33. Saint
33 SAINT
Why do I keep thinking about Tem’s cunt?
Hot and tight and squeezing.
She’s so fucking responsive to every little thing, and those damn nipple piercings threw me for a loop.
So what if my dreams have shifted from nightmares to erotica about those ?
Biting them, tugging them, twisting them with my fingers.
Watching her face go from pleasure to pain and back again without reprieve.
The real thing was better than waking up with a stiff dick and only my hand to take care of it.
“His car is down there still,” Tem says, exiting onto the street.
I shine my flashlight at the sidewalk.
It’s not really dark enough to require one, but it’s not yet light enough to trust I won’t miss something small.
Sure enough, there’s a glint of reflected light.
I pause, crouching, and touch the wet spot.
My finger comes away red.
“What the fuck?” Tem breathes.
She’s right over my shoulder, so close I can feel the heat of her body.
“Is that blood?”
I rise and swing the light around in a wider arc.
“We don’t know it’s his.”
She hisses out a breath.
“And if it is?”
Then…
“I don’t know.” My voice is hoarse.
“I guess we’ll need to ask for help, Artemis.”
She bristles.
“No shit, Sherlock.”
I eye her.
She seems genuinely worried.
The cool air—and the bottle of water I guzzled while Tem got dressed—helps abate some of my drunkenness.
I slept off a good portion, too.
Still probably not enough to drive, but enough to think clearer.
“I shouldn’t have fallen asleep,” I tell her.
Tem sighs. “It’s not your fault.”
It is.
I meant what I said about him being on my conscience.
If he’s missing—and all signs point to yes —then we have a late start because I passed out as soon as he left.
“Stop staring,” she mumbles.
The words register, and I scowl.
I force my gaze away from her face and turn to the building.
She picked this condo when she wanted security—when the town was literally going to shit and she was a target.
Which means she chose one with locking front doors and security cameras.
“Come on.” I unlock the front door and usher her into the lobby.
It’s not just the doors that are monitored—the elevators have cameras, and above the third floor require fobs to activate the lifts.
But the important part is the guy who sits behind the desk around the corner.
He wears a Security jacket, black with silver light-reflecting patches on the arms and thick stitching.
“Hey, man.”
He whirls around, eyeing me up and down.
His limbs tense, like he’s about to jump to his feet and fucking square off with me.
But then recognition takes hold, and his posture eases a fraction.
“Some lady is screaming on the fifth floor. We tried calling down but it wasn’t going through. It sounded kind of… violent.”
He swears.
“What unit?”
I make a face.
“I don’t know. Maybe 505? Hard to say for sure.”
He jots something down, then grabs keys and leaps up.
I guide Tem out of the way, keeping her behind me as the guard bolts back down the hall.
The door swings shut, and I stick my foot in to keep it from fully closing.
As soon as he’s around the corner, we slip inside.
“Nicely done,” she murmurs.
“But he’ll be back as soon as he realizes you made that up.”
I shrug.
“He’s still probably going to check on everyone up there.”
I take a seat at the monitors.
Admittedly, I’m not very high tech, but I can navigate my way around an old desktop computer.
He didn’t even shut it down.
I glance at Tem, who still hovers at my shoulder, and figure out how to rewind.
We watch a somewhat grainy video, starting at midnight and zooming onwards.
There’s nothing for a long while, the building near silent.
A couple lets themselves in through the front door, kissing in the elevator.
They exit.
I don’t dare glance at Tem.
She grabs my shoulder when Reese enters the elevator.
I slow it down to real time, leaning forward.
He weaves a little, seeming out of it.
Lost in his thoughts?
Tem’s hand turns into a claw when he exits the elevator at the lobby.
He glances around the open space—new angle, now—and stumbles on his way out the door.
“Oh my God,” she whispers.
“How much did you two drink?”
I grunt.
I click on the camera feed that points outside.
Reese exits and stops on the sidewalk, his chest heaving.
Suddenly, he stops.
He pivots and punches the wall, and it must bite him back, because he shakes out his fist. For a moment, it seems like he’s going to stride away.
But then?—
Tem gasps.
Someone comes behind him from the left-bottom side of the frame.
It’s grainy, and kind of hard to see with the shadows, but the glint of an object rising in the stranger’s hand, coming down hard and fast at Reese?—
He shifts, getting a look at his attacker a millisecond before he’s hit in the head.
Reese crumples.
I pause it and try to reel in my anger.
While this was happening, I was fucking sleeping?
“Don’t,” Tem warns. “Now’s not the time for the blame game. Keep going.”
Fuck .
I don’t want to admit that she’s right, but her words ring true.
I hit ‘play’ again, and we watch the guy stand over Reese for a long moment.
He then bends down and gets Reese slung over his shoulders, like a fireman’s carry.
He walks off-screen, heading across the street, with Reese slumped and unconscious.
Not good.
“Is there another angle?” Tem’s voice is desperate.
I click through, but there’s nothing.
I stand, and her hand slips from my shoulder.
I face her, the guilt that I’ve been feeling low in my stomach now burning through me.
“We’ll find him.” It’s a promise.
“Could that have been Kade?”
Tem presses her lips together, quickly shaking her head.
“No. Too… slim? Kade is bulky.”
I grimace.
“We need help,” she adds.
“Kade or someone else?—”
“How about your brother?”
She hesitates.
Scowls. Then, “I don’t know if he’d take it seriously.”
Yeah.
Apollo holds a grudge, especially since our first introduction to Reese was Tem fainting at the sight of him.
Although their prior relationship still evades me, I always figured it was wrapped in trauma or some shit.
A regular old breakup wouldn’t make Artemis faint .
“We’re not going to Kade.” I cross my arms.
She raises an eyebrow.
I know that look. I also know that her mind is set, and I missed my opportunity to volunteer someone better than her brother .
I find myself nodding along to her unvoiced idea, silently accepting that Kade and I were bound to clash sooner or later.
I mean meet . We were bound to meet sooner or later.
“Let’s go,” she says quietly.
“I got my car back from Apollo, so…”
“Great.”
I follow her to the parking garage.
Her car is in the spot right next to Reese’s truck, the block lettering painted on the concrete floor denoting it as her two free spaces.
She gets in the driver’s seat, and I wrinkle my nose getting into the passenger seat.
The car smells like her, though.
She uses some sort of lavender-scented shampoo that I used to loathe.
But it’s grown on me, and now I take a deep breath.
I try to let it settle me.
“What happened earlier…”
I glance over.
By the time we pull out of the garage, the sun has risen.
It truly is a contrast to how much time we spent watching the footage, and…
other . Fucking. Which brings my attention back to my dick and how it felt to sink into her.
Thoughts I shouldn’t have but cannot stop.
It’s what she’s bringing up anyway, isn’t it?
She startled me awake with ice-cold water, I leapt on her, and the burning urge—what I had been dreaming about, not satiated with the icy water dripping from my face—took over.
Sue me.
“Go on,” I goad.
“Gonna try to walk that back?”
“You’re using me,” she accuses.
I frown. “Am I? Any more than you’re using me, Artemis?”
“No, I?—”
“Tell me how it’s different.” I twist to face her, ignoring where we’re going.
“Tell me how you didn’t have any reaction, that you didn’t spread your legs. Tell me you said stop and I missed it.”
“Saint.” Her cheeks redden.
“No, I didn’t say stop.”
I hum.
“We’re using each other,” she decides.
“We’re distractions.”
“Reese kissed you.” That unpleasant memory comes snapping back to the front of my mind.
“Did you ask him to do that?”
She shifts.
“I did.”
That silences me.
She goes from freaking out around him to—to making out with him?
What the fuck is that?
It’s not like I want monogamy.
Actually, it’s the last thing I want from her.
Or anyone.
Not her.
I mean?—
Just stop thinking .
I lean my head back and close my eyes.
I blow out a long, slow breath.
Inhale. Exhale. It should be easy to get myself back into the mindset, but she seems to have obliterated my calm facade.
“We’re here,” she says quietly.
She shuts off the car.
She gets out before my eyes open.
But when I do, my heart immediately stops.
I knew he lived here.
I knew… I knew, and I fucking forgot.
We’re in front of the mansion that Kronos once took refuge in.
The mansion made of glass and steel, that sits on its own private beach in North Falls.
There are dunes to the left, the ground rising farther beyond.
The sandy beach disappears into cliffs.
The reservoir is beyond that, and the church…
I suppose it’s not a church anymore.
It was an evil place.
But this ground is evil, too.
I get out, unwilling to even let Tem deal with Kade Laurent on her own.
His car is in the driveway, nearly covering the spot where…
I swallow.
It nearly covers the spot where I last held Elora.
“Come on.” Tem doubles back and takes my hand.
“We’ve got this.”
My stomach turns, but I let her lead me anyway.
Up the driveway, around the solid wall that was once riddled with bullet holes.
It’s been repaired, patched, and painted.
How long did it take them to get Elora’s blood out of the driveway?
Concrete is porous… they might’ve had to dig up the whole square.
There’s a side door that Artemis aims for, but I’d bet anything that it’s locked.
She releases my hand and pulls a knife from a holster strapped to her ankle.
I stare at her. “How long have you had that?”
She brushes her braid back over her shoulder.
It swings across her back, and she eyes me.
“I always have it.”
Noted.
The sweatshirt, at the very least, isn’t Kade’s.
It’s black and boxy, the bottom elastic cut off.
It has Bow & Arrow’s logo—the neon sign above the club’s door just a symbol, essentially—across the back.
The edges are all frayed, but it just adds to her aesthetic.
A mix of badass and I don’t give a shit .
The sweatshirt hides the gold shirt and the necklaces she wears.
Layers and layers of them.
Instead of using the knife to jimmy open the door, she drops into a crouch and continues along the wall.
We have to duck under windows.
“Are we in danger of being shot?”
She frowns.
“You probably are. Stay behind me.”
Great.
We reach the back of the house, and she straightens abruptly.
I almost crash into her and catch myself at the last moment.
She stows the knife and motions for me to stick close.
My gaze lifts from the back of her head to the ocean.
The very same beach I stormed down, throwing myself into the waves in a fit of grief and shock and rage.
I see it now, the way Kora and Wolfe chased after me and dragged me out…
The echo of gunshots rings in my ears.
Tem’s elbow lands in my gut.
Kade is waist-deep in the white, frothy water.
His tattoo-free torso glistens with droplets, hair wet.
His back muscles flex and tense right before he puts his hands together and dives under the waves.
Artemis marches down the beach, stopping at the edge of the water that rolls up to greet her.
It recedes without touching her boots.
We wait for Kade to pop out on the other side of the break.
He glances back at the shore mid-stroke and pauses.
Appraises, in a single look, the two of us.
Then he dives again, and Artemis lets out a little sigh.
He returns to shore.
The waves tug at him, and my eyes widen when the water finally releases him.
He’s naked.
And pierced.
What a pair he and Artemis make .
The thought strikes me without warning, and I glower at him.
While still wondering why the fuck anyone would pierce their dick.
Tattooing mine was a long, torturous process that I barely felt because it was in the aftermath of Elora’s death.
I don’t think I could handle it in a normal frame of mind.
I wrench my gaze away before I can examine it further, but when I meet his eyes, he’s smirking.
My scowl deepens.
He stops in front of us, hands on his hips.
“You’ve been avoiding me, sweetheart?”
Tem mirrors my expression.
“Can you put some clothes on?”
His abdomen tightens, dragging her gaze—shit, no, my gaze—down again.
I turn away and stalk toward the house.
His towel and shorts are on one of the chairs.
I pick them up and whirl around, but he’s right behind me.
“We fought,” he says plainly.
Yeah, we did. And he got the best of me.
Another reason I grit my teeth.
I shove the shorts and towel at him, and he laughs in my face.
It’s loud and abrasive, and will Tem care if I just murder him right here?
With my bare hands?
“Stop.” Tem grabs my arm.
Am I really the issue, here?
I glare at her, trying to convey that this dickwad is naked and laughing at me.
“Kade, Saint. Saint, Kade.”
She positions herself in front of me, forcing me a step back.
With breathing room between him and I, the weight on my chest lessens.
I take a breath, then another.
I imagine myself back in Elora’s house, hitting my head against the wall.
Thump, thump, thump .
It matches my slowing heart rate.
“We’ve met,” Kade says.
His voice is low, but no less powerful than his stance.
Or his posture.
I immediately hate him more than I did five seconds ago.
The preening peacock.
His unspoken duh is obvious.
She was there, too. She was also there when I forced myself to enter this house the first time and drag her out.
The urge to do the same is only tempered by the knowledge that he can help us find Reese.
Or… well, Tem thinks he can.
And that means putting aside my massive trust issues.
It’s my fault he was taken .
I didn’t tell her about the drinking game.
The questions.
“Great,” Tem says.
“Because we need your help.”