by Isadora Hart
“I said don’t kill her,” she repeated for the third time. “We could have gotten information from her.”
“I can’t stop it. When the rage comes, I can’t stop anything,” he said, fetching his phone from his pocket. “I’ll call the police.”
People were already coming out of their rooms to see what the commotion was.
Cassie finally got a good look at the woman. Her eyes weren’t lilac, but it could have been contact lenses. She wasn’t going to rule out the possibility of a Tevisian just yet.
Vikram placed a hand on her shoulder and she jumped, a scream sticking in the back of her throat. “You should go back to your room,” he said. “We don’t want people getting photographs of you. Journalists will be here before long, and you’re shaking.”
His knife was still stuck in the woman’s chest, and her mouth was open in a scream. Cassie replayed the death in her mind, and didn’t know if it made her feel safer with Vikram or not. He was deadly. He was terrifying.
She allowed him to walk her back to her room, her body on autopilot as he kept his hand on her lower back.
He shut her door. “The police will be there to deal with that in a minute. I’m going to stay here with you.” He took her hand and she blinked, looking up at him with wide eyes. “You have a cut on your arm,” he clarified. “It needs wrapping.”
“Oh. Right.” She shook her head, pressing her non-bloody hand to it. “I just need a minute to get my head right.”
“Take as long as you need.”
“What was that?” she asked him. “With the skin and the eyes and the fangs?”
He smiled, sitting her on the edge of the bed and taking a seat beside her, first-aid kit in his hands. “It was a rage. It’s like a trance, almost. It’s why we make such good bodyguards. When someone is in danger, we can channel the rage. We get stronger and faster and less affected by pain. It makes us good fighters.”
“You said you couldn’t stop yourself from killing her. Does that mean you could kill anyone in a rage and not know?”
“It doesn’t work quite like that. I’m going to use an anti-bacterial wipe. It’ll hurt.”
She nodded, gritting her teeth and refusing to make a sound when the intense burn of the wipe blurred her senses for a moment. “It’s fine,” she managed.
“But, yeah, part of being in the rage is heightened ability to read body language. We can tell friend from foe. I’d never hurt you when I was in a rage.”
He began wrapping the bandage and they lapsed into silence for a moment, while she watched his fingers work gracefully. His hand was so much bigger than hers, he could have crushed her in a second if he had the desire to.
There was a knock on the door and she jumped, grabbing Vikram’s wrist as an automatic reaction. His skin was scalding to the touch.
“It’s okay,” he soothed, resting one hand on top of hers. When she didn’t relax, he lifted a hand, and she thought for half a second that he was about to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear. It hovered, right by the strand hanging in her face. He didn’t, though; he used the hand to help him stand up and said, “I’ll get it.”
She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she could no longer feel his body heat beside her and let it go.
It turned out to be the police, and she spent the next half an hour talking through exactly what had happened while someone recorded her. When they said they were done, she finally let go of her restraint and asked the questions she’d been holding back. “Is there any news on the Archie case?” she asked.
“I’m afraid we can’t talk about an ongoing case.” They stood up and she did too, folding her arms.
“You haven’t even interviewed me about it yet.”
“We have a long list of witnesses, I’m sure you understand.”
“I do not understand. A man was murdered and you have the body of his assassin. There should be more news by now. I just want some updates. He was my friend.”
“I’m sorry. This is procedure. As soon as there’s news, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Just like I was the first to be interviewed, even though I was right beside him and almost got shot myself, I’m sure.”
They didn’t reply and left the room. Cassie’s mood was black with anger, and she slammed the door after them. “Bastards,” she muttered.
“Just following orders. It’s their bosses that are the real problem.”
“Does that mean you’ve had a change of heart and intend to help me with my investigations?”
“Don’t push your luck,” he muttered.
Her smile was weak as everything came back to her, and she lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. “Well this definitely isn’t where I was expecting my day to go.” She automatically checked her bra to make sure the memory cards hadn’t somehow fallen out. “What a shit storm this conference has already turned out to be.”
“I can’t see it getting much better.”
He was doing another sweep of her apartment, and then back to the window to watch people down below. “They’re giving a statement to the press now.”
“I don’t have to give one about this attack too, do I? Maybe I should. At least now all these stupid rumors about Archie’s personal life being the reason for his assassination might stop. Unless they think we were having an affair and his wife is eliminating both of us out of misguided vengeance. Actually I can see some of them printing that. I shouldn’t even joke.”
“It’ll all die down eventually. Just got to push through.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“I’m staying in your room from now on.”
He asked it like a question, even though the words were a statement.
“Really?”
“Someone came to your room and almost killed you. If I’d been in the middle of something you’d be dead. I’m not risking that again.”
“My couch is a little bit small.”
“I don’t mind. I’d feel better knowing I was in the room. As long as you don’t mind.”
She felt a small thrill at the thought of suggesting they could just share the bed. It was practical, after all. He was far too tall to sleep on the small couch really, and the bed was a double.
And if they happened to wake up tangled in each other’s arms in the morning, it would have happened in their sleep, so what would it matter?
“I don’t mind,” she said, turning around to hide the flush that had crept onto her cheeks. So he was attractive, that didn’t mean she needed to fawn over him. There were more important matters at stake. “Really, though, you can’t sleep on the couch. It’s tiny.”
He looked at the bed once, before dismissing it. “I’ll manage.”
She decided to leave it for now. She was still too full of adrenaline to think about going to sleep any time soon, anyway.
She looked at the bowl of ice cream on the floor. “I really wanted that ice cream,” she muttered. “Would it be a terrible idea to order some more? I mean what are the chances of twice in a row, really?”
“You’re allowed as long as you get enough for two.”
She beamed, and put an order in to room service. “Deal.”
He grabbed a cloth from the sink and the trash can and sank gracefully to the floor beside the mess. She had no idea how he did it when he was so large. How could he go from killing someone as though it was nothing one minute to moving like a dancer the next. He was mesmerizing in every way, really.
It wasn’t until now that Cassie realized just how distracting he was.
She’d almost been killed less than an hour ago but she was quite content to sit on her bed and watch the muscles in his back move as he scrubbed ice cream off the carpet.
It wasn’t a good sign.
7.
VIKRAM
Vikram knew that staying in Cassie’s room was less than ideal, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave her alone. The panic button had worked this time, the chances of someone tr
ying the same ploy again was unlikely, and there was no other way someone could let themselves into her room without a key card, but he couldn’t get past the fact someone had almost gotten her.
When he’d opened his door and seen her running down the hallway with tears on her face, blood on her arm, and panic in her eyes, he’d flown into a rage faster than he ever had before. It had been instantaneous, an immediate tunnel vision to kill the assassin, and nothing could have stopped him.
He had no memory of her asking him not to. No memory but the sound of his blood pumping in his ears and the knife sliding beneath the assassin’s ribcage.
It was the first time he’d had to kill someone in a long time. He’d done it before, of course, but he didn’t normally do jobs where he saw action. It was a lot of sitting in offices and looking intimidating. Opening the doors to cars and spaceships for politicians.
This was the first time he’d been called into someone in immediate danger.
He wasn’t expecting to have gotten so attached.
“You don’t have to do that,” Cassie said, sinking to the floor beside him and taking the cloth from his hand. Their knees knocked together and her fingers brushed against his. “I don’t mind.”
He stood up, almost flinching from the contact, and listened to Ballar’s voice in his head screaming, Never have a personal relationship with a charge. Professionalism and control are the two words you live by.
He was already pushing the boundaries of professionalism by even admitting he thought she was attractive, and it was all about control now he was staying in her room. It wouldn’t be difficult, though. It had been his entire life, training to be a professional. There were beautiful women all over the world, and he’d been around them before—been in bed with them before—Cassie wasn’t going to make him give up everything he’d worked for just because her smile was enough to send a hot flash through him.
He was better than that.
A knock on the door made her jump, and his immediate reaction was to touch her. Just a small touch, just something to comfort her. He held back this time.
“I’ll get it.”
He opened the door with a knife in his hand. It was an employee with a tray and two large bowls of ice cream. It was a man this time—someone who looked more like he was security rather than someone who would be bringing room service to people’s doors. Vikram wouldn’t be surprised if no one had volunteered to bring stuff to Cassie’s room anymore. He’d heard from the police that the original server had been found knocked out in the elevator.
The man handed him the ice cream and the exchange was short. Vikram shut the door and locked it behind him.
Cassie took the bowl hungrily. “Thanks.”
Vikram hadn’t had ice cream for years. It wasn’t something that existed on his home planet, and that was where he spent most of his time when he was off duty. Not that he was off duty very often. Guarding someone was more than a nine-til-five job, and he didn’t often get more than a few hours in an evening to himself when he was off-planet, and those were spent in bars rather than ice cream parlors.
She stayed sat on the floor, and he took the couch. “What’s your favorite flavor?” she asked. “They only had vanilla, but if you could have had anything?”
“Salted caramel,” he answered immediately. “I’ve only had it once. I was off-planet on my first job, guarding a paranoid old woman who was certain someone was after her. She was wrong, of course, but she was rich so they gave her the rookie and told me to look after her. She was lovely. She went to go and visit her grandson and he owned an ice cream parlor. I had just about one of everything, but the salted caramel was my favorite.”
She smiled. “That’s cute. That must be the ideal job.”
“Yeah, it was. Part of me is convinced that she was just desperate for someone to talk to. Her husband had died three months before I was hired.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died. She had a heart attack. It was natural causes, but it was a wake-up call when I went from guarding her to some stuck-up politician who thought having some muscle at his back made him more intimidating.”
“I hope that’s not what you think of me.”
There were so many ways he could have disputed that statement. He wanted to tell her all the ways she was different from the people he’d guarded the past decade, but he kept his thoughts to himself. “It’s definitely not. You’re… just about the opposite of all those people.”
“You don’t think I’m intimidating?” she teased, looking up from her ice cream, a white spot on her chin where it had dripped off her spoon.
He couldn’t resist reaching forward and wiping it off. “You don’t look intimidating, that’s what makes you scarier. You know how to play people.”
Her eyes widened. “That makes me sound so sly.”
“You played those police officers like it was nothing.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess so. Archie always says it’s better to trick people than aggravate them. You’re more likely to get your way.”
“See. That’s why you’re second chair even though you’re about twenty years younger than everyone at the conference. You can keep your anger in check.”
“You really think so?”
From the soft glow on her cheeks and the quirk to her brow, he realized he might have said something more personal than he’d meant to. “I really think so.”
“That means a lot.” She grinned. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Vikram wasn’t sure he could say the same thing. Cassie was throwing him off balance in every way.
He was out of his depth, and all it did was make him nervous.
8.
CASSIE
Cassie felt almost giddy from the praise she’d just received. Her confidence was at an all-time low with the conference coming up, but Vikram was buoying her up. He looked startled by her reaction. He had no idea how much she was living for those little comments he made as though they were an obvious fact.
“We should go and get your bedding,” she said. “If you really want to sleep on the couch. Or I can send for some more. I should have probably done that with the ice cream.”
“I’ll go and get mine. I have some more things in my room I need to get, anyway. You’re coming with me. I’m not leaving you here on your own.”
He yo-yoed between giving authoritative commands and almost seeming shy about things he’d said. She wanted to keep pushing the boundaries of his professionalism even though she knew it was cruel to put him in that awkward position.
She got a rush of heat every time he had to look away from her after he broke his stern bodyguard character, though. She wanted to go sit in his lap and tell him she didn’t care if he was just himself around her, that she wanted to know everything little thing that went through his mind, especially if it was about her.
“I figured.”
He scraped the last bit of his ice cream up and looked tempted to give the bowl a lick. “Come on. Let’s go now. You look exhausted.”
“Gee thanks.” She was starting to feel it, though. The adrenaline had left and her whole body felt sluggish. Her arm was throbbing.
And the conference began tomorrow morning.
She definitely needed some sleep.
She stood up and stretched, then trailed after Vikram into the corridor.
When she got there, though, she had to stop. The body was gone, but the evidence of the struggle wasn’t. The area where the assassin had been stabbed was taped off, but the blood was still smeared on the wall and pooled on the floor. All the images, the surge of fear she’d felt as she ran, came hurtling back for a moment.
It had been so close. If Vikram had taken just a bit longer, she wouldn’t be here anymore.
“I can’t believe someone tried to kill me,” she murmured, going closer to the wall and finding it too easy to imagine herself pushed against it, the knife going through her heart.
She wondered who would have come
to her funeral. Or, have actually wanted to come rather than feeling obligation to go because she was their colleague.
Her shoulders sagged. She’d spent all this time on the job and Archie was the only person who’d ever truly cared about her. She’d never had friends outside of work, it was too hard to keep up with them. She was always being called away, going on excursions that took weeks at a time. It wasn’t conducive to having any kind of relationship.
“I don’t want to stand in the corridor for too long,” Vikram said, resting a hand on her shoulder. He stood behind her and she automatically relaxed into his touch, taking for granted the fact he was physically close when she couldn’t get emotionally close to anyone.
He immediately pulled his hand back, though, and she forced herself not to flinch.
He was just here to do a job, not to be her friend. She needed to keep reminding herself of that.
She turned from the blood and started walking back down to his room. She wanted to apologize, but was sure it would just make things more awkward.
He unlocked his room and revealed a pristine hotel room, as though no one had been staying there. She shouldn’t have been surprised. A small bag was in the corner, and he slung it over his shoulder.
“That’s all you brought with you?” she asked.
“That’s all I need.”
“I suppose you wear all your weapons,” she teased, grabbing a couple of pillows from his bed and trying her best to breathe deeply. They smelled like him. A strong, clean smell with just a hint of spice. Maybe she could surreptitiously switch them and keep these ones for herself. “Got everything?”
He took a quick glance around, went into the bathroom and stuffed a few more things into his back, then grabbed the comforter from the bed. “Got everything.”
She’d been hoping to get some insight into what he was like when he relaxed, but his barren room had given her nothing. She’d have killed to get a look inside his room back at his home.