Esher looked over his shoulder at her as she reached him.
She could feel him waiting to hear her opinion and whether she liked it.
“It’s stunning,” she breathed, a little lost in traversing it with her eyes, fascinated by finding things she had missed at first glance, hidden paths and lanterns, and a seemingly ever-changing vista as the sun moved, sinking lower. “How did you come to live here?”
He shrugged, but it was stiff. “Father bought it and it’s been in the family ever since.”
He didn’t want her to ask more, but she wanted to know, couldn’t see such an impressive house without needing to know more about it and the man who lived in it.
“You live here with only your brother?” She hoped he didn’t find that question too intrusive.
When he almost smiled, she relaxed a little. “I do, but I have other brothers.”
He turned away, heading back into the house, and as much as she didn’t want to leave the garden, could spend forever looking at it and never grow tired, she wanted to know more about Esher.
She found him in the kitchen, rifling through a large modern refrigerator.
“How many brothers do you have?”
His voice came from the other side of the silver door. “Two older, and four younger.”
Six brothers.
She couldn’t imagine what it was like to have such a large family, but she felt a little envious as she tried.
“Are they all like you?” She moved to the other side of the kitchen so she could see him and rested against one of the wooden cabinets.
He poked his head out of the refrigerator, his handsome face etched in thoughtful lines, and frowned as he closed the door and set some vegetables down on the work surface. “We’re all quite different really. Like fire and ice. Some more so than others.”
He hadn’t quite understood her question, but she didn’t correct him as he set to work. She had meant were they all spirits, or possibly gods?
But he answered that question in a way, revealing one thing to her.
They were all elementals.
She took up a knife, and a chopping block, and moved to stand beside him at the cramped workspace. He didn’t stop her when she took the carrots from him and started peeling them. He just stared.
When he had been staring at her for so long she started to feel self-conscious, she paused and glanced up at him.
“Sorry… I just always do the cooking. The only time I get help, it’s under duress. My brothers are lazy.” He picked up an onion and peeled it. “They prefer to sit in the other room waiting for me to prepare the meal.”
He didn’t seem bothered by that.
She leaned back, looked through to the other room, and then went back to chopping carrots. “I’d rather help.”
She had the feeling that pleased him as he started cutting up the onion and followed it with a few potatoes, and then some beef. When she was done with her carrots, she set them aside and looked around at the small kitchen. Three rice cookers sat side by side on the counter opposite. Big appetites?
She supposed seven men would eat a lot of food.
While Esher finished up with the ingredients, she hunted through the cupboards for the rice and got it on for him.
“I was going to do that,” he said as he took a large pot from one of the bottom cupboards and set it on the stove, and the note in his deep voice told her that this time he wasn’t happy.
Because he wanted to impress her with his cooking?
She hadn’t missed the pride that had shone in his eyes when he had announced that he was a competent cook.
“I can’t find the sauce packet.” She closed the final cupboard and looked over her shoulder at him.
He stared at her, blue eyes wide, a flicker of confusion in them. “Sauce packet?”
“For the curry.” She presumed they were cooking curry rice anyway.
He chuckled and shook his head. “Sauce packet.”
Aiko could only watch as he opened a cupboard above the stove and pulled out an armful of different glass jars and metal pots, and proceeded to open them, measuring different herbs and spices out onto a plate.
So maybe he was a better cook than her, because she always used store bought sauce for her curry. In fact, she had never cooked it from scratch before and was sure she had never known anyone who did either.
When the curry was bubbling on the stove, and smelling mouth-wateringly delicious, she took some plates and bowls and set the table for him, picking the end nearest the door, where she had a view into the garden. It was growing close to sunset now, and the garden was even more breathtaking as the light turned golden and warm.
She hadn’t realised she had paused to soak it in until Esher appeared in front of her, a pot of curry in his hands. She smiled at him, helped him arrange the heavy pot on a stand, and filled a glass with water for him as he went back into the kitchen, returning with the rice.
He chose the seat that had its back to the garden, and she knew he had done it on purpose, giving her the view.
“Thank you.” She took the plate he offered to her, and the tempting smell of curry filled her nostrils, making her stomach grumble.
He filled his own plate, and set it down, and as she gathered a spoonful of both rice and curry, he stared at her, waiting again.
She popped it into her mouth, and her eyes widened as her taste buds lit up.
She covered her mouth. “Oishii!”
Delicious.
Esher smiled, the sight of it almost as delicious as his cooking. “You look like an anime character.”
She shook her head. “I’m being serious. You’re a good cook.”
He averted his gaze and muttered, “I’ve had a lot of time to practice.”
Aiko studied him as he fell silent again, enjoying her food and the time with him. She wasn’t sure how long spirits or gods lived, whether they were truly immortal or only lived longer lives than humans. He looked no more than eight years her senior, but he could be thousands of years old.
Her mother had married her father and there was a fifteen-year age difference between them, and her grandmother had been almost twenty years younger than her grandfather.
She wouldn’t care if there was an eight-year or eight-thousand-year age gap between her and Esher.
She felt connected to him. Deeply.
He glanced at her as he ate, and she had the feeling he wanted to speak but was struggling to settle on a topic.
“You’ll have to share the recipe with me.” She pushed her empty plate aside and smiled for him, hoping it would soothe him and help him find his voice.
“You can fight me for it.” The twinkle in his clear blue eyes said he wasn’t being serious, and it was strange to see this side of him when he had only ever been deadly serious around her.
His expression shifted as that thought drifted through her mind, turning awkward again, that conflict reigniting in his eyes as he grabbed the plates, rose to his feet in one fluid motion and walked into the kitchen.
Why did he find it so hard to be relaxed around her?
Why did he find it so difficult to trust someone?
She could feel trust was the source of his conflict, stirred feelings in him that he didn’t like, or wasn’t sure how to cope with them. Was it because he was a spirit or god, and she was human, and he wasn’t used to talking with her kind?
She had encountered spirits at a shrine in the mountains once, and they had turned vicious when she had tried to communicate with them, chasing her from the sacred grounds. They had manifested enough to throw barbs at her, callous words that had cut her because they had been the first spirits she had encountered that had been violent towards her and a foolish part of her had started to believe all spirits were kind and gentle and enjoyed sharing their world with humans.
Aiko’s gaze tracked Esher as he walked back to the table, and as he cleared the other dishes, following him back and forth between the kitchen.
/> He was troubled again.
She switched her focus to the garden and the outside world when he disappeared into the kitchen for the final time, and she wasn’t surprised to see clouds threading the horizon. It was going to rain again if she didn’t do something, and as much as she enjoyed the rain, she couldn’t find it soothing or peaceful when she knew it stemmed from his turmoil.
When he stopped by the table again, she looked up at him and smiled as she found a subject he could talk with her about, one that was bound to take his mind off his troubles.
“Will you show me around? The house is beautiful, but I would love to see the grounds too.” She was the one who waited this time, a little anxious to hear his answer, heart filled with hope that he would consent to it and wasn’t about to mention taking her home.
She didn’t want to go home.
Not yet.
Home was quiet, cold, and here she felt warm.
With Esher.
He tunnelled his fingers through his wild black hair, shoving the long lengths away from his eyes, and looked between her and the garden. His chest heaved with a deep sigh, and her hope faltered, cold already settling into her bones again as her fear that he was going to take her home caught hold of her.
When he finally spoke, heat washed that cold away. “Alright.”
She pushed onto her feet and joined him when he jerked his chin towards the other end of the room.
“You’ve already seen the kitchen.” He led her across the tatami mats to the couches that surrounded the wooden coffee table and television. “My brothers voted for this. I was against it at first, but now I think I spend half my time here, watching the news and documentaries.”
Shows about real life, not fantasy. He preferred to experience the world in this way?
Or perhaps he merely wanted to know more about the one outside of Tokyo.
She wasn’t sure whether he was bound by anything. Many spirits and gods were, forced to remain in one location, starved of information about the outside world. She had told a few about current events, and sometimes talked to herself when she visited shrines, just in case any spirits and gods in the vicinity were interested.
She pointed to a long, low side cupboard set against the far wall, beyond the cream furniture. “You have movies too.”
It was stacked full of DVDs, and games too.
He hiked his shoulders. “I watch them sometimes. Mostly when my brothers are visiting.”
“And you watch anime.” When he looked at her, she added, “You said I was like an anime character, so I guessed you watched it.”
He ran his blue eyes over her, quickly at first, but they slowed as he took her in, making her feel self-conscious again as he lingered on her ruffled black skirt and then her legs.
“You look like one,” he muttered, voice low and rough, and heat flared in his eyes, banked but burning, igniting her own desire as she stood and let him look at her, didn’t hide from him as she normally would from a man.
She liked the feel of his eyes on her, the way he looked at her as if he wanted to devour her, or possess her.
As if she was special.
Precious.
“You look like a J-rock star.” She held back her smile when he frowned at her. “Your hair, the way you tuck the bottoms of your jeans into your boots, even the scarf you like to wear.”
He scowled now, but there was no real anger behind it.
“I like it.” She twirled away from him, felt his gaze boring into her as she headed towards the corridor, and found him staring at her, that heat breaking through in his eyes, as she spun to face him again.
Heat that said he liked the way she dressed too.
“What’s this way?” She had never been so forward in someone’s home before, knew it was rude to take the lead rather than wait to be shown, but she felt relaxed in the ancient house with him.
At home.
He trailed after her, fire still burning in his eyes. They were brighter now, the blue turning tropical as he hit the wooden walkway with her.
He gestured to the rooms to his right and her left as she walked backwards in front of him. “Each of my brothers has a room here. I should probably keep you out of them. Both wings are just our bedrooms.”
She spun away from him and pointed to the far end of the wing. “And yours is above the pond.”
He stopped walking.
His voice was a low growl. “How did you know?”
Aiko looked over her shoulder at him.
Surprise danced in his eyes, but a ripple of darkness marred it, turned his handsome face too serious for her liking and had a warning arrowing through her that told her to say something to soothe him.
She turned and took a step back towards him. “It was a guess.”
Sort of.
She had figured that a water god would like to sleep close to his element.
His irises darkened, turning inky as his black eyebrows dipped low above them. “A guess?”
She didn’t like the bite in his tone, or the way it sounded like an accusation.
She nodded and forced herself to take a step towards him rather than away. He wasn’t a danger to her.
The way he eyed her said he might be, his expression savage and irises dark as he studied her, as if he was trying to see through her to the truth and wasn’t going to be happy if he discovered it was as dire as he was imagining.
“It was just a guess.” She spoke softly, held her hands up between them and edged towards him.
His eyes turned stormy and clouds rapidly multiplied overhead.
The scent of rain laced the thick air.
“You weren’t spying on me?” he snarled, and she might have laughed and thought he was teasing if he hadn’t looked so serious.
She shook her head. “No. I saw the way you looked at the lake at the teahouse, and the way you were looking at the pond after you had opened the doors when we arrived here… and I thought you would like the room that was set over the water.”
The truth.
As much as she would tell him, because she wasn’t sure how he would react if she mentioned that she could tell he wasn’t human like her. His accusation rang warning bells in her mind that said he would react badly right now. He thought she had been spying on him.
Because he was finding it hard to trust her.
He was looking for a reason not to and telling him that she knew he was different to her was a sure-fire way of making him believe he couldn’t trust her, that she was out to harm him or do something terrible to him. He would think everything they had been through, everything they had shared, had been a lie to manipulate him into letting her get closer to him. He wouldn’t understand that she didn’t care he was a god or a spirit, or whatever he was.
He wouldn’t understand that she just enjoyed his company and felt a connection to him.
Felt attracted to him.
“I need to do something. Look around the garden.” His voice darkened in time with his handsome face as he took a hard step towards her. “Do not venture too far or open any of the rooms.”
She nodded, and he pivoted on his heel and stalked away from her, heading back towards the main room of the house. She remained rooted to the walkway, her pulse pounding as she tried to let his change in demeanour roll off her back and not let it cut her.
Maybe she had been right about him, and he was both benevolent and violent.
He moved past the open doors in the centre of the building, his head bent, gaze locked on the smartphone in his right hand.
He was calling someone?
About her?
She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she had the feeling he thought she had, that he honestly believed she had been spying on him for some nefarious reason or was out to hurt him.
When he disappeared down the corridor that led to the other, smaller building, and didn’t reappear, she blew out her breath and looked around her at the beautiful mansion. His snarled words echoed in her head, w
arning her not to open any of the rooms.
Or venture too far.
He wanted to know where she was at all times.
Didn’t he trust her?
After what they had shared, that stung.
But what hurt her most of all was the feeling that she had been a fool, stupid for believing what they had shared had meant something to him, crazy for thinking it was going to become something.
And an idiot for trusting him.
He wasn’t a man.
But he certainly acted just like one.
CHAPTER 11
Esher had lost track of Aiko at some point during his tense texted conversation with Marek that had resulted in his brother telling him at least a dozen times that a daemon couldn’t breach the wards that protected the mansion.
Unsatisfied with that answer, Esher had asked whether one of them could bring a daemon into the grounds.
As far as Marek knew, they would have to mark a daemon with a specific set of counter-wards in order to bring them past the walls.
And as far as Esher knew, Aiko didn’t have any such wards on her, and since only he and his brothers, and his father, knew which wards had been used in protecting the mansion, a daemon couldn’t mark themselves with the counter-wards anyway.
It should have set his mind at ease, but now he couldn’t find her.
And worse, Marek had mentioned telling their brothers and sending some back up because he was sounding jumpy.
Esher had sent a two-word response to that.
Fuck off.
He had then focused his power to reach his brother halfway around the world in a remote area near Seville and made it rain just on his villa. Marek had got the message loud and clear, and had sent a text back saying he wouldn’t tell a soul, but only if Esher stopped bringing a biblical flood down on his home.
Esher had flipped the switch on it and had gone in search of Aiko, expecting to find her where he had left her.
Only she hadn’t been there.
Something had flipped inside him on seeing that.
Something that had birthed a fierce, almost desperate need to find her, to know that she was still near to him, that she hadn’t walked out of the mansion grounds.
Away from him.
Gods.
Esher (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 3) Page 10