt both vulnerable and comforted…and was surprised to realize I minded neither.
“How’s your father?” Ben began once we’d been left alone in my father’s cavernous conference room, located on the fifteenth floor of the Valhalla hotel. There was a table the size of a small airplane between us, and our coffee cups were reflected back on the deep, polished mahogany.
“Great,” I replied, lifting my cup. “Or so I hear. I never see him.”
“Do you want me to call him? See if he can come down?”
I jerked my head. I’d stopped needing my father long ago, and Ben knew that. “He’s probably at home counting all his money. I’d hate to interrupt.”
My family was nouveau riche, and my father’s story had probably launched a thousand capital ventures in gaming and resort management, the majority of which failed. In the most capitalist city of the most capitalist nation in the world, Xavier Archer remained an icon of unparalleled and, seemingly, unquenchable ambition. His rise had been meteoric: his competitors found him cagey, his investors brilliant, and the rest of the world knew him only as driven.
No offense to my paternal grandmother, whom I’d never met, but he was also a nasty and cruel son of a bitch.
Ben inclined his head, and I could tell he was as proud of my independence as I was of his accomplishments. Both had been hard won. “And what about you? You sit at home counting your millions as well?”
“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “Just counting the same million over and over again.”
“When you’re not going out with hardened criminals, you mean.”
“That’s merely a hobby.”
He smiled, eyes shining, but pushed the tape recorder on and recited his name, badge number, and the date and location of this interview. Then he turned his attention back to me. “We should get this over with.”
“All right.” And I told him everything. I said I had a rule about never saying no when someone asked me out, though I didn’t say why, and he didn’t ask. There’d have been no reason to mention it at all, except it explained what I was doing with Ajax in the first place. For some reason it was important to me that Ben know it had been the date that was blind, not me.
I spoke about the serrated poker, what it looked like, and I alluded to the woman in the restaurant, before moving on to the part about the pheromones and how Ajax had said he knew I was the “one.” That was the only point where Ben looked at me strangely, and I shrugged, unable to explain it myself.
The rest of the time he simply took notes, glancing up intermittently, cop face firmly fixed as if we’d only just met. This was fascinating—I felt like an audience member at an old Siegfreid and Roy show, one who couldn’t believe what they were seeing, and didn’t dare blink lest the stars disappear altogether.
An hour and a half later Ben turned off the recorder and leaned back in his chair. “That’s good, Jo. We should have enough here to put Ajax away for a while.”
I toyed with the buttons on my chair that controlled the room’s media center. “Doesn’t mean you will.”
“No,” he said, not looking at me. “It doesn’t.”
We both knew the system had loopholes. Sometimes, I thought, the bad guys just disappeared. We were silent for a time. I nervously sipped my cold coffee.
“You have a good eye for detail,” Ben said, glancing up. “Probably comes from your martial art training, huh?”
“It’s not an art.” Krav Maga was martial, no doubt, but in eight years of training I’d never once considered it an art. It was violent and dirty street fighting. Ten years earlier my instructor—now a friend, Asaf—had immigrated to the Nevada desert and brought with him the discipline, the system, and the knowledge of Krav Maga from the Holy Land. His first student, I had soaked up his instruction like a desert rose watered after a scorching summer drought.
We trained for life-threatening situations—knives, guns, multiple attackers—driving ourselves to fight on in the face of fatigue. We trained, as he told me that first day, for the possible, the eventual, and with the conviction that survival depended on breakneck reflexes and split-second reactions.
“No human predator is going to pull his punch just because you’re a girl,” Asaf told me in that wonderful clipped cadence of his. Of course, this was something I already knew. My possible, my eventual, had already happened.
When Ben saw I was going to say nothing more, he rose, shoved his hands in his pockets and stared down at me. Mr. Authority. “I should put surveillance on you. If there are others out there, like Ajax said, then we—”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Exactly.” He sighed, and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Sure you won’t even consider it?”
“I won’t be stalked.”
“Followed, not stalked,” Ben corrected, somewhat irritably. “They’re police officers.”
“I won’t be followed, then.”
“Even if I’m doing the following?”
I stood too. “Even then.”
He shook his head. “Mule.”
“‘Know thyself,’” I quoted, wanting to see if he’d take the bait.
“‘Knowledge is power,’” he answered, an even more tired cliché than my own.
One side of my mouth lifted. “‘All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death—’”
“‘—than the animals that know nothing,’” he capped, shaking his head. “‘And a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’”
We both smiled. We’d collected quotes as teens, dueled with them, and it’d become our own language, not unlike the silly, secret ones of very young children. It was another love we’d once shared; the English language, and the way the masters could turn a phrase, and the world on its ear, in only a few words.
“How’s your wife?” I blurted, then cursed silently, feeling myself color. I didn’t really know this Ben Traina. And we no longer belonged to one another. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”
“No, it’s all right,” he said and, amazingly, slowly, smiled. “But you’d have to ask her new husband.”
I blushed even more. Ben cleared his throat and picked up a crystal paperweight, flipping it in his palm. “Saw the article on your family.”
I studied him for judgment or sarcasm but found none. I licked my lips slowly and watched him watching me. Interesting. “So you read how I’m a slacker with no ambition and few abilities or admirable goals?”
He scoffed as he put down the paperweight, then skirted the table between us to take me by the hand, and led me to the window that overlooked the glittering Las Vegas Strip. His palm was warm and dry, and my own looked dwarfed inside of it. Even as a boy he’d had great hands. “They should have intervi
ewed me. I have my own theory about the ‘prodigal daughter of the Archer dynasty.’”
That quote stung. I withdrew my hand and turned on him. “Why? Because you know me so well?”
“I think I do.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I can’t wait to hear this.”
“Okay.” Ben mimicked my pose, leaning on the glass wall, looking as though he were reclining against the night. “First, it’s your birthday. Twenty-five years old. Happy Birthday.”
He remembered. I glanced down at my watch so he couldn’t see the sudden moisture in my eyes. “You’re about twenty-four hours early, actually, but thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Second, you’re not aimless, merely restless. You battle between a fleeting need for security and a constant one for complete freedom. You can’t lie about who you are, and therefore you can’t feign interest in your father’s business, or imitate your sister’s social grace, regardless of how successful they are.”
He paused, brows raised, and I motioned for him to continue. In a quieter voice he added, “You think too much, and you’re haunted by things you can’t change. You have a strong sense of right and wrong, with little tolerance for the in-between, and zero patience for deception.”
“Anything else?” I said, a bit tightly.
“Just one. You’re a photographer, but not as a means of commerce or even as a form of communicating with the world. The lens is actually a barrier shielding you from the rest of us. It’s a way of distancing yourself from your subjects so you can study them. Or hunt them.”
“That’s a bunch of crap!”
Ben grinned. “You’re also quick-tempered.”
Hunt them, I thought, shaking my head, annoyed. It was the same wording I’d heard earlier that evening. We’ve been hunting you for a long time, Ajax had said. He’d been trying to scare me, of course, but now Ben was saying it as if I were the predator, like some sort of skulking vampire, on the lookout for O-positive. “You’re reading too much into it.”
“You’ve been out every night this week.”
“Wait,” I said, holding up my hand, but otherwise going very still. “You’ve been watching me?”
“You’re using yourself as bait, aren’t you?” he persisted, ignoring the question. “That’s why you go out alone, at night, in the most dangerous parts of town.”
I clenched my teeth together, hard. “I go out at night because it’s quiet, and because light and shadow are a photographer’s main tools.”
“You seem to be more in the shadows than the light.”
“So what?” I tried not to sound defensive, but it was hard.
“So, why?” he said. “Why spend your days training like you’re going into battle, and your nights on the streets seeking it?”
I know that’s what it looked like from afar, from the outside looking in, which was the only way Ben could possibly see it, but it was more than that. Not that I was going to explain it now. “Maybe I’m just dedicated to my craft,” I said, lifting my chin.
“You haven’t been taking your camera.”
I whirled away from him, turning as much from the understanding his face held as from the shame that my secret—what I thought was a secret—had been so easily found out. I rubbed my arms, trying to erase the chills that had shot along them. A part of me was thrilled; he’d kept up on me, hadn’t forgotten me, still cared. Another part was furious. How could I have not seen him? Part of the point of these nocturnal excursions was to look for men—a man—who were looking for me.
“Joanna?”
“I can’t believe you’ve been following me.” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat, but it felt scratchy and dry, like all my words would stick to its walls.
At least he had the grace to sound apologetic. “It was an accident the first time. I was on a stakeout and I just saw you. I trailed you to make sure you’d be safe, but it didn’t take long to realize you weren’t trying to be safe.” His voice loomed closer, just behind me. “Why, Jo-Jo?”
“I’ve just been feeling…restless lately,” I finally said, which was the truth, if only half of it. Most of the time I felt like I was being bitten by a thousand fire ants buried deep beneath my skin. Or like someone was stoking a fire in my soul. “I feel like something’s going to happen, but I won’t know what it is until it’s too late.”
Ben put his hands on my shoulders, which I wouldn’t have tolerated from anyone else, and turned me so I was facing him. “You’re looking for him, aren’t you? Tempting him. Testing him.”
I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached. It had been such a good cover too. Confirmed slacker. Lazy little rich girl. Token black sheep of the Archer dynasty, the one others could point to and say, “See? All the money in the world can’t buy you happiness.”
The writer of the Fortunes and Fates article hadn’t caught on. Neither had Ajax or any man I’d dated before him. Not even my family, or Asaf—who knew only that I slept badly—were aware of what I did, or why. Nobody had seen that it was all just a cover. Until now.
I shook my head. “I’m just taking pictures.”
“And if you happen to find him locked between the crosshairs of your lens?” Ben asked, watching me again with his cop eyes.
I didn’t have to ask whom he meant. I met his gaze as I’d met Ajax’s, unblinking. And just to see who this new Ben Traina was, I said, “I kill him.”
His answer was immediate. “Good. Any other long-term goals?”
That jerked a laugh from me. I was surprised my throat had even let it escape. More surprised at Ben for laughing with me. Where was the lecture? Where was the warning that should’ve followed? The PSA about the long arm of the law? Then again, I didn’t really need it. Despite my words, my actions were all defensive. But I think the real reason we both let it slide was because the “him” we were referring to was the one who’d ultimately driven us apart.
“Long-term goals?” I repeated, before shaking my head. “Just survival, Traina. I’m just trying to survive.”
Which wasn’t entirely true. I already had the survival thing down pat.
Ben turned back to the glass wall and looked out with a sigh over the city we both patrolled. I joined him, pressing my forehead against the cool glass, and let the lights below blur into a blinding stream of nothingness. We call it camera shake in photography; when the camera moves and the shutter is open long enough to cause an overall blur. The effect was mostly undesirable, except for times like this.
Together we looked out at this strange city where the play of shadow and light was more pronounced than in any other until finally he said, “There has to be more to life than survival.”
There hadn’t been for me, I conceded, not for a long while. But with Ben standing close, knowing about my past and not flinching, I began to think there might be. I raised my eyes to find him gazing at me. Not just gazing, but seeing.
How long had it been since I’d been truly seen?
And the look on his face was so soft and clear it was practically translucent. Probably, I thought, a good reflection of my own. Just then, I would have loved to frame that face with my camera lens. Capture that moment, and him, forever. God, what a beautiful man.
I froze suddenly. “Please don’t tell me I said that aloud.”
Ben straightened, grinning wickedly. “You did. You said I was beautiful.”
Embarrassed, I turned away, but his hand, wide and firm and warm, grasped my shoulder. He turned me toward him again and held all of me there; body, eyes, and mind.
“If I’m beautiful,” he said, thumbs tickling against the inside of my elbows, “then you’re the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen.”
I ducked my head automatically, though my pulse points hummed. “My sister’s stunning,” I said, “I’m strong.”
“You’re stunning and strong,” he murmured, and moved in closer.
I lifted my head and leaned into him. It felt natural, and my pulse throbbed. “Go on.”
His lips quirked up at one side as he drew me against him. “You’re stunning and strong, Joanna Archer, and you’re about to be kissed.”
And I knew exactly what he would taste like. Ambrosia. The breaking of a fast. Water, pure, clean, and spring-clear after a ten-year drought. All the relevant clichés applied.
How masochistic, I thought, sighing as his mouth molded to mine. Instantly back in love with a man I’d spent a decade trying to get over. Anyone have a dull razor blade? Cat-o’-nine-tails? Old, rusty nails?
Yet this was also a first. The first taste of a man whose lips and arms and body touched the expected places in unexpected ways. The first hint of underlying passion, like touching a battery to the tip of my tongue, that metallic zap of pure power just aching to course over into me. The glory of a man whose flesh and cellular structure spoke to my own but, biology and chemistry and pheromones aside, one who just felt fucking great wrapped around me.
“Jo-Jo?” Ben finally said, breaking away.
“Hmm?” I still hadn’t opened my eyes. It’d been so long. Why hadn’t I known I needed this, wanted it—had been missing it—for so damned long?
“You’re groping a senior officer.”
I smiled against his shirt and moved my hand. “Gonna put it in your statement?”
“Gonna ask you for a date.” He pressed a kiss to the crown of my head. “You never say no, right?”
I pulled back and peered into his face. “I object to the implication. I say no to some things.”
“Gonna say no to me?”
“No.”
He smiled, lifted a hand to my face and caressed it, his touch impossibly gentle. I wasn’t used to being handled gently. In truth, I wasn’t used to being handled at all. Certainly not by a man who could be both as hard as granite and as soft as a feather. So much new to discover here, I thought, lifting my head to kiss the hollow of his neck.
“Your cheek is bruised,” he murmured, voice hoarse.
I leaned into him, offering up that cheek for feathery kisses and pointed attentions. All wit and sarcasm and guarded inhibitions fled—in Ben’s embrace I wasn’t an heir to the Archer family empire, as so many others saw me, or a wounded warrior bent on vengeance, as Ben had claimed with such certainty. I also wasn’t a woman fighting for normalcy—fighting, but losing—which in fact was how I saw myself. I was just a woman. So often that was all a woman wanted to be.
The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material Page 3
