Chapter Three #2
“Something like that,” he said on a breath that hinted of eternal fatigue.
“I angered the little human,” Kaos said, ready to change the subject.
He gave a low chuckle. “And you want to say sorry with food?”
No, he wanted to say sorry with pleasure. “She has to eat.”
“And she can’t cook?”
Kaos grinned a little as he stood, angling his head toward the patio. “She locked herself out of her apartment and burned her food.”
A long, dramatic sigh. “We could rotate jobs, I guess,” he suggested.
The genuine offer translated as pure threat that required crushing. “I surely can’t be trusted around things I’m allowed to kill,” Kaos considered. “But… it’s difficult to guard an asset when you don’t really know the asset.”
“You’ll have to make do with a general shield,” he warned lightly.
“I am.”
The silence spread then thickened. “What do you want to say to me, Kohl? I’m still burdened with certain knowing abilities.”
Kaos figured as much, but to what degree? Not mind reading, fortunately.
“Ignorance isn’t always bliss,” he said, deciding not to share more.
“Well don’t I fucking know it,” he assured. “See you soon.”
Kaos stared at the phone when he hung up, turning his focus to his forbidden dilemma of soft silk. It would help if he knew more about humans. He’d only known his Queen.
The Queen. No longer his. And yet… he was still hers. Shattered pieces of a vengeful being. Orbiting the one who’d breathed life into his soul. The one from which he’d tasted humanity. It was just enough to make him crave it with every fiber of his heart.
And loathe it with every ounce of his Rage.
****
Jaxi stared in a love-struck daze at the clothes she’d yanked from her suitcase in her blind anger.
She was staring into his eyes again in her mind.
She’d known they were special and had tried so many times to see why and how they were .
But she’d only gotten a few seconds here and there, enough to make her need to see so much more!
She held her hand against her chest, recalling the feeling of his warm, strong fingers, imprisoning it like a helpless bird.
While he stared right into her eyes! Her breath slowly left her as her heart pounded in her chest. Pools of passion and fury.
And his mouth. Glory in heaven his beautiful, perfect, mouth. She’d almost kissed him. Kissed him!
She returned to the memory of his decadent gaze and how it burned right through her.
“You push for conversation like it doesn’t come with a price—so maybe I’ll shove my fingers past your lips, drag them along your tongue like a promise, and fuck your mouth until even your silence knows who it belongs to. ”
She wanted those words tattooed across every inch of her body in invisible ink only she could see.
But… had he meant it? Honestly… even if he didn’t mean it, he’d said it.
And those words were alive and breathing in her soul.
They were hers to do whatever she wished and she wished to hallucinate that he did mean them.
That he lusted for every inch of her the way she did him.
She pressed her fingers to her smiling lips.
He was so very cold and walled off and angry.
Furious. Her joy ebbed with careful curiosity.
Why was he? That’s what she desperately wanted to know.
His rage acted like a hook in her chest, pulling her to him.
Making her want to excavate and discover this dark, terrible secret he harbored.
He was like a madman. A murderer. A psychopath.
And she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything.
To unwrap the layers of pitch black until she reached the colors that hid beneath.
She sucked in a huge breath, remembering. He had her panties! Oh God! Oh God, what did he do with them? How would he return them?
She escaped her fantasy, breathless, focusing on the clothes then snatched them up. Maybe she’d picked them on purpose. Maybe she was still at that cliff, thinking of jumping. She grinned at imagining it. Jumping right on her horribly mean, beautiful bodyguard.
He would probably insult her or… smack her. Or worse—quit !
Treachery. She’d rather be smacked.
She should cook him something for… for trying to be nice. That’s what he’d done at the end. He’d come to his delicious senses.
Miss Juniper.
Yes, silly Miss Juniper. That’s how he saw her.
Once he got to know her, he’d see she was not silly, not even a little. She was something else. Something he’d never imagined before. The exception to the rules, the special occasion. She was a raging phenomenon. That’s what she was. She was not silly.
****
Jaxi’s heart nearly exploded in her chest at finding her fantasy bodyguard sitting at the island.
“Good,” she gasped, hurrying to the fridge and opening it.
“I was about to go looking for you.” She began pulling food out and setting it on the counter.
“I was a bit rude to you and thought, you know, the night is still young and not lost if we don’t allow it to be.
I’m not a chef or anything,” she said, avoiding his eyes lest she fall into them and make a love-struck fool of herself.
“But I can wield a spatula as good as anybody.” She pulled one from the jar of cooking utensils and waved it in the air, demonstrating.
He sat with his forearms on the counter, studiously investigating the meaning of her freak show.
She continued on, determined to paint the moment with all the colors present.
Curiosity, fear, joy, excitement. And lust wrapped in mystery .
“I’m really surprised at how well they stocked these fridges,” she said, keeping the tone easy and conversational, something he either knew nothing about or hated. Maybe both.
“I don’t eat.”
She paused, egg carton mid-air.
“At night,” he added. “Usually,” he further added.
She continued on her mission, her guts a-churning at that little addendum. “At night, huh,” she mumbled, getting mayonnaise and lunchmeat next. “Statements like that will get the otherworldly police after you.”
He continued watching her—least her peripheral said he was. “Otherworldly police.”
She gave him a glance and grin. “What planet are you from? I never did ask.” She pulled a stick of butter from the pack, finding his digging gaze all over her.
“Earth,” he answered finally, his sincerity making her laugh.
“You’re funny,” she said, unhooking one of the pans hanging above the stove. “I knew you were hiding good stuff.” She found the cabinet with spices and tiptoed in her indecent sleep shorts to peer at the shelf.
“Always too short. I need a stool,” she complained, glancing over her shoulder, finding his gaze exactly where she’d hoped.
Her heart pounded when his stare remained locked on her butt, a hard edge to his features that could’ve been mistaken for anger.
But there was something else, something that defined the look.
It was hungry. And it burned all her private parts till they tingled and ached.
She blindly took things from the cabinet and transferred them next to the stove.
“Why do you think I come from another planet?”
His tone matched the look she’d seen. Deep. Thick. Hot.
She realized in that second that he was the one. He was the one she’d give her virginity to.
“What are you looking at?”
Her breath froze at realizing she was staring at him. She swallowed. “I was… your eyes,” she went with, tearing her gaze away. “You might be hazardous to cook around,” she realized, turning on the stove.
“Why?”
Why. This was good. He was talking. Trying. And seemed genuinely clueless. But it was a legitimate question. One she’d usually never have an issue with answering. It was why she was still single. No man could tolerate her honesty. “Many reasons,” she began, smearing butter onto the skillet.
“How many?”
How many, not what reasons. Interesting.
But that was the difference with him. There was no arrogance or falsehood, all brutal honesty, like it’s all he knew or was trained to be.
“Why don’t we count them together,” she suggested with a smile, opening the carton of eggs and cracking one into the pan.
“First reason: you’re drop dead gorgeous.
How I’m standing here and not dead is an abstract painting in impossible motion.
And two,” she hurried before she lost her nerve.
“You’re like an addictive puzzle I want to figure out which requires me to look at and examine closely which is… bad manners outside of my work.”
“I don’t care where you place your eyes, Miss Juniper.”
She nodded, cracking another egg into the pan.
“You sound very genuine and sincere and yet,” she murmured.
“I hear much more, the same way I see much more in colors, and taste much more in textures, and feel much more and smell much more than most ever will or do. And yet, with you, I’m running into… barriers that are locking me out.”
She lightly sprinkled salt, casting a glance up and finding him laying into her with that hot, hungry stare.
“Tell me what you can see? Human. ”
Human. She giggled on that one. He was playing now, and that was good. A crack in the ice facade. “I can see a man who has a lot to hide. Many secrets he’s holding that make him…very angry. More than angry. Furious, ” she corrected, a smile twitching on her mouth as she peeked at him.