Chapter 13 Veronica #2
“It’s a little bigger than my place, but not by much,” he said.
I was still thinking about that moment we’d shared out on the street, that sexual energy that had crackled between us for that brief, delicious second.
“That’s fine.” The horny teenager part of my subconscious hoped there would only be one bed.
My dream from earlier continued to play on repeat in my mind.
It was a crazy thing to think about given the situation, but hell, I could be dead in a day or two.
Why not live life to the fullest while there was still time?
Plus, he was so hot, which didn’t hurt at all.
“This is the kitchen, obviously,” he said as we walked through the house.
“Living room and dining room combo,” he added, pointing through an open archway.
“Got a guest bathroom here, and down the hall is a master bedroom with its own bathroom. You’ll take that, and I’ll be here in the spare bedroom,” he said, opening a door to a very small bedroom for himself. A twin-sized bed stood in the corner.
I was more disappointed than I’d thought I would be. As silly as it was, I’d already imagined lying in bed with him, his body heat radiating into mine. Me taking the initiative to reach over in the middle of the night to pull him toward me and start something I hoped we’d both enjoy.
“Great,” I said, hearing the flat tone in my voice. “Perfect.”
We ate a dinner of ramen noodles from the sparse pantry, and afterward, Declan grabbed his bag and walked down the hall toward his room. “I’m gonna take a shower. I feel gross after trudging through those sewers.”
I put my bowl in the sink and filled it with water. “Me too.”
“You go first. Goodnight. If you need anything, you can wake me up any time,” he said, giving me a reassuring smile before closing the door behind him.
“Goodnight,” I called back.
He needs to be careful saying things like that. He has no idea what I’d like to wake him up for.
I chastised myself for such childish thoughts, chalking it up to the situation.
I’d been running for my life for over twenty-four hours.
With the sheer amount of adrenaline and hormones coursing through my body, it was no wonder I was feeling a little frisky, especially now when I finally felt safe.
I needed to get that out of my head. Now was not the time to start something with a man I barely knew.
As fun as it would be, this was not the time, place, or situation.
The mental pep talk lasted all of fifteen minutes.
After a quick shower, I lay in bed, the lights off, listening through the wall as Declan showered.
The steady muffled hiss of water on tiles lulled me, but not into sleep.
Instead, the soothing sound brought another mental image to my mind.
Declan in the shower, water streaming across his body, sluicing off the defined muscles of his chest and arms, slick soap lathering his abs, legs, and…
Despite my best intentions, I slipped my hand between my legs and closed my eyes, allowing myself a few minutes of weakness and release. Within seconds of orgasming, I was asleep.
“Okay, first things first,” Declan said as he stirred oatmeal in a pot on the stove the next morning. “Which god do you think Balthazar might have pledged himself to?”
I took a sip of coffee, trying my best to act cool even though my fantasies of the night kept swirling through my head.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I’m still shocked that he’s a warlock. No one knew that, not even Wendy, or if she did, she did a hell of a job keeping that secret.”
“I’m gonna go out and grab some groceries later. There’s a magical bookstore in town, I’ll swing by there too and grab some research material. We can look through it all and see if we can find something that gives us a clue.”
The bookstore was most likely the same one Wendy had dragged me to a few hours before my life got flipped on its ass. I had no desire to go back there. It would just bring back bad memories.
“I’ll hang out here, if that’s cool?”
“You should be safe, but just in case—” He pulled his pistol from his holster and slid it across the table. “You know how to use that?”
“Point the barrel at the bad guy, then pull the trigger?”
“Nailed it. It’s a double-action, so no need to worry about any kind of safety.”
Thankfully, there was no need for me to point the gun at anyone.
The only people I saw were humans in cars on the street outside, heading off to work.
The house felt preternaturally quiet in the two hours he was gone.
I spent the time resting and watching TV until he returned, laden down with groceries and two bags full of books.
“Gonna feel like I’m back in college,” he said as he tossed the bookstore bags on the couch. “Studying all day for my criminal justice degree.”
I took a look through the books. Most were about the dozens of different deities that walked the earth and astral planes.
I wondered what the regular human world would do when they realized their few gods weren’t what they thought they were and a ton of other gods from mythology were actually real.
Baldur, Ra, Shiva, and more, all living their lives like deposed kings and queens, still powerful and influential, but pushed aside for the flavor of the week.
In a thousand years, the gods they worshipped now would end up the same way.
“I guess we need to get to it,” I said. “Where should we start?”
Declan grabbed the ledger we’d found in Balthazar’s office.
“We go through all the sacrifices and offerings, cross reference them with what we find in here. See if we can pinpoint exactly which god Balthazar was bound to. Once we do that, I can pull some strings and see if we can get an audience with that deity.”
I swallowed hard. “An audience? With a freaking god?”
Smirking, he tossed his leather jacket on the couch. “I didn’t stutter. Let’s get to it.”
It was not an easy task. We pored over the books and the journal for four straight days. Along with that, we both did a lot of online detective work, but that was less dependable than the books. Anyone could post something on the internet, and you had no real way of knowing if it was true.
On the fifth day of our research quest, Declan leaned over the laptop, reading something while I ate a grilled cheese sandwich.
“You sure you know how to use that thing?” I said, a faint grin touching my lips.
“What do you mean?” he said absently, clicking something with the touchpad.
“I mean, you are pretty old. Those things weren’t invented that long ago. It’s new tech, right?”
With incremental slowness, he turned to look at me. “Are you being a smart-ass right now?”
I smirked at him and popped the last of my sandwich into my mouth. “Maybe. Unless you can’t handle it.”
I didn’t care how old he was. At this point, I liked and was attracted to him for who he was. The guy could have been sixty, and it wouldn’t have mattered.
He looked at me for several long moments before a smile finally cracked his stone face. “I can handle anything you can dish out, Curly Sue.”
I gasped, putting a hand to my chest in mock horror. “How dare you, sir. These curls are fucking exquisite.” I flipped my hair for emphasis.
“Is that what they’re calling it now?” he said and shrugged. “Interesting.”
Not only was Declan pretty damn brilliant when it came to both detective work and research, but he was funny too.
Especially once you managed to break through that wall he had built up.
We’d bantered back and forth like this since the night before, and as good-natured and fun as it was, there was also a weird undercurrent of sexual tension that simmered, ready to boil over.
At least there was for me. Declan was so guarded that it was hard to tell.
He enjoyed having me around, but whenever I imagined I saw a little glimmer in his eye, or if I thought I caught him staring at my chest, he’d do something that made me think it was all in my imagination, and I was too nervous to make a move and see if this attraction was one-sided.
Though, I’d been very close the night before when he’d gone into the garage to get a workout in.
Without his equipment, he’d had to revert to bodyweight exercises.
I’d walked past the open mudroom door and peeked in while he’d done burpees, sit-ups, and push-ups without his shirt on.
At the time, I’d felt a bit like a peeping tom, but when I saw his sweat-slicked abs, chest, shoulders, and arms, I decided some things were worth being a bit inappropriate.
“Anyway,” I said, trying to drag my mind away from that mental image. “Come look at this. I’m trying to figure out if I found something.”
Declan heaved himself up from his seat and joined me at the table, where I had books and notepads spread out.
I pointed at the page. “This says that the Roman goddess Vesta did take animal skins as sacrifice, and there are several instances of that in Balthazar’s journal.”
Declan leaned closer, almost touching me, to read the passage.
I could smell the freshness of his soap and the masculine musk of his pheromones.
In our time together, I’d grown to find comfort in those scents.
After my dream a couple nights before, it did more than comfort me, though.
While he read, I surreptitiously took a deep breath, filling my lungs with it.
“Are you sniffing me? Declan asked.
“No,” I lied, leaning back and crossing my arms, rolling my eyes for all I was worth.
“What a freaking weird thing to do, lol.” In my panic and embarrassment, I literally said the letters L, O, and L out loud like some moronic middle-schooler.
I cringed so hard I thought I might collapse in on myself and become a black hole.
Mercifully, Declan said nothing more, though I did hear him chuckling to himself as he did. Heat crept into my cheeks, and I chided myself for being so dumb.