by Erin Hayes
He turned to go into the kitchen for the aforementioned coffee. She could have at least have gotten dressed before I showed up.
"I could have gotten dressed, but it occurred to me that you were coming to my place at three a.m. uninvited so... I just didn’t feel like it," she said, following him into the small alcove off the living room that made up the kitchen.
He stopped, his brow furrowed, his hand on the steel countertop. "Did I just say that out loud?" he asked, turning around to face Constance.
She swallowed and met his eyes, "Of course...I..." She furrowed her brow too. "Yeah, you would have had to. Right?"
"Yeah, I guess," he said, reaching out for the coffee cups near the machine. He pressed the button to brew the coffee she’d set up for him, and took a sip as soon as the last drop fell.
Her own mug, gray with black swirled design, sat at the end of the counter untouched. "So what had you running over here in the middle of the night?"
He took a deep breath and debated telling her at all. The entire trip over he had gone back and forth about it but something pushed him to tell her so... "I saw you standing by my bed. You looked like a lost soul."
"You’re not kidding? Is this some sort of new detective hazing thing you do or something? Because if that’s the case I’m going to kick your ass since I’ve been on the force a lot longer than you have."
"No, honest. Sometimes I see lost souls wandering around. I usually send them beyond so they can rest, but I have no idea why I saw yours."
Constance spun around, grabbed her cup, and settled on the couch with a purple fleece blanket. "This is weird. In the three years with Xander we never had anything strange. I’ve been your partner for what? Three weeks?"
He tried not to growl at her. "I don’t want to hear about your creep of an ex-partner."
She met his eyes as he sat down on the couch opposite her. "He saved my life numerous times. That’s all that matters to me."
"It wouldn’t be if you knew what he did to earn his purgatory."
"Well, that’s his business, not mine."
"You don’t want to know?"
"You don’t want to tell me anymore than you want me to ask so drop the bullshit."
He inclined his head in surrender and sipped at his coffee. The sharp edge of the dark roast caught him unawares, but he drank it anyway. "There is still something wrong here. Just be careful until we figure out what it is."
She gave him a look so menacing he could only describe it as her telling him to "fuck off" with her eyes.
Somehow as the last few weeks had passed she was starting to more than fascinate him. Her strength and determination was a siren call to his heart. One he didn’t want to ignore. Their daily sparring matches had begun to make sure they both stayed up on their abilities. But now he loved the feel of her body moving around his, gravitational almost. The rare times when he could touch her, other than fighting, were enough to keep him rock hard for hours after. The vows of celibacy he’d taken had never been so tested. "Constance, I’m not trying to be a demanding dick, okay. I just want to keep you safe."
She pursed those full pink lips and looked into her coffee. "You can call me Connie if you want. My friends would, if I had any."
"I could be your friend," he whispered.
He’d not had many in his life. No one wanted to be friends with a Reaper. He’d also hardly ever had female friends as they were mostly afraid of him. Even in the church investigation units they were afraid of him. The Reaper Element also didn’t have women. There wasn’t a single female born Reaper, and the church had made the mistake of creating one just after the Reaper Element inception. It was a terrible idea as the woman couldn't handle the constant emotional bombardment as men could. Any woman who committed a crime so terrible would be burned at the stake until dead after a quick hanging.
She met his eyes. "Is that even allowed?"
His mind situated on the one time he saw a burning, and Constance pulled him back to the present, even from such a horrible place.
"I think we’re going to remain partners after this case so it might be nice if we got along on some level, sure."
"Okay. So what do friends do at three a.m. on a Saturday morning?"
The corner of her lip rose up in a grin, and she dashed off the couch sloshing coffee in her wake. She placed her coffee cup on the counter and reached up on top of the refrigerator for a cookie jar. The back of her tank top rode up exposing bare white skin to his eyes. He couldn’t look away until she came down from her tiptoes with a yellow duck-shaped cookie jar. Probably not a good start to a friendship. "You want to eat cookies at three a.m.?" he asked, growing amused.
"No, stupid." She sat down across from him again cup and cookie jar in hand. Once she arranged herself comfortably, she shoved the jar toward him.
He took it warily meeting her eyes with an arched brow. Lifting the lid carefully he peered inside to find a bottle of moonshine. He pulled it out and stared at the amber liquid through the hazy glass.
"I’ve had that bottle for a while, but it’s no fun drinking alone."
"I really shouldn’t drink. It goes right through me and messes up my chemistry."
She raised an eyebrow at him and he conceded to pouring some into her coffee cup then into his own.
The liquid burned as it hit his tongue but then slid down smoothly with a nice almond bite. He didn’t have the heart to tell he would be even worse at filtering out her thoughts and emotions once he started drinking. She seemed so happy to have someone to share it with and he didn’t want to burst her bubble
They sipped in companionable silence until she moved closer to him on the couch. "You know you’re not so bad," she said, bumping his shoulder with hers.
"That’s probably the booze talking. I’m sort of an ass."
She chuckled and scooted in closer bring her knees up to her chest and laying her head on his shoulder.
The second her bare skin touched his body a jolt went through him, and he had unfettered access to her thoughts and emotions. He didn’t snoop, that would be wrong, but there was something on the surface, something about himself, he couldn’t ignore. He delved in just enough to see and jumped right back out of her mind in a hurry, but the images followed him to his own mind, and he was stuck watching her imagining of him and her together.
They sparred as they usually did but then something changed between them and he ended up on top of her on the carpet. This time no one moved to continue the fight but only sought something deeper. In her meanderings he dipped his head to kiss her first. He could almost taste her now, sweet, yielding, and passionate.
She clutched onto his neck with a vice-like grip, pulling him closer to her body with her hands and her lips. He wasn’t a virgin. There’d once been a time in his life when he’d fought against the control of the church, he regretted it even as he did it, but this was different. Somehow there was a purity with Constance he couldn’t fight against.
She arched into him and his real body already reacted. He had to let it go, push it away. He took a long deep breath then climbed to his feet quickly. Connie fell over onto the couch without his support there.
"Sorry," he said. "I need some water."
"You okay?"
"Yeah, sure. Fine. Just need some water."
He grabbed a small glass from her cupboard and some water from the tap while his brain went eighty miles an hour over bible scriptures and apostolic literature. Those images of her would never leave his mind, and from now on every time he looked at her he would want her in a way he could never have her.
Once he got his raging hard-on under control he settled back on the couch. No way he was drinking moonshine again. She cuddled back in to him, and he put up every single mental barrier he knew to keep her mind out of his.
"You sure you’re okay?" she murmured. "Am I making you uncomfortable like this?"
He reached out and stroked a strand of red hair. "No, you’re fine. I’m fine. Everything is p
erfect."
She smiled and drifted off to sleep her head resting gently in the curve of his neck.
He didn’t sleep one wink for fear of what her dreams might hold.
Chapter Five
Connie woke up alone on her couch with a foggy head and a pounding behind her eyes. She blinked the haze away and sat up slowly, clutching her head. Maybe drinking was a very bad idea. Memories from the early morning seeped into her mind and she remembered falling asleep on Mikon. She jerked and looked around, but she didn’t see him anywhere.
Maybe he went home.
He’s probably cursing being assigned with her anyway, Connie berated herself. She’d gotten him drunk, hit on him, and then fell asleep on him. The man is probably long gone by now.
She got up and stretched some of the stiffness from her muscles before heading to the bathroom. The fog still clouded her brain as she opened the bathroom door. Mikon stood at her sink brushing his teeth with her spare toothbrush. The man was half-naked and wrapped in a towel. Drops of water slipped down his back, and she watched them roll across a tattoo. Looping shapes in intricate detail covered his back from neck to below the towel, forming a massive display of angel wings. It looked so real; if she touched his skin, they would be soft.
Before she could think about it she reached out and dragged her index finger down the soul-mark and he shivered under her hand. She jerked her finger back. "I’m so sorry."
His toothbrush bobbed between his foamy lips. "No, don’t worry. It didn’t hurt."
She wanted to ask, she needed to ask... "Is that? Are those your..."
He spun around to face her, removing the toothbrush from his mouth. "Yes, that would be my soul-mark."
"Why angel wings?"
"I was born with this on my back and it evolved over time, just as the soul-mark on your arm did, but it doesn’t show me anything when I look at it. When I see others’ soul-marks I see inside them. I see their essence, the very thing that drives them and makes them who they are. Don't ask me why angel wings. I have no idea."
Connie swallowed. He’d seen all that in her last night then. It must not have been terrible if he stuck around. But now she was dying to know exactly what he saw in her mark. Before she could ask the awkward question he spoke up.
"I used your extra toothbrush. I hope you don’t mind. Look, I know it’s a Saturday, but I thought we might get a plan laid out for this case."
She nodded and shook herself from her own mind. "Yeah, just let me get dressed. Make some coffee."
He nodded, grabbed his clothing, and stepped out of the bathroom.
She kept her eyes firmly on the opposite wall so as to not drool on him as he left. He had an ass that wouldn’t quit and the outline of a six-pack. It had been years since she’d been with a man and right now she felt every damn day of that absence. Get it together woman. He’s your partner and a Reaper. The very definition of off-limits. She'd heard a distinctly lonely tone in his voice last night as well.
"Gah!" It was more of an expletive than a word. She began to wash her face and brush her teeth. Nothing was going to get accomplished if she just stood around mooning after him. She heard him tinkering in the kitchen as she wiped the foam from her lips. A deep breath in, a long exhale, and she was ready and composed to face him again.
He had the tab on the bar. The coffee waited in front of the other bar stool and she climbed on it and settled in for a long conversation not involving the man’s anatomy and lack of soul.
"Did you sleep okay?" he asked putting her bottle of pain liquid in front of her.
"Yeah, alright. You?"
"I didn’t."
"You mean Reapers don’t sleep either?" she asked, dropping a small dot of the honey liquid onto her tongue. It took a few seconds, but she sighed as her headache ebbed then disappeared entirely.
He chuckled. "We do sleep. I just don’t sleep well outside of my own bed."
"Oh. Sorry about that. You could have left. It wouldn’t have bothered me."
"No, I wanted to stay. I was still shook up by what I saw last night."
She nodded and pressed the button to bring up the case on the tab. Opening the folders she started to separate out the data and pull what she needed. She activated the 3D sequence and pulled the images off the tablet and up to the air between them. "It looks like this is going to be an undercover operation. It would be easy to set myself up as bait for this guy. Play the innocent heiress or something. What do you think?" She looked up at Mikon but he had an odd look on his face.
"You want to set yourself up to be seduced by this snake?" he asked.
"You think I can’t handle an undercover op? This man is beautiful, yes, but he’s also a despicable criminal that feeds on the innocent. I want to put him away in the most efficient way possible. Do you have an alternate plan in mind?" He pursed his lips, spread his hands out on the counter and stared out at the data from his high vantage point. "No, unfortunately. Your idea seems like the best bet. But for the record, I don’t like it."
"Fine. Noted." She went back to digging through bits and pieces of information, occasionally pulling out facts about his preferences and proclivities.
"Can you play this role? This upper-class woman?" he asked after a while.
"Yeah. I have before. I can do it again."
"Was it for an undercover thing?"
"No, it was more like my mother sold me for souls and then I had to parade on some upper class old man’s arm until I got away thing."
His eyes grew round, and she held them steady until he looked away. She didn’t want to see his pity but she wasn’t going to act like it was her shame.
"I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I read your file, but it didn’t give anything about your past."
"I know. I scrubbed it when I broke into the archives just after I joined. Wouldn’t believe the penance I served for that. Worth it though."
"I can still fit in this role too. I can be your personal bodyguard/Reaper. A lot of the high-society set are starting to recruit rogue Reapers for the novelty of it."
Connie nodded, looking him up and down. "Yeah, I think it will work. We just need an in and a budget."
"We have a budget," he said, pulling out a credit card. The plastic rectangle gleamed shiny red in the kitchen lighting.
"Why didn’t you tell me this before?" she demanded.
He shrugged. "I forgot."
She pointed a finger at his chest. "You forgot to tell me I could go shopping? If we are going to remain friends don’t ever do that again."
He smirked. "I guess you don’t go very often."
"Nope, not at all. The whole worldly-possession thing isn’t big in the church. Ya know?"
He nodded, and she grabbed the card from his hand.
"You stay here. I’m going to go put on real pants." She practically skipped out of the room clutching the plastic.
When she returned she wore black tight fitting pants and a t-shirt that read "Christ or Bust" on it. Her service weapon strapped against her right thigh for all the world to see and know not to mess with her.
"Connie?" he said, while staring at the wall opposite him.
She looked over. All along the far wall of her loft hung small frames bearing tiny pictures. Some were splattered with ink. "Mm," she said, looking over to what had caught his attention.
"What are these?" he asked, peering closely at the tiny pictures.
She cleared her throat. "They’re stamps."
"What’s a stamp?" he asked.
"When I was a little girl my mother gave me something. It was the precursor to email, something called a letter." She gestured at the wall. "These are what people used back then to pay workers to hand deliver written messages to others. They were all worth a certain amount depending on the weight or the distance of the message."
"Wow! Two dollars for such tiny little things," he murmured. "You’ll have to tell me more about this later. It’s fascinating. I think I read a book that had a letter in it o
nce, but I can’t remember the title." He reached out and ran his finger over the image to see if it held a texture. The one he chose had a faint ridge around an edge.
"What hobbies do you have?" she asked abruptly.
"I guess I read a lot," he said, walking back over to the counter.
"Oh, yeah? Like what?"
He smiled. "I read mostly history. There are a lot of books about the church dating back millennia. I also like to read about the wars. I believe that history repeats itself and I hope if enough people learn the history we can stop that from happening.
She laughed. "So you’re an idealist then?"
"I wouldn’t say idealist. I just would hate to see so much useless death again. It's horrible and sad that the Earth has suffered so much."
She settled back on a stool and stared at him.
"What?" he said, leaning away.
She’d noticed before he didn't like to be stared at. "Nothing. You’re just more complex than I originally thought."
"Uh...gee. Thanks."
She sighed. "No. I just meant I‘m enjoying learning about you and what you like." She shrugged and stared down at her hands.
"Don’t worry about it. We are newly friends, it’s proper we should get to know one another."
She nodded. "So are we going shopping or what?"
She curled her legs under her and practically bounced off the stood. Her small stature made her look like a manic mouse before him.
"Yes, we can go shopping. I made a list of things we’re going to need and it includes a formal gown for you," he said.
She smiled from ear to ear.
"You should smile more," he said.
"I never get much to smile about. I'm happy when I find a new stamp or spare change in my couch. That’s about it."
He motioned toward the card. "Now, shopping."
Chapter Six
Noah walked into a party alone for the first time since dear Mrs. Hannock passed away unexpectedly. Pity for her she was on her last soul.
He waited the requisite few weeks before re-entering society, as the upper-class had become stuffy about mourning periods, and now he was itching for a new mark.