Chapter Two Monika #3
“You won’t get cut in half now. I promise.” Taranis stands and reaches toward me. The fool that I am, I forget to wipe my sweaty palm before I take his smooth, dry, massive hand in mine.
The moment our fingers touch, I swallow a gasp behind sealed lips, pressed together so tight that it hurts. Holy shit. A surge of energy tunnels from his skin into mine. Maybe he’s electrocuting me?
He clears his throat, the connection severed with the loss of our touch.
He frowns briefly before sucking in a quick breath and turning those glowing purple eyes back up to mine.
He smiles. “Monika, I know we’ve met before, but I’d like to reintroduce myself.
” He guides me out of the elevator by gently pressing his hand to my lower back.
He’s taller than I am. Not by a foot or two, like the Wyvern is compared to Vanessa, but a good distance.
It feels nice. So does that gentle stirring, a low current unlike the heat it had been before.
It stirs my gut and my conscience as a sweet realization sweeps me.
A damning one. Whatever he’s going to say next, he already has me.
I’m a fly sucking the nectar without realizing I’m already caught in the trap.
Or maybe even worse—I do realize it, and I’m totally fine with whatever happens next.
“I’m Taranis. I’ve been admiring your work for a while, and I’d really like to work with you.
I’m not trying to poach you, as Ms. Theriot would have you believe,” he says with another of those deeply charismatic chuckles that make my knees turn to soup.
“But I have an upcoming assignment, and even though it might be a little dangerous, I think . . .” He drones on and on, but it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t.
Working with Taranis closely and doing something dangerous? The latter would have had me alone. And then he has to go and kill me stone dead.
In his sweet, sweet voice, Taranis says, “I also was invited to the South Korean Embassy for the Jinju Lantern Festival kickoff next month. I saw your name listed among the guests of honor and . . . I know I’m not Korean, and I don’t want to take the spotlight away from any talented Koreans in attendance, like yourself, but I was thinking since you’re already going I might come with you .
. . as your date?” He clears his throat, sounding just the right amount of contrite for me to know this is real and not some crazy ploy to get me to take the bid.
“Sorry. I know that’s insanely forward and you’re likely already taking someone, given, I mean .
. .” He glances down my body. I’m wearing a baggy black shirt, chunky black sneakers, and fucking cargo pants.
“Sorry. I take it back. Of course you have a date already . . . boyfriend. Are you married? I’m so sorry. I didn’t see a ring. I—”
“I Will Go With You as a Date.” I say the words at maximum volume, which is strange because I’m speaking in a normal-ish tone. The whole thing is a disaster coated in chain mail. I can’t break through the compulsion to keep talking as loud as I possibly can and say, “Sorry. Yes. Sorry.”
He blinks at me, but he’s somehow smiling anyway.
“Yeah?” he says, his eyes aglitter. It takes me that moment to notice he’s wearing a pale baby blue sweater, beneath the V of which I can see a silver strand glimmer, tan pants, matching baby-blue-and-tan sneakers, and a watch layered among other chunky silver bracelets that collectively look more expensive than my most expensive lens—hell, more expensive than all of them, plus my car.
“And what about coming with me on this mission? It’s dangerous, I’ll remind you, but I’ve seen some of your other photographs, and compared to what you went through in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, or Afghanistan, it should be nothing.”
“Oh yeah. Yes. Definitely. I’d love to.”
“Monika!” Vanessa’s voice is shrill, and I jolt, looking past Taranis at Vanessa standing there with her hands on her hips. “You can’t just say yes. You need to see the terms!”
What? Wait. What am I doing? I shake my head. “Of course. I, um . . . will need to talk about it with my lawyer,” I say to Taranis. “Not the date part, but the pictures . . . I just need some time to consider . . .”
But he’s already pulling something out of his back pocket.
I don’t get a glance at it before he leans in and brushes his lips over the upper shell of my ear.
He puts the smooth, dry paper in my hand.
A pen finds its way to my other hand, and a shiver travels between the paper and the pen up through my hands that expands throughout my entire body when his fingertips graze the outsides of my arms.
My eyes all but roll back. No person on this planet has ever had this effect on me. So I don’t hear Vanessa or the Wyvern or even the warning sirens between my own temples blazing. Instead, I sign where he points.
He takes the paper back. And right before he brushes a dry kiss over my cheek, he says, “No, you don’t.”