I gape at him in a fog of pleasure as I watched him push his fingers into his mouth, cleaning my juices from him. “Mmm, you taste so sweet. I would like nothing more than to pull over now and let my cock swim in some of that sweet nectar, but I’m curious to see where we’re going.”
An uncomfortable sensation settles at the bottom of my stomach and I turn my gaze to the world beyond the car window so he can’t see the worry in my eyes. He won’t like where I’m taking him. It will be unpleasant and uncomfortable, especially in the wake of this bliss. But it’s a discomfort I had driven from Portland to bear, for the sake of my sister. And I would bear it, with or without Gideon by my side.
Chapter 13
Gideon
“What is this place?” I ask Sophie, who’s standing next to me on the sidewalk with guilt and something more severe creasing her brow. She looks morose, and as her mate, I endeavor to make her happy. Darkness clings to this place, and it leeches into my sweet Sophie, robbing her of her joy.
That rubs me the wrong way.
I want nothing more than to carry her back to my apartment where we’re safe and happy. But the gravity of this place, it’s significance can’t be denied, and I can gather all that without even knowing what it is.
To me, it just looks like a shabby, tired-looking apartment complex in a less than desirable neighborhood somewhere between Seattle and Tacoma. But of course, there is more to it than that otherwise we wouldn’t be here, and I would be able to shake this uneasy sensation an angel always gets when something isn’t quite right.
“Where are we?” I ask my ward again, this time with more bite in my words. She flings a pitiful look at me, one that I’m surprised contains tears. “Sophie…”
I gather her in my arms, and she leans into me as though I’m the only solid ground and she might float away to the sea if she doesn’t cling to me tight enough. I know the feeling all too well, only my solid ground was alcohol. It sounds stupid now, now that I have her in my arms.
She pulls back in my hold to lock eyes with me, and at that moment, I see the fear lurking there. I’d tear the entire apartment building down if I thought it would banish that darkness that’s clearly gnawing at her.
“I’m surprised you didn’t recognize the address when I gave it to you.”
I blink and spare a swift glance to the complex, as if to jog a memory that isn’t there. I shake my head in defeat. “I don’t know this place, should I?”
“You should. It’s Elise’s apartment…or it was.”
A tremor rattles my body. Elise’s apartment? No, that’s impossible. “Sophie, Elise was homeless. She lived on the streets.”
I’m confident in the validity of my statement. The handful of times I had seen Elise in the last couple of years, she was sleeping in the back alleys of Seattle, usually in the Belltown district. Her hair was always greasy from weeks without a shower, her complexion yellow and dry for lack of food and drugs that ravaged her body, and she carried a filthy sleeping bag on her back and a backpack filled with her few possessions. Back in those first months together when her stubbornness hadn’t outlasted mine when I would find her passed out from overdosing, I would carry her to my apartment. When she woke she never stayed, in fact, she acted like I had carried her to the bowels of hell.
Elise truly detested me, and the friendship I offered her. She would rather live in the streets than stay with me. Whenever she tore out of my apartment like a bat from hell, I followed her to make sure she was safe. She never went here.
“No. Elise was homeless. If she had a place I would have known about it.”
Sophie stepped back and out of my arms, inspecting me with a suspicious gleam in her eye. “You weren’t close to my sister.”
I don’t anything, allowing the bitter silence to serve as my answer.
“What organization was it that hired you to look after her? Did you really do such a shit job you missed this?” She gestures to the apartment building with an angry scoff.
I furrow a brow, biting my lip in frustration. “Elise’s favorite things were that which would destroy her, and evading me.”
“She didn’t like help from anyone, at least not when other people offered it. She wanted to be free and wild and if she wanted you she would come find you. Which was why I was surprised when she excepted the apartment from our dad, she called it a peace offering, I called it a bribe.”
“A bribe?”
She gives a solemn nod. “For abandoning us when we were little. Our mother was a junkie, and she tried her best to take care of us. But her addiction came first. She died when we were twelve, either from the pressure of having to be a mother or from the drugs. Still don’t know. Our dad could have come and got us, he had the means. Instead, we ended in foster care. I guess he decided he wanted to try to be a good dad somewhere in the last handful of years, called me on my 21st birthday to wish me a good day, and asked me what I wanted.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked, watching her intently.
“That I would die before I would take anything from him, that what he had done to me all those years ago taught me to never need him or anyone ever again. But he was happy when I told him Elise needed help, almost relieved even, like he didn’t even really care that his daughter had fallen in the same steps of his wife. It was like he expected it almost, and that he was happy for it so he could make some gesture that would relieve him of his guilt. So he bought Elise this studio. It’s a dive, but maybe it did keep her alive for a little longer than if she had been completely on the streets. I don’t know.”
She’s staring at the complex with grief in her eyes I wish I could take from her, and perhaps store it where I had kept my own before I met her. She looks so demure, with her pallid skin and her blonde hair blowing around her shoulders in the faint, early spring breeze. Even in her sorrow, her beauty and her perfection renders me completely speechless.
I knew Elise had a complicated past, most wards did. But I never knew the details, and I had learned more about my ex-ward from a five-minute conversation with her sister than I’d learned on my own in the last three years.
I know I’m partially to blame for that. I won’t fail Sophie like I failed Elise.
I won’t let myself.
Turning to Sophie, I don a cool and reassuring smile and reach out to grasp her hand. “Come on, we’ll go in. Together.”
Her slender fingers tighten around mine, and her lips tug into a small smile. “Together.”
* * *
I lean a shoulder against the dirty, corridor wall of the apartment complex, watching Sophie fumble with a key. We’re standing on the third floor of the building, in front of a door with a plaque that reads ‘207.’ My gut does somersaults as my mind tries to imagine what kind of living space could have belonged to a human-like her. I can’t help but wonder if the inside is as depressing as the exterior, with it’s chipped paint and scratchy green carpeting that some humans with perhaps borderline blindness might mistake as grass.
The twin’s father clearly didn’t invest too much compassion and goodwill into securing a safe place for his daughter, if this heap of crumbling shit in this part of town was the best he could do.
“She gave you a spare key?”
My throat is tight as Sophie jams the key into the lock. I didn’t even know this place existed.
“No,” her voice cracked and she paused, her hand frozen on the handle. “The police found it on her. Didn’t take it as evidence because they didn’t want to bother investigating a suicide. So I got it.”
I stare at the back of her head, wishing I could take away the pain that clouds her voice. I reach out and brush the back of my fingertips against her shoulder blades, gentle and slow, tracing their shape. She lets out an airy sigh and leans into my touch, her breathing steadying.
My heart clenches at her reaction. I bring her comfort, something I never could have done for Elise.
“Have you been here yet? Alone?”
She shakes her head. I can smell the faintest tinges of salt lace the stale air around her.
She’s crying.
“I tried but I couldn’t bring myself to. I even came as far as having an Uber drop me off here, the day of the funeral when I followed you to The Guardian. I came as far as the door but I couldn’t bring myself to go inside…”
“You’re here now. That’s what matters.”
“I lacked courage. I couldn’t have done this on my own. Not without you.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. You didn’t lack courage following the only lead in your sister’s murder. You didn’t lack courage, approaching him in the street with fury in your eyes, blazing hotter than all of hell’s furnaces. And you don’t lack courage being with a man, with darkness in his heart and liquor on his breath.”
She spins around and sags against the door, as if bowing under the weight of my words. Frustration rages quietly in her eyes as her gaze searches mine with an electric sort of desperation that brings bumps to my skin.
“You aren’t those things, not since I’ve known you,” she whispers.
I step closer to her until there is no space left between us and grab onto her waist, pulling her into my solid frame. I hold her tight, caging her in my arms. “I changed the moment you graced my sad, pitiful life. You give me hope, purpose, drive. You ignite the fire in me that I thought had burnt out long ago.”
“Gideon…”
Before I can say anything else, she stands onto her tiptoes and pushes her lips to mine. Her tongue pops into my mouth, giving it a sensual swirl in a wet and heated kiss. The taste of sin and salt washes over me, like a tidal wave I long to drown in.
This girl is utter heaven, far more angelic than I can ever hope to be. Somehow the fates have smiled upon me, sending this creature into my arms. I wasn’t really sure I ever believed in fated mates before, at least not for my kind. Paradise was relentless with shoving the fact down our throats that we were better than shifters, a different class of being. Somehow, that meant we were above things such as companionship and monogamy.
It was all horse shit, that’s what it was. Just a way to control us, maybe even going as far as to saddle guardians with wards who they knew would be all wrong for them. After all, how could they hope to maintain order if all Guardians started putting humans first, rather than the toxic obsession with duty and purity they were hellbent on instilling.
Elise was never meant to be my ward.
My ward should have been Sophie. My relationship had been soured with Elise the moment I tried to force myself into her life, a life where there was no room for me. Although she had never discovered the secret of my true nature, she had somehow known we were not meant to be together in any way.
I was meant for her sister.
Shame hangs over my head like a rainstorm. Sophie must feel me stiffen against her as her lips still and she breaks our kiss. Her eyes search my darkened expression with a frown perched on her mouth where my saliva glistens.
“What’s wrong, Gideon?”
Elise’s death still weighs on my heart. Sophie has already told me that it wasn’t my duty to protect her sister, but she still thinks I was a hired bodyguard or some kind of counselor for troubled women or some shit. What will she say when she discovers I was her twin sister’s guardian angel? And that I failed? Will she still kiss me like she does, like I am the sun and she is the moon? Will she kiss me at all? My heart aches at the thought and my inner protector rips at my insides for even daring to think of it.
Shut up, I say to the angel inside, the one who will never shift again. I already lost a woman I was supposed to protect. I have no right to cling to this one.
But cling you will, she’s yours.
But cling I will, as much as I can until she herself tells me to go. I hope that moment never comes. If it does, I wonder if I can even bring myself to obey.
This bond between us feels so absolute, I doubt it can be frayed let alone severed completely. If only I had shared this connection with Elise, because of their fuck up neither of us would have been condemned to Hell.
I shake myself free from the troublesome thoughts and bring my attention back to Sophie. “Nothing. Let’s go inside and see if we can find anything that might prove that the Tacoma Pack is behind Elise’s murder.”
Let’s find the fuckers who I failed to protect her from. I swear upon Lucifer and my soul he’ll surely kiss when I part from this world, I won’t fail a second time.
She summons a brave smile and turns the handle to apartment 207, pushing the door open.
Chapter 14
Sophie
As soon as I step into my sister’s apartment, a lump the size of a golf ball forms in my throat, and my stomach flips, as though it knows we shouldn’t be here.
Elise wouldn’t want me here. She never wanted me anywhere near her. I was so fucking stupid for not realizing how desperate she had to have been to ask me for 25,000 dollars the last we spoke. She never wanted anything from anyone. If she hadn’t been homeless there was no way she would have accepted this apartment from our father. Her pride would have probably outrode her shame had she had not been so desperate.
The weight of Gideon’s hand on my waist quells my nerves and with a deep breath, I look around the apartment, taking in my sister’s home. To say it isn’t much would be a vast understatement.
By Elise and our father’s account, he outright bought the studio. She owned something, even if that something was a shabby, rundown apartment in a shady part of town. But by the sight of the ramshackle apartment, which was even smaller than Gideon’s place, it looked like she was an unwelcome squatter rather than the owner. A bare mattress lay in the corner of the living space with clothes strewn everywhere. A strand of string lights had been pinned up around the ceiling, they were still on, their owner had clearly intended to return. In the corner opposite the mattress was a bookshelf with a cardboard box at its base with books still inside, the shelf only half stocked. Elise had put some amount of effort into making the space feel like a home but clearly, her heart hadn’t been invested in it. Even with a roof over her head she still felt lost.
Like me.
The difference between us was that Elise dove headfirst into her loneliness, allowing it to fester and grow, and from it, sprung far deadlier vices.
I on the other hand wore my loneliness like an armor, carrying it with me as if it would protect me from anyone who tried to ever hurt me again. I guess my armor was no match for this man behind me, whose dark eyes had broken through the walls I hid behind within minutes of knowing me.
I swallow. I feel his presence behind me, his breath hot and heavy on my neck and his eyes intently watching me. I can feel them drilling into my skull. He’s like a bodyguard with an obsession for me that’s so black and smothering it’s nearly suffocating. And I’ve suddenly found myself with a fetish for asphyxiation.
I take a step away from him and turn towards the only other piece of furniture in the room. It’s a white vanity dresser that looks to have been painted so many times the surface is uneven and chipped. The oval mirror attached to the dresser’s surface is cracked, a fist-sized crater embedded in the center of the glass as if someone had struck it out of anger.
I approach the dresser slowly. My image is distorted, my face hidden by the fractures in the mirror’s surface. But I can see Gideon’s refection, his eyes are hooded, watching me with an intensity that electrifies the air.
On the dresser is a book, with a piece of paper stuck into its center as a marker. By its placement, she was nearly done with the book. An invisible knife jabs at my belly. Outlander. I had never read it myself but I did know it was a book about a woman who got sucked into another time, leaving her old life behind. My twin always romanticized the notion of fresh starts, as long as it had nothing to do with her own. Like me, she loved burying herself into other worlds, reading about other women who had the strength to start over.
I reach out, my fi
ngertip running along the edge of the worn, well-loved paperback. “My sister always had a love for books, it was the only interest we shared,” I say through a cracked and ragged voice. Gideon’s reflection closes in on me. Heat radiates off of him like a sauna. I close my eyes and allow myself to lean back in his chest, basking in the comfort of his warmth.
His fingers clasp the nape of my neck and trail over my shoulder and down my arm, leaving a trail of goosebumps in the wake of his touch. His hand settles over my own where it rests on the book.
“Your sister and her books…” he whispers against my neck. “She seemed to love paper more than flesh and blood.”
I heave a breathy sigh and rocked my head against his chest in a lazy shake of my head. “She was always on the run, chasing worlds that could never be her own. There’s something special about escaping into different places, to get to know people who could never hurt you like flesh and blood people can. She could safely get to know the characters of another world. She would cheer for them. Cry for them. Understand them.”
I pause, opening my eyes to meet Gideon’s infernal gaze in the mirror. It sinks straight into my core, warming me all over. I feel like a moth, surrounded in darkness, flocking to a flame that could quite possibly be my destruction.
“Have you ever stopped to consider that life might not truly be what it seems?”
His dark orbs gleam in the mirror, but his expression remains unreadable. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if all we are is characters in someone’s book? We’re fleeting, waiting for a happily ever after that might not ever come. What if we’re killed off, what if we meet the same end as Elise?”
Gideon’s lips curl into a solemn smile. Even heartache looks divine on his handsome features. “If that were true, think of it as you explained Elise’s love for books to me. Perhaps someone, somewhere is coming to know you. Cheer for you. Cry for you. Understand you. Isn’t there comfort in that?”
Claimed by my Dark Angel: A Forbidden Paranormal Romance (Saints to Sinners Book 1) Page 9
