by K. A. Linde
Reyna didn’t know who Penelope was trying to convince with that speech, but Reyna had lived on the streets. She had seen the city streets. Beckham had educated her as well as the rogue vampire who had almost killed her. If Penelope thought she was doing her job, her father was doing his job, then they needed to get out more.
This wasn’t even about Beckham and Penelope at this point. Reyna had actually experienced being poor and hungry, and saying some program was going to fix things was almost insulting.
“That’s a nice speech, but unrealistic,” Reyna said.
“What do you mean? I’ve lived through the administration. I’ve seen the improvements.”
“You call this an improvement?” Reyna asked, shocking even herself in her enthusiasm. “Have you actually seen the streets? Like walked around on them? Seen the people starving and dirty and poor? Seen the streets littered with filth and felt the utter despair? It’s palpable. Has your father—or have you, for that matter—actually done anything to change what’s happening out there or are you just hiding behind your words? Because I’m not sure if you’re aware, but words don’t feed the hungry or help get the poor a job or make the streets livable.”
Penelope gave her a stunned look. Everyone else around them had gone silent at Reyna’s passionate outburst.
“Of…of course we’re working to fix things. Everything doesn’t happen overnight. We’ve set up some very successful initiatives…”
“How exactly are you measuring success? More or less deaths than the day before in your wealthy districts? You probably can’t even count the number of dead in the dregs of the city.”
“I don’t know where you think you’re getting this information from,” Penelope said indignantly, “but the city cares about the poor just as much as the wealthy.”
Reyna laughed. Actually laughed. “The rich always say they care about the poor as they clean up the bodies. Whatever you think you’re doing, Penelope…it isn’t working.”
“Reyna, that’s enough,” Beckham growled.
“It always is when you say it is.”
He full on glared at her, but she didn’t shrink away.
“Will you excuse us?” he spat.
Without waiting to hear what anyone else had to say, he grabbed Reyna roughly by the arm and hauled her across the ballroom. The room quieted down as Harrington got on the small stage and started speaking into a microphone. But she couldn’t hear a word he was saying over the deafening silence between her and Beckham as he dragged her out a side panel of double doors and into a small deserted lounge.
“What the hell was that?” Beckham asked
“You forgot my champagne.”
“Forget the damn champagne. What you said was incredibly out of line.”
“What I said was the damn truth and you know it! You’re the one who showed me the city in the first place. I’m not going to let someone tell me what it’s like out there when they’ve never lived through it.”
“You know absolutely nothing about Penelope.”
Reyna scoffed. “The mayor’s daughter? I know enough. I honestly can’t believe you’re seeing her.”
“She isn’t the person you think she is.”
“I highly doubt that. And if she’s so virtuous, then how come you never mentioned her?”
“I thought you already knew.”
Reyna threw her hands. “How could I possibly know?” She turned away in disgust. “Does she even know we kissed?”
“No. That’s none of her business.”
“It’s none of her business?” she asked in disbelief. “I doubt she would agree. Why didn’t you tell me you were dating someone?”
“What I do in my spare time is my own business.”
“Obviously,” she spat. “You made that perfectly clear. I don’t even know why you brought me here.”
“All of the Permanent Subjects were supposed to be here tonight, to show off how well the program is working to the rest of the company.”
“What a load of shit!” she cried. “You brought me here for work? Did you really want to be here with Penelope? I mean…you’ve made it so fucking obvious to me. I feel like such an idiot. I should have seen it all along. I just wish you would’ve fucking told me. Then I wouldn’t be over here feeling…”
She stared up into his drawn face, wanting so much for him to understand. But he didn’t. He had said that he wanted this to stop. She was attracted to him of course. It was pure physical lust for a man who didn’t even want to touch her. Yet she couldn’t shake the memory of his hands and lips and body.
“Feeling what?” he prompted, stepping closer to her.
The temperature spiked in the room with him so near. She knew she needed to step away from him…but they were like two magnets.
She reached out, took his hand in her own, and then placed it over her heart. “Feeling this.” Her heart thrummed under his fingertips.
“And how is that?” he asked, his voice strained. His free arm wrapped around her waist, drawing her closer. Her breathing stopped as he held her with his hand still pressed against her heart, which was now beating furiously. She swallowed hard and wet her lips.
“Torn. I want to kiss you,” she confided, “but I don’t want to end up in some ridiculous love triangle.”
“I cannot give you what you want, Reyna.”
“Which part?”
Then his lips were on hers again and the rest of the world slipped away. Her mind grew fuzzy. Their previous arguments disappeared. Even the thought of Penelope dissolved at the feel of Beckham’s lips.
It was as if she were sinking into the ocean and never had to come up for breath. She was drowning in him. Lost in the eternity sea.
They stumbled backward until her knees connected with a chaise. Beckham’s body immediately covered hers. His hand rode up the slit of her dress and bunched the material around her hips. She groaned into his mouth, only urging him on further.
There was a fever to their movements. She had thought about this moment ever since he had first kissed her. Wanted a repeat of that night. Wanted to feel his rough hands on her skin. Now that she was, she kissed him back with a ferocity she hardly knew existed within her.
“Beckham!”
They both heard his name called, and a wall of ice soaked through their skin. Beckham jumped back from Reyna. A look of horror crossed his features for a second and then was immediately replaced with his cool outward appearance. By looking at him, she would have never guessed he had just been furiously making out with her.
She wasn’t sure she could say the same about herself. She was human after all. Slower to stand and attempt to adjust her dress. Her lips were swollen, her skin flushed, and her hair slightly tangled.
“Yes,” Beckham called back. “Just a moment.”
Penelope walked in through the double doors a second later. She took in Reyna’s disheveled appearance and Beckham’s apparent nonchalance.
“Harrington wishes to speak with you. I wanted to make sure everything was all right.”
“Fine, Penny.”
“Right,” she murmured and then retreated.
Reyna’s hand flew to her mouth. She couldn’t believe what had just happened…that she had instigated it. She didn’t know what was going on between Beckham and Penelope, but surely it wasn’t right for Reyna and him to do this. She wished she had some answers from Beckham rather than this hot and cold.
“I have to go speak with my boss,” Beckham said curtly.
“So that’s it? You said you’d never kiss me again…and now you have.”
“A mistake,” he said callously. “Your emotions run high, and they send my…baser instincts into overdrive.”
“It couldn’t just be that you’re a man desiring a woman?”
“No. It is an animal enj
oying the hunt. The monster within struggling to get out. Nothing more.”
Reyna shook her head and started toward the door. She didn’t have to stay and listen to this. When she reached it, she looked at him one last time.
“How boring your life must be to have no one fill you with passion and make your emotions run high. I’ll take my chances with the monster over complacency.”
Chapter 20
“What are you doing out there?” she mused aloud to herself. Reyna tapped her foot impatiently.
She had been waiting in her bedroom all afternoon for Beckham to leave the apartment. He should have already gone to work or done something. It wasn’t like him to adjust his perfect schedule, but he hadn’t left. She could still hear him moving around and she hadn’t heard the elevator.
After she had walked out of the lounge last night, Beckham had caught up with her and ordered her back to the car. She had waited thirty long minutes for him to finally show up. The drive home was tense and uncomfortable. She hadn’t wanted to talk to him any further about what happened, and he clearly felt the same way. As soon as they had made it back, she had stormed into her room and hadn’t left since.
The last thing she wanted to do was run into him in the living room and make some meaningless small talk. She wasn’t going to be the first to break that was for sure.
Footsteps in the hallway made her stop her pacing and stare at her door. She could hear Beckham stop on the other side. What the hell was he doing out there?
He didn’t knock. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there. They both just stood there. Neither of them willing to make the first move. She didn’t care if that made her stubborn. He had kissed her, treated her poorly, and on top of all that was dating someone else. She had no reason to talk to him.
After a few minutes, she heard him walk away from her room, the telltale ding of the elevator, and then she was alone.
“Finally,” she breathed.
Reyna yanked the tight pink dress over her head and tossed it into a discarded pile on the floor. She walked into her closet, found her stash of normal clothes, and grabbed stuff for her to wear. Once she was clothed in a loose cotton T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and her Converse sneakers, she brushed her hair out and threw the baseball cap on her head, low over her eyes. Her camera went into a plain black bag that she hoisted over her shoulder before leaving the apartment.
She texted Beckham’s driver to let him know she would need a ride. Her bodyguard, Philippé, was always waiting for her in the car whenever he was needed. Beckham must pay a lot of money for these two men to do nothing but wait for one of them to leave the building.
When she got to the front, the car had pulled up for her to get into, but she stopped when she saw Everett. His eyes widened at her clothing.
“Reyna?” he asked.
He hadn’t been on duty the past couple times she had snuck out in regular clothing. She had been glad he didn’t know about her double life. He was clearly so traumatized by what had happened that he could barely look at her. She didn’t want to involve him in anything else that could get him hurt.
“Oh…hey,” she said. “I have to get going…”
She started toward the car, but he followed her. “Hey, are you avoiding me now or what?”
“I…what? No. Of course not.” She looked up at him tentatively. “I thought you were avoiding me.”
“I’ve barely seen you. How could I avoid you?”
“Well, you were all serious that first day back. You called me Miss Carpenter. I thought maybe you…blamed me still. Or agreed with your friends.”
“Sorry about that. My manager was on duty. He’s been around a lot more since my attack. I think he thinks I’m fragile and going to fall apart or something. But…I just got off work if you want to hang. I’d love to find out what you’re doing in those clothes. Are those Beckham approved?”
Reyna made a face. “He’d probably have my head if he knew I was wearing this.”
“I hope not literally.”
She laughed and it felt good. “No. Not literally.”
“So, what are you up to?”
“Just…occupying my time.” She dug into her bag and pulled out the camera. “Trying to see the city from a different perspective.”
“Cool. Can I come with?”
She looked down at his valet outfit—white button-up, black vest, slacks, and dress shoes. “No offense, but you’ll kind of stand out where I’m going.”
“Well, now I’m definitely intrigued. I have a change of clothes in my car, around back.”
Reyna considered it for a second. She knew that Beckham didn’t want anyone to know that her pictures were connected to her, but she didn’t think it hurt anything to take Everett along. Who was he going to tell? He was a valet for her apartment building.
“Sure. Why not?”
Reyna tapped on the glass of the front passenger window. It rolled down slowly. “Yes?”
“I’m going to go around the back with my friend. Will you meet me there in a couple minutes to pick us up?”
“You aren’t going to leave without us, are you?”
Reyna rolled her eyes. “I agreed not to. We’ll be in the completely lit back parking lot.”
“Five minutes,” he said and then rolled the window back up.
“Charming,” she muttered, following Everett around to the back.
“So, what got you interested in photography?” Everett asked.
“The attack actually,” she said softly. She stared hard at the ground. “I already had a bad image of the streets, but that magnified it. Beckham gave me the camera as a hobby, I think to keep me from getting bored, and I decided that I wanted to see the streets through the eyes of the suffering. People like me.”
“People like you were…”
“Just because I live up there right now doesn’t mean I’m any less like you or your friends or anyone else. I don’t belong there, and I want my pictures to show that. Show what no one at Visage or in politics or in the upper class really see with their eyes.”
“That’s…really great,” he admitted.
They reached Everett’s Mustang, and he found his spare clothes. She watched as he took off his vest and button-up, revealing a rather nice bare chest. Her cheeks heated and she quickly turned around.
“Oh, sorry.”
Everett laughed. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I want to hear more about this photography. You know it reminds me a bit of this blog everyone has been talking about lately.”
“What blog?” She turned back around to face him. He had on a plain gray T-shirt and a pair of jeans perfect for what they were doing.
“I’ll have to find it on my phone.”
Beckham’s car drove toward them as Everett fiddled with his phone looking for the blog. They hopped into the backseat, and Reyna told them where to go. She had been taking pictures at a homeless shelter a lot lately. The pictures made her eyes blur with tears when she looked through them, and that was how she knew they held truth.
“Aha. Here,” Everett said. He passed the phone to her. “Perspective.”
Reyna nearly dropped the phone. There were her beautiful pictures. Beckham had been the one to name the website Perspective when he had set it up for her. She hadn’t even realized that other people could see them. She had just been uploading her images to it and organizing them for herself.
“You said people are looking at these?”
“Yeah,” he said, eyeing her questioningly. “They’re anonymous though. Everyone has been trying to figure out who the photographer is. They think the person must be an Elle sympathizer.”
“A what?” she asked. People were associating her pictures with a person she had never even heard of?
“You really know nothing about politics, do you?”
<
br /> “No,” she admitted. “Who is Elle?”
He glanced up uneasily at the driver and her bodyguard. “Someone…and something a lot of people disagree with.” Then he leaned over and started adjusting the baseball cap on her head. “I’ll tell you when we stop.”
She took the hint and changed subjects until they made it to the homeless shelter. Once they were safely inside, she slung her camera strap around her neck and walked the halls with Everett.
“So, tell me.”
He peeked behind them, but her bodyguard was a respectable distance away, pretending to be invisible.
“Elle is the code name for the rebellion against the vampires and Visage. Back when Visage was just forming, there was a series of protests against vampire-owned businesses and the mission statement that was coming out of some of these corporations, of which Visage is now the most prominent. They called this Elle’s Rebellion for the woman who led the protests, who was subsequently killed in an otherwise peaceful protest. Everyone thought that would be the end of it, but since then, there have been whispers that the Elle sympathizers have gotten together under the Elle Rebellion name and formed a more formal underground rebellion. Hence Elle or sometimes the graffiti on the streets is just a cursive L in a circle.”
“Wow,” Reyna breathed. “That’s…crazy. I’ve seen that logo before.”
“Yeah. It’s everywhere. Elle rebels believe that Visage wants to be more than just the biggest company in the world. They want to rule. A lot of them claim that Visage was responsible for the economic collapse so that they could force humans to work for them. Make everyone desperate for change so they place too much power in the hands of one company.”
Reyna’s mind spun. There were people out there fighting Visage? Even though she worked for them now, it lifted her spirits to know that there were other people out there who disagreed with what was going on.
“And they think that the person taking those pictures is an Elle sympathizer? Why?” she asked.
He pulled his phone back out and showed her the latest entry. Her latest entry. Everett had walked them over to the exact spot the picture had been taken in this very homeless shelter.