by M. S. Willis
I peeked out at Alex from the other side of David and grinned. “HE didn’t yell at me for pissing someone off, so HE can share in my happiness.”
David suddenly stopped in mid-motion. “Who’d you piss off now, Paige?” The apprehension in his voice was obvious and I could have sworn I saw him tremble.
“No one new.”
David nodded and blew out a little sigh of relief. Bringing the mug to his lips, he eyed me from over the rim. “Is he still mad about the woods incident?”
Alex’ laugh echoed through the room. “The woods incident?! Ha! That’s child’s play compared to last night!”
After turning around to set his mug on the counter, David grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. “Did you do something stupid AGAIN last night?!”
“No!” I threw my hands up to get David to let me go. “Chris blew up Tomb last night while Alex and I were there and…”
“He did what?!” The color immediately dropped from his face and his mouth hung open in a mixture of terror and disbelief. His head swung around to face Alex. “And you were there?”
Alex groaned while pulling himself into an upright position. “Yep. And, as usual, Paige had to go running away and almost get herself killed…again.”
David’s head swung back to me. “What were you doing there?”
“Daemon and I were driving back from my parents’ place and Logan called to report that Chris had been spotted at the club. We went by so Daemon could deal with the cops.”
“Why were you at your parents?”
“So I could yell at them for lying to me about Buddy.”
His eyes bugged out as a vein noticeably pulsed at his temple. “Wait…what? Your parents lied to you about Buddy?”
I nodded.
“What…why…” He shook his head as he became more frustrated. I giggled a little over the amount of information a person can miss over the course of eight hours of sleep.
“How did you find out your parents lied to you about Buddy?
“Daemon.”
“Daemon knows Buddy?”
“Daemon is Buddy.”
David froze. Literally, froze. His muscles didn’t twitch, his eyes didn’t wander. I was concerned because it didn’t appear that his chest was moving with his breaths. At that moment, he was a mannequin whose expression was a mixture of shock and disbelief, with a sprinkling of confusion thrown in for good measure.
Alex chuckled and pushed himself up to walk into the kitchen. As he approached, he reached out and patted David on the back. “I know, man. That was my reaction when Paige told me at the club.”
David stood there mouth agape. I jumped slightly when he finally spoke again. “What did your parents lie about? How did you find out Daemon is Buddy? How are you acting so calm about this? How is Alex so calm about this? Did Tomb really blow up? How are you two even alive if you were there?”
A sympathetic expression played over my face as I watched David attempt to process what he had just learned. His never ending barrage of questions was staggering. He was like a computer that short circuited from too much input. I probably should have broken all of this to him little by little, but I had to admit it was more fun watching him flip the fuck out. “There, there, David, let’s go to the couch and I’ll explain everything.”
My arm went around David’s shoulder and I gingerly walked him over to the sofa. We sat down and as I settled into the soft, cozy leather, I heard a distinct clink of glass against metal. My head spun to the kitchen and, sure enough, Alex was stealing the last of the coffee. My brows furrowed as I glared in his direction. Alex turned to look at me while pouring out the last of the contents, his lips turning up into a large, shit-eating grin.
The bastard!
Chapter Four
Over the course of the next several hours I explained everything that had occurred while David was sleeping the night before. Okay, maybe explained is the wrong word. Rather, I dissected every little detail and nuance until David felt satisfied that, even though he slept through the events, he knew enough to feel like he had actually been witness to everything. At some point during my story-telling, Alex had returned to the couch and I received a thorough talking to from both of them for venturing out into the woods during a lightning storm. Apparently, I’d made some doozies of dumb decisions in the last twenty-four hours. But who could blame me? My world had been turned upside down, shook around, dropped to the floor, kicked around like a tin can, and then handed back to me to deal with the crumpled and tattered version of my life.
The afternoon dragged on as Alex slept on the couch and David and I sat around bored out of our minds. The only entertainment in the place was the TV in Daemon’s room, so David and I eventually found ourselves snuggled up on Daemon’s bed, watching old movies. Eventually Alex joined us and our two man pity party became a threesome as Alex quickly fell back to sleep. I’m not sure when exactly David and I fell asleep, but I can imagine it didn’t look very good when Daemon came home to find the three of us cuddled together on his bed.
Daemon cleared his throat which caused me to instantly wake up. I went to sit up but found that David’s head was on my shoulder and his leg was tossed over mine. I pushed his head aside and…was that drool? Ew. After removing his leg, I turned to remove Alex’ arm from around my waist. Scootching off the bed, I stood up and shuffled over to wrap my arms around Daemon as he continued standing in the doorway. Resting my head against his chest, I said, “It’s not what it looks like.”
Daemon’s chest vibrated from silent laughter, which was replaced by his low voice. “It looks to me like you fell asleep with two of your friends while watching TV.”
I looked up at him just as his head lowered to place a kiss on my lips. “Like I said, it’s not what it looks like. We were actually making wild monkey love with each other. A couple of circus performers were involved, but they had to go home early.”
Daemon smiled and shook his head as he took my hand to lead me back out into the living room. He dragged me into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge. Popping the top, he leaned against the counter and I could see the exhaustion weighing down on his shoulders.
“How’d it go today?”
“Good, I guess. I found out that no one was killed last night as a result of the explosion or fire. Apparently, Chris was able to somehow plant the device in the storage room, which basically sheltered most of the main portion of the club from the blast. Detective Troy was out today and she was concerned about our safety here at the apartment. She’s ordered that three officers constantly patrol. One will be located in the garage and the other two will monitor the perimeter of the building at all times.”
“So, I take that to mean they haven’t found Chris.”
“Precisely.”
A long heavy sigh sounded from me and I walked over to Daemon to cuddle into his large frame. “How bad was the damage at Tomb?”
“Pretty bad. It will take several weeks to get it up and running again. Luckily there was no structural damage so it will only be a matter of rebuilding parts of the interior, but luckily, most of the costs are covered by insurance.”
“We’ve got to find Chris, Daemon. This can’t keep going on. He’s only getting worse.”
Daemon was silent for a few minutes. I was concerned that he would object to my statement, but eventually I felt the tension in his body release as his arms came up around me. “I agree with you, Damsel. What can we do to find him?”
My investigator instincts kicked in and I decided that we would have to go about this in the same manner as I had before. Talk to people. Find out as much as we could and follow up on any leads or information that we could pull from those who knew Chris. “I’ll pull a background report on him. We can talk to whoever appears to be connected to him; family, friends, old roommates if there are any. Maybe, he’s worked other places and some of the employees might remember something about him.”
“Pull the report. However, yo
u are not going anywhere alone. Alex or I will accompany you at all times. Agreed?”
“Yeah,” I grudgingly agreed. This sucked. Even though I appreciated that he wanted to make sure I was safe, I still hated feeling like a child who needed someone to watch over me.
Daemon chuckled and kissed me on the forehead. “Good girl. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go kick the two men who just slept with my girlfri…oh wait…can I call you girlfriend now, or are we still not doing labels?” His head cocked to the side in amusement of having put me on the spot.
I wavered. I mean, sure, I was committed to him, but the word “girlfriend” felt like a commitment to that commitment. That was like a double commitment and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It’s not that I didn’t want to be Daemon’s girlfriend, but I’d lived so long not really being anybody’s anything. It was a security blanket that I kept tucked tightly around myself. If there was no commitment, there were no expectations. Expectations made me nervous. I’m not good with expectations. I usually end up falling short of them with my newest wild scheme.
I could feel Daemon’s laughter at my silence rumble through his body. “Either way, I need to go kick those two out of my bed.”
I moved aside to allow Daemon to exit the kitchen, but followed along to assist him in removing my friends from his bed. When we entered the room, I startled at the sight of Alex and David cuddled up together. A broad smile took over my face and I had to cup my hand over my mouth to keep from audibly laughing. Daemon’s lip quirked up into a grin and I nudged him before indicating that I wanted him to hand me his phone. His shoulders bobbed up and down as he attempted to stifle his own laughter. He handed me his phone and I quickly snapped off a couple photos. I held up my finger to Daemon to indicate that I needed a minute. My fingers moved deftly over his keyboard as I texted the photo to both Alex and David’s phones. Quickly moving back out into the living room, I spotted both of their phones sitting on the coffee table in the living room. I grabbed each phone, opened the texts, and saved the photo as their home screens. Giggling to myself, I placed both their phones back where I found them and ran back to the bedroom.
Daemon turned to me and said, “Did you want to wake them or should I?”
I looked over at my friends. They looked so innocent and content, like two little boys curled up together after a long day. No…wait…that imagery wasn’t exactly normal, was it? I shrugged my shoulders and walked over to the bed before climbing on and jumping up and down at their feet. “Rise and shine boys!”
They both startled awake and opened their eyes to find that their arms and legs were twisted together like pretzels. Alex jumped immediately when he realized his close proximity to David and he rolled over and OFF the bed after his discovery. He hit the ground with a heavy thump before popping back up off the ground to survey his surroundings. “What the hell?!”
David let out a big yawn and resembled a cat as he stretched his long lean form out of its previously curled position. David finally opened his honey brown eyes and looked around to find me standing on the bed above him, a confused Alex kneeling on the floor next to the bed, and a snickering Daemon standing at the foot of the bed. “Well, hey guys. What’s going on? Why’s everybody staring at me?”
Alex huffed out in exasperation while pushing himself up into a standing position. “Apparently, you decided that I was your new cuddle buddy.”
David smiled a satisfied grin just before he stopped suddenly. He brought his shirt up to his nose and his face twisted in obvious disgust. “Sonofabitch! I’ve been sullied! Seriously, Alex! Go home and shower and change. This shirt cost a lot of money and now….” David lifted the shirt to his nose again. “Now, I’m going to have to…” He ripped the shirt off of himself and tossed it into a trash can by Daemon’s bedside table. After shooting a disgusted glare in Alex’ direction, David crawled off the bed and stomped out of the room. Alex’ booming laugh competed with Daemon’s. I climbed off the bed and sniffed the sheets.
“Holy crap, Alex, David wasn’t kidding. Seriously, you need to change.” I started peeling the sheets off the bed as Alex glared at me.
“Well, it’s not like I’ve had a hell of a lot of time to go home. I’d intended to change this morning if I wasn’t called over here to babysit your ass.”
Daemon’s face had turned red by this point and I worried about his oxygen levels being depleted by his uncontrolled laughter. He finally made his way over to help me strip the sheets from the bed as Alex marched out of the room.
“Is it always like this around them?”
I looked up into the face of my man and smiled. “Yeah, mostly.”
We finished removing the sheets and Daemon walked them out to go place them in the wash as I pulled new sheets from his closet. After making the bed, I strolled out into the living room to find Daemon speaking with David and Alex in the living room. All three sets of eyes widened at the sight of me and they suddenly became quiet. Confused by their reaction, I inspected myself to make sure that I hadn’t grown a third arm or leg. Having found that everything was normal and where it should be, I looked up in question. “What?”
Alex and Daemon laughed and shook their heads.
“Alright man, well, I’m going to get out of here. I need a shower and a change of clothes. What the fuck time is it anyway? Alex grabbed his phone from the table to check the time. As soon as his thumb swiped across the screen, his eyes widened again, before his face took on a slight shade of purple. “What the fuck?!”
I puckered my lips together to keep from breaking out into a grin as Alex looked over the picture of his phone. His eyes caught mine and narrowed. “You did this.” David peeked around to look at Alex’ phone and squealed in delight. “Oh, how cute! Alex, you should leave that.”
Alex moved quickly to erase all evidence of his cuddlefest with David, while David searched his phone to delightedly find that he too had the shot. After correcting the offending screen image, Alex began to stomp in the direction of the front door. “Whatever, Paige. I’ll see you all later on.”
~
Daemon breathed deeply as he slept next to my side. We were cuddled up on his large bed, now with clean smelling sheets. He fell asleep watching some stupid war movie while I pounded away on my laptop keyboard in search of Chris. The hunt was not going well and it was apparent that Chris kept himself off the radar more than most people. I’d pulled his background report earlier to discover only a few scattered addresses through the years, one or two stints in jail for petty thefts and about four vehicle registrations. Much like when I pulled Daemon’s report months ago, there were no relatives listed, no possible acquaintances and his history read more like a visitor to this life, rather than a resident. He had no credit cards, no property in his name…nothing. The report did include two obsolete phone numbers that were so old, I imagined they now belonged to new people who were clueless to the fact that their number was once used by a psychopath.
Breathing out in frustration, I pounded every little bit of information I could into my Google search engine, scouring for any clue that might lead me to Chris. I was damn near about to give up when I decided to search the phone numbers in the report. The first number came up with no results, but the second…well that number was attached to an old ‘for sale’ ad. The ad was for a beat down truck that looked like it had been dragged through the mud a few too many times, only to end up being used as a bumper car, with its many dents and dings marring the rusted out paint job. I compared the description of the truck to the registered vehicle history in Chris’ report, and lo and behold, it matched. Chris would have been about sixteen when he owned the truck, but the information was better than nothing. Quickly, I flipped back to the sales ad and it gave an address located in a beat down mobile home park that was located about forty-five minutes outside of town. Eureka, I’d found something.
I jotted down the address and slammed the top of my laptop shut. The likelihood of Chris being at that address was sli
m, but I might just be lucky enough to run across a neighbor or two who knew something about him. It was a long shot, but a shot nonetheless.
My eyes shot to Daemon and I contemplated waking him to inform him of my discovery. His arms rested above his head as his massive body was stretched out entirely on his back. Even stretched out, his muscles bulged and rippled across his body, my hand itching to run along the many grooves and lines of his chest and abdomen. I refrained. His face was so content and relaxed that I couldn’t bring myself to wake him. He’d had a rough couple of days and, sadly, I was the cause of the drama.
Placing the laptop on the side table, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and pushed myself up slowly so as not to disturb Daemon. I made my way out into the living room and surveyed the décor of the room. As usual, the only illumination in the room were the flame sconces on the walls. The old world feel to the room, made up of medieval and renaissance artwork and other replicas, was cast in dancing shadows and glowing light. I glanced at the long wall that ran along the right side of the room and my eyes caught on the center painting on the wall. Stepping closer, I took in the painted scene of a knight bending down to kiss a woman as she sat in the woods. Knowing this Knight would be doomed following that kiss, my heart panged when I remembered Daemon’s admission that he understood that type of fate. I hadn’t realized Daemon’s true identity at the time of his admission, but now, knowing that he was my lost friend from days past, the painting took on new meaning. When I found out that Daemon was Buddy, he’d made a point to look at this painting, to point out that, at least to him, this painting represented us.
At the same time a large, shaky breath escaped me, I heard a throat clear. My head shot in the direction of the hallway and there stood Daemon. His hair was in its usually messy state as it framed the chiseled jaw of his face. The masculine lines of his cheeks were only accentuated by the flickering light of the sconces. My eyes traveled down his body and I sucked in a breath at the sight of his broad shoulders that narrowed down into a tight, V-shaped abdomen. His jeans hung casually off his hips but were filled out again by his muscular thighs. When I looked back to his face, his sculpted mouth was slightly parted as if he could feel my desire for him as much as I could feel his for me. Our eyes locked and I was momentarily lost in a pair of blue eyes that had haunted my dreams for so many years.
