Once I’m inside, I hurry to my room and take a hot shower. Chasing the chill from my bones is a relief. But my vision is flooded with Maximus. Our perfect dinner. His tender touches. His bold ones. I groan with frustration as I towel off and throw on a T-shirt and some comfortable sweats.
Kell is standing on the deck with a glass of wine. I grab one of my own and join her. The night has grown dark, but the rain has stopped. Not a cloud in the sky, actually.
“What are you doing out here? Everything’s wet,” I say, closing the sliding door behind me.
“The storm knocked the internet out. I’m bored as fuck. How about you? Where have you been?”
“Just stayed late at the library,” I lie.
She shoots me an unimpressed look. “Is that why your car has been in the garage all night?”
“I got a ride.”
She lifts an eyebrow and brings her glass to her lips. “You’re a bad liar, Kara. If you’re going to keep sneaking around with your professor, you might think about boning up on your bullshitting skills. Or you could just tell me the truth.”
I take a big gulp of my wine in lieu of answering her.
“Well?” she presses when I don’t give her a response.
“I think I’ll stick with omission if it’s all the same to you.”
She turns toward me, leaning her back against the railing. “I suppose it would be if I didn’t feel like it was up to me to change your mind. I’m just trying to give you some sisterly advice. We both know it’s just a matter of time.”
“Until what?”
She cocks her head. “Until they send someone for you. Then playtime is over. It’s a black cloud following me everywhere too. Trust me, I get it.”
“Then why are you on me about it?”
“Because I care about you. I don’t exactly know where they send rebellious demon girls who don’t save themselves for the right person, but I really don’t want to see you go there.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s hell. That’s where we’re all going to end up anyway.”
She chews on her lip and looks out toward the glittering lights of the city. “Yeah, but we’re not there yet. I know you hate this life and everything Mom’s trying to do, but it could be a lot worse. It could be, you know, actual hell.”
“We’re living in a delusion. None of this is real.”
She straightens and throws her arms out to the side, causing her wine to slosh onto the decking. “I’m real. You’re real. Isn’t that worth protecting?”
I’m tempted to keep arguing with her, but I can sense her growing frustration. More, I sense it comes from a better place than anyone else in my family is capable of. The bond we have, as thin as it seems sometimes, is still a bond.
“All we’re doing is inspiring people to be as vapid and self-involved as we all seem to be. That’s what it means to be a Valari. Sorry if I’m dragging my feet on my way to that party.”
“You don’t want to go to the party at all. That’s the problem. And…” She closes her eyes and exhales tensely. “Kara, I just don’t want to lose you.”
I tip some of my wine into her nearly empty glass. “You’re not going to lose me,” I say lightly, even if the dread in my chest is heavier than before.
She sighs dramatically. “Are you falling for this guy or what?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Just tell me the truth.”
I lift my chin and search my soul for the answer. Before tonight, I could have been indecisive. Now Maximus is in my blood. A full-blown addiction. Books have always been my only addiction, but Maximus is his own story. A living, breathing mystery. The most fascinating hero I’ve ever met. And I don’t ever want the story to end. Ever.
Kell cocks her head, bringing her wine-stained lips together tightly. She’s waiting for my honest answer, even though it’s not the one she wants to hear.
“Yes,” I finally say. “I’m falling for him.”
Chapter Fourteen
Maximus
“My, my, my. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, indeed.”
Jesse’s comment—like so many he makes—has me debating whether to groan or chuckle. I follow the line of his gaze across the lawn below his office window to the trio of females lazing in the midafternoon sun.
“You’re a hopeless cause, Professor North.”
But the mirth beneath my mutter isn’t so easy to maintain once I open my phone. Today my social media feed is filled with nothing but shots of Kara Valari. She’s dressed in a trendy blouse and red denim pants and is beaming her way through a charity luncheon for a local animal rescue center.
Fucking great.
Because every effort I’ve made to push her out of my mind since last night, including two cold showers, a run on the Santa Monica berm, and a two-hour lunch with my best friend, have been splintered by twenty seconds of puppies, kittens, and that woman’s backside in skintight red denim.
And I thought she’d never best the Daisy Dukes from last night.
Jesus. Christ.
Last. Night.
“Yo! Earth to Maximus Kane.”
I’m grateful for the chance to snap my head up. “Huh? What?”
“Now who’s the hopeless cause?” While I’m focusing on his words, he flings out a length of super-elastic rubber that latches on to my phone with a loud thwop. Before I can blink, the device is yanked out of my grip and handily caught in his thanks to his little gizmo. “Well, look at all this.”
“Goddammit, Jesse.”
“And this…and this… Why, Maximus Kane. Are you cyber-drooling over Kara Valari?”
“Give me my phone back.”
He holds it up and out of the way, as if we’re kids quibbling over who gets to be player one on the game system. “Not until you give me the scoop about what happened with this little cutie.”
“Don’t call her that.” Protective rage is a strange invader in my senses.
“Make you a deal.” He raises a brow. “I’ll stop talking when you start. Let’s start with the other night…at your place.”
I scrape a hand through my hair. “What’s going on here? You’ve never pulled this with anyone else I’ve been seeing.”
“Because none of them have showed up at your front door on a Sunday night before.”
“And that changes…what, exactly?”
As a maddening answer, he simply wiggles the phone over his head. “No details for Jesse, no phone for Max.” He doesn’t relent his pose, knowing I won’t breach his personal space unless I’m lifting him for practical purposes. “Come on, man. Humor me with a few juicy details. Don’t leave me holding your phone and my dick here.”
“Thanks for the terrifying visual.”
“Know what’s even more terrifying? The fact that in the three years we’ve lived at that building, I can’t recall any woman in your doorway except for your cleaning girl and old Mrs. Worthington with her brownies.”
I take a turn with the brow cocking. “Do you have brownie envy? Is that what this is about?”
Jesse narrows his glare. “This is about you and healthy human companionship. Well, besides me. The kind of companions who might like the idea of your manly scruffstache between their silky—”
“Okay, hold up.” I surge out of my favorite wingback chair and start marching around the end of his desk. “Damn it, Jesse. Why are you pushing this?”
He tilts his head, his expression sobering. “Because part of me is worried about you, man.”
“I’ve dated, okay?” I turn and brace my ass to the desk’s edge. “You know there have been a few…exceptional ladies…in my past.”
“Sure,” Jesse drawls. “But Wendy from college, Therese from the staff retreat, and ‘Recto Verso Renee’ don’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re all ancient history.” He huffs. “Dude, Wendy is married, Therese has kids, and Renee moved back to Britain.”
“Okay, fine.” I
rub my knuckles through my beard. “So I’ve been busy.”
“No,” Jesse counters. “You’ve been fucking picky.”
“You know, there’s this term that a few guys in this world still live by, Mr. North. It’s called being a gentleman.”
For extra fun, I overenunciate every syllable of the term. As revenge, Jesse exaggerates his new laugh. I grit my teeth. He’s so gleefully certain about all this, seeing through my rhetoric and down to my most agonizing truth. That I haven’t pursued a woman for such a long time because there’s been nothing inside to pursue her with. A void I’ve filled with a thousand other things besides what’s really me. A me I know nothing about. Because chasing it results in exactly what happened at the shop with Mom.
Anger. Confusion. Frustration. Disappointment. A deeper dive into a darker void.
“Okay, just for giggles, let me get this absolutely straight.” Jesse’s interjection is a needed slice into my moroseness. “Are you telling me you had Kara Valari at your front door, looking like sin and smelling like the ocean, and you were a gentleman about the whole thing?”
I drop my gaze and abandon the quest for my phone. At the moment, there’s a bigger concern in front of me—like controlling how much of the truth I feel okay about revealing here. No way do I want to lie to him, but what Kara and I share is still too new and special in my mind—and other places of me. It feels too vulnerable.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Ah! Yesss.” Jesse pumps a fist. “And here I thought that extra bounce in your step might just be from caffeine.”
“It is just from caffeine.”
“Which means what?”
“Exactly what I said.” I move back to the chair and drop into it. “I’m a gentleman, not some horny hellhound.”
“You ever think she might want a horny hellhound?”
“She didn’t leave disappointed.” All right, maybe a little. “But it was just a kiss.” And groping. And stroking. And caressing. And gazing into her huge, dark eyes until my soul wanted to swim in hers for hours. “That’s all it’s really been so far.”
“So far?” Apparently, Jesse deems the disclosure worthy of handing my phone back over. He slides the device back across the desk. “That’s a pair of loaded words, my friend.”
It doesn’t take me long to lift my head. “Yeah. I guess so.”
A deeper interrogation brews in his gaze, then across his whole demeanor—but before he can act on it, there’s a stir of movement in his office doorway. I join him in looking up, to where a dark-haired, kohl-eyed beauty awaits his acknowledgment with unnerving stillness.
On paper, Kell Valari is a year younger than Kara—but looking at her now, I’d guess the opposite as truth, by more than that gap. It’s not just the force of the woman’s outward appearance, which is as scrubbed and styled as the rest of the Valari royalty. It’s everything else that informs her arrival. The authority in her stance. The regality of her posture. The confidence in the sole step she ventures toward Jesse.
“Is this a bad time, Professor North?”
Her words sound so much like Kara but not. Where Kara’s voice still wavers in places, sounding uncertain—maybe hopeful?—Kell’s is more assured, as if she already knows the answer to her question. For that matter, every other question in the world too.
In short, she’s spun of everything my best friend craves in a woman. A truth that’s now stamped across his too-beautiful-for-a-man features.
Still, Jesse gamely replies, “It’s a fine time, Miss Valari. What can I do for you?”
The moment would normally be my cue to fake interest in my phone, but the notion is fleeting in light of my fascination with Kara’s sister. Her smoky eyes are now locked on my friend. She pulls in a defined breath through her flared nostrils and then lifts the corner of her mouth. But only by a fraction.
“Well, I’m not here for official reasons,” she confesses. “There’s just something I’m curious about, and you seemed like the best person to consult.” While she talks, she withdraws her cell from the side pouch of her trendy satchel.
“Uhhh…great.” Jesse spreads his hands, looking every inch a flummoxed dork. “I’m all yours. I mean, I’m all ears. Consult away.”
“I took this picture in the middle of that freak storm last night,” she says, moving over to stand next to him. “There was lightning, thunder, and gallons of rain coming out of the sky—but then this.”
Jesse’s stare is confused at first but bugs out as he focuses on her screen. “Is that a—”
“A full constellation, right?” Kell returns quickly. “But I can’t identify it and thought maybe you could.”
Jesse zooms in on the image by spreading his fingers across the screen. “I’m not sure I’ve seen anything like it.”
“I didn’t even notice it until I looked back through my photos this morning,” she says. “I don’t remember seeing it last night when I was taking the shots. It looks like it’s right on top of the clouds. Or maybe…in them?”
“Perhaps it’s just a trick of light. Your phone reflection on the glass, maybe?”
“I was on the balcony of my bedroom,” she explains. “I slid open the door to take the pictures.”
As the two of them huddle over her device’s screen, strange needles in my bloodstream multiply. It’s not just the sight of my best friend getting cozy with a woman so physically similar to the woman I’m crazy about. It’s what they’re talking about. The storm last night. Which pivots my thoughts to everything I was doing during it. Everything I was feeling during it. The sensations that coursed through me, even hours after I dropped Kara at her place. Stirrings that were hot and new but bizarrely familiar.
Like they are now.
“I’m going to leave you two to the spectral sleuthing,” I assert, rising once more. “My office hours start in fifteen minutes, so…”
“Yeah, yeah. Talk to you tonight, man.”
Jesse’s reply is more a distracted rote than a thought, and he doesn’t look up from the image casting an electronic glow across his captivated face. Kell is another story, though. As soon as I clear the threshold of Jesse’s office, she’s not more than three steps behind me.
“Professor Maximus. Do you have a second?”
The pricks in my blood, now feeling more like daggers, encourage me to pretend deafness and keep moving. But my respect for Kara, and the love she no doubt bears for her sister, have me scuffing to a stop.
“Miss Valari.” I conduct half a pivot. “How can I help you?”
She steps up, sending a pair of forceful clacks down the hall courtesy of her elegant high heels. The rest of her outfit is decidedly casual, though her jeans have Italian detailing and there’s a three-carat ruby on a glistening gold chain around her neck.
“Listen.” Her voice is surprisingly quiet, even gentle. “I care deeply about my sister, okay?”
That makes two of us.
Outwardly, all I do is clear my throat. Her decorum deserves the same in return. “Thank you for sharing.”
She folds her arms. “Well, she did a little sharing of her own with me last night.”
“Regarding?”
“You.”
Thank God I expected that part. I’m ready with my sham of nonchalant surprise. “Me? In what sense?”
She ticks her head to the side and leans in to calmly scope me out. “I think you already know.”
I square my jaw along with my shoulders. “I know that I’m your sister’s literature professor. Whatever else you’re intimating—”
“Stop.”
“Stop…what?”
“Just stop.” She steps back and takes in a sharp, deep breath. “And let me be clear about this part. I’m not asking you to stop these denials, which are kind of hilarious now that I’ve smelled the proverbial roses.” She gestures up and down with one hand, figuratively painting the air in front of my form. “Maybe pretending to the rest of the world will make it easier for you to put on t
he brakes with Kara behind the scenes too.”
A lead brick thuds its way down my throat. “Theoretically speaking, if I were seeing Kara…socially…why would I choose to ‘put on the brakes’ with her? Last time I checked, your big sister was a grown woman with impressive control of her own mind.”
“Her mind? Sure. I’ll give you that much.” She’s not vehement about it now. Her voice cracks with a new emotion. Resignation? Sorrow? “It’s just the rest of her she’s got to worry about.”
The brick’s now in my gut. “What the hell does that mean?”
Kell shakes her head as if I’ve jarred her from a trance. “Listen. I’m begging you here, okay? Just…let her go. And do it soon. The longer you let her think there’s any kind of viable choice, the worse—so much worse—it’ll be for her in the long run.”
Against my will, my jaw clenches. The stabs in my blood are now blinding flashes behind my eyes. I haven’t had a migraine since the early days of middle school, but damn it, I recognize the approach of one now.
“Choice?” I growl it out but swear my utterance sounds like thunder. Or is that the sound of the sky outside? “She’s a bright woman. Whatever she elects to do with her life, there’ll be plenty of choices.”
“Right.” The woman’s bitter laugh is hollow as she casts a bleak look at the darkening day outside. “Choices galore. That’s the life of a Valari woman, all right.”
I blink hard, struggling to keep focus on her profile. At this angle and in the dimming light, she reminds me even more of Kara. The proud chin. The petite triangle of a nose. The smooth, high forehead.
“Bitter subtext is one of my favorite themes,” I confess. “What, in all this universe, are you talking about? I imagine your lives can often be burdens you haven’t asked for, but you’re grown adults. You and Kara have the ability to write your own fates.”
At first, Kell’s answer consists of nothing but a long laugh. But this time, there’s no acrid undertone to it. “Our own fates?” she counters. “Sure. I’ll give you that one too. Fate will have a field day with all of us.” She looks up at me with an even darker grimace, her eyes full of anguished flames. “But Maximus Kane, you are not part of my sister’s fate. You never can be. And the sooner you get that through your thick skull, the better.”
Blood of Zeus: (Blood of Zeus: Book One) Page 11
