by R. J. Blain
“It has also come to my attention it may be wise for you to be trained in non-traditional fighting methods, including the use of long and short bladed weapons.” There were so many unvoiced questions in Sergeant Gildroy’s statement I wanted to crawl under the desk and hide.
Swords weren’t illegal, and I sat a little straighter to give the illusion of confidence. “I own a katana, sir. I thought it was pretty.”
“Bring it tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll be issued a phone and a tablet tomorrow so you can do remote monitoring and receive official police notifications. You’ll be expected to carry both with you. You’ll be briefed on their use and given everything you need to use them no matter where you are.” Sergeant Gildroy tapped his fingers against the metal doorframe. “Wear formal attire.”
“Yes, sir.” I locked down the system to prevent anyone from tampering with it and stood, wondering why anyone in their right mind would wear formal attire during weapons training, but I didn’t question the man.
Criticizing cops was a good way to get arrested. Would they arrest me for getting an attitude when I worked for them? Keeping my mouth shut got harder and harder each time I was presented with yet another ridiculous order.
Who wore a dress when shooting weapons?
Sergeant Gildroy escorted me out of the building, and I nodded and smiled through all of his reminders of things I already knew. After seeing the systems I was slated to work with, I couldn’t really blame him.
Holding the hands of young elite was probably part of his job description, and it wasn’t giving me any hope of what I’d face when classes did resume in a couple of days. I swallowed my sighs and retreated to the comforts of Rob’s condominium.
There were three discs stuck to my clothes, and Colby removed the devices with its usual efficiency. Instead of chasing my macaroni and cheese casserole around his condo, Rob patted me down and found a fourth one hidden in the leg of my jeans a few inches above the hem.
“Strip,” he ordered, tossing the disc to Colby without inspecting it.
My eyes widened. After being bugged so many times, I expected him to start ripping the devices apart to find out what they did instead of destroying them. I shuddered at the thought of someone—or something—pawing inside my shirt in order to plant the devices on me. Goosebumps covered me as I peeled out of my shirt, which Rob yanked out of my hands the instant it was over my head.
An inspection of my shirt raised the number of devices to seven. Sputtering at the thought of someone having toyed with my clothes without me being aware, I reached behind me to unhook my bra and found another disc near the clasp. My dismayed wail captured both of the dae’s attention.
Rob spun me around so my back faced him, and he peeled the disc off, tossing it to Colby.
Four more were adhered to various locations in my jeans, but the worst one was located on my hip, firmly attached to my underwear. My mouth hung open, but all that emerged was a strangled croak.
Maybe the discs stunned me into silence and immobility, but Rob had me out of my bra and panties in the time it took me to squeak. The lingerie wouldn’t be worn by anyone ever again, especially not after Colby finished with it.
They both disappeared into my gluttonous noodle monstrosity along with the disc.
“What is going on?” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“I trust you haven’t been taking your clothes off at work. If you want to strip on the job, I’m sure we can find a nice, quiet, and private location tomorrow when you’re all mine.” Rob ran his hands over me, gentle, swift, and so thorough my face burned from a mixture of embarrassment and the desire to drag him to our bedroom and put an end to his teasing.
He found a skin-colored disc against the back of my neck, and I winced at the tug of hairs as he pulled it free. “I can’t believe you didn’t notice any of that, Alexa. Please tell me you’re not going to be one solid rash as a result of this.”
“How is this happening?” I whimpered, covering my face with my hands.
“Someone wants what they can’t have for themselves,” Rob hissed, and I peeked through my fingers in time to observe him crush the disc between his finger and thumb. It cracked in two, revealing a tiny chip board and a few wires, and he tossed the device to the floor. Colby pounced on the pieces, leaving no trace of its existence.
I stiffened, and my body temperature plummeted. “What do you mean?”
Heaving a sigh, Rob headed to the couch, grabbed the blanket, and wrapped it around me. “You’ve captured someone’s attention, and it’s not mine.”
Jealousy coming from Rob didn’t surprise me, not anymore. In a way, I liked it. There was security in his awareness of me and his dislike of competition. The two words I dreaded, his verbal staking of a claim on me, didn’t come out of his mouth. Puzzled by their absence, I took hold of the blanket, tilted my head to the side, and muttered, “Probably Kenneth.”
Rob’s breath left him in an explosive sigh. “Probably. I want to hang him from the Ivory Tower by his toes and let the pigeons feast on his intestines.”
“While I fully support getting rid of him, that’s a bit gross. Aren’t you worried you’ll poison the poor birds?”
“You can be the one to cut him open with your sword, however sad it would be to dirty such a beautiful blade with his filth.”
“How gentlemanly of you, Rob.”
Rob smirked at me, swung his leg out, and knocked my feet out from under me. The blanket tangled me in its plush embrace, and his laughter rumbled when he caught me and tossed me over his shoulder. “Hardly. A true gentlemen would never kick a lady in such a ferocious way. I’m a scoundrel tonight.”
“Scoundrels dress in suits? Since when?” During my recovery, I had gotten used to Rob picking me up and relocating me at his whim, so while I considered kicking my way free, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort of struggling.
When he was ready to put me down, he’d put me down. Struggling amused him, especially when I fought to keep from laughing, and breaking free was an option if I really wanted to escape.
The instant actual fear set in, Rob would release me as though my emotions burned him. The few times that had happened, he had worried himself into a frenzy.
“Scoundrels do not listen to the ladies they’re stealing away for their nefarious schemes.” Rob sat on the couch and slid me down so I straddled his lap, but instead of releasing me as he usually did, he kept his arms around me, his body tense beneath me.
“This is the couch, Rob. It’s ten whole feet from where we were standing. You need to work on your definition of nefarious. ”
He dropped kisses on my forehead. “I’m saving the truly nefarious work for when I figure out who is planting those discs on your lingerie.”
Rob’s vocabulary needed work; when he said nefarious, he actually meant either bloodthirsty or vicious. “I did not take any of my clothes off at work.”
“It’s a good day when you don’t flinch away from me or Colby when you don’t realize it’s us. While I appreciate your willingness to take your clothes off for me, I’m rather confident I have no worries in that department. You’re a tempting seductress, but you’re mine.”
There were the two words I so hated, and I bristled at their use. Scowling, I freed my arm from the blanket to jab him in the ribs in retaliation. He captured my hand and laughed, massaging my palm with his thumbs.
“That’s cheating,” I informed him, narrowing my eyes. “I do not belong to you. I belong to me. I just tolerate you being around.”
Instead of taking offense, Rob grinned at me. “You’re so stubborn.”
“You’re one to talk.”
He laughed. “Can’t you let me get away with it just once, Alexa?”
“No.”
Rob’s pout was one of the most effective weapons in his arsenal, and I resisted the urge to reach up and touch his mouth with my fingertips. Reminding myself of the reasons for his protective p
ossessiveness kept me from succumbing to my desire to drag him into the other room.
There’d be time enough for enjoying him later. First, I had to figure out who was attaching those discs to me and how they were getting away with it. The problem of formal attire also distracted me from everything I wanted to do to and with Rob, and I sighed at the mountain of obstacles blocking my way.
“What’s wrong?”
Getting annoyed at Rob for sensing what I hadn’t managed to hide wouldn’t do me any good. I snorted, sighed again, and shifted off his lap and onto the couch beside him, stretching out so I could prop my feet up on the end and force myself to relax. “I have a list.”
Rob’s lap always made a nice pillow.
“I have time.”
My schedule accounted for my every minute, and Rob’s wasn’t going to be much better. While I had to juggle multiple lives, he had to make up for all the time he had spent with me.
“Okay, let’s start with the discs. Someone put one on my bra, Rob. My bra.”
I had issues with people touching me, especially when I didn’t know who they were or why they were determined to attach things to me. My privacy—and my body—had been violated and invaded enough at the hands of Arthur Hasling and Kenneth. The idea that someone else was doing the same—so stealthily I hadn’t noticed who or when—birthed a cold sweat on my skin.
“Someone was in your pants, and it wasn’t me.” Rob growled, low and deep. He balled his hand into a fist before splaying his fingers over my stomach. “A dae, for certain. No unawakened is that stealthy. Somehow, a dae is doing this.”
“You don’t know how?”
Rob grunted, stretching out his legs and shifting his weight beneath me. “I can speculate.”
When Rob started speculating, hours could go by while he rambled through each and every possibility. Before he could begin, I blurted, “I have to wear formal attire for work tomorrow. I don’t have clothes.”
“Formal attire?”
I recognized my mistake the instant Rob smiled and his blue eyes brightened from excitement. While subtle, the tension in his body shifted, and he drummed his fingers on my stomach and plucked at the blanket, as though struggling with the urge to yank it away, pose me, and dress me to his liking.
What was it with dae and their fetish for clothing? I had yet to meet a dae who didn’t like clothes. Were humans so fixated on what to wear it had infected the entire species with a fashionista curse?
I supposed it beat lycanthropy, although Baltimore had plenty of that to go around.
“Alexa, they want you to wear formal attire?”
Yep, Rob was definitely excited. His voice wavered with his ill-disguised emotion, which he confirmed moments later by tapping his toes on the floor like an eager child.
“You’re ridiculous. This isn’t a good thing, Rob! What am I going to wear? They didn’t exactly schedule time for me to go shopping.”
I was already supposed to have eaten and gone to sleep instead of spending the time lying on the couch while Rob satisfied his protective instincts.
“They’re testing to see if you can fit into elite society.”
“You’re joking, right? Me? Fit into elite society? Have you forgotten I’m an unawakened? Or a fringe rat? You’re crazy.”
“You’re a fringe rat who happens to live in one of Baltimore’s most exclusive residences with, if I do say so myself, one of the city’s most desirable bachelors. You are above mere caste labels now, my darling.”
I could trust Rob for a lot of things, and the emergence of his egotistical side was one of them. “You are not Baltimore’s most desirable bachelor.”
“I’m hurt, Alexa. Why would you say such a thing?”
I huffed, pulled free of him, and hopped to my feet, keeping the blanket in place. Two could play at the possession game, and I’d win the argument for once by staging a quick escape after laying my claim. “Perhaps you’re desirable, but you’re not a bachelor. You’re also a self-proclaimed scoundrel. To conclude, I’m pretty sure you’re my property, Mr. Lucrage. Don’t you forget it.”
I made my retreat before he could turn the tables on me and steal my victory.
Rob found my frustration with wearing formal attire to work funny, and I glared at him in my effort to squelch his amusement. His eyes sparkled with his mirth, and his mouth curved in his best smile.
I wore my workout clothes to both spite him and remind him I wasn’t a high-classed woman. My effort only seemed to amuse him even more, and his delight was written on his face for the world to see.
Maybe I should have let him speculate until the early hours of the morning. At least that way, I would have learned something. Instead, I witnessed Rob’s more lecherous side, and it amazed me how much lust and desire a man could display without taking off a single stitch of his clothing.
Once upon a time, Kenneth’s mouth had fascinated me, but Rob’s enthralled me and silenced any desire to scold him for enjoying my plight. He was smiling, and I didn’t want him to stop, which confused me almost as much as his enthusiasm over what I would wear to the police station so I could shoot a gun.
While I gawked and floundered like an idiot, my temporary advantage and victory rendered null and void by Rob and his damned mouth, he headed to the closet and pulled out my best—my only—dress and held it out in my direction. “My lady is stunning in her gown.”
I remembered the night I had gotten it—and my katana—all too well. I had been stupid, venturing out into Baltimore on my own to test how well I had healed and get Rob a present. It had resulted in the destruction of a store by feuding dae. When I had been trying the dress on, it hadn’t been studded with precious stones.
I had found it in a fringe department store.
Magic—or the spontaneous eruption of mythical beings into pink powder—did strange things to clothes, including decorating them with gemstones worth more than I was.
I had wanted to find a dress to avoid embarrassing him—and myself—when giving him a present to thank him for all of his help.
In a way, I missed the months I had spent recovering from my close and painful encounter with a skyscraper. The shopping trip resulting in the dress, my katana, and Rob’s dagger, had been the first time I had left my apartment on my own since breaking my ribs and rattling my brain around in my skull.
Rob had found me midway through the chaos, and I was still amazed the dress had survived the store’s demise and his enthusiasm the instant we had made it back to my apartment.
The fact I hadn’t been blamed for the destruction amazed me. It hadn’t been all bad. The dress came with shoes, a purse, and the phone I hadn’t been able to use thanks to my caste.
Rob still wore the dagger I had given him, and with a faint smile of my own, I disarmed him while ignoring the dress he held. “You’ve clearly taken leave of your senses. That dress is far prettier than I am.”
“Nonsense. I’m not sure I want all of those police to see how ravishingly beautiful you are in it.”
I prodded the dae in the ribs with his dagger. Because I liked him, I reversed the blade in my hand and used the pommel instead of the business end of the weapon. “You need an eye exam.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. Obviously, the one with the defective eyesight here is you. I stand by my claim. When you wear this dress, you are ravishingly beautiful. I should know. You weren’t wearing it long before I ravished you.”
I blushed because it was true.
“They really asked for formal attire?” Rob wrinkled his nose, staring at the dress before staring at me.
“They did.”
“The discs are trackers.” Rob hung the dress from a hook on the wall and ran his hands over the blue material and its sparkling gemstones. “They want to know where you’re going.”
“How do you figure?”
“I found one on you when you were at my office yesterday. I had one of my team tear it apart. It’s a GPS tracker. We didn’t f
ind a mic. We didn’t find a camera, neither. Just a memory chip, transmitter, and GPS chip.” Sighing, he turned to face me. “Someone wants to know what you’re doing.”
“Earlier, you wanted to speculate.” Crossing my arms over my chest, I perched on the couch’s arm. “That’s pretty confident for speculation. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“You’ll wear this dress tonight. We’re going shopping, and we’re going shopping where people will see you.” Rob stretched his fingers before running both hands through his hair. “I’ll see if my team can come up with a way to fry the discs so we can limit how many times I have to strip search you. Wait, I take that back. I like strip searching you.”
“Funny, Rob.”
Rob’s smile warmed me in so many ways. “You like it. Go make yourself pretty, Alexa. We have clothing to buy. If we’re going to lose sleep tonight, we may as well have a night on the town. With luck, you’ll come home with a few new friends. Then the real fun can begin.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he was talking about. “Fun for who?”
“Me.”
14
“We’re only going to do a little shopping.”
Venturing into Baltimore after dark both thrilled and frightened me. The dangerous dae roamed the streets at night, and both Rob and Colby seemed at home on the streets.
That my macaroni and cheese roommate openly hopped along worried me. It wasn’t registered, as far as I knew, and the last thing I needed was to have to explain the fact my dinner had developed a severe case of sentience during the Dawn of Dae.
“Relax,” Rob chided, linking his arm with mine. “We’re only going to do a little shopping. Maybe we’ll get a drink after.”
How could he expect me to relax when I wore a fortune in jewels and couldn’t sit without a gemstone poking me in the ass? “I don’t see why I can’t just wear this tomorrow.”
“Someone is tracking your movements, and appearances matter. We’re shopping because you work for the elite, and the elite expect this behavior. If Smith is the one tracking you, it also serves our purposes.” Rob leaned towards me and kissed my cheek. “It doesn’t hurt I like dressing you up.”