I stood staring at him debating on how to brooch the next topic.
“Yes?” he asked. I guess I was pretty transparent.
“I need to go by my apartment.”
“No.”
“Wasn’t asking. Just telling.” I’d never had a temper in my life, but he had a way of dictating that made me go from zero to sixty.
“Fine. But not alone.”
“I didn’t want to go alone.”
“I’ll be back tonight. Be ready.”
Chapter Twelve
I put together my best stealth outfit out of the supply of clothes I had. One more reason I needed to get into my apartment. Everything they had picked out was skintight. I looked like a hooker. I guess it’s what you can expect from a young man shopping for you. There was a washer dryer closet off the hallway that I had already used several times. I’d already washed the only non hooker outfit I had. It didn’t make sense why he even had it because it seemed he got everything professionally cleaned.
I took one last look in the long mirror that hung on the closet door of my new bedroom. My hair looked better down and flowing I decided. Even though I had picked my outfit for utilitarian purposes, it really did do nice things for my shape.
“Ready?” Caden yelled from the other side of the door. I looked at the clock and it was five after eleven at night.
I didn’t bother to answer, I just opened the door and smiled.
“Leave your cell phone here.”
“Why?”
“Because they are going to be watching for you. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have someone tracking your location on your phone, just waiting for you to leave here.” He paused looking down at me. “You know this is stupid, right?” It was a rhetorical question but I answered anyway.
“I need my stuff.”
“I’ll have whatever you need ordered and delivered for you.”
“It won’t be mine. I can’t make you understand this if you don’t get it. I feel like they’ve robbed me of my entire life and I just want some of it back.”
He looked at me with his deep-set grey eyes and I could see an understanding there. Maybe he did have a soul after all. He didn’t want to do this, but he would. You could see the resignation as he turned and headed out. I of course followed.
The cold wind bit at my skin as I stepped outside. He climbed on the back of the meanest looking motorcycle I’d ever seen. It was a different one from the other night. This one looked more fitting for someone who had demon blood with flames licking across the gas tank.
“Put this on.” He handed me a black leather jacket.
“There are gloves in the pockets. The leather will break the wind a lot better than wool will. If we get cornered this is the best mode of escape.”
“I thought you could take them?”
“I can but if they are alone. Just stay close. It will be easier to slip in and out without anyone noticing. Now get on.”
“Where am I going to put my stuff?”
“Here.” He shoved a backpack into my hand.
He was a typical guy if he thought that I’d be able to get all my things into a backpack, but I didn’t want to argue about it right now. I just wanted to see my apartment. I still wasn’t sure if he really understood exactly why I wanted to go back. The look on his face when he handed it to me made me think he didn‘t quite understand how many things I needed to take. I couldn’t squeeze my life into a backpack!
We pulled into the alley near my building. He put his finger to his lips to signal me to be quiet and hid his bike behind the dumpster. We quietly made our way into the building and nothing seemed amiss. My apartment door was locked, and I went to use my key. So far so good, that was until I opened the door and flick on the light.
It was in shambles, not like it had been searched, but as if to make a point. Whoever had done it had been real angery. My pictures had all been torn off the wall, and the smell of urine permeated the air. I rushed into my bedroom to see if anything had survived. My clothes were strewn about the floor and my dresser looked like an axe had been taken to it. Shards of glass from my dresser mirror were scattered everywhere.
I was still trying to get a handle on the destruction of my belongings when something burst from the closet door and I saw a fist coming toward me. I was quickly pushed back as Caden intercepted it. Stumbling, I landed in broken glass and looked up to see what had almost hit me. It had been one of Carl’s men, who was now lying on the floor with Caden standing over him.
He turned his head toward the front of the apartment. “More are coming. I can hear them.”
He rushed at me and pulling me to my feet, dragging me behind him back to the living room. Knocking my plants out of the way, he opened the window and climbed onto the ledge.
“I can’t jump this! There’s a fire escape in the bedroom.”
“We don’t have any time.”
“It might kill me!”
“It won’t, just climb on my back.”
“Won’t they be waiting down there too?”
“Yes, but it’s a better position, and it’s where the bike is. Once we get down there just stay toward the dead end of the alley. I’ll fight our way out but I don’t want them to be able to run with you.”
He climbed onto the sill, I jumped on his back, and he leapt to the ground. It was a surprisingly soft landing. He shrugged me off his back and behind him as the first two thugs ran at us. He knocked them out quite easily and had the bike out before any others had shown up. We got on and we were almost out of the alleyway when a third ran at us and punched me in the side trying to knock me off the back of the bike. I only managed to stay on because Caden blocked me from falling with his arm and we were off.
“I heard a crack. You might have a broken rib. Don’t try to talk. We’ll back in a few minutes,” he yelled back to me.
I wanted to speak, but I was having hard enough time breathing. We fled down the streets and we were back in few minutes like promised.
He left the bike in the alley and swept me up into his arms. I would have preferred to walk, but I didn’t have the breath in me to fight with him.
“Do you have any idea how close they came to taking you tonight?” he asked the question but I was pretty sure it was rhetorical. “You’re lucky it wasn‘t worse. I shouldn‘t have agreed.”
“I would’ve just gone alone,” I said breathlessly.
When we got inside the bar, it was closed and there was a group of men waiting.
“Lexie, these are my guys. You already met Mike.”
I looked to Mike and he was all smiles, like everything was normal, that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. It might have been convincing too, if his body wasn’t so tense and telling an all together different story.
There were four more men standing around me. One I recognized from that first night in the bar but the others I’d never seen. He introduced me to each of them, Joey, Dave, Alex and Nick.
All of his guys were on the taller side. Joey, looking like he was the youngest of the group was muscular but not quite as filled out as the rest. Dave and Alex looked like brothers. They both had darker skin and hair. They looked like they’d lived on an exotic island beach and eyes so dark they appeared black. Their personalities seemed almost as dark as their eyes. Nick looked like the fun loving flirt of the group. He winked when he said hi. You might as well just hand over a business card with professional gigolo on it because he screamed womanizer.
“It’s not good Caden.” The one Caden had introduced as Dave said. “It’s causing more trouble than we are prepared for.”
I took “it,” to be a poorly disguised code for “me.” Code might even have been giving it too much credit. A four year old could have cracked it. I guess it was better than the alternative of being blatantly rude and flat out pointing to me.
“He means the situation Lexie, not you,” Mike said as he came over and patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry! It’s all good!”
Looking at Mike gave me hope. He wasn’t a monster. I wonder if he was only a smidge Druath, like an eighth or something. Maybe that is all I would be too.
Caden placed me gently down onto the booth being more careful about my ribs than I thought he was even capable. When he stood, I could see his whole being change, his muscles growing and bulging. Instead of being alarmed at why his muscles were bulging out, the vain and shallow part of me took over. I was more concerned that this would happen to me when I started changing. Not a good look for a girl, that was for certain. I’d never be able to show my face in a tank top again.
I was pulled from my distraction when I saw him step into Dave’s personal space. They looked like they were about to come to blows.
“It’s my call.” He spoke in the scariest tone I’d ever heard and punctuated it with a deep growling noise that sounded like it came from his chest. It was even scarier than the night in the alley with Carl. It wasn’t a sound that I had ever heard come from a human man. Another thing to add to my list of things I hoped I wouldn’t get, icky demon voice with growl. Between that and the muscles, I’d never get another date. At that point, I might as well turn green and move to the swamps.
“If they want her, let them have her! We were on the brink of peace! Now the place is crawling with them. We had to shut the bar down tonight because we were afraid of an all out brawl in here. And what about my wife Diana? Doesn’t she get any consideration in this? She’s human and more vulnerable than anyone here, and now, because of this girl, my wife is sitting in the middle of a hornet’s nest. I won’t have it.”
Diana, that must have been the blond girl he was in the booth with the first night I’d come here. I wouldn’t have blamed him for not wanting me here anyway, but I could understand him wanting to protect his wife. For the first time in my life I could be termed “nothing but trouble.” Hmmmm, that was kind of an interesting transition. I never thought I would be the one walking into a room of people and hear them whisper “stay away from that girl, she’s trouble.” It conjures up an image of tattoos and piercings. I guess a tattoo would flow with the whole demon girl thing if I ever decided to embrace the life. Maybe a crazy set of black wings spanning my back or something.
“Dave, if you thought we were ever going to have any kind of long lived peace you’ve been deluding yourself. They’ve already infiltrated the police department and have people in the mayor’s office. Every day they are encroaching into our territory a little step further. What would you like me to do? Roll over? Let them have whatever they want until we are living on the scraps they leave behind? Should I call them and tell them to come and get her too? We don’t even know what she is. We don’t know what kind of edge she could give them.”
Dave turned in my direction and with a look that said clearer than any words that he didn’t believe there was a shot in hell I was going to give them an edge.
“Hey! I could turn out to be one kick ass Drauth!” I tried to say it with some force but it was hard with the cracked rib and all. Not that I really wanted to be a kick ass demon, but it still hurt my feelings to think I’d be a lame one. Nobody wants to be the loser of the group, even if it is a group of monsters.
“She stays. If you’ve got a problem with that then you can leave,” Caden punctuated it with a finger poke to Dave’s chest. I inwardly cringed. Nothing is worse than the finger poke. You could scream and rant and rave but a finger poke meant business.
“So, you are going to pick her over me? You would jeopardize Diana’s safety for someone you just met. We’ve been together for hundreds of years and that’s how quick you kick me to the curb?”
Hundreds? What the hell? Oops, I might have to remove that phrase from my vocabulary. It carried a distinctly different tone under my new set of circumstances. I knew they lived a long time, but damn they aged well. Oh no, I had better stop using the word damn too. This was really going to affect my whole vocabulary.
I looked at Caden’s face. Dave had struck a nerve. His entire frame seemed to relax a bit, and he let out a long exhale which had the exact opposite effect on me. I felt a lump in my throat form, as I wondered if I was about to be thrown out on the street.
“Dave, you are a brother to me. I don’t want you to leave, but you can’t ask me to throw her to the wolves.”
“There are other places you can send her. She doesn’t have to be here.”
“This is the best place and you know that.”
We all watched Dave intently, waiting for a reaction. He finally shook his head and threw up his hands in surrender. The tension was immediately broken, and I sighed in relief. Caden slapped him on the back. He leaned next to him and said something privately that made them both smile and laugh.
“So how are we going to handle this situation?” Nick asked.
“We go day by day like we’ve been doing. I’m going to reach out to the council. If they can help get this back under control, then good, but otherwise we start handling things on our own and the council can go fuck themselves.”
“What about the bar?” Joey asked.
“Closed for renovations until further notice,” Caden said. “Things are too messy right now. I don’t want to take the chance of civilian casualties. Until things calm down, everyone needs to watch their backs.”
Chapter Thirteen
He carried me down to the elevator and put me down on the couch once we got to his apartment. He sat next to me and helped me gently take off the heavy leather jacket.
“They can’t get in here,” he said to me in a reassuring voice. He must have seen some residual fear left in my eyes.
“I want to check your ribs.”
I nodded my head and his hands slowly ran along my side. My breath caught in my throat when his fingers grazed the underside of my breast.
“Did that hurt?” he asked, mistaking my irregular breathing.
“It just hurts to breath.” I wasn’t actually lying this time. It did hurt to breath.
“That’s normal. I think there just bruised. They feel intact. They’ll heal, but you’re going to have to take it easy for a couple of days. I’ll get you something for the pain.”
“No, I don’t want anything. I hate pain medication. It makes my head foggy.”
“Okay, how about some whiskey?”
“A whiskey I’ll take,” I agreed gratefully.
He came back and handed me a glass. We sat in silence for a while.
“I can’t go back to work with them coming after me,” I said it aloud, but I wasn’t expecting him to give me the solution.
“No, you can’t, at least not for a while.”
I knew he was right and even though I had so many other huge problems, I couldn’t help but panic wondering how I would pay my bills.
“Don’t worry.”
“Hmmm?” I looked up at him having lost myself in my own concerns.
“Money isn’t an issue. Everything will be taken care of.”
“I can’t take your money. It’s bad enough that I’ve moved into your home.”
“You didn’t impose. I moved you here. It’s easier for me if you don’t go back to work. I’d have to have someone with you all the time.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll pay you back.”
“It’s not necessary. I’ve got more money than I could possibly need. It’s one of the perks of living a long life.”
“I’m still going to pay you back.”
“We’ll work it out. Let’s not worry about it for now, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Let me help you into your room.”
“I’ve got it,” I said but he helped me up anyway.
“Do you want me to help you change?” I looked at him standing there in his open shirt and rolled up sleeves, standing oh so gorgeous next to my bed. He looked like sex. He smelled like sex too. And now he was being all sorts of nice to me. I couldn’t get involved with this man. I didn’t need any more complications. My life was already in a com
plete upheaval.
“I’m good.”
“Call me if you need me,” he said as he left the room shutting my door on his way out.
I tried to get my shirt off and realize I couldn’t lift my arms to pull it off. Sitting on the floor I tried to wriggle my way out of it by crawling through the neck, but got stuck again. I was ready to start crying in frustration when I heard Caden knock on the door.
“Lex?”
“Yes?” I sounded winded from exertion and the fact that I couldn’t take a deep breath.
He opened the door to find me lying on the floor, my sweater stuck stretched partially over my one shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
“I can’t get it off. It hurts too badly when I raise my arms.” I was starting to tear up. I’d been attacked in an alley way by a thug three times my size but this sweater was going to break me. The idea made me even more frustrated and I actually felt tears now roll down my cheeks.
He kneeled down and helped me sit up, as it was hard to move my arms with the sweater partially down.
I looked in his face and saw a tell tale smirk. “Don’t laugh.”
“I’m sorry, I won’t laugh. Hang on, I’ll be right back.”
He returned with a scissor.
“Don’t cut my sweater! I love this sweater!”
“I can’t do this without cutting it or it will hurt too much. I promise I’ll get you a replacement by tomorrow.”
Sitting on the floor next to me, he started cutting his way up the center of the sweater. Now that I had calmed down slightly I realized quickly that this was going to be a bit awkward. I was wearing undergarments that had been picked out by Mike and they were just as risqué as the clothes. He finished cutting up the shirt, and my naturally full breasts were sitting there, looking quite perky in their burgundy lace push up bra. It barely concealed my nipples that were now hardened knowing that an attractive male was appreciating them. I decided to tell myself it was the chill in the apartment and that it had nothing to do with Caden.
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