Talia's Bodyguard

by Lisa Daniels

  Now tears began trickling out of her face again, and she flushed in shame. She felt like a leaky faucet and didn’t want to keep breaking down in front of her bodyguard, that big, tough, hairy mountain of a man who, in his way, wanted to comfort her.

  “Oh, don’t be like that. It’s okay.” He made soothing sounds in the back of his throat and approached her tenderly, gripping her shoulders and then lightly massaging them. “This is supposed to help. Get you all relaxed. Stop you thinking about all the things you shouldn’t.”

  The feel of his fingers digging into her back caused shivers to roll down her spine, and she relaxed back into the contact, closing her eyes, his hands working a sore but pleasant ache in her muscles. And maybe stirring some extra feelings in her, too. The kind she wasn’t sure she wanted to feel around him.

  She felt his breaths near her forehead as she continued sinking into the massage, eyes closed. Was he near enough? Was he bent over with his face inches from her own? She didn’t dare open her eyes and prove or disprove this notion. Instead, her heart rate decided that now was a great time to increase in speed, and her pulse seemed to throb in her throat, her cheeks, her ears…

  It’s nothing, she told herself firmly. He just needs to be close to… ahh… to massage…

  Something soft placed itself against her forehead. It moved, and the warm touch of lips and breath caressed the skin there. Her eyes snapped open, and she saw him lifting his mouth from her, smiling softly…

  She couldn’t say who exactly started it then. Maybe she did, twisting around to inspect him better. Or he did, taking that as an invitation, but one moment, it was just a simple massage, and the next—it wasn’t. His mouth was upon hers, greedy and seeking, hot and eager, and she responded to that wild passion with some of her own. Lips parted and tongues probed, exploring one another’s mouths. He tasted of the Coors, and her lips became wet from the contact, as well as her lower ones.

  Wrapping her arms around her neck, she tasted him, breathed him in, her heart stuttering at a frenzied pace. He had a wild, animal scent about him that dug into her. Her fingers scrabbled at him, but it was only when he began groping under her shirt that reason returned. She wrenched herself from his face, pushed his hands away from her, and stammered, “I, uh, no. That was an accident. I’m gonna—gonna go to my room.”

  His surprised and hurt expression clawed at her. But this wasn’t an appropriate time. She was too vulnerable. Easy to sway, clogged up with alcohol and suppressed mourning. Of course the first sign of affection, of close contact and kindness would set her off. She didn’t want to use him, and she didn’t want to give the wrong impression, either. Ignoring his protests, his confusion, she hurled herself into her room, locked the apparently faulty lock, and slumped onto her bed.

  “Talia?” His voice came from outside. She didn’t respond. After a moment, she heard his feet back away from the door. She felt even worse, like she was about to slam hard into her hangover, and all the excitement of earlier crusted into a poisonous darkness.

  She lay there for an indeterminate amount of time. Her mind spun and spun until it was simpler not to spin at all, and she stared into the back of her own eyelids, felt her beating heart and her trembling limbs. Her breaths sometimes came in sobs, and she felt very sorry for herself.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She expected it to be Janos, and ignored it for a moment, until it buzzed again. Then, with an irritated grunt, she yanked it out of her pocket and unlocked the screen.

  Rosen.

  A sense of dread settled in her stomach with all the other emotions she was trying to suppress, and she stared at her sister’s name, before clicking on it.

  Great news. Father woke up. I’m fine. Mom knows about what happened. Hope I’ll be back to work within a week. Also heard about what you did. We know someone’s after us. We’ll get them. Don’t you worry. :))

  Talia gaped at her sister’s message for a moment. What?

  Her father was alive? He was alright?

  She anxiously chewed her bottom lip, thinking.

  Well. She must have been mistaken about what she felt. Probably too emotional, too panicked to concentrate properly. That made sense. The burden upon her heart mostly lifted… but there was still an inexplicable knot left there.

  Chapter Eight – Janos

  Not exactly used to being spurned, Janos didn’t know how to react at first when Talia had stormed off, sealing herself in her room. His inner alpha growled in annoyance and sexual frustration, but he tamped it down. Clearly the girl was in quite the emotional state. He didn’t want to upset her further.

  But the news afterwards, that her father was alive and well, seemed… fishy.

  She told him, beaming with happiness, and seemed to have conveniently blanked out all memory of their little makeout session. Though obviously she remembered it, because she avoided looking him in the eye, and turned such a bright crimson that he was mildly surprised that she didn’t spontaneously combust on the spot. It irritated him to no end, because he wanted to confront her and ask about it, how she felt, what it meant… but she insisted on the avoidance.

  She visited her father and sister the next day in the hospital. Janos watched from the side as she interacted with Rickard. He watched the two of them hug. He saw Rickard’s gaunt and tired face, and heard their whispered conversation, because his hearing was that good.

  “I thought you were lost forever, Father...”

  “It takes more than a car accident to kill me,” Rickard had said with a smile. “I’m sorry if I made you worry.”

  “I’m glad you’re alright, Father,” Talia had replied, looking slightly perturbed. Once they had finished their conversation, she confessed to Janos outside the room that she thought her father seemed a little… too nice.

  “Well, he did have a near brush with death. That tends to put a lot of things in perspective,” Janos pointed out. She accepted his words, smiling at him briefly, before apparently remembering that she was trying to avoid looking at him at all. Irritation ripped through him and his inner alpha. How dare she keep avoiding? He wanted to seize her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her, but knew better than to do that. She obviously felt relieved to see that her family was all right.

  But… she’d seemed so sure she couldn’t sense her father’s soul. What was that all about?

  He tried to persuade Talia to take another day off—her lecturers would understand, of course, but she was having none of it. She wanted to hit Rosewood again, and do a little detective work of her own. Find the person responsible for trying to kill her family, who knew her enough to hit where it hurt.

  Privately, Janos went through his own list of suspects, as he followed Talia around the crowded university and sat in on her lectures once more. Sometimes letting his mind wander, which was a first, because he’d been trained perfectly to never let it sink into distractions. It just… Talia happened to be a whole other level of distracting by herself. A necromancer. Something he should automatically hate, except he didn’t, not at all. Something he’d even kissed, and his inner alpha had definitely approved of that kiss. It wanted more. It desired staking a claim upon her. Making it clear to other werewolves that this woman was his, and his alone.

  Those types of bindings were about a century outdated now, however. Werewolves didn’t do that with their human females anymore, though sometimes they still committed to a scent binding with female and male werewolf unions.

  When his mind wasn’t exploring the possibility of what things might have happened, if Talia didn’t run into her room like a coward after the kissing, or getting annoyed at her blatant and shoddy attempts to avoid him, he contemplated a private list of people. The lecturer with the gun felt like a potential issue, except that person had opportunity to kill, reason to do so, and chose not to.

  The random group of people Talia associated with but wasn’t really friends with were possibilities as well. But they didn’t know a whole lot about her private lif
e. What they knew came from the media, from secondhand accounts of what other people said. Though they could probably suss out regular meeting spots and routes from this information alone.

  Last but not least was Talia’s knot of friends. Jake, Elodie, and Nadine. Jake always seemed boundless and curious, asking things of Talia all the time. So he moved higher on Janos’ suspect list. Maybe he asked all these things to try and learn how to do necromancy himself. Maybe he only pretended to be excited about everything, when in reality, boiling hatred fueled him—the kind that was irrational and could never be reasoned out.

  Nadine seemed to him as a bit of a sycophant. Clearly in love with Jake, but for whatever reason, those two were firmly in the friend zone. He knew enough to understand that none of this little friend group were currently dating anyone else. If Jake was the enemy, then that meant Nadine might be right in there with him. Or genuinely oblivious. But he didn’t think it was her at all.

  Elodie, on the other hand… Janos’ eyes bored into Elodie’s back, but she didn’t pay any heed. Elodie, Jake, and Talia were together this lesson. Scribbling notes, trying to keep up with what their lecturer was saying. Elodie… he didn’t know where to place her. She seemed friendly enough, but they all did. She was supportive of Talia, even if sometimes maybe she found it hard to wrap her head around the concepts of necromancy. Hadn’t Talia once said that Elodie at first was on edge with her, but learned to accept?

  After some thought, he placed Elodie on his suspect list, higher than Jake.

  She was missing when the attack on the university happened, he thought. And she reappeared once all the bodies had been taken over by Talia. Not that she would even need to disappear. Unless necromancers could sense one another if they were casting nearby. Perhaps they did. Perhaps that was why Elodie vanished.

  But then, what about the attack at the crossroads? Elodie had never mentioned anything about her views of Rickard.

  Didn’t mean she didn’t have any, of course.

  How would I bring this up with Talia? Janos highly doubted Talia would appreciate being told that one of her inner circle of friends might be the one trying to kill her family and discredit necromancers. Someone who clearly wasn’t afraid of the casualties piling up in their mission to do so. Anything to cast necromancy in the worst light possible.

  No choice. Talia needed to be informed. His duties screamed for it. But he did hate his job a little more, and subsequently, his father for handing him this position in the first place.

  The plot thickens. He stared at Elodie as if he could see the intent in her mind, read every thought. Of course, he probably was completely wrong, but all possibilities needed to be considered.

  When the lesson was done, he fell into his customary step behind them as they flocked to their free period to meet up with Nadine.

  “—honestly thought my father was a goner,” Talia was saying. Her voice was clear and beautiful to him, standing out from the rest of the crowd. “I was so scared, I didn’t even want to think or feel. But… he recovered. So did my sister. They’re okay.”

  “I knew it!” Jake said with a happy laugh, clapping Talia hard on her shoulder.

  “That’s great news,” Elodie said, but behind, Janos couldn’t really gauge their expressions to determine how genuine they were. “It’s a horrible thing, to lose family.”

  Isn’t it? Janos thought, sensing something else to Elodie’s words, though she didn’t elaborate. He wanted to follow Elodie if she went off somewhere, but also knew not to leave Talia. But perhaps Talia might be safe enough if his little suspicion turned out to be less of a suspicion and more of reality.

  The day turned out to be disappointingly normal. As did the next. And the next. Talia’s father and sister still needed time to recover, leaving the youngest necromancer with full rein of their fancy estate. She’d taken to sitting in her father’s personal library and reading through all his books about necromancy. She’d even phoned her mother, Caroline, to ask her views on necromancy.

  Along with her practicing, Janos couldn’t help but feel two things: one, that she was searching for something very specific. Two, that she was using it as an excuse to avoid him some more. Since every time he tried to strike up a conversation, to confront her about it, she shrank into her shell or snapped about being too busy to talk.

  She also didn’t exactly take his statement about her inner circle of friends being dangerous too well, either. The fact that he’d even dared to implicate her three friends was enough to earn him a black mark in her book, and frankly, he started feeling tired of doing his duty.

  If she wanted him to quit his job, she should at least have the guts to say it directly to his face, rather than with all this non-confrontation. A part of him also hurt from her rejection. He’d been so sure in that moment, no matter how career-destroying it was, that she wanted him. He smelled the desire. He tasted her intent.

  If only, if only…

  Disappointing day by disappointing day, it was still left up to him to break up any potential ire between Talia and strangers of the university or street. Twice, he needed to morph into his werewolf to send an aggressor scampering. Once, another werewolf wanted to challenge him, completely losing his head from the inner alpha that simmered within, and Janos taught him a little lesson in etiquette.

  Rosen returned to duty. Rickard came home, instantly resuming his work, and doing it with a much more jovial attitude than before. With her father home, Talia approached Janos at last, looking him in the eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. He bristled, but listened. “I know I’ve been avoiding you like an idiot… I just… I didn’t want to get distracted from thinking of my family.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “No?”

  “I didn’t want… whatever was happening between us… for the wrong reason. I didn’t want to use you.”

  He grunted. He didn’t mind if he was used—especially if it came down to the fact that someone needed the distraction. Though he was glad to not have to explain to his father that he was no longer working with Talia because he tried to come on to her—it did leave a rather sour taste in his mouth all the same. “Yeah, well, probably shouldn’t have acted like a child all that time, and spoken to me like an adult instead. Instead of icing me on the side like I’m a disease.”

  “I had a father and sister to worry about,” she said, her apology burning into flame, eyes taking on a glint. “I have this whole discrimination thing to consider, rather than…”

  “Rather than take ten seconds to explain,” he scoffed, and they both trailed into a rather moody, angry silence. He inwardly cursed himself for their snippy exchange, but he was too proud now to take it back. They continued their frosty silence until June the 6th, just over two months since he had started his duties. It already felt like a year. And he still remembered their kiss like it was yesterday.

  I’ll wait until the end of the semester, he thought, knowing that wouldn’t be too far away, and then I’ll ask my father and hers about swapping in another family member instead.

  He sat in his usual seat of power in the back of one of the many lectures Talia needed to attend, watching Talia gush about whatever it was girls gushed about with Elodie. Talia had quite vehemently rejected his suggestions, to the point where it felt to him like she was putting on a show when it came to interacting with her inner circle of friends.

  Lunch break was when all the action started. Again. Students rushing to eat, others piling to sit outside in the hot summer sun to do homework or converse with their friends. Talia preferred to sit inside by the air conditioning on the sunnier days—she wasn’t a fan of the heat, and Samhain had it packing.

  The first thing Janos noticed was Elodie heading away from Jake and Nadine. All his senses went to high alert.

  Probably she was just going to the toilet, but another part of him, the part made up of just instinct, wanted to follow her. To see if she really was doing something innocent, or was up to something… nefarious.
But it meant leaving Talia. An active choice with potential consequence. At the last moment, he chose to gallop after Elodie, leaving the blissfully unaware Talia to enjoy the company of her remaining two friends.

  Janos transformed small parts of himself to enhance his senses further, so that it would take barely any time at all to complete the change. Elodie did seem like she was heading to do something ordinary—but once she was in the university, she took a side exit, and Janos followed, adrenaline and excitement beginning to pulse through him. Also a little anxiety that he might be wrong, and it was Nadia and Jake he needed to watch out for, or one of the numerous students who harbored a grudge.

  Walking through the parking lot, Elodie headed directly into the copse of trees that lined the premises. The small copse led into Rosewood Park, another popular spot where students went to play truant.

  His instincts told him not to follow too deep, but his curiosity won out over caution. Inside the copse, Elodie’s trail went off the beaten path, into the wilder tangle of brush.

  The stink of death slammed into his nostrils when he finally caught up with Elodie, who stood by an opened bunker of sorts.

  “You,” he said, morphing completely into a werewolf. “What are you doing here?”

  Elodie, all blonde hair and smiles, faced Janos with little fear. “What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be protecting Talia, like she so hates?”

  “I am,” he grated, his inner alpha going wild at the scent of death.

  “I’d never hurt her,” Elodie said. She seemed sincere in this statement, but there was something behind her eyes. An edge of madness that Janos hadn’t spotted before. She also stank of stress, from being discovered. “Why would I hurt my best friend?”