“At least I haven’t turned into some Renfro-like creature snacking on flies and saying ‘Yes, Master’.”
They looked at each other. With exhaustion pulling on her, she mentally checked out and stood there thinking his eyes were too pretty for words and that his mouth was drop-dead sexy. He blinked, and she came back with a shake of her head. She sighed. “Those magehelds were after me.”
“Yes.”
“You recognized the mage, didn’t you.”
“His name is Rasmus Kessler.”
“I thought for sure it was Christophe. Huh. Do you think he’s working with Christophe? Or was this just another day in the life of an assassin, and this Kessler person was just trying something?”
“Almost certainly he was working with Christophe.”
“Damn. Those mages get around, don’t they?”
Durian crossed his arms over his chest. “We have avoided the issue of the magic you took from Christophe.”
“Yes. Yes, we have.”
“That magic has been quiescent, and I allowed myself to think it was nothing we need be concerned with.” He fell silent again, and she had no idea what to make of the quiet. He was blocking himself, but he did that a lot. “It seems there is an unexpected benefit.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Of course not.” His eyebrows drew together. “Quite the opposite. You felt the magehelds when I could not. That is a useful gift.”
She yawned again.
“If you are tired, you should sleep.”
“Or down six or seven shots of espresso.”
“There is an espresso machine in the kitchen.”
“Kidding about the coffee, Durian. All that would do is make me crash even harder.”
“How long since you last slept?”
She almost didn’t answer him. “A few days. I’m fine.”
He tilted his head slightly. “We’ll talk, Gray, after you’ve slept.”
“About what?”
“Killing.” He stopped and swung around so he faced her. His eyes raked her head to toe. “And other things.”
Gray swallowed. “Okay.”
He headed up the stairs. Since it was daytime, on the way she could see the jaw-dropping views from just about anywhere the house faced away from the street. The bay was impossibly blue today. They kept walking until they reached a door near the end of the hall. He touched a round, carved medallion on the wall by the doorjamb. A thread of magic leaked from it.
Gray’s eyes drooped closed, and she stood there thinking that when they got to the room she’d been crashing in next door to the do-jang, she’d just pass out on the bed with all her clothes on because she was too tired to change or even shower first.
“Gray?” He touched her shoulder.
“What?” She’d actually fallen asleep on her feet. Durian held the door open for her. She blinked a couple of times but couldn’t make the room look like the room she was expecting. “This isn’t my room.”
“No.” He touched her waist, and they walked inside.
The room turned out to be a suite. Her new sneakers, scuffed up from the hike and the fighting, looked shabby against the Persian rug that covered most of the floor. “Where is this?”
“My quarters.” He stayed close to her. “When I wish to be private.”
“Oh.” She thought about her old place, the one she’d never go back to. Her apartment had been full of secondhand furniture culled from flea markets and Craig’s List giveaways. In here, a hardwood floor shone wherever the rug wasn’t. A small but colorful abstract painting hung on the wall. Original and expensive, was her bet. Durian didn’t seem like the kind of guy to have a reproduction.
In this first room, the desk against the far wall was the antique kind with cubby holes and tiny drawers. Real wood. Not veneered particle board. No sidetables covered with a kicky shawl to hide the warped top. A leather jacket slung over the chair in front of the desk probably cost more than she used to spend on clothes in a year. To her right, an interior door opened into another room, but the lights were off in there.
Durian hung his keys on a brass hook by the door and closed the door behind them. He touched another wooden medallion small enough to fit on the door frame near the lock. The face carved in the center looked eerily real. For a minute, she was sure she saw it blink. She really needed some sleep. Durian, of course, didn’t need to sleep. None of the kin did.
Above the door frame were three more wooden medallions the size of her palm. The faces painted on them looked real, too. They must have something to do with magic because she was getting a vibration from them that reminded her of Durian.
“You can sleep in here,” he said after he’d walked to the desk and put his wallet on the polished surface. “For the time being.”
“Where?” She took in the room. She meant it as a joke, but she was too tired to make it come out right. “On the floor?”
Durian looked her up and down.
“Are you checking me out?”
She thought about what she must look like to him. Scrawny. Disaster-red hair chopped off without the aid of a mirror. Dirty and sweaty. Her jeans were a mess, and her new shirt had blood on it. If they ever ended up in bed, she was going to have to remind herself that she wasn’t his type or she’d end up hurt. Still, she liked the idea of having hot and sweaty sex with big, dangerous Durian.
“The shower is this way.” He walked past her to the open far door and reached in to turn on the light.
She went in after him. The walls here were a dark, dark matte red with crown molding shiny enough to be gold leaf. Lights glowed from recessed areas near the molding. More painted medallions were spaced every three or four feet on the molding. There was enough magic in them that she felt a ripple in the air when she came close.
She pointed at one, eerily convinced they were watching her when she wasn’t looking directly at them. “What are they?”
“An alarm system of sorts.” He’d been up there fighting, too. How did he manage to look like he’d just stepped off a modeling job for insanely hot men? What if he’d changed his mind about starting something physical with her? She knew for a fact that sex with a demon had its dangers for someone like her. He might not want that. Except, there was that scorching hot kiss… “They will prevent entry by almost anyone not authorized by me, or else make them wish they had not attempted. And inform me of an intruder’s presence.”
“Oh.”
He gazed at her. “They are a magical construct that can be defeated by anyone with sufficient power or motivation. But not without cost.” He thought about that. “So I like to flatter myself.”
“I love it when you get all paranoid on me.” She examined the wooden disks.
“The nature of my work for Nikodemus warrants caution.”
“True.”
“Gray.”
“What?” She went back to examining the medallions. She touched one with her fingertip. The surface felt hot. Inside the circle of wood, the carved face hissed, baring a tiny pair of fangs. “Mean little buggers, aren’t they?”
“They protect me.”
“You’d think they’d know I’m doing the same thing.”
“If they didn’t, Gray, you would have lost your finger just now.”
She turned around. “Whoa. You could have warned me.”
“The medallions pose no danger to you.”
“Is that so?” she asked.
He started to speak, then changed his mind. He lapsed into one of his infuriating silences. While he stood there, silent and brooding, he didn’t take his eyes off her. Silence got to be a habit after a while, and Durian, she was certain, had been in the habit of being silent for a long time.
“You’re not my type, either, you know, but if I was clean and even halfway awake, I’d jump your bones in a heartbeat.”
More silence. Except eventually he said, “Then we ought to remedy your situation, don’t you agree?”
“Right now,
I’d agree to just about anything.” She pushed off the wall and jammed her hands into her back pockets. This time, the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Their eyes met and she didn’t look away. Another shiver of arousal washed through her.
She walked into the room and took her time looking around. A wide stone table pressed up against one wall. A king-sized futon on a series of Japanese tatami mats was against the opposite wall. The floor in here was a bluish gray slate, which was rough under the soles of her sneakers. There was a gold duvet over the futon, but no pillows. Besides the door they’d come in, there were two more doors. Both closed. Her whole apartment would fit in just this one room.
She was definitely in the bat cave; the place to which Durian retreated when he wanted privacy. Like now. Privacy for two people.
He crossed to one of the interior doors and opened it to reach around and come back with a thick terrycloth robe. Even with the dim light, she could see that he’d opened a bathroom door. “If you’ll give me your clothes, I’ll have them washed while you are sleeping.” He took a step back. Then another, but he was looking at her with a hungry gaze that was melting her inside. “I’ll wait.”
She stuck her head in the bathroom and took a look around. Sandstone floor and walls, ochre-tiled sunken bathtub big enough for a couple of men Durian’s size, if you decided to soak instead of shower. The sink was a copper bowl atop a narrow bronze pedestal. The toilet was white. Back in the doorway, she said, “I could take a really quick shower.”
“The thought appeals, Gray. A great deal. However, my ego would never recover if you fell asleep while we were…”
“Getting to know each other?”
“Precisely.” He smiled and boy. Talk about heat. “I’ll wait for you, Gray.”
“You better.”
She went in and peeled off her clothes. Dirt cascaded from her jeans and from her shoes. The silence in here got to her. She felt as stripped away inside as she was physically. Her legs trembled and in her head she heard that mageheld’s neck breaking, felt the echo in her hands and arms.
The robe Durian had given her was several sizes too large for her, but she wrapped it around her as best she could and tied the sash before she brought out the bundle of her soiled clothes. She handed over her shoes, too, laces tied together.
After he took them from her, with one of his old-fashioned bows, he brushed a finger across her cheek. The tingle went straight to her belly. “You could take a shower with me.”
“Tempting.” His mouth curved. She closed her eyes and had to forcibly make them open again. He was still looking at her. “If I did that, Gray, you would not get the sleep you need.” He cocked his head. “Another time, perhaps?”
“Promise?”
He gave her a gentle push toward the bathroom door. “Go, before I change my mind.”
She needed a few minutes to figure out how to start the shower, but she managed it. It was much nicer than the one she’d been using and that one was pretty chichi. The hot water felt like heaven. She took her time getting clean. A few of her scrapes stung, but she healed quickly these days. None of the cuts and bruises would bother her for long.
When done, she stepped out, toweled off and put on Durian’s robe—it was so soft and thick she started plotting ways she could manage to never give it back. She wandered back to the bedroom. The stone floor was cool underneath her bare feet.
Despite the drag of exhaustion, she’d gone beyond tired and was now wide awake. There wasn’t much here. No television. No radio. No stereo that she could see. No clock. No gadgets that would link Durian to the twenty-first century. The walk-in closet didn’t have many clothes: just a suit, two pairs of trousers on hangers, some shirts, all in a palette of gray, black, brown, and dark blue. At least ten pairs of shoes were lined up in the closet, most of them dress shoes. Now that felt like pure Durian.
She wandered back to the bedroom and ended up in front of the photograph hanging over the stone table. The Icelandic poppy looked too large for its spindly stem but you could see how the sun streamed through the petals and made them glow brilliant orange. A color she would have worn in the old days. What, she wondered, had made him choose this photo over all others he could have hung here?
The sounds and events of the fighting kept replaying in her head and there wasn’t anything to distract her. She gripped the edge of the table, overwhelmed by the need to cry. They had been slaves to that mage Rasmus Kessler, and he had sent them to their deaths.
She was still in front of the photograph thinking about what the sun must have been like on the day the photograph was taken when the back of her head buzzed. She faced the door but kept an eye on the medallions until she was sure it was Durian. A few minutes later, he walked in from the anteroom, two dark bottles dangling from the fingers of one hand.
“Hey,” she said, shoving her hands as deep as she could into the pockets of her robe. His robe. The sexual tension between them came back full force.
“Since you are not sleeping.” He lifted the bottles.
“You knew?”
Once again she got the fathoms-deep stare. “I will always know such things.”
He’d showered somewhere else, because his hair was damp and slicked back in a look that completely worked for him. He wore clean clothes, more casual than before; black trousers, a heavyweight black T-shirt, and shiny black loafers. He looked damned good. He held up the two bottles again. Beer.
“You drink beer?”
“I do not drink bad beer, Gray.” He walked to her, and she took the one he held out.
The label featured a leering horned demon. At the top were the words Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale. At the bottom, the label read You’re Not Worthy. “Thanks,” she said, smiling.
She took a pull of the ale. The alcohol hit her stomach hard, but it tasted good. She hadn’t had a beer this fine, well, ever. Back before Tigran, she almost never drank. Maybe a glass of wine if she was celebrating something. Couldn’t afford the calories. She took another sip from her ale.
He took a drink of his beer, too, and she wondered if drinking straight from the bottle was his idea of loosening up. He put it down on the table. There was a strange energy in the room she didn’t completely understand.
He sipped his beer. “I am not like other kin. At this point, I think it’s safe to say that you are not like other kin, either. There is seldom opportunity to connect with my own kind. I find that after a sanction, I prefer to contemplate my oaths, and the consequences of them.” His fingers tightened around his beer. “You might find the same is a help to you.”
“Thanks. Maybe I’ll do that.” Silence rose up between them. She was thinking she was all over the possibilities with Durian. “Can we maybe sit down or something?” The only place to sit in here was the futon. How convenient was that? Unless he’d changed his mind. Had he? “Or not.”
He moved in close and touched the side of her throat. Not in a sexual way, which she thought was a shame, because she was certainly thinking about sex. As she watched his face, the tension around his mouth and eyes eased. They connected, that surface link that she had come to find so restful. His eyes slowly drifted closed, and her sense of him expanded. The sensation was different than having him in her head. This was just so… peaceful.
“I am unused to having someone so close to me.” She looked into his dark eyes and found she couldn’t look away. “You have been more tolerant of me than I deserve.” He smiled and her stomach took flight. “I have been isolated a very long time.”
She blinked and at the other end of that blink she saw through Durian’s eyes even though she was aware of the boundaries of her body and his, and the place where his palm touched her cheek. The darkness in him, the desolation, his magic, resonated in her. She blinked again and was back in her own body. They remained in the psychic connection, sharing not thoughts or intentions but a heightened awareness of the other and the oaths that bound them.
They stood there like that, separated by
inches, his hand on her cheek, looking at each other. Durian took her right hand in his. He pushed up the sleeve of her robe until her forearm was exposed.
A flicker of arousal started up in her. She considered pretending she wasn’t thinking about sex, except, you know, why bother with a deception like that? Her chest felt funny. Like something inside was breaking apart, and she didn’t know if that came from her or from him.
With his other hand now warm around her wrist, his index finger brushed the tracery on her arm. A shot of heat raced up to her shoulder. He kept touching her and she didn’t want to do anything that would make him stop even though he didn’t mean it that way. Not the way she wanted him to.
He slid the side of his thumb over the mark at her temple. He closed his eyes and breathed in and her magic reacted to him. She ignored the resulting sexual heat. Or tried to. If he could control himself, so could she. He raised her arm between them, turning the inside toward him and bringing her forearm to his mouth. Gray held her breath as he pressed his lips to her skin.
The bottom dropped from her stomach when his mouth opened. His breath warmed her skin. A lock of his hair fell forward, brushing over her. She knew what was coming, and she braced herself. His teeth scraped her skin. A zing of pain traveled up her arm. The backs of her knees quivered, and then he pulled, and she got dizzy.
A trickle of blood slid toward her elbow, a crimson trail, so bright. The scent rose between them sharp and pungent. She felt Durian’s reaction as he drew her blood into his mouth, the sharp inhale, the tightening of his muscles. The taste echoed in her, too, as did the roar of his magic moving through her.
He followed the line of blood, taking in every drop.
She knew what he was doing, but not why. She and Tigran had made blood exchanges in order to cement the links he’d forged between them, to make sure she was ready for the changes he intended to make in her and so she’d be stronger when he did. Some of what he’d done had been so painful that, when she slept, she still had nightmares about it. Sometimes, though, the blood exchange enhanced the sex.
My Immortal Assassin Page 11