I could already picture the demise of the lovely little getaway in Italy, along with whatever loyalty Jake might have felt towards the poor sap he’d left behind. Jake’s new image of himself was already reforming in his light hazel eyes as I watched. He stared into the distance, no doubt envisioning himself latched onto the arm and wallet of some young designer or international model...jetting-set to Paris, Rome, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles.
The sad thing was, I knew he could probably do it, too.
Jake was pretty enough, and good enough at excessive flattery, to be a natural in any entertainment industry. That, combined with an embarrassingly vast knowledge of fashion and art, and other skills of Jake’s I preferred to know absolutely nothing about, would likely land him a new playmate before we left the building.
When I looked at Nik that time, I felt the frown, more than saw it.
Even so, he didn’t argue.
Maybe he just wanted to reserve the right to kick me off the job at some point in the future, especially if he started working for Gantry for real. But that was a thought I still couldn’t quite wrap my mind around, truthfully.
Gantry and Nik, that is.
Working together.
Still, yeah, of all the guys I could have brought along with me from my new, alien-focused entourage to act as a wing man, I couldn’t help wondering if I’d picked the wrong one.
4
Social Etiquette, Psychos and Jake’s Fashion Sense
I spent most of that night with Irene, catching her up, I guess.
She had about a million questions, now that she knew where I’d been all of that time, so we ended up having that kitchen table talk I’d envisioned all of those weeks ago. In fact, we didn’t leave that table until about two in the morning.
When I finally got back to the living room, which now doubled as me and Nik’s bedroom, Nihkil was already asleep, stretched out on his back with an arm wrapped around his chest. I found myself watching him for a few minutes as he slept, wondering if I could feel his dreams if I tried...through the lock, that is.
I left him alone.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering if part of my decision to let Irene keep me up half the night was to give me some more thinking room around Nik himself.
After that morning, and getting Gantry and everyone else involved in this thing with us, I couldn’t help stepping back a bit, and wondering what exactly I was doing.
With Nik, that is.
Nik made it pretty clear he saw our connection as lock mates as having more than one facet, and while, yeah, sure, I was sorely tempted, I wondered if it was really such a great idea for me to start sleeping with him, now that we were back on Earth.
I could feel the part of me that wanted to go there.
I could feel the part of me that wanted to go there pretty badly, and say the hell with reason or logic or whatever else. It wasn’t all because of looks or hormones or whatever, either...although that definitely played a part, sure.
I cared about Nik. A lot, actually.
He’d saved my life, but it was more than that, too, I knew.
I guess I just wondered if it made sense, the me and him thing.
Or maybe it just freaked me out, because I saw a glimpse in Gantry’s eyes of how most people would view it, if it ever got out what Nik really was.
My mom always had this thing about me not marrying a Cuban like dad, because she was convinced all Cubans were cheats. While I’d pretty much rolled my eyes at that piece of advice from day one, I couldn’t help smiling humorlessly at the thought of explaining to dear old mom and dad how I’d decided to shack up with a guy from another dimension, instead.
I knew even that wasn’t all of it, either, though.
That bond between us was strong. Freakishly strong, at times.
Truthfully, it scared me a little. Part of me wanted to keep a distance between us for that reason alone. I wasn’t sure what it meant, or how much of it came from me versus whatever being Nik’s lock-holder did to me. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to sign over my whole life to someone I’d only known for a few months...and something told me if we started sleeping together, things were going to get a lot more intense between the two of us. More intense than the usual boyfriend-and-girlfriend thing, that is...which could be intense enough.
Still, looking at him while he slept, even for those few seconds, I could tell it wasn’t going to be that easy to stay away from him.
Maybe that was the lock thing, too...or simply how much we’d been through together already. Either way, I knew things had changed with how I saw Nik from as far back as when we’d first been bunked in that cell together on Ledi’s ship.
Since that time, the feeling hadn’t diminished any, unfortunately.
Really, it had gotten worse. A lot worse...even before I found out that my little crush on Nik wasn’t exactly unrequited.
Realizing I was still staring down at him like some kind of creepy stalker, I sighed a bit, combing my fingers through my hair as it hit me how tired I was. Looking for the biggest open spot on the roll-down bed, I kicked off my shoes with another sigh, relieved I had another day to think about it before we were alone again and both more or less conscious.
Tomorrow I would get up early.
After all, I was going to let Jake dress me.
That would require at least a full pot of Irene’s high-octane coffee.
Possibly with a few shots of something stronger thrown in, too.
“I do not understand,” Nik said, frowning at me. His eyes had turned a light green in the pause, one of those colors I hadn’t figured out the meaning of yet. “...This is fashion?”
He looked at Jake that time, as if expecting some sort of explanation.
Jake rubbed Nik’s shoulders, a little more sensually than necessary I thought, and kissed Nik on one of his excessively symmetrical cheeks.
“Yes, darling,” Jake drawled at him, giving him another squeeze. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”
I did not, for the record, feel gorgeous.
In fact, I felt a little bit like one of those dancing monkeys that used to wear red doorman uniforms with gold buttons, holding out tin cups for blind beggars playing accordion.
Only in much less comfortable shoes.
Looking down at myself with a sigh, I found myself having a déjà vu moment with me and Nik’s last little fashion head-butt, which happened back on Palarine. That time, it had been Nik’s pal, Ledi, aka, Razmun, who had been the one to dress me up like a quasi-prostitute.
To his credit, Nik took it significantly better this time than he had on Palarine.
“Don’t you think she looks hot?” Jake pressed, clearly not going to be happy until Nik validated his creation. “Don’t you just want to ravish her, right now?”
Nik gave him a puzzled look, then looked back at me.
“Yes,” he said then, shrugging lightly as he exhaled. “...But I wanted to before. And this is likely to make others react to her in inappropriate ways.”
Irene giggled at that, covering her mouth.
She leaned against the tile counter as she watched our little exchange, gripping a chipped coffee cup from her collection in one hand.
I only rolled my eyes, although my cheeks might have warmed a bit.
“Jeez, louise, guys,” I said. “What am I, a prize pig?”
“You want to ravish her?” Jake said, ignoring me to focus on Nik. Clearly he saw an opening, and pounced. “Really? Did you ravish her, Nik? Last night, maybe?”
“No,” Nik told him. “I fell asleep before I could ask her. I woke up wanting sex this morning, but she had already left the room...”
“Really?” Jake said, his eyebrows going up in delight as he glanced at me. “You wanted sex this morning, did you? Did you have an erection?”
“Yes––” Nik began, but I’d completely had enough at that point.
“Nik,” I snapped. “House rule, okay? We don’t talk about erections with Jake, okay? Ever
. Not yours. Not anyone’s. Clear?”
There was a silence where Nik seemed to think about my words.
“What about with Irene?” he asked me then, his eyes puzzled as he glanced at the object of his question, his mouth firming into a straighter line.
I followed his gaze to where Irene leaned against the counter.
Feeling another irrational stab of jealousy, I bit it back, but not before my cheeks warmed more.
“Not with her, either, Nik,” I said. “...And not with Gantry. And not with anyone else you meet here. That stuff is private, all right? And you don’t ever have to answer my brother’s ridiculous questions, especially when it’s about anything personal. He’s taking advantage of the fact that you don’t know these things...”
Nik nodded, his eyes holding a denser, more intent look that time.
Something about that look made me think he’d caught more than a small glimpse of my reaction to him looking at Irene, too.
Nik looked away from my eyes even as I thought it.
I watched him give Jake a wary look, right before he looked back at me.
Jake just smiled at him, his own eyes still shining with that veneer of boy-crush worship.
“Oh, I so want to keep him, Dakota,” he murmured. “Are you sure I can’t borrow him, just for a little bit? He needs abusing more than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
Nik’s frown deepened more.
“Please,” Jake said, squeezing my arm that time. “I promise not to break him...”
I felt my teeth grind a little at that, too. Giving my brother a harder stare and ignoring the questioning look that came to Nik’s face, I felt my jaw clench more when Irene and Jake continued to watch Nik like he was their new favorite toy. I stomped my foot to get Jake to look away from Nik and over at me, no mean feat in the five inch heels he’d strapped around my feet and ankles, and nearly enough to topple me into Irene’s lime green fridge.
“Can we seriously get out of here, Jake?” I said. “I let you have your fun. It’s ten-thirty already, and Gantry said we couldn’t be late.”
Jake sighed.
He took his weight off the counter, still looking at Nik, either because he was annoyed Nik didn’t seem to be as enthralled with him as Jake was with Nik, or because he was still contemplating all of the decadent possibilities inherent in Nik’s total lack of experience with the way things worked here.
Either way, it irritated me, enough that I found myself wondering if I could get Gantry to kick Jake out of the country again.
I was about to say something to that effect, when Jake gave a last sigh.
He more or less acknowledged my words then, if only by pulling his jacket off the back of Irene’s kitchen chair.
“I’m ready, I’m ready...” he muttered, still watching Nik’s face. “God, now I have an erection...”
“Leave him alone, Jake,” I said, my voice closer to a growl. “Seriously. You need to cut it out. You don’t want to piss Nik off. Trust me on this.”
Jake glanced directly at me after I spoke, smiling before he looked back at Nik.
“Our Dakota is possessive,” he smirked, falling back into his usual, bratty smugness with me. He looked Nik over again, winking at the morph. “You should feel honored, Nikky. That’s a first for her. She clearly doesn’t want me touching her new, sexy, little alien friend. Selfish, selfish, selfish...”
I bit my lip, but didn’t bother to point out that Nik had a few good inches on him, and probably weighed a third more than Jake, to boot.
Nik gave me a direct look. “I will feel it if you have trouble,” he said, pointing to his chest. “Can I wait outside?”
“No,” I snapped, shoving Jake towards the door. “Gantry’s coming to get you in an hour. I’ll find you later and fill you in on what happened, okay? Just...do what Gantry says, okay? You can trust Gantry. Unlike Jake.”
Nik nodded.
He seemed like he would have liked to say more, but he didn’t. Instead he just stood there, watching silently as I continued to hurry Jake out of the room.
Even so, I felt another stab of conflict as I left.
It was getting harder and harder to pretend that my feelings about Nik weren’t more than a little confused. I could only imagine the kind of trouble Nik could get into with Gantry, given the conversation that had just transpired, but I didn’t really want to think about that, either. Nik was far from a fool. He would be more careful in what he said to Gantry now. I suspected he’d taken my words to heart about Jake, too.
Still, there was no way he’d figure this stuff out overnight.
I continued to hustle Jake out the door as the realization hit me again.
Truthfully, I wanted Jake as far away from Nik as humanly possible, for reasons I’d only half-admitted to myself...but I also wasn’t kidding about the lateness thing.
Gantry wouldn’t have mentioned the “be on time” thing for no reason.
I was already seriously regretting that I’d told Jake he could come. In fact, I might have insisted he stay behind, if the idea of leaving him alone with Nik didn’t scare me even more than having Jake with me at the modeling agency downtown.
If Jake was with me, at least I could keep an eye on him.
So we grabbed a taxi and headed downtown, picking one up on Broadway faster than I expected. If it had just been me, I probably would have walked or taken the bus, or ridden my bike, if it had occurred to me to get the Enfield back from Gantry the day before. The Enfield, which had been a present from Jake himself, funnily enough––or more precisely, a gift from the checkbook of the guy he left behind in Italy––was a high-end, modified motorcycle that had been my pride and joy before I fell through that dimensional portal.
But I hadn’t gotten the Enfield back.
And anyway, given how Jake dressed me that morning, neither the Enfield nor the bus would have been remotely practical or even feasible. Well, not the Enfield, at least.
As it was, I felt pretty ridiculous.
Teetering down the street in a skin-hugging, dark purple mini-dress that barely covered my butt and crotch, I felt about as capable of defending myself as if I’d been wearing a straight jacket. In fact, less so, although I didn’t have direct experience to say that definitively.
The dress left few of my bumps and curves to the imagination, even apart from that, and the most modest thing about me was likely the clunky silver necklace Jake had slung around my neck, like some kind of vicious dog choke-collar. Even that, Jake claimed as some one-of-a-kind original, a “piece” like it was some work of art instead of a trinket that social climbers slung around their necks to give rich old guys an excuse to stare at their chests.
I noticed Jake managed to make himself look fashionably presentable, too, only wearing a lot more comfortable-looking clothes than what he’d pushed on me. His designer jeans and fitted dress shirt showed off his Italian coastal tan and muscles to fine effect, but also left his sexuality sufficiently ambiguous that he would have options, depending on who we met.
It scared me that I knew so well how my brother thought.
The cab dropped us off on the curb in front of one of the biggest high-rises in downtown Seattle, a big black building that locals jokingly referred to as the “Grim Reaper.”
I hadn’t had a lot of occasions to go inside there before, but I’d met a client or two in the lobby. I knew it had several banks of elevators, as a result, some of which only went to a chunk of the upper or lower floors, presumably to make the climb up those seventy-plus stories faster. Given that ol’ Death Angel probably housed some of the most expensive business real estate in town, especially on those upper floors, I supposed it made sense.
Under the segregated elevators, the high-end clients wouldn’t have to ride with the peons working the lower floors...or wait laboriously on the ride to the top while those same peons got off and on the cars for lower-level suites.
Jake followed me as I teeter-walked to the bank that only visited lev
els thirty-seven to seventy-six. Jake stood there, preening a bit yet looking suitably mysterious as I pressed the button to call the next elevator down to the lobby.
Luckily, we were still too early for lunch and too late for the first mad-rush coffee break that usually occurred around ten a.m.
Even so, the lobby was hardly deserted.
In a building like this one, it never was. I’d seen a number of people checking us out as a result, and not all that surprisingly, I guess.
Jake and I had always made quite a pair, with our similar looks and unusual coloring.
It was part of the reason Jake always wanted to drag me around to parties with him when we were both younger...and before I wised up enough to realize I was being used as an accessory in his scams. I knew my outfit was designed to be eye candy, anyway, drawing male attention as much for the skin showing and my legs as anything to do with my face and figure, per se.
That part didn’t bother me; in fact, I was counting on it.
Funnily enough, I’d found that wearing this kind of thing made me more anonymous, not less, and less likely to be recognized later by anyone who saw me, no matter how hard they stared. People stared at my legs and my butt and my chest. Some noticed my hair, or my waist, and even my eyes...but for the most part, my face blew right past them.
Which was perfect for me right then, since I wasn’t keen to have any more people finding out I was back in town. So yeah, I was banking on no one remembering me today...or recognizing me, either.
This wasn’t my usual part of town, anyway, clients or no, which was the main reason I’d let Jake dress me up in the first place. Not too many people would know my face with this much make up even if they did know me, much less the skin-tight dress and my hair down with those loose curls Jake had painstakingly ironed into it.
And yeah, that was assuming they bothered to take note of my face at all.
Even so, I averted my gaze on a few stares.
All but one, that is.
We were still waiting for the elevator when I fielded a stare from a pair of baby blues that I recognized. I froze, like a deer in headlights, and the frown that had crinkled the man’s boyish face suddenly turned to understanding, then full-blown recognition. I felt a deeper kind of misgiving trickle down my spine as I watched those same eyes turn to ice.
Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two Page 6