Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
SHARD
Rooney is a disheveled mess.
I feel tense and unstable, and while I’m trying not to alarm him, it was only yesterday I recovered from consuming his…
distress. I was careful not to take more than the illness, denying myself even the most infinitesimal taste of his soul.
Rooney is brilliant in his untouched state, and I don’t know if I’d be able to stop myself were I to sample him.
It’d be unforgivable to dim his light, and devouring too much of a person’s soul, well…
it doesn’t kill them—usually—but it leaves them empty.
A shell. Soulless walking puppets with no joy, no desire. I can’t risk it.
Although I try not to frighten him, the way he’s clenching the counter while he meets my eyes through the mirror says I’m not succeeding.
“Can I help you?” Rooney asks, a parody of his usual disposition. There’s a slight slur in his words.
“You…” I falter. Not knowing what I ought to be scolding him for, I send a sliver of insight to slip through his pores into his meat, shimmying through the plates of his skull so I can enter his mind.
Invading someone so intimately produces an odd sensation, so I don’t do it often, but presently I have a good reason.
I paw through his thoughts, seizing the tail of his insecurity and fear, drawing it out when it tries to escape under a nest of bravado.
What is he worried I’ll say next?
“Allowing patrons to touch you is against the club rules,” I spit out.
I did not have time to consider the statement before speaking, but once it’s freed, I feel right about it.
I don’t want other men touching Rooney, especially none of these degenerates, and fortunately there are already guidelines in place to obscure my jealousy.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Rooney responds immediately. By the twitch of his eyelid I can tell it rankles to present a submissive front, but the fragment that hasn’t left his mind yet informs me of his apprehension. He’s thrown off by my foreign presence, the power I have over him.
I don’t want my jewel feeling subjugated by me. He’s more powerful than he knows.
Clearing my throat, I say, “Don’t sound so nervous.” I withdraw the remaining fragments of myself before he responds, suspecting it wouldn’t be appropriate to spy on his thoughts before he voices them. “You don’t have to worry; I’m not going to dismiss you.”
Stubbornness shapes the set of Rooney’s jaw. “Forgive me if I don’t automatically trust you.”
“Trust me? No,” I say, struggling to keep my resolve from dissolving under the acid of his sneer. “But believe me, as a businessman, I wouldn’t terminate a valuable worker over such a small offense.”
“You could get fined for it,” Rooney argues. “The cops do stings for prostitution an’ shit in this area all the fucking time.”
Unbidden, a fragment of jealousy chases a line of fire up my throat. I swallow it down. “Were you planning on fucking them?”
Rooney huffs. “Ew. No.”
“Then I rest my case.”
He scowls down at the counter, fists clenching until his knuckles are white.
I can’t hold back a quiet chuckle. “You seem displeased. Are you angry about being confronted?”
Rooney’s head snaps up, and after a moment of watching me in the mirror, he spins his chair around, then throws one knee over the other. He gives me a shrewd look before speaking. “I’m not scared of you.”
“I don’t recall asking if you were,” I reply, mildly taken aback.
“How could I be?” he continues. “Not when you—” He cuts off with a soft hiccup. I wait with bated breath for his next words, but he doesn’t seem inclined to continue.
“When I what?”
His teeth sink into his plush lower lip.
I take two steps toward him, falter on the third, plagued by uncharacteristic trepidation.
Rooney catches my gaze and holds it with such intensity the desire to curl around the orbs of his eyes is nearly unbearable.
I want to clutch his ocular stems and peer through them, experience whatever he’s seeing in me.
“When you nothing,” he finally says, sighing. He rubs his temples. “Nothin’ but a bad trip.”
Disappointed, I frown. “You’re drunk,” I point out, in case he thinks I haven’t noticed.
“I’m not,” Rooney protests, trying to shoot to his feet, but wobbling on the way up.
I can’t help myself. I devour the distance between us, reaching to steady him even though I’m sure he could have managed on his own—he doesn’t need to be alone anymore.
But the moment my hand brushes Rooney’s elbow, he stiffens.
His hazel eyes harden as he jerks his arm close to his body, clutching the spot I touched.
Not wanting to crowd him in a clear moment of distress, I move several paces back.
We size each other up, Rooney’s features shadowed in suspicion.
I wish he’d say something, but he doesn’t.
When the silence begins to itch so profoundly I can’t bear it any longer, I surrender to voicing the only thought I have left: “No more drinking on the job. Understood?”
Rooney’s mouth drops open. “No more— Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“Your boss,” I respond, a smile tugging my lips.
Cheeks flushing with discomfort, Rooney snarls, “I know that. But you’re not my goddamn mom.”
“I never claimed to be.”
Leaving that hanging, Rooney descends upon his street clothes.
He yanks a worn graphic tee over his head, mussing his long bangs and the shaggy tail at the base of his skull.
He shoves his wiry arms into the sleeves of his hoodie, leaving it hanging open rather than covering his front.
Then, snatching up his bag, he storms toward the exit, avoiding looking at me all the while.
“Rooney.”
He pauses in the doorway, but doesn’t turn around.
Sighing quietly through my nose, I wonder out loud, “How are you not freezing?”
Rooney purses his lips, seeming to consider for the first time his lack of weather-appropriate clothing.
“I’m used to the cold,” he says quietly, then tugs his hoodie closer to his core and stomps outside.
I watch him through the heavy door until he escapes the radius of my perception, and while my own core clenches with the need to keep him in my atmosphere, I know I have to let him go.
For now.