Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  I was so absorbed in kissing him, that I leaned so far back that I fell backward. He moved forward with me, still kissing me. We did not separate for a second. His body covered mine, pressed into mine. His fingers tangled in my hair. My fingers dug into his back. He sucked my bottom lip into his mouth. We tangled together, limbs intertwining as our lips did.

  I had never felt a kiss like this before, a kiss that was not just in my mouth but shot through my entire body. I was quivering and shaking and wanting more, wanting him closer. Never wanting to stop kissing him…

  When the doorbell rang, I faintly acknowledged it in my mind, but it was far from important. What was important was Wyvern’s lips and his hands and his body and what those things were doing with my lips and my body.

  His lips moved to my neck gently kissing just below my jaw line, then kissing harder, deeper just a little further down.

  Someone knocked on my door. “Dakota?” Clara’s voice.

  “One second,” I said, dazedly as Wyvern kissed my neck even more deeply just an inch lower. “Give me…five minutes?”

  “Your friend from school is here, she says she only has a moment,” Clara said.

  “Fine,” I said, groaning, “Give me a second?”

  Wyvern groaned too, and then raised his head back up to give me a disappointed smile, almost bashful; he gave me a quick kiss on the lips. I leaned forward when he pulled away, making him chuckle while he crawled off me.

  I climbed off the bed after him. Looking down I realized I was wearing yesterday’s clothes. Not only that, I had a hard cry last night and I more than likely had morning breath. None of that seemed to bother Wyvern though.

  Not ready to see what I looked like, I grabbed a hair-band from my table and tied up my hair.

  Wyvern stepped up and took my hand just like it was our routine to walk hand in hand.

  I closed my eyes. “We just kissed,” I said, reflecting how freaked out that made me feel.

  “We just had our first kiss,” he said, his free hand caressing my face. “Come on; let’s go take care of what we have to today so we can come back here.”

  That sounded way too inviting.

  As we exited my room, I said, “So this cook you hired…you might want to warn them…”

  “Warn him of what?” Wyvern said.

  “Well,” I said, “My mom can be, demanding. Most of the people hired to work here quit pretty quickly because of how much my mom would ask them to do even if she paid them, which she often did not.”

  “I think he’ll manage,” Wyvern said.

  “If you say so,” I said, shrugging.

  We walked down the stairs and through the house to the front door, holding hands. The front door was open, and through it I saw Mele standing across from a very unhappy looking Auli.

  Her soul—

  My heart pumped faster and faster. Invisible cotton filled my mouth and throat.

  Auli was wearing her school uniform; she looked so small as she was stick thin. She glanced around at anywhere but at Mele, staring at my house, then my driveway, then behind her, until her gaze landed on me. Her gaze darted over to Wyvern, then to our joined hands. “Good,” she said, “Maybe you’ll leave my brother alone now.”

  My heart… it was beating too fast. I stumbled back. I could not breathe, my airways had been clogged and I wasn’t getting air.

  “Auli,” Mele said, sounding annoyed, “You asked for me to come out here, but now you won’t talk to me?”

  “I was waiting for both of you to get here,” she said. “Stay away from my family, both of you.”

  “Are you serious? Your family is staying at my house with my mother, Auli!” Mele yelled.

  “Yeah, stay away from your mother too,” Auli said. “You need to start a new life away from us.”

  “She wants me home! She’s texted me like fifty times!” Mele’s voice was as emotional as I had ever heard it. But I could not focus on her pain.

  I was going to die. I was dying, this time, I would die. All I could feel was my heart fighting to break free of my chest. All I could see was Auli’s soul.

  I gasped in a breath and turned to stumble inside. Wyvern had been growling something at Auli —I did not know what – but he turned as I stumbled away. He wrapped me in his arms, while I started gasping heavy breaths.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Auli asked.

  “Dakota? She has panic attacks…” Clara called from somewhere behind us, I had not even known she had followed us outside. Suddenly, she was beside me and opened my ring. “Momma could you go get Dakota’s bracelet?” Clara whispered.

  My mother, who I also had not realized had followed us out, rushed back inside.

  Clara rubbed my back. “It’s okay Dakota, everyone is safe.”

  “I—”Auli started to say, “I just want—”

  “We got it!” Mele yelled, “Just get out of here.”

  “Her soul is a waterfall,” I gasped. “It’s just like her father’s!”

  “What did you say?” Auli said.

  “Nothing,” Wyvern growled, “Leave, now.”

  “She knows about-”

  “Leave!” Wyvern shouted.

  Auli stood one more second, her gaze darting between us, and then she took off running to her car. She jumped in the driver seat and the engine started up, but she let the car sit for a minute before driving off.

  The moment Auli left I could concentrate on feeding the panic into my ring, funneling it down, down, down. By the time my mother came back with my dampener I felt weak and nauseous, but no longer panicked.

  My mother touched my clammy face. Her breath smelled only of vodka, no orange juice or spicy tomato mix. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said.

  “I’m sorry about what I said yesterday,” I told her, because at that moment it seemed very important to say it.

  “Honey, I knew you didn’t mean it,” she said, “What matters is that you feel okay.”

  “I’m okay; it wasn’t that bad,” I said. “I just need to go sit down.”

  She nodded. “If you need me, I’ll be in my room.”

  When I nodded, she shuffled off.

  Clara, Mele, Wyvern and I all stood in the driveway for a moment before we turned to the house. When I tried to pull out of Wyvern’s embrace, he held onto me, insisting on keeping his arm around me until I sat down at our dining room table.

  I sure was freaking out left and right around Wyvern, wasn’t I? To top it all off, I knew I smelled like sweat and panic.

  Clara unplugged my phone from the wall and handed it to me five seconds before it rang.

  “I’m fine,” I said hoarsely into the phone.

  “You don’t sound fine,” my grandfather said.

  “Panic attack,” I said.

  “That’s two in less than a week,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’m going to double my efforts to break the contract, be ready,” he said.

  It was an order.

  I met Wyvern’s gaze, knowing that he could hear both sides of the conversation.

  “Neither panic attack actually had anything to do with him. They happened both times when I was with Auli Hale,” I said, “She reminds me of someone in a lot of ways, I think being around her triggered both of them.” Was I actually trying to convince my grandfather not to break my contract with Wyvern? It would be inconvenient for my search for Honua to be delayed for even the six hours it would take to break the contract.

  That was the only reason.

  “I see,” my grandfather said, “Next time make sure to wear your dampener when you’re with her.”

  “Okay, I will,” I said. Then we hung up.

  “Can I get you anything?” Clara said.

  “Some water?” I said. My face fell into my palms.

  Wyvern sat next to me and Mele across the table.

  “You must think I’m constantly going into fits,” I said to Wyvern.

  “I knew about your panic attac
ks,” Wyvern said, “It was in your medical records.”

  I looked at him, “There is something wrong with you.”

  “Your grandfather released them to my steward, so I can protect you,” Wyvern said. “It happens every time with a contract—”

  I raised my hand to stop him, “It’s not like you don’t know everything else.” If I was mad at him for that right now, I would have to get mad at him for all his invasions of my privacy and I just did not have the energy.

  After Clara gave me the glass of water, I sipped it slowly, and then raised my eyes to see Mele very intently studying my charm bracelet.

  “Who just called you?” Mele asked.

  “My grandfather,” I said.

  “How did he know you were having a panic attack?” she asked.

  “I called him,” Clara said before I could give a decent lie. Obviously she did not call him; she was with us the whole time.

  “She called him before I went outside, I was already starting a panic attack,” I said.

  “So it wasn’t Auli who caused your panic attack?”

  Crud.

  “No, I just said that,” I said. “It makes him feel better if there was a cause that could be avoided.”

  “Like Auli’s waterfall soul?” she said.

  This was bad.

  “I say weird things sometimes when I have panic attacks,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Auli seemed to think it did,” Mele said, she finally raised her eyes from my dampener. “You know you can trust me, right?”

  “I do trust you,” I said, “I trust you with my life.”

  “Okay,” she said, rubbing her face which looked drawn and pale. “I meant to ask you yesterday…what did that witch say about making me a charm that would let me cross water wards?”

  I could not believe I forgot.

  Here I was, wearing my deadly dampener.

  I dropped my hands under the table and Mele tracked my arm’s movement with her gaze. Quickly, I unfastened my dampener and dropped it onto my jeans, hoping that the material separating the bracelet from my skin would be enough if the charm really was deadly.

  When I focused back on Mele, I saw that she wasn’t asking lightly, she looked like she was going to cry. Before this moment, I could not have ever have imagined Mele crying yet there were tears waiting on her eyelashes for me to say no.

  I could not tell her. I could not say to her, ‘sorry, the one hope I dangled in front of you very likely would kill you if you tried it.’

  “She said it will probably take a couple days to make,” I said.

  Mele sighed, and then gave a small relieved smile. “But she’s making it?”

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  I’m going straight to the lowest level of the human hells.

  “Good, it would be nice to wear clothes that fit me.” Mele laughed but she did not sound happy. “I’m just going to take a nap in your guest room, is that cool?”

  It was barely eight in the morning, but she did look exhausted. Whatever infection she caught from Wyvern was taking it’s time to surface. She was probably knocked out from the changes in her body.

  “It’s yours,” I said. To Clara and Wyvern I said, “Please excuse me, I seriously need to shower.” I stood up.

  “I’m going to have to go with you,” Wyvern said.

  I spun, staring wide-eyed at him.

  He smiled and said, “Kidding.”

  Chapter Twenty Two

  An hour later I was clean and I had reentered my room feeling like I just had had my first big break in this search for Honua.

  Wyvern sat at my desk watching the surveillance footage. Not on the bed. That was a good thing. My gaze caught on the unmade bed without my mind’s consent.

  Forcing my gaze away, I sat in the chair Lorelei must have brought in from her room last night.

  “It was Auli,” I said.

  Wyvern just looked at me, gave me an exasperated look and shook his head.

  So not the reaction that I had expected.

  “What’s that look for?” I said, defensively. “Her soul is exactly like her father’s.”

  “You want it to be her because you don’t like her,” Wyvern said.

  “It fits,” I said angrily.

  “No it doesn’t. You think it was Senator Hale’s daughter for the sole reason that she has a soul like her father’s. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Her father is a killer,” I said. “She has the same soul as a killer.”

  Why wasn’t he following this?

  “If someone is a killer, does it show on their soul?” he asked.

  “I don’t… maybe…” I said, “But she was also one of three people who were there when Honua disappeared,” I said.

  “Which you did not think was incriminating evidence against Keanu Hale,” he said.

  “But she’s obviously very protective of her family. Were you not there when she just showed up and told Mele, her best friend since birth, to stay away from her family? I mean, she’s always on a mission to keep me far away, but she loved Mele. The moment Mele gets tossed from the water ward Auli tells Mele to get lost. Doesn’t that show you she’s a little nutty? What if she found out that Honua was sneaking around her house…?”

  “And what about all the other girls that are disappearing?” he asked.

  “She could be helping her father take them,” I said.

  “Maybe I should have hired a real detective,” he said.

  Ouch.

  “Fine,” I said, turning to my computer. “You’re the boss, boss. If you don’t agree with someone it must mean their ideas are idiotic—”

  He reached over and scooped me onto his lap. When I struggled he bear-hugged me so tight I could not move.

  “Ugh,” I said, “I am so filing for sexual harassment.”

  He chuckled into my hair. “You’ll need your arms for that.”

  I stopped struggling realizing that Wyvern was about fifty times stronger than I was and trying to escape was wasting my energy.

  “I’m not saying that she did not do it,” Wyvern said. “I’m saying that you think it’s her because you don’t like her and you don’t think it’s her brother because you like him.”

  “I have been studying them for years,” I said. “And, I can see souls. Don’t you think I have some right to judge?”

  “Perhaps you do. Just don’t decide that it’s her yet. My promise not to attack Keanu was for three days, you still have the rest of today and tomorrow.” He paused. “Except, we’re going to be busy tonight.”

  “You’re not serious,” I said. “Honua has been missing for three days and we actually have some suspects...”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Wyvern said. “My father is out of the volcano and he wants to meet you.”

  Oh this was just getting better and better. “I think I’m coming down with something, possibly the plague,” I coughed. “It’s deadly and contagious.”

  “Not to me,” he said and then he kissed my neck.

  “But to everyone else, so, you and I will just have to stay here.” Wow, I just said that out loud.

  “That will just have to be our plan for tomorrow night,” he whispered, kissing my neck again.

  My eyes closed. And I tried and failed to force my mind away from thoughts about what kissing him on the bed had felt like, and how maybe we could try it again, like, say, right now.

  Perhaps he had the same thought and thought better of it, because he set me back in the desk chair.

  He said, “The security team arrived earlier this morning—”

  I closed my eyes, forcing myself back into the job at hand. “Good, I really need to see if Honua’s friends knew what she was planning and who her contact was in the Hale estate.”

  Going to school might turn up nothing but I was stumped and wasn’t quite ready to storm up to Senator Hale and Auli and demand they produce the girls they stole.

  I had glanced thro
ugh the screen shots that Lorelei had taken before my shower and unfortunately I had not recognized any of them. I had kept a small hope that they were members of the Hells’ Hogs; while I did not know every member of the club, I seriously doubted that the clean-cut office-assistant looking movers were secret club members.

  “Do you think I’ll be able to make it by lunch time?” I asked.

  “Make it where?” Wyvern said.

  “To school,” I said.

  “You’re not going to school,” Wyvern said.

  “But you said that when the security team-”

  “That was before we went to the water witch,” he said.

  Oh, yeah, the water charms killing people thing. I kept forgetting. But, really…I said, “Wyvern, the witch said that it wasn’t the charm—”

  “We’re not discussing it,” he said. “I sent the human in your security team to your school today.”

  “Somehow you think I gave you permission to control my whole life but I did not.”

  “Baby, you did,” he said, not ashamed at all, “At least where your safety is concerned.”

  “No, this is because I let you kiss me,” I said.

  Big. Fat. Mistake.

  “No it’s not.”

  “Yeah, it is. I let you kiss me and now you’re not respecting my opinions or my ability to do this job.”

  “If your grandfather saw this much risk in an assignment, would he send you on it?” he asked.

  “There are always risks—”

  “This much foreseeable risk of dying?” he said.

  “No,” I admitted sullenly.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said.

  “What can I really do for you if I can’t get into all the places you hired me to get into?” I asked.

  “You’ll figure something out,” he said.

  “Ugh! Fine! But you should call your human and tell him—”

  “Her,” he corrected.

  “—tell her that she should break into Honua’s locker. All of the students' digital activity is threatened to be monitored so she probably should not even bother with Honua’s digital records. The school issued book-bags for some of our homework, if she can find Honua’s that should be checked as they’re really only used for passing notes. When I asked your mother if she had Honua’s book-bag, she said it wasn’t brought home that day. It’s a chance.”