Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Lizette
F ear and arousal skitter along my skin and my nerve endings.
Reaper’s following, I know it. But he’s not following because he’s changed his mind about sex or he’s so enamored he wants to kiss me again, lick my throat. Does he even get enamored? He’s so quiet on a level that’s part of him and he takes everything in.
The kiss wasn’t from lust or need.
It was to hide me, shut me up.
And I took it and ran.
I’m no fantasy girl. I’m just me, a sheltered, stupid virgin.
There’s a part that wants to lay blame at my own feet for my predicament. And yes, going into Unholy Trinity territory, one of their domains, was stupid. If I’d been alone and going mad with heat, I’d…I’d be in the hands of the Council and shipped to Hover City for my so-called chosen alpha.
No one’s to blame. My dad died and the cops took my name. And there’s a part of me that wonders since the letter got to me so quickly, if they’d been aware of me since Dad’s death.
If I hadn’t gone to Pandora’s Box, then…
I shudder.
“Hey, Liz.”
The rough voice startles me, and I turn to the pizza place where the metal roll gate’s half up and light spills out. Ray, who owns it, is outside, apron on, sweeping the walkway.
“Ray, how are you?”
I don’t really want to talk, but I’m not rude, and he’s not one for idle chitchat. Or maybe he is. Our paths usually cross inside the restaurant when we’d pick up pizza for dinner on occasion. He and Dad were friends.
“Still a damn shame about Con.” He shakes his head and tugs on the corner of his salt and pepper handlebar mustache. “Listen, I gotta make a batch of dough and check in the marinara I’ve been simmering since last night, but…some people have been asking about you, Liz. Well dressed. Oh, and some guy in a cap who said he was your cousin? Told ‘em I didn’t know you. Figured since you’re passing by and I’m doing early morning work before we open for the lunch crowd, I’d tell you.”
“Thanks.” Cold spreads through me, and I shiver.
“Be careful, okay?”
I nod, and he salutes, then pulls the gate up, and goes in, only to send the gate screaming back down.
His words sit inside me like little jagged shards of glass. Ray didn’t tell me when they came by but it had to have been at some point since I stepped foot in Pandora’s.
This time, I look behind me, to the sides. I study the shadows of alleys and deep doorways, the heavy branched trees that dot the nature strip before the curb.
I don’t see anyone.
Maybe Reaper left.
His scent is on me, so I’m not sure if I can pick him out as the city wakes and fumes, breakfast carts and people who wear either their own aromas or ones from a bottle start to fill the world for another day.
I have a hoodie on under the jacket. It’s big, Dad’s, and I like it because it’s old and worn and a faded black that’s now dark gray. I’m not cold. Sure, the early morning’s crisp, and there’s ice from fear in me, but it’ll warm more today. I zip it up and pull the hood over my head.
Better than nothing since I don’t have the skills of Reaper in the disappearing arts.
My stomach lurches. Or that man who warned me.
As I scurry back, head down, hands shoved in my pocket, my fingers wrapped around my silent phone, I attempt to distract myself with who the man was. A friend? Not of the Unholy Trinity, but maybe of Dad’s and by proxy mine. His advice to keep away is something I should head, mark on my throat or not.
We didn’t do it. Knight didn’t go into rut. No knot. No release for me to catch, so to speak.
Maybe the man works for the Council. Or maybe?—
I bump into someone, and I dart up a startled look at the woman. She’s well dressed. Not flashy or anything, but she could work in an office in her pants and blouse and vest.
People, Ray said. To me, people is shorthand for a man and woman, or men and women. He mentioned the man in a cap. Not person. So…
I give up with my convoluted thoughts as the woman speaks. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking, but now I have you, can you spare a moment?”
My heart both sinks and slows its beat to normal.
The smooth transition into pre-sales speech is familiar and innocuous.
“A moment, but I have to get to work,” I say.
I’ve played the game before. It’s part of city living having people approach and try to sell you something. Whether it’s a pack recruiter—some do that, usually weird, freaky ones—or people looking to get money from you and everything in between, it’s a familiar dance with familiar dialogue.
She throws a curve ball by shoving a photo under my nose.
My heart almost breaks free of its bone prison.
“Have you seen her? She’s not in trouble, but I’m so worried…”
It’s me.
Oh, fuck. It’s me.
Looking up at Dad, smiling, hair free and?—
I breathe slowly, carefully. “I’m sorry. I’m new to Starlight City, so I don’t really know many people.” Average and nondescript is key. Dad drilled that in. Average melts into faceless and into forgettable.
“Have a look.” She shakes it under my nose.
I take it, looking because running brings attention. I pretend to study it, but my eyes are blurred with unshed tears as my heart hurts looking at Dad.
Finally, willing my fingers not to shake, I hand it back. “Sorry.”
I step past her and keep moving at the same pace, turning off on a street that leads to a lot of stores and businesses. From there, I wait at a closed restaurant, staring into the plate glass window.
It’s busier now, but people are moving by, not looking at me or lingering.
Inside, it hurts. I try to hold the aching parts of my heart as I keep going, back to that desolate and bare bones basement studio in the Wharf district. Seeing that photo tore at something. I think because it’s one I haven’t seen. A candid moment.
And—
Candid.
Someone took that photo. Someone who was watching us.
The Council ?
Each beat of my heart urges me to quicken my pace, to run, but I don’t.
I walk, and my spine is ice, prickling like a thousand eyes are on me.
It’s in my head.
Not even Reaper is behind me now.
I want…I want those touches. Those kisses. The rough and honest elemental from him. The seduction and satin-wrapped sternness from Knight. The pretty, pretty man with the soft curls and dimples. The one who asked me to call him Daddy.
I liked it. The place of control and domination in a kind form from Knight, who can kiss like an angel with a dark heart. Or a devil with a good one.
And I liked the thrill of the chase, the hardcore finger fucking, and eating me that Reaper did.
Both are iceberg tips with so much more beneath the surface. How can I want to dive in and explore both in equal measures? How can I want a man that tells me I’m a good girl and asks me to call him Daddy, and also want the dark, bloody danger and thrills that the primal chase with Reaper brings?
Those are so different, yet…they both make me feel unbelievably good.
If they do that, what would Dante like, want, desire? How would he take his fill? What pleasures await from him?
The man doesn’t like me. Sure, he got hard when he was around me, but that’s because I’m marked by another alpha in his pack. And I was in heat.
I deliberately shut the door on them all, and continue to my solitary confinement. It’s safer that way.
Reaper doesn’t come.
Do the others know I’m here?
All the ways I decided I could see him, into him, understand and know him, start to fray as the doubts build.
Maybe he mirrored back the things I want because of my stupid naivety, my loneliness, and he isolated me.
To kill me.
I make myself keep that in my head.
Because he is a killer.
A person only has to look at him to know that. It’s the one real truth that I can be sure of from all the things I saw or thought I saw in him.
I go through my phone. Rearrange my things. I pack, repack.
Finally, with my stomach rumbling, I get something to eat.
It’s late afternoon, and I keep looping back to the photo the woman showed me.
Who took it?
And when?
I think about what we wore, and…the photo is about a year old by my estimations. We were laughing about something that happened at my job, something so stupid Dad couldn’t stop his mirth and it set me off.
The memory pierces so sharp and bright I can’t breathe for a few seconds.
I hug myself and look around at what my life’s become: hiding, a prisoner again.
“But that’s not true,” I whisper. “Reaper gave me keys.”
So, what am I meant to do? Every sound outside that filters down here, like when a truck backfired with a boom, I jumped. Some of the time, it’s in my imagination, like footsteps that approach.
No one comes.
I try to nap, but I can’t. I finally start looking at places I could go. I’ve still got my money.
Does it matter if I find somewhere? The Council has reach, and if they or the mythical people who might be worse can break into my apartment, can watch me and Dad and take photos and seemingly wait until he died to make a move, is anywhere going to be safe?
I know this city. In the world beyond? I’d have to go somewhere big. Congested. Another city. But that’s another set of dangers. And?—
It hits me why I repacked.
There’s no way I can stay here. It’s dangerous. Lonely. I’m a murder waiting to happen at the worst, and a sitting duck for someone to find me and take me to the Council. Or to that alpha I’m supposed to mate with.
I need help.
I take my backpack, and I slip out.
I run.