Chapter Twenty-One Monika #2
“Turning blue.” He opens the oven, and a gust of warm air billows out of it. He slides the covered pan inside and sets the timer, then shuts the oven door. “Some stupid shit.”
I laugh and he shakes his head, gets two ornately carved crystal wineglasses out of the cupboard, places them on the counter. He then slides open a dark-gray farm-style door on the left wall that I incorrectly assumed was a bathroom. It’s not. It opens into a walk-in wine pantry. I whistle.
He smirks and grabs a bottle, returns to me, and pours me a glass. “You like red?”
“Yeah.”
“We better be talking wine only, I hope.” He clinks his glass against mine while I work to puzzle together his words.
When it finally hits me, I laugh again. “I don’t have a crush on the Wyvern, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He grunts and doesn’t answer, just sips his wine and watches me sip mine. I don’t know what it is, but it’s good.
“Do you think it’s inevitable, all the Champions and villains eventually changing colors and getting big?”
“We’re supposed to change, all of us. The way we look as humans is just an illusion implanted by the beings we left behind on our home planet. Made it easier for us to blend in and be accepted by the humans.”
“You’re saying if you’d ended up on a fish planet, you’d have ended up a little goldfish?”
“A shark.” He snaps his fangs in my direction and I flush.
“How do you know all that?”
“I’ve been remembering details of my life before.” He looks uncomfortable. “We got forty minutes; wanna sit at the table or the couch?”
I glance at the couch. It’s such a glossy leather that it looks like you’d slide right off it. Then again, the dining chairs are made out of stiff wood.
“What?” he asks, almost in a growl.
“Nothing. Couch looks . . . okay.”
“What’s wrong with my couch?”
“Nothing, let’s sit,” I say, sliding off my stool, but when I turn toward the couch, he’s standing in front of me, blocking my way.
His fingers are on my chin. Schei?e, his claws are massive.
“I know you haven’t accepted the fact that you’re mine yet,” he says to me, sending feeling skittering all the way through my bare toes that’s infinitely more powerful than any of his lightning bolts.
“But I don’t wanna be enemies either. I wanna know what you’re thinking.
Not gonna get mad and yell at you again. I learned my lesson the last time.”
Well, shit. This is uncharted territory. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, which wasn’t far before he turned blue and grew to almost seven feet. Feeling untethered and way too comfortable after the date and the wine and the wind, I blurt out, “Your couch sucks.”
“What?”
“All your furniture sucks. Your place sucks.”
He gawks at me like a fucking kid. “You’re kidding. This is a multimillion-dollar penthouse.”
I point at that hideous leather thing on his floor. “Your couch looks like a giant bar of soap. And your dining chairs look like they were made to torture heretics in the Middle Ages.”
“Excuse me? These are three-thousand-dollar-chairs designed by Peter Olvanson.”
“You just made that name up, and even if Peter existed, I’m pretty sure he hates you. The most comfortable spot to sit in your house is on this stool, and it doesn’t even have a backrest. What kind of masochist has a chair that doesn’t have a backrest?”
His eyes narrow even farther. He takes a step into me, his abs brushing my knees and forcing me to look straight up if I want to keep his gaze. “Your apartment looks like a flea market.”
I scoff. “It’s cozy, colorful, and maximalistically decorated.”
“The best interior decorator in the country designed my space.”
“Does she hate you too?”
“No.” But his full lips twitch.
I grin and point a finger up at his mouth. “Aha! What did you say to insult her, and how far into the process were you?”
He grunts. “Two days.”
“And had she procured the couch yet?”
His blue-purple lips purse even farther until I can’t see their fullness at all. “No,” he growls.
My head falls back as I laugh again. Hard. “She’s an evil genius. I think she and I would be friends.”
“You’re an asshole,” he says.
“You’re the asshole. You’re a villain.”
And then his huge hand comes and cups the side of my face.
In a dark, demonic voice, he murmurs, “Oh no. I’m a far more complex, far more terrible creature.
” I shiver, eyes opening as I look up into his.
They radiate the most spectacular white light.
“I’m not a villain. Not a hero either. Like you, I work on my own.
Don’t have time for Boy Scouts or merit badges. ”
I chuckle, shoulders shaking. “You’re two-faced.”
“Which one of my faces do you like better?”
He’s joking, but I actually have an answer to that. I reach up and stroke his cheek. He flinches and it fills my chest with a scary tremor. He’s not a male used to being touched, is he? At least, not with gentleness. “This one.”
“That’s a lie.” He grabs my wrist, then tilts his mouth into my palm, kissing it and sending feeling coursing through all my bones. “I saw you damn near pass out when I turned on the charm back in that elevator.”
“Maybe. But this is a face I’d do a lot more than pass out for,” I admit like a fool. But it’s worth it to see the surprise on his face.
“Yeah?”
I nod.
“Like what?”
And then I blurt out, “Try to trust. I don’t trust Taranis at all. But I’m starting to trust Darius.”
His hand strokes down to my neck. His face looks . . . I can’t interpret his expression at all. He looks pissed, but his touch is so soft.
“Thank you for tonight,” I say. He doesn’t respond, just watches the movement of his hand over my skin. “Your eyes are so bright.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Right?”
His claw flicks over my collarbone gently. He exhales, and then exhales deeper. “Okay,” he says calmly. Far too calmly. His gaze meets mine again and is so bright it’s impossible to hold it without squinting. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Let’s go to your place.”
“We can hang out on my balcony. I have those heater things that are terrible for the environment, but, shh, don’t tell anyone.”
He rolls his eyes. “Who would I tell? I don’t have friends. And I know damn well you don’t either.”
The strange realization hits me, and I shrug at the truth of it. And then we both start moving at the same time, except we’re moving in opposite directions. “I thought we were going to my balcony,” I say.
“We are. But I’m not going to take the elevator all the way down to the lobby and then take the other elevator all the way back up just to go down four floors. Come on.”
Instinct and curiosity have me trailing after him as he snatches the wine bottle off the counter, gripping it in the same massive hand as his glass.
As he approaches his balcony doors, they slide open automatically.
I wonder whether it’s his gifts doing that or he’s just a lazy fucker who had automatic sliding glass doors installed in his penthouse.
We’re high up on the thirty-second floor, and even though I’m on the twenty-eighth, my balcony faces a different direction—west instead of the more highly coveted south that his faces.
Actually, I observe as I step out into the wind, his balcony wraps all the way around his penthouse. Lucky sonofabitch.
I’m smiling giddily, still wrapped up in his comforter as he wraps his burly arms around me and lifts us up together from the floor of his balcony. “Eyes on me,” he whispers in a low voice, making my stomach clench as I’m distinctly reminded of the first time he said those words to me.
He goes silent then as we round the building to the west side and start to descend. “You know I’m not gonna drop you, right?”
“I don’t think Darius would drop me, no,” I reply right as a particularly loud siren sounds way beneath our dangling feet, making me jolt. “But sometimes I don’t know who I’m speaking to—Darius or Taranis.”
He’s quiet again for another pause, this one long enough for him to finish his descent and touch down lightly onto my balcony, covered with a bright pink-turquoise-cream-and-yellow outdoor rug.
Even though my plants are thriving in the day’s lingering sun and I’ve got fancy self-watering cans rigged up, I’ve been concerned because my balcony door has been jammed for the past few days and the maintenance guy couldn’t fix it.
“I wouldn’t let you fall.” The way he says it so simply feels so unlike him.
I turn on the heater, then take a seat on my finest outdoor sofa, a plush pink poof of a thing. He hands me a glass and pours me wine, then sets the bottle on the low table between us.
Instead of taking a seat on the sofa beside me, he drags a dark-red papasan chair over, making space for it between my petunias.
They blossom bright purple and white behind him.
Feels fitting. I must be making a face, because he makes one back at me and grunts, “You gotta stop smiling at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m cute.”
“I’d tell you you are cute, but you already know that.”
“I don’t wanna be cute to you.”
“What do you want to be, then?” I ask genuinely. “My hero?”
He rubs his chin and shakes his head. “The villain you say yes to.”
“Yes?”
“What’d you do with the marriage license I gave you?”
I choke, wine literally spraying from my lips. He doesn’t so much as flinch. I cough to clear my throat as best I can and sputter, “That was a power play. You don’t . . . actually want to be married. You want to control.” I set down my wine.
He lifts his. His serrated claws rattle the glass. “Maybe I want both.” He drains his glass and I drain mine. He pours us both some more.
I swallow hard. “Why did you . . . why did you come for me today?”
“Because I wanted to. Why did you come with me?”
“Because I wanted to.” I smile softly.