Gunnar waved her apology away but continued to gaze at her with curiosity. Reaper’s words pulled Gunnar away from his probe.
“She is telekinetic. We’ve worked on a list of possibilities, but I have a feeling that we’ve only touched the surface. She is very powerful and I think that’s why they captured her in the first place. On top of that, I think it’s rare for any human to have any talent that is classified as supernatural, and they thought they could manipulate her to do their bidding,” Reaper answered.
“But I couldn’t shift,” Gunnar said.
She glanced at Reaper and a silent communication passed. She was a bit overwhelmed by the situation, so he explained about her time with the shifters at Standard.
She had been so focused on Gunnar and Liv that she didn’t realize that the room had started to fill with a mix of shifters and vampires, all staring at her even though she hadn’t been the one speaking. Without realizing her actions and what they signified to the group, she stepped closer to Reaper and found her back pressed against his chest. She relaxed when he wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her flush against him.
In the safety of Reaper’s arms, she glanced around at the group gathered around them and sucked in a breath. She had known that the immortals were physical specimens, but the men who surrounded her were stunning.
Her eyes were torn away from the group when a woman raced down the stairs and jumped into Liv’s arms. Ara sensed that the new woman was a shifter, and the first thing that stood out was her auburn hair. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. The woman must’ve sensed Ara’s gaze on her because she leapt from Liv’s arms and stepped closer.
“Jade.” Reaper’s voice rumbled against her back.
When Jade took another step, his arms tightened around her as his roar echoed through the silence.
Ara couldn’t figure out why he was warning the other woman to stay away. To her, she seemed harmless.
When she glanced back at Reaper’s tense face, his glare bore into the beautiful woman and Ara absently wondered whether they had a past. Studying the emotions that flashed on his face, an unfamiliar pang in her chest surged into something easily definable, although she had no experience with the particular feeling. Ara had no idea where it came from or even whether it was justified, but she could feel her pulse in her ears and all rationale fled. She sensed more than witnessed several pairs of eyes on her, but she dismissed their stares because her emotions were going berserk and she could only handle one thing at a time.
She had no claim on Reaper, but despite reason, the new sensation grew to be unpleasant.
Over the past few days, she’d grown to believe that he was her one anchor to the strange world she found herself in. But more than that, she started to care for him and any thought of losing that connection was devastating.
Blackness started around the edges of her vision and she heard someone shouting her name from far away. She knew that she was about to pass out, but Reaper pulled her into his arms and whispered words that tried to calm her. Unable to understand her actions, she pushed away from him, needing space to figure out her reaction. Slowly, reality came back into focus.
“Ara?”
“I’m okay. Sorry. Sorry.”
She opened her eyes and caught a strange look on Reaper’s face, but she lowered her gaze to the ground and leaned against the wall for support, embarrassed by her reaction and to the thoughts that started her panic attack.
“I was just going to say hi. Jesus, Reaper, you scared the shit out of her,” Jade said.
In that moment, Ara was swept into another hug and blinked back the sheen of tears that threatened to fall. Jade smelled of peaches and vanilla, and her hold was strangely comforting. Ara thought she would balk at being touched again, but Jade comforted her in a way that she didn’t understand.
Just as she settled into Jade’s hug, the door to the basement was flung open and it slammed against the wall with a bang that resonated in her head. Jade pulled back and stepped away from her a moment before a tall teenager bounded down the stairs.
“He’s determined to ruin every wall in the house,” Kai groaned.
“Like you care,” Liv retorted.
Kai laughed and it relaxed the fierceness of his features. “That’s true.”
She had yet to meet the others formally because they had given her space after her freak-out, but instead of heading toward Liv or Kai, the teen strode right up to her and tilted his head as he gazed at her.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Ara, and you?” she asked.
“Seth. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Same here.”
She smiled at him, bewildered at how easy he made it seem to meet someone new.
“Dinner’s ready.” Seth darted back up the stairs.
Ara’s eyes widened as she watched everyone in the room disappear upstairs. Reaper stayed behind with her, and when she turned to face him with an apology stuck in her throat, he cupped her cheeks in his hands. The next moment, he walked until her back was flush with the wall and he captured her mouth in a kiss that scorched her. Her hands slid up his chest while she rose on her toes, wanting to get closer; his low growl traveled through her body and strummed against her core.
He ripped his mouth from hers and she loved when his hot breaths caressed her cheek. She kept her eyes closed and breathed him in.
“Open your eyes, Ara,” he demanded.
She did as he asked because of the urgency of his voice. When she met his gaze, the jealousy and her reaction to it seemed immature. He had looked at her in no other way than with a need she couldn’t describe, and in that moment, she knew the truth a split second before he spoke.
“I want you. Since the moment I spotted you in the lab, I wanted you. That will never change.”
He brought his mouth back to hers and she grew aggressive when she touched her tongue to his. Moaning for more, she ran her hands through his hair and pulled him closer, swallowing his low growls as she grew more and more breathless. It took several minutes to get her need under control, and when she pulled back to glance at his face, she realized that he told her the truth.
“In time, I will show you how much. But for now, let’s go eat and I’ll introduce you to everyone.”
Chapter Five
Reaper
“You are such a flirt.” Ara pushed Axel back into his chair, laughing as she enjoyed their interaction.
Jealousy surged inside him again, but he managed to take a breath and not overreact. Reaper had wanted Ara to get to know the people he was closest to, and because of her earlier panic attack, he thought that would have been impossible. He’d thought about taking her home right after, but she insisted that she wanted to get to know his friends. As the hours passed, the tension had receded enough for him to sit back and enjoy the byplay between Ara and everyone at the table.
Ara had been worried that she wouldn’t be able to remember everyone’s name, much less relax around a group of people when being around anyone was alien to her, but he could see that she had been truly enjoying herself. Her sharp laugh echoed in the room when Ax wiggled his eyebrows at her, and when she reached for a roll to throw at him, he pretended to be remorseful.
“I’m sorry, gorgeous, but teasing you is easy,” Ax said.
Ara put her hand over her heart and blinked. “Why Axel, are you saying that you weren’t flirting with me?”
He sobered when Reaper’s low growl rumbled across the room.
“No, I mean yes…hell.” Ax rubbed his forehead.
They had never seen Ax so flummoxed by a woman before, and when Ax looked sheepish, a ripple of laughter traveled through the room.
Ara threw the roll, which Xander snagged out of the air before he smiled at her. Xander’s shy smile was returned, and Reaper could see the quiet man was as taken with Ara as much as everyone else in the room.
“Don’t worry about it, Ax. I wouldn’t even know if you were flirting with me or
not, but you are an easy target.”
Murmurs erupted at her statement, and Reaper reached for her hand. He didn’t want her to know that Ax was outright flirting with her despite Reaper’s repeated threats to separate his head from his body. Before he could say anything, the others beat him to the punch.
“You’re beautiful, which I’m sure Reaper has told you many times,” Gunnar said.
“I agree,” Hunter said.
Ghost, Kane, Xander and Seth murmured their agreement. It looked as if they were holding their breaths as they waited for her response, but she remained quiet. She glanced around the room before she smiled and commented.
“Coming from a group of assassins who probably moonlight as underwear models, I’m going to take your opinions with a grain of salt.” She paused for a moment and looked around again. “Are you underwear models?”
Reaper, Kai, Liv, and Jade laughed the loudest. He knew that she had been teasing, but the horrified look on his fellow assassins’ faces made him laugh harder. Ara turned to him and when he spotted the sparkle in her eye, he smiled at her and squeezed her hand.
“Okay, okay, you got us. But I’m curious, how old are you, Ara?” Hunter asked.
Reaper sobered and shot a glare at the panther, but Hunter’s gaze hadn’t moved from Ara’s face. Reaper knew that the innocent question would lead to more probing questions, and over the last few days, Ara balked anytime he’d asked about her past. He wanted to know everything about her and he was curious to know why she held back, but he knew better than to press. Nothing in her past would change his mind about her, but he had a feeling that she would pull away from him when her past became known and that, to him, was unacceptable. He decided to let the questions be asked, but if she refused to answer them, he would warn the others off.
Ara didn’t sense anything off about the question, and while still smiling, answered, “Twenty-six.”
“Where do your parents live?”
He could see an almost imperceptible tic in her jaw. She took a deep breath and opened her mouth to speak, but she glanced at him with worry etched on her face. His mouth tipped up in a smile before he reached for her and settled her on his lap.
“Nothing will change if you tell us, beautiful. We won’t judge you.” Although he wanted to claim her and declare to everyone in the room that Ara was his, he knew that she wasn’t ready to hear the truth of the situation between them. Yet.
Everyone agreed. Ara still hesitated. A sense of dread washed through him and he tightened his arms around her waist in reassurance. Liv reached for Ara’s hand and gave her a reassuring squeeze, giving Ara the courage to speak about her past.
“My parents were killed when I was fifteen.”
That’s not what he expected to hear. Apparently not what any of them expected to hear. They sat in silence and stared at Ara with shocked expressions.
He’d known that she had been reluctant to tell him anything about her childhood, but he never suspected something so tragic.
He glanced at her expression, and although he expected sadness or some similar emotion, he found that her lips were pressed in a thin line and anger flashed in her eyes. There was much more to the story, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to hear it.
“My parents married when they were sixteen, forced to marry by their parents when my mother became pregnant with me. Unable to handle the responsibilities of a child, they decided that meth was a great option to solve all of their problems, so by the time I was eight, they were heavy users.”
At that moment, he realized why she looked at him with worry. She thought that he would change his mind about her once he learned about her past.
Fuck that. He tightened his arms around her and pulled her closer. Although he couldn’t reassure her with the words that stuck in his throat, he could with his touch.
With a sigh, she continued. “We moved around until whatever landlord who had rented to them realized that my parents didn’t have any money to pay them. At the same time, they had been posing as dealers to get the product they promised to sell, instead using it all themselves. Within a couple of months, the dealers realized they’d been ripped off, but by that time we would be long gone. This happened more times than I could count.
“When I was fifteen, their luck ran out. I walked in after school to find the dealer waving a gun at my parents, screaming incoherently at them. They were both high so I don’t think they realized the danger they were in. I must’ve done something to startle the gunman because he started shooting at them when the door closed behind me. I was too stunned to move as I watched my parents die in front of me. He raised the gun at me and at the time, I had no idea that I had any powers, but my hands shot forward to stupidly block the bullet. With my slight movement and without realizing what I had done, I turned the gun around and when he pulled the trigger, he shot himself.”
The silence in the room turned excruciating and when Ax spoke up this time, Reaper was grateful to him.
“You did what you had to do to survive. No one would’ve blamed you for that. You were just a girl.”
“My parents taught me to avoid the police, at all costs, and that’s what I did. I searched through their pockets and grabbed all the money I could find before I ran. I feel horrible for that,” she mumbled.
“You shouldn’t. You also stopped a robbery where the clerk was about to be killed. You exposed yourself to save another person. You did what you had to in order to save yourself. No one blames you for that. I’m proud of you for keeping your head and finding a life for yourself,” Reaper said.
“What?” Liv cried.
“That’s how the bastards at Standard learned about her powers. The one who kidnapped her witnessed her powers firsthand.”
Growls and snarls ripped through the room and Ara started in his arms.
“About time you brought her to us. We can protect her together,” Ghost said.
He squeezed Ara tighter to him, reassuring himself that she was safe.
“Yeah, about that. I wasn’t actually with her since she escaped Standard. She disappeared, twice in the same night, and I…found her last weekend.”
“She avoided you for a month?” Gunnar asked.
“Yes,” Reaper growled.
The rest of the assassins laughed their asses off while he pulled her closer to him. Ara took him by surprise when she tucked her head underneath his chin and absently rubbed his chest to soothe him for several minutes.
Soon, he sensed the troublemaker came closer to them, and Ara must’ve sensed her too, because she unfurled herself and glanced up at Jade.
“Can I ask you a favor?” Jade asked.
Ara straightened and nodded.
“I’ve been curious about this since you threw Reaper close to a mile back to the warehouse. Can you, you know?” Jade pointed to the ceiling and waved her hand around.
Before Ara could answer, everyone spoke up and asked for turns after Jade. Ara turned and smiled a knowing smile at Reaper, before she turned back and nodded. They moved quickly to push the furniture out of the way, but before they could turn to Ara and tell her they were ready, she had launched them into the air.
“Holy shit,” Xander mumbled.
Ara laughed before she started moving them around the room. Some of them asked her to flip them, others wanted to shoot from one side of the room to the other as fast as she could manage, and all had a great time.
Reaper looked for any stress in her motions, but she had no signs of fatigue or problems with moving ten bodies in separate directions with varying speed. She turned to him, and before he could protest what she had in mind, he found himself whizzing by several of the assassins, laughing.
He growled when Hunter asked Ara whether she could raise them to the ceiling and drop them until they almost hit the floor, but it turned out to be more fun than he realized. The free fall was both exhilarating and terrifying, and this one time, he enjoyed being out of control.
After several drops and f
lips, Reaper noticed that Xander looked pale and sickly. When he glanced at Ara, she must’ve noticed the same thing because she lowered Xander until he stood in front of her.
“Are you okay?”
Xander groaned and dropped his hands to his knees. He inhaled deep breaths and groaned again, but neither being on the ground or deep breaths seemed to be helping him. Ara reached for Xander’s hand and squeezed lightly. It surprised him and the rest of the group when color flooded to Xander’s face and he straightened. Xander’s gaze bore into Ara’s, but she remained worried about him and scanned his face for any sign of sickness.
“How did you do that?” Xander asked.
Confusion flitted over her face and she shook her head. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You made me feel better.”
“I…didn’t. I just brought you down.”
“When you touched me, my motion sickness disappeared,” Xander said with awe. “Can you flip me around again?”
“Are you sure?” Ara asked, hesitant.
He nodded but Ara’s brows drew down as she examined him closely. Xander glanced at her with an expression of excitement, and Ara blew out a breath before she lifted Xander into the air and flipped him as requested.
After several minutes and countless flips, Xander seemed fine. “No motion sickness. Sweet.”
Ara kept a close eye on Xander, but she must’ve sensed the others, including him, watching her. “Should I bring you down?”
“No,” came the chorus of murmurs from the assassins.
Reaper glanced across the room at Ghost. His boss’s gaze bore into him and Reaper shrugged. He had been as surprised as the rest of them that Ara could cure motion sickness with a touch. Because they had been working together for so long, he interpreted the determination to protect Ara in Ghost’s face. With inclusion came protection, from all of them. Reaper blew out a breath.
“Can you levitate yourself, Ara?” Hunter asked.
“I’ve never tried.” Ara’s brows drew down as if the thought never occurred to her.
Reaper (A Dark Assassins Novel Book Two) Page 5