by Lauren Dawes
At the bottom were some bottles of water and one bottle of white wine. I grabbed both and put them onto the counter. When I turned around, Mason had made himself at home, unpacking the groceries and laying everything out.
“Wine?” I asked, holding up the bottle.
“Sure.”
I hunted around for the glasses, needing to ask Mason to get them down because Sawyer had put them onto the highest shelf in the tallest cupboard.
Because he was a bastard.
While Mason chopped and prepped, I poured the wine and drank it.
“You have a roommate?” Mason asked, expertly slicing up a red pepper, then sliding it off to one side and grabbing a handful of mushrooms.
“Why do you think that?”
He pushed his glasses up his nose and motioned to the glass in my hand. “They were put away by someone tall.”
“Got me. Yeah, I do, although technically, I’m the roommate.” At his quizzical look, I said, “About three weeks ago, my apartment building was condemned when two witches had a magic-off in the apartment below mine. The damage they caused interfered with the structural integrity of the building. Hence, now I’m someone’s roommate.”
He blew out a whistled breath. “Wow. I remember reading about that in the paper.” Slowly, he began chopping again. “And this is… normal for you?”
Taking another sip of wine, I contemplated how to answer that. Was it my new normal? Could I expect supernatural attacks around every corner? The past six weeks were certainly a good indicator of that. “It’s my normal, yeah.”
“What does your roommate think of the injuries.” He scooped up the mushrooms and put them into a bowl at his elbow, then grabbed a bunch of broccolini. Stripping the rubber band from around the middle, he trimmed the ends.
“My roommate is my partner at work, so he’s used to all the crazy shit that happens to me.” I tilted my head when I heard keys in the door. “Speak of the devil.”
Sawyer opened the door and paused when he took us in. Coming all the way inside, he flipped the lock and dumped his keys.
“Hello?”
“Sawyer, did you get my text about Mason coming over?”
His gray gaze flickered to the other man in annoyance. “No, I didn’t get it.”
“Well, it said Mason was coming over and making dinner.”
“Have you eaten?” Mason asked, pushing the glasses up his nose again. “I’ve got enough to feed everyone.”
“No. Thank you.” His words were clipped, his expression like a dagger through the heart. Sawyer stepped down the hallway, throwing, “Cat, can I speak to you?” over his shoulder.
He disappeared, and I glanced over at Mason with a shrug. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Trailing after Sawyer, I felt like a naughty puppy. I found him in his bedroom and as he shut the door, I let out a whistle.
“Damn, this is nice.” His room was about double the size of mine—more of a suite than just a room. The king-sized bed was on one side of room, and a set of two armchairs and a couch were on the other, complete with a TV hanging on the wall.
“What’s he doing here?” he demanded in a low growly voice.
I tore my gaze off the one-hundred-inch screen. “Man, you could watch some good porn on there.”
“Focus!” he barked.
“Are you trying to tell me you don’t watch porn on there?” I shrugged. “Look, he invited himself over. Said he’d make dinner. I was hungry… feeling better by the way… so I said okay.”
“This is my apartment.”
My hands came to rest on my hips as I stared at him. “Don’t be an asshole about this.”
His gray eyes darkened as they traveled down my body in an invisible caress. “And what the hell are you wearing?”
I looked down. Blushed. Then cleared my throat. “It’s a long story.”
Sawyer stalked toward me, making me step back. I slammed into the door, which rattled from the impact. He crowded me against the wood, placing his palms on either side of my head and leaned in. This close, I could smell him—chocolate and whisky—and I was dying to have another lick.
Stay strong, McKenzie!
He arched his hips into my stomach, letting me feel the hard, hot length of him. All thoughts of staying strong evaporated. He anchored his hands around my waist, pulling my lower body into his while my shoulders and upper back remained flat against the door.
“I don’t like seeing you with other men,” he said in a low growl into my ear. He nipped at my earlobe, then licked away the sting. I quivered from the contact. “I don’t like the idea of you with another man. I feel murderous when another man is allowed to touch you.”
I gasped and hooked my leg around his waist, grinding myself on him. Tilting my head back, I let him lick a hot trail up the column of my throat.
“So why do you want him here?” he demanded sensually.
“I told you—”
“No. Why do you…” a hiss, “… want…” a bite, “… him…” a lick, “… here.” A suck.
My brain fritzed out as lust pooled heavily in my core. Hooking my other leg around his waist, he held me effortlessly against the door. His fingers were bruising, clutching at me like he was afraid I’d run.
“Because he can be faithful.”
Sawyer pulled away suddenly, staring at me in disbelief. He unhooked my legs, and I trembled as he stepped back, his expression vacant. “Then you’d best get back to your safe human boyfriend.”
I wanted to argue that he wasn’t my boyfriend—that he was just a guy I was thinking about dating—but Sawyer’s expression was so dark, so full of self-loathing that I was afraid to open my mouth. Instead, I pulled down my shorts where they’d bunched around my waist and straightened my shirt.
I should probably get changed. With a shaking hand, I opened up the door and left, stealing away into my room. When I emerged with jeans and a chunky sweater on, I felt one hundred times better and more in control of the situation.
Sawyer’s bedroom door was still shut, and I figured he was staying in there all night. Wandering out into the kitchen, I found Mason just starting up one of the burners on the stove.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, holding up a stainless-steel spoon. “I had to open every cupboard and drawer to find what I needed.”
“You probably have a better idea about what’s in this kitchen than I do,” I quipped, not feeling like having him here anymore. Still, he’d made an effort to come, and I was hungry. I took a seat at the counter and watched him toss the vegetables into a wok, moving them around the pan effortlessly with that big spoon.
We chatted as he cooked, then some more while we ate. In this environment, with nobody else around, I found him charming, but he lacked something. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. He even cleared our plates and shooed me into the living room to finish my wine while he tidied up the kitchen.
Yep, Mason was a keeper, but would I be the one keeping him?
Nine
The next morning, I rode to work in my truck even though the thought of starting the engine terrified me. Sawyer had taken off earlier in the morning, claiming something about needing to work out first and didn’t want to drag me into work that early.
It wasn’t that.
The man was hurt, and I was the one to have hurt him. Did I feel bad about that? Yeah, of course. I’m not a complete bitch. Did I think he had the right to be so angry? No, because we were both adults and just because I didn’t choose him, shouldn’t mean he gets to treat me this way. Besides, we’d discussed this. We’d agreed to this.
But hurt feelings were hurt feelings and nothing that could be truly reasoned with.
I stopped at the coffee shop close to the station—the same one I saw Sawyer in for the first time only six weeks ago. Man, had it only been six weeks? I felt like my life hadn’t just been turned upside down but had been thrown into a paint shaker for good measure.
I’d just placed my order and stepped a
side to wait when I bumped into someone, biting back a scream when hot liquid splashed down the leg of my jeans. Oh, God, like I needed this too. Although, if this were another attempt at murder by Kailon, the fucker was getting sloppy. Somehow, death-by-scalding just didn’t seem like a fitting way to go.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” a man said behind me in a deep, rasping voice.
I turned and looked down at the freshly-brewed black coffee soaking into the fabric of my jeans along with my skin. “My fault,” I said, breathing through the blistering pain before glancing up.
A man with dark skin and dark, cropped hair was staring at me like he couldn’t quite believe he’d dropped his entire coffee on me. He looked to be in his early forties from what I could gather, his face not exactly craggy, but he’d seen some things. There was just something in his eyes—they looked haunted.
“I’ll get some napkins,” he announced.
“Thanks,” was my reply, but the flimsy two-inch-by-two-inch squares of paper those coffee shops disguised as napkins weren’t going to do jack-shit for the first-degree burns on my calf. He hustled back, brandishing a thick wad of mini napkins before sinking onto one knee and mopping things up.
I bent down to stop him. This was too weird. “I got it,” I said, taking over clean-up duty. Undeterred, he began soaking up what little coffee had made it onto the floor, instead of my jeans. He finished before I could and hovered anxiously above me.
“Don’t worry,” I mumbled. “I’m not going to sue you or anything.” I was only half-joking.
“I’m really sorry,” he said again. “Truly. I didn’t see you there.”
I braced myself for the short joke that was no doubt tacked onto the end of that statement…
… but none came.
He looked genuinely apologetic.
“It’s fine.” I’d hoped my words would put him at ease, even if just a little bit.
Nope.
He still looked anxious as hell.
“Really. It’s fine. What’s a first-degree burn between complete strangers?”
I’d meant it as a joke, but the guy wasn’t laughing. I shrugged. A lack of sense of humor was not my problem to deal with.
“Look, I’m just going to go,” I said, turning my attention to the barista to see how far along my order was.
“I’m sorry, but—”
“I already told you. It’s fine. No harm done.”
I dumped the used napkins into the tiny little bin on the barista’s counter and folded my arms, hating that my hands were also covered in coffee. At least the guy didn’t use a boatload of creamer and sugar.
“No. I was going to ask if you were Michael McKenzie’s daughter?” he asked in a low voice.
I stopped breathing at the sound of my father’s name. Looking back at the man, I studied his face, wondering if my adolescent brain would pick up the slack. But my memories of this man were non-existent. I had never seen him before.
“Who are you?” My question was forced from my body in a barely-there whisper.
“My name is Willis Cameron, and I was a friend of your father’s.”
My heart leaped into my throat. If he was a friend of my father’s, then maybe he could help me answer some questions about Rogue Faction—if he actually knew anything about the organization at all. Licking my lips, I asked, “And my mother?”
“I knew of Alyce, but she’d already passed when I joined… their organization.”
Bingo! “What do you mean by their organization?”
His eyes darted to something behind me, and I turned. The barista was holding my takeout cup and smiling. It looked like she’d been calling my name for a while.
“Thank you, Jen.” I grabbed my drink and took a sip, then turned back to Willis.
“Would you like to sit down for a minute? You’ve gone sheet-white.”
“Sitting,” I mumbled. Yeah, sitting would be good right about now. I moved robotically over to a table that had just freed up, sliding my cup onto the table, then wriggling into the high bar stool. Willis did the same—without the wiggling—and he simply stared at me in wonder.
“You look so much like your father. Same colored eyes and the shape of your face…”
“We have the same hair color, too.” I waved at my head. “You know, under the teal.” I took a sip of coffee and let the caffeine settle into my blood. “Tell me about my father and about Rogue Faction? What do you know?”
He pursed his lips in thought. For a minute, I didn’t think he’d answer my question, but then he said, “I joined Rogue Faction a decade ago after I was discharged from the Marines. I didn’t know what to do with my life. All I’d ever done was serve my country, and when I returned, I felt lost… like what I did didn’t matter anymore. That was when I met your dad.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“At the airport, actually. He was heading to Bulgaria on business, but he said he recognized the soldier in me. Offered me a job right then and there.”
I frowned at that. My father was a meticulous yet cautious man. Granted, I never really knew what his particular skillset was, I’d always been told he and my mother were archeologists.
“Anyway, I took a couple of days to think about it,” Willis continued, “before I agreed to meet him at his office when he returned to the States. The rest, as they say, is history.”
Despite the uncertainty lurking in the back of my mind, I clung to Willis’s words. If he knew my father, he might’ve known where he got the opal necklace from. He might have known what kind of headspace he was in because as a kid, I’d had no idea.
My phone bleated with a message, and I peered at the screen. “Look, I have to get to work, but can I call you some time to discuss this further? I have so many questions and nobody to ask.”
His smile was slow but gentle. “Of course.”
Digging into my pocket, my fingers brushed past the kiss protection card Alistair had given me. On our first case, Sawyer and I had helped rid the local vampire kiss of an interloper and as thanks, they put me under temporary protection. I was still holding onto the card just in case I needed it at some random time.
Because this was me and crazy shit just happened.
I felt another card in there—thinner and glossier—and I pulled it out. Placing it onto the table, I said, “Here’s my cell.”
Willis did the same, offering me a business card, which I read immediately. Under his name was a logo—a Roman fasces. I recognized it from my spin through Enemies of the Fae: A History.
I ran my thumb over the icon.
“It’s called a fasces,” he told me. “It’s the symbol for Rogue Faction. ‘Strength through Unity,’” he said proudly, turning his head so I could see a tattoo representation on that ancient ax peeking out of the top of his shirt. “All members get one.”
“The tattoo?”
He nodded. I couldn’t remember my parents having a tattoo like that, but maybe they kept it hidden somewhere clothes could cover it.
“Well,” he said with a smile and standing. “I’m sorry again for dropping my coffee on you, but I hope you reach out and get in contact soon. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.”
“Thanks.”
I watched him walk away. Then, with my coffee clutched in my hand, I stood on shaking legs, my mind whirring at the possibilities. When I hopped back into my truck, I stowed my drink in the holder and started the engine, breathing out a sigh of relief when there wasn’t any strange ticking noises or bombs exploding.
Man, I was jumpy.
I had a feeling today was going to be a looong day.
Ten
I’d been right about the long day.
Sawyer had been cool toward me ever since I set foot in the office. Wordlessly, we went from investigation to investigation, barely saying a thing outside of anything work-related.
At our last incident for the day, at the scene of a mauling, I got tired of all the silence.
�
��Are we going to be adults and talk about this?” I snapped, pulling on some gloves so I could open up a billfold that had been discarded in the snowy bough of a tree. Zachary Hayes was a twenty-four-year-old college kid who was supposed to be spending Christmas with his family at the Buxton Forest Lodge. Instead, he was dead on the forest floor with his throat and stomach torn open and his blood melting the snow.
Tis’ the season…
His parents had reported him missing late last night after failing to return from an after-dinner stroll. The regular PD had found the body dragged off the main path, and we’d been called in because the ME who’d initially come to process the body thought the claw and bite marks looked nothing like a regular animal’s, so we were dealing with a supe—a shifter of some sort most likely.
“About what?” Sawyer replied, looking at the killing wound to Zachary’s throat. It had been slashed open with ragged claws. The much bigger wound—the one to his stomach—was surrounded by a lot of blood, which indicated he’d been alive when the animal had started to feast on his insides.
Poor bastard.
I averted my gaze so I didn’t look down at the intestines spilling out of his abdomen like fat, flesh-colored sausages. “You know what, Sawyer,” I retorted, pissed off I even had to elaborate on this. “About Mason coming over last night.”
His shoulders tightened, yet he still didn’t look at my face. No, he kept his gaze on Zachary’s frozen expression of terror. “I don’t want to talk about that. Who you date…” he hissed the word, “… or don’t date isn’t my concern.”
Exasperated, I threw my hands into the air. “Argh! I’ve already told you, we aren’t dating. Mason is just a guy I’ve gone out with once. You know, you’re being a total bitch right now.”
He seethed silently for a moment before bursting into action. “And how would you like me to act?” he snarled, standing up in one swift movement. He came toward me with fire in his eyes. “I told you I can’t stand the thought of you being with someone else.”