How long had I been unresponsive? “Sorry.”
He rose from his crouch and reached over me, and then he was crouching again, pushing a glass of water into my hands. “When I was a kid, I’d faint at the sight of blood.”
I took a sip, my head still swimming from the memory of my first encounter with Trevor. “Not anymore?”
“I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I fainted now, would I?”
My throat went dry at the reminder that I was in a Triple’s home.
Sharp. I needed to stay sharp.
I emptied my water glass to clear my mind of my previous mission so I could focus on my present one.
Chapter 15
Muriel and one of Jarod’s armed guards stood in the marble foyer, hands clasped in front of them.
“Can we clear away dinner, Jarod?” Muriel asked.
He nodded to her before heading up the stairs.
Was I supposed to follow him? Did he have another reception area upstairs? I didn’t move, waiting for his instructions.
“Feather, are you coming?”
Thumbing the adhesive strip of my bandage, I clipped across the marble toward the curving staircase, feeling every set of eyes grind into me. His staff probably assumed I’d come to bed the boss. Even though I longed to set them all straight, what they thought he and I would do tonight didn’t matter.
As I started to ascend the carpeted steps, Muriel called out Jarod’s name.
He gestured for me to keep going. “I’ll be up in a minute.” He returned to the older woman and spoke in hushed tones with her.
I peeked over my shoulder but didn’t dally, suspecting it would be construed as eavesdropping. On the landing, a collection of seascapes in sumptuous carved frames dotted the cherry-paneled walls, thick dabs of lavender, gray, and gold giving life to tormented oceans tossing ships with bloated white sails. I wanted to touch the paint, but what if it set off an alarm? Besides, it was probably not a good idea to touch art. I leaned forward and squinted to make out the signature at the bottom—Aivazovsky. I sensed I’d read the name somewhere before. Perhaps, in a museum?
When I straightened, my back bumped into a body.
Reflexively, I tucked my wing-free shoulder blades in. Without turning, I said, “Do you have to stand so close?”
“I didn’t think proximity bothered you considering how you hung on to Tristan last night.”
I spun around. Even in my three-inch heels, Jarod towered over me. “I let him lead me around because he was familiar with your house and I wasn’t.”
He let out a short snort that suggested skepticism.
I balled my fingers, ungluing one of the sticky flaps of the Band-Aid before pushing it back in place and crossing my arms to create a barrier between our too-close bodies. “Why are you so intent on making me feel trapped? Do you think it’ll make me run?”
His gaze eddied like the squall in the seascape. “Possibly. Or possibly I enjoy watching you squirm.”
“Tough luck. I don’t squirm.” I squared my shoulders. “So, what’s on this floor?”
“My bedroom.”
“The entire floor?”
“No. There are two other bedrooms, but they’re far less interesting than mine.”
“What am I doing up here?”
“I need a shower and a change of clothes, and you need to find a way to make me kind. Since I don’t intend on going back downstairs until morning—Mimi just reminded me tomorrow is the first, and you now know what happens on the first—I thought we could continue our extraordinarily enlightening conversation in my bedroom.”
I raised my chin a notch. “You’re not planning on trying anything on me?”
The smile toppled from his face, and his eyes grew harder. “During my free time, I track down rapists and child molesters and get rid of them. Even the ones locked safely away in jails. So, please never insinuate something of the sort again.” He turned sharply, his polished Oxford shoes squealing on the hardwood, and pushed through a set of doors.
My arms collapsed against my sides as I trailed after him. “You can’t go around killing people.”
“I don’t expect you to understand. Your kind has a skewed view of justice.”
“My kind?” My spine tingled as though my wings were about to pop out.
He slung his jacket over the back of an antique desk chair, then started on his cufflinks. “Fanatical devotees of higher beings.” He tossed them on an orange tray.
When he untucked his shirt, I jolted my gaze to the art over his canopy bed. The pastel-hued depictions of rosy-cheeked women with golden ringlets contrasted sharply with the dark wood paneling and the bedsheets that shone like liquid steel in the subdued lighting coming off his bookcase.
I needed to get off the subject of religion that hit too close to home. “You really love art, don’t you?”
“Uncle did.”
“But you don’t?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t gotten rid of them.”
I looked back at him, forcing my gaze not to dip to the dark hair blanketing his pecs. “Why can’t you ever give me a straight answer?”
He shot me a withering smile. “Consider yourself lucky you’re getting answers from me in the first place. I don’t make it a habit to divulge anything about myself. Not to friends. Not to strangers.”
“Why are you undressing in front of me?”
“Where would you like me to undress, Feather? This is my bedroom.”
When his fingers dropped to his belt buckle, I whirled around. “I’ll wait for you on the landing. Come get me when you’re showered and changed.”
“Weren’t you enjoying the show? I haven’t taken off my clothes in front of a woman in a long time.” I had a hard time believing that. “Perhaps I’m not doing it well?”
Thankfully, I had my back to him, so he couldn’t see how flustered I’d become. I pulled his door shut and then walked to the other side of the landing, my heels clicking in time with my ratcheting breaths.
I’d been wrong to let down my guard around Jarod. I wasn’t sure what game he was playing, but I didn’t like it. I peered over the blackened-iron railing, longing to race down the stairs and through the courtyard.
Would his bodyguards let me leave?
I wrapped my trembling fingers around the banister.
Asherceleste.
I squeezed my fingers, my palms molding around the cool metal, the injured one smarting.
I couldn’t leave without trying to help Jarod.
You can’t die, Leigh, I reminded myself for the umpteenth time.
Sure, he could torture me, bruise my skin, or put a bullet through my flesh, but my angelic blood would heal me. As long as I had wings, I was immortal.
I closed my eyes and forced my breathing to slow, forced my heart to quiet. I was going to be okay.
“Did you change your mind about spending the night with me?” Jarod’s voice had my palms skidding off the banister.
He was leaning against his door frame, arms crossed over a black silk bathrobe that stopped right above his knees. He’d either taken the quickest shower, or I’d just spent an inordinate amount of time contemplating my calamitous fate.
“I thought you weren’t scared of me.” His lips were quirked in a deprecating smile.
Was it that obvious? “You confuse me.”
“And here I thought I was an open book.”
If he was an open book, then I was the queen of Elysium, and there was no royalty in my world. “Did you ever have another ambition than taking over after your uncle?”
His dark brows slanted. For a long minute, he said nothing, then, “No.” The stretch of silence told me he had wanted something else.
“What would you have rather done?”
“I just told you. Nothing.”
“You hesitated.” I walked back toward him. “And now you’re getting mad.”
A grunt scraped up his throat. “This isn’t me getting mad, Feather. You haven’t
seen me mad. You don’t want to see me mad.”
His silken robe fell open, revealing that hard, hairy torso of his. I hadn’t seen Asher’s chest but I’d seen his arms—golden and hairless—and imagined his chest would be bare and sculpted. Why was I envisioning Asher’s pecs? I wanted to marry him for his status, not his body, even though his—as opposed to Jarod’s—was undoubtedly beautiful.
“See something you like?” Jarod’s voice sounded an octave deeper.
Everything about this sinner was so very dark, as though he’d been steeped in tar at birth and that tar had colored his hair, eyes, and soul. If he’d had wings, they, too, would’ve surely been pitch-black.
“Interesting,” he said.
“What is?”
“Your silence.”
“Why is my silence interesting?”
“Because I asked you a question, which you seem unable to answer.”
“I’m not unable to answer. I simply choose not to.”
He cocked his head to the side. “And why is that? My body clearly appeals to you. You can’t keep your eyes off of it.”
A blush stung my cheeks. “I’ve just never seen anyone as hairy as you before.”
His eyes sparked with amusement. “As hairy? You do realize I’m a man, right? Most men have hair on their body. Some even have hair on their backs, which, thankfully, isn’t my case.”
A sultry, smoky fragrance lifted from his skin, reminding me of the incense one of my sinners burned while she conducted seances, pretending to speak to the dead to rob her gullible customers of their hard-earned salaries.
I swallowed. “Can we go back to discussing something you could do to help me win my bet?”
He pressed off the door frame and gestured to his bedroom that seemed darker than when I’d stepped out. “After you, Feather.”
As I squeezed past him, his chest hair whispered against my shoulder, raising goose bumps. I rubbed my exposed skin, trying to friction away my body’s reaction to his before he could jump to the conclusion it had been brought on by attraction.
Because I wasn’t attracted to him.
Not in the least.
I was attracted to people pure of soul and heart—not people who were cloaked in darkness inside and out.
Chapter 16
I took a seat on the edge of the cowhide recliner propped next to his bookshelves. Like in his study, only old, leather-bound books with gold embossing on the spines graced his shelves.
“Did you turn up the heat?”
Jarod smirked. “That’s your body’s reaction to mine, Feather.”
He strode over to a silver tray topped with an etched crystal decanter filled with clear liquid, a stainless-steel ice bucket, and two empty tumblers. As he served himself a glass, I folded my legs, but that almost tipped the chair forward, so I uncrossed my legs and planted my feet firmly on the floor.
He smiled. “You should lay down. We’re going to be here a while.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
He dropped two ice cubes into his glass, then splashed whatever was in the decanter over them. “It was my mother’s favorite chair. She would spend her afternoons reading in it.”
For some reason, his anecdote made me slide backward and settle into the rigid shape that was surprisingly ergonomic.
He took a sip of his drink, the ice clinking against the glass. “She died in it.”
My body stiffened, and I bolted up, no longer feeling comfortable. I stared at the cowhide, expecting to see a blood splotch on it, but the coarse hairs were white and brown—not red.
“It wasn’t the chair that killed her.” He took another swig of his drink.
“I-I imagine it wasn’t.”
He stared beyond me at the desk on the opposite side of the room, and a lock of hair fell into his eyes.
“How did she die?”
Silence ebbed between us before he said, “Stabbed herself.”
I gasped.
The souls of people who committed suicide were neither brought to Elysium nor to Abaddon. They were deemed too weak to be recycled, because angels considered life a gift not to be tossed away and wasted. Another law I wanted to change. I believed that every soul—that wasn’t irrevocably stained—deserved to be escorted through the Pearly Gates and at the very least judged by the Seven before being deemed unsalvageable and discarded into the ether.
“Why did she kill herself?”
“Because she loved my father too much and me too little.” Even though his voice was quiet, it cut like broken glass.
“Oh, Jarod . . .” If he’d been anyone else, I would’ve hugged him, but Jarod didn’t strike me as someone who’d enjoy a hug, much less welcome one.
“Don’t pity me,” he muttered. “She was catatonic and miserable after my father passed away. Her death was better for everyone.”
“You don’t actually believe that.”
“Would you care if your mother died?”
“I don’t know my mother.” Plus, she couldn’t die. Unless she gave up her wings, but only angels who favored Earth ever considered giving up their wings. Considering she didn’t even travel to the guilds, I doubted she loved Earth all that much.
“Look at that. The sinner and the saint have something in common.”
That drove all thoughts of my mother out of my mind.
“Both of us motherless,” he added.
“I said I didn’t know mine, not that she was dead.”
“Don’t want to have anything in common with a sinner, do you?”
“I’d be happy to have something in common with you, Jarod.” A familiar pain stabbed my spine, and my thumb, which had been toying with the Band-Aid, flicked it right off my palm.
Not another feather.
Please, not another one.
My eyes filled with heat as downy barbs skimmed my ankle before settling beside the fallen bandage.
This man would be the death of my wings if I didn’t leave now.
I raised my wet gaze back to his. “Jarod, I should—” I stopped short when I caught him staring at the space next to my bronze shoe. “What are you looking at?”
He walked over and crouched. The air in my lungs turned solid.
Impossible . . .
He didn’t have wings.
He couldn’t possibly see—
He picked up the Band-Aid and balled it up before flicking it toward his bookshelf. “Want a fresh one?”
He unglued my wounded hand from my hip and checked my scar. “Look at that . . . all healed.”
“It wasn’t deep,” I said.
He let go, and I pulled my hand back to my side.
I itched to retrieve my feather but couldn’t risk being zapped into another memory. Later. I’d grab it later. It wasn’t as though it would disappear until it was touched. Which had me wondering about the feather I’d lost in the hall last night. Had a human unintentionally touched it? They couldn’t see it, but if their hand glanced over it, the memory would sink into their minds. Some humans brushed it off as a dizzy spell, some as a déjà-vu, some as a divine vision.
Yesterday’s feather had probably been sucked up into a vacuum.
As my gaze arced off the floor, it tripped over Jarod’s body and the robe that gaped wide. Oxygen jammed in my throat, and I forgot all about my lost feather.
I traced the whorls of pastel paint on the canvases above his bed with my eyes. “Could you put on some underwear, please?”
I caught the flash of teeth in my peripheral vision. Of course, my discomfiture amused him.
“I assure you, it doesn’t bite,” he said.
“Forget it.” I headed toward the door. I’d made a promise to myself to leave if I lost another feather and was going to uphold that promise.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. I’m going home. This was a bad idea.”
“You’ll lose your bet.”
I laid my palm on the metal handle. “At this point, I have more to lose
by trying to win this bet than by forfeiting.”
“Will you stay if I get dressed?”
My pressure faltered, and the handle sprang up without unbolting the door. “Don’t you want me gone? You called me bland and spineless. Not to mention a stalker.”
“The word I used was soft, not bland.”
“Was it supposed to be a compliment? Because it certainly didn’t sound like one.”
“I don’t give compliments because sugarcoating life doesn’t teach resilience.”
“It might not teach resilience, but it shows compassion.”
“I’m not a compassionate person, Feather. Not sure what led you to believe I was . . .”
I turned toward him. “Even though it isn’t your job, you punish child molesters and rapists.”
“Like I said, I punish them because your kind doesn’t. Your kind’s too busy trying to locate a glimmer of hope in their putrid souls.”
I sucked in a breath at his admonishment. “You’re right, Jarod. My kind scratches at the ugliness to find a spark of beauty. My kind tries to save sinners instead of ending their miserable lives.”
We glowered at each other from across the room—well, I glowered; he just looked at me in that steady, inscrutable way of his. I reminded myself that Triples didn’t get their score by being docile and moral; they got it by being cruel and selfish.
He started toward the opposite end of his bedroom. “I told my guards not to let anyone in or out until morning.”
A gasp rocketed through me. “You’re going to keep me here against my will?”
His long fingers curled around the sleek wooden edge of a door frame. “I didn’t force you to come back, Feather.” He slipped out of sight, but his voice drifted to me. “You’re welcome to hang out in the dining room until daybreak. Everywhere else is under alarm, so unless you want my guards rushing at you with raised guns, I suggest you stick to the dining room.”
My jaw dropped on another gasp. “Keeping me against my will is wrong.”
Jarod padded back out barefoot, wearing a black T-shirt and tapered black sweatpants. He hadn’t seemed the type to own sweatpants, nor had he seemed the type to lock up women. No, that wasn’t true. He did seem like the type who’d do something as callous.
Feather (Angels of Elysium Book 1) Page 9