Chapter 20
TWENTY
LAYDEN
When we pull into Vlad’s compound and Phoenix leads me downstairs to her wing, I can’t help but feel déjà vu wash over me. During the month we stayed here leading up to the wedding, I kept to the guest wing with my family. I was never allowed down here in her private space.
She even has another computer lab in this wing. I’m pretty sure Vlad had it installed here so she could show anything to visiting dignitaries without him having to lead them down through her pink-walled part of the compound.
As we push through the double doors to her wing, though, I see things have changed since I was last here ten years ago. “The walls aren’t pink anymore.” The hallway is painted a pleasant beige now instead.
“I grew up,” she says shortly while all but stomping down the hall toward the lab. When she shoves open the door, I’m relieved to see at least this room is still much the same as I remember. Banks of computer monitors. Her organized chaos of notes. The familiar hum of machines.
“Hey,” I start while reaching out a hand. I don’t quite dare to touch her shoulder, so I withdraw it before making contact. “Are we okay? After what happened back there in the alley?”
“We’re fine,” she says, but there’s a strain in her voice. “Why wouldn’t we be fine?”
“Because we just had sex.” I watch her carefully for any reaction.
“That wasn’t us,” she bites out while sitting down at her main workstation. She starts booting up the computer with jerky movements.
“It sure felt like us to me. I remember everything that happened.”
She swings around in the chair so fast she almost kicks me with how quickly she moves. “It wasn’t us,” she says again with adamant force. But I can see something underneath the anger. Fear, maybe.
“If it wasn’t you that I was having sex with, who was it?” I demand, my frustration rising. “Because it was my first time ever, Phoenix.”
Her angry eyes soften immediately, filling with something like shock mixed with disbelief. “What? That was your fir—” She cuts herself off and looks at the ground. “Are you okay?”
I nod, hand to the back of my neck. “Yeah. I was— It was… okay. With me. Are you okay?”
She nods quickly, still staring at the floor. “It just—”
“It just, what?” I take a step closer to her.
“It can’t be like that between us.” Her voice has gone quieter now.
“So what happened earlier was nothing to you?” I don’t know why I’m pushing this so hard. But I never could hide my cards with her, never could pretend I felt less than I do.
If the sex truly meant nothing to her, fine.
I’m not the kind of man who pushes anything a woman doesn’t want, especially not this woman.
I’d throw myself into the sea first. I just need to know now before I get pulled any deeper into this impossible situation.
The way she looked at me while we were together, I just have to know if it was… real.
“It can’t be,” she repeats, but her voice wavers slightly.
“Because of your professor?” The words come out more bitter than I intended.
“What?” She looks up at me with genuine surprise. “Don’t be an ass. He’s just my advisor, nothing more.”
“Are you sure he knows that?” I can’t help pushing.
She stands up abruptly and shoves me in the chest with both hands. “Don’t be an ass. I mean it, Layden.”
I want to provoke her into shoving me again just so I’ll have some form of physical contact with her. Even standing as close as we are now, I can feel the heat and intensity from back in the alley rising up again between us like a living thing.
“Was it only Ammit making us feel that way?” I ask while taking another step closer so she can feel the heat from my chest. “Or was any of it real?”
Her eyes flip from my eyes down to my lips. Back to my eyes.
Back to my lips.
And then she shakes her head slowly. Hope rises in my chest like a bird taking flight before she steps back and away from me.
“She could already be fleeing the city if we don’t find her soon. We have to search the surveillance feeds.” She sits back down at her workstation and starts flipping through camera footage without saying another word to me.
I’m frustrated by her withdrawal, but I won’t push it any further right now.
More than anyone, I know how many pressures Phoenix has closing in on her from all sides.
But I won’t let it go without her knowing one thing.
“It meant something to me. Ammit might have pushed me to do things faster than I would have otherwise, but I was still me in that alley. I knew exactly what I was doing.” I pause. “Were you still you?”
Her hand on the mouse pauses in its clicking. I think I see her throat work as she swallows. Her cheeks go pink. But then she continues clicking through screen after screen without answering me.
“I checked my phone log, and I called Vlad at eleven twenty-three.” She zeroes in on the location coordinates and accesses the camera feeds near the club. “So we can work backward from there.”
I sit down in the chair beside her as the alley comes into view from several different angles. I don’t miss her sharp gasp as she rolls the fast-reversing cameras back far enough that the previously empty alleyway suddenly has several figures on it. Us.
She tries to drag the progress bar forward again quickly, but not before both of us get an eyeful of us having sex in several different positions. The footage plays in comically fast reverse.
“Wait, you have to go back further,” I say while trying to keep my voice steady. “Ammit fled right at the beginning before we started.”
“Dammit,” Phoenix curses under her breath.
She starts to reverse the footage again but accidentally pauses on a frame of her on her knees with her hands on my ass.
In the frozen image, she’s taking my cock deep into her mouth.
The beast inside me growls at seeing the erotic image of us lost in each other’s bodies.
I go hard just looking at the screen and remembering exactly how her mouth felt on me.
The suction. The warmth. The desperate need in the way she took me.
“Jesus,” she hisses while finally dragging the bar in reverse again. She goes back past the entire sex scene until she stops right when we leap on each other and start ripping off our clothes.
Because there she is in the corner of the frame. Ammit. There’s just one brief moment where her face looks freaked out before she tears off down the alleyway at a sprint.
“South!” Phoenix announces with triumph in her voice. “She’s heading south toward the river.”
Phoenix zooms in on Ammit’s face with practiced efficiency. She takes a screenshot and emails it off to her contacts at the police department, who are monitoring the perimeter of the locked-down city.
Phoenix seems more than relieved to close out of the window containing our sex tape. She moves on to a camera feed further down the alley. She must have noted the time stamp on the previous camera because this time, she drags the progress bar directly to where it picks up Ammit running past.
I was a little too distracted by the previous footage to pay attention to details.
But I try to get my head back in the game now and look at the time stamp in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
10:47:02 PM. Well damn. We were going at it for almost half an hour.
It felt like just the blink of an eye to me.
Phoenix pushes play, and we watch Ammit run down a darker part of the alley. Then she turns left when she comes to a larger street. Phoenix clicks on another camera feed with quick precision. “Got you now, bitch,” she whispers while leaning closer to the screen.
Phoenix keeps chasing from camera to camera with impressive speed. She follows Ammit’s path until the goddess reaches a river that cuts through the middle of the city. There’s no camera coverage along that section of the waterfront.
“Dammit!” Phoenix slams a fist on the table beside the keyboard hard enough to make me jump. The monitors shake slightly from the impact.
“It’s okay,” I say while reaching out to touch her shoulder.
This time I actually make contact. “Vlad shut down the city by eleven-thirty, and look at this.” I point to the last timestamp we have Ammit on video.
11:38 PM. “She’s still somewhere inside the city limits.
It’ll just take us a little longer to find her with the surveillance network.
Why don’t I take over for a bit so you can take a break? ”
Phoenix nods and shoves away from the desk abruptly. “I need to take a shower.”
Right. I bet she does. Does she still feel me on her skin?
Of course she does, and she wants to wash it off as quickly as possible.
I can still smell it on both of us—the unmistakable scent of sex between us.
All of my brothers and I were cursed with an overactive sense of smell that makes these things impossible to ignore.
She shoves the door as she leaves the lab. It doesn’t close fully behind her, and I listen to each of her steps as she strides down the hallway to her bedroom. That door she slams with enough force to rattle the frame.
Jesus Christ, she’s doing it again.
Here I am, trying to focus on tracking down a dangerous goddess through camera feeds. But that smell is wafting through the air from underneath her bedroom door. That same smell that used to torture me on certain nights when I lived here all those years ago.
She went to wash the scent of our alley encounter off her body. But now there’s a different scent in the air. It’s even stronger than before, mixing with the sweet smell of her shampoo and body wash.
The exact same thing that used to happen back then.
I’ve just gotten my hunger back under control after seeing that footage of us. But I immediately go hard again in my jeans.
She’s touching herself in the shower.