Chapter 2 Weapons Of Desire
To say that I was still in shock was an understatement as I never believed it was possible.
Sitting next to my uncle, having this conversation, just proved how little I knew.
How wrong I had been. Yet despite the excuses my uncle made on my behalf, I still felt foolish for not trying to delve deeper into The General’s intentions.
As for his intentions for me, I was sure I would soon discover them.
When I heard my name spoken, I turned to find Aster standing there. Oh, and once again, he was back to looking human.
“Ah, Aster, I see you’ve met my niece,” my uncle Rick said, making me wince when I saw that tick jump in the Minotaur’s jaw.
“Yeah, we met,” he said sharply, making me release a heavy sigh as guilt hit me hard.
“The General wants to see you,” he stated, causing my heart to jump a beat.
He was no longer someone I could blame for all this.
Meaning, I no longer knew how to act around him, not after everything I had just learned.
The General had always been the villain in my book, and now, I felt like everything I thought I knew only made me the bad guy instead.
I stood, placing a hand on my uncle’s shoulder, but before I could speak, he got there first.
“I will be right here, honey.”
I nodded before turning to face Aster, someone who refused to look at me. Especially when he turned toward the entrance and started to walk away like he knew I would follow… that, or he simply didn’t care, either way.
I rushed after him down the path, trying to keep up with his long strides. His act of indifference was like a weapon he used against me, making guilt twist deeper in my gut until I could take it no longer.
“Hey, hold up a sec,” I said, after finally catching up once inside the building, which had probably started life as an administrative space where they no doubt processed the prisoners.
It was clear it had become the place tourists paid for admission before entering what must have been a historical part of Idaho’s lawful history.
Of course, this was before its current use as a sanctuary.
I watched as Aster’s posture tensed, and his shoulders lifted while his back was to me.
He held himself like this before they dropped with a sigh, and he turned to face me.
I didn’t take it as a good sign when I saw the way his arms folded across his chest. Nor when he raised an unimpressed brow, waiting for my groveling to commence.
“So, I owe you an apology,” I stated, yet his expression didn’t change, telling me he wasn’t going to make this easy for me. “I er… well… I’m sorry.”
He lifted his chin slightly before walking away, leaving me standing there.
“Aster?” I called his name, making him pause.
“We both have reasons to be sorry, Alex… you for betraying me and me for trusting you,” he said, looking back over his shoulder and making me flinch back from the verbal blow. A reaction he didn’t miss, but instead of saying anything more on it, he nodded toward the door to his left and said,
“The General is waiting for you, and because neither of us trusts you, I will be outside keeping watch.”
Again, I swallowed hard at the dig, and just as I opened my mouth to say more, he left through the doorway, making me deflate in on myself.
I deserved it, and more, I knew that. Especially when I put myself in his big biker boots, knowing I wouldn’t have been so quick to forgive me either.
So, with no other choice, I squared my shoulders and faced the next challenge in my life, asking myself, how had I even gotten to this point? But all the ‘why me’s’ in the world weren’t enough to save me from The General and, well… I needed answers.
I decided to knock, half of me hoping that to be met by silence so I had the excuse to chicken out by not having to face him. But then, it wasn’t exactly my year to be lucky because his stern, unwavering voice spiked my nervousness when he spoke.
“Enter.”
I did so under my own duress, forcing myself to open the door and take in the modest-sized office. The room was made even smaller by his imposing figure, standing and looking out of the tall sash windows. Windows that faced the trees that surrounded parts of the prison walls, showcasing the sky.
But as I continued my scan of the room, I realized it must have been the warden’s office at one time, as it still held tourist information up on the walls about what life as a warden here had been like.
The small amount of furniture in here also told me that The General likely didn’t spend much time in this room.
Not when the small writing desk didn’t exactly look like his style, and the chair in front of it looked like it wouldn’t even fit his large frame.
Next to the door where I was standing, was a wooden bench, and a display case in the corner beside it.
One that looked to hold old newspaper clippings and other prison memorabilia.
On the other side of the room, there was a solid wooden table that gave no indication as to what it had once been used for.
It was void of any historical relevance, unlike everything else in the room.
In fact, it was like the room was stuck in time, with my only clue that I wasn’t living out the past being the intimidating presence of The General himself.
A man who turned to look at me over his black armored shoulder-plate that his long cloak hung from, to find me standing frozen by the door.
“I think we have established by now that I don’t intend to toss you in a cell and throw away the key,” he stated firmly.
I looked down at my feet, wishing I knew what to say. Christ, this was so much easier when he had been the villain and not the hero who saved my uncle’s life.
“Shut the door, Alexandra,” he stated when I hovered inside the door frame like I was stuck between two worlds… his and mine.
Knowing which one I had long ago already been lured into, I stepped fully inside and did as he asked, shutting the door.
A door I decided to stay close to because, well…
I wasn’t an idiot. The guy still terrified me, and for good reason.
My uncle may have his own positive opinion of him, but I had mine.
The General was still the one who had haunted me for the last three years.
“I assume after speaking with your uncle, you are left satisfied that he is here of his own free will, along with the rest of them?” he said, and for once it was without that arrogant tone of his, despite it being warranted this time.
His back remained to me as he continued to stare out of the window, the darkening clouds allowing him the barest hint of my reflection.
“You saved him,” I said in way of reply, my tone strangely vulnerable. A side of me he had never seen before, and it was, no doubt, what caused him to tense slightly before turning to face me fully.
“Yes,” he stated, his tone strained, as if witnessing what his heroic actions had meant to another wasn’t something he was used to. Which was the reason I blurted out my next question.
“Why?”
He jerked back slightly, as if shocked, his regal features hardening before he answered like a sharp blade, each word edged with bitterness.
“Why would a monster save one of your kind, you mean?”
I flinched, realizing how my question had been taken.
“I never called you a monster.”
“Yet the implication was thrown my way enough,” he countered, causing me to release a frustrated sigh.
“And what did you expect? You didn’t exactly come across as the white knight ready to storm the castle to save the girl,” I snapped, something that made his eyes heat in that strange way I had seen before.
It was my only warning before he moved faster than my eyes could track.
One second, he was by the window, and the next, he was right in front of me.
A breathy gasp left my lips at the same time I tried to take a step back, only to find my injured hip not wishing to cooperate.
When he saw me about to crumble to one side, his arm snaked around my waist to prevent me from falling, and the next gasp to leave my lips was for a very different reason.
“And I suppose you would be the princess in this picture-perfect fairy tale of yours?”
My mouth dropped, and it was something he chose to focus on, making my heart feel as if it was now trying to beat its way out of my chest. It wasn’t the first time I questioned why he had such an effect on me.
Although I didn’t look to be the only one affected, not if the heated gaze he had focused on my lips was anything to go by.
Lips that I forced to gift me back even a shred of dignity as I uttered a weak little,
“No.”
His knowing grin grated on my nerves as much as it stoked the flames of my traitorous desire.
“In my experience, fear rules over humans like a cruel tyrant and has the power to twist the truth to fit whatever narrative you wish to listen to. Many wished to play me as the villain in their story… including you,” he said, lowering closer to my face with this last part, making me breathe him in deep as his power added to the impact of his words.
But he wasn’t the only one with this verbal weapon of choice.
“And did you ever once try to change the minds of people?” I threw back, finally finding the bravery to challenge him as I often did in my dreams.
“No, I was too busy saving them,” he snapped back, making me flinch in his hold as I hopelessly tried to put more space between us. But this became a moot point when he suddenly lifted me up so my feet were dangling off the floor.
“What are you…!?” My whine of outrage was cut off when he gave me a stern look. With me held in one arm, he walked toward the small table and placed me down on it, then he said the last thing I ever expected him to say.
“Take off your pants.”
I swear the way my eyebrows shot to my hairline must have been comical.
“Excuse me?” I squeaked out, making him look like he was fighting a smirk.
However, instead of giving in to the impulse, he lowered his head closer and told me, “Take off your trousers, Alexandra.”
I swallowed hard at the order and tried to remember how to breathe.
“But… but why?”
This was when he finally allowed himself the impulse to smirk, and I hated how devastatingly handsome it made him.
He had the type of manly beauty that gave my brain only a few things to think about.
None of them was healthy, but all of them were sexual.
Just like the way the scent of him was wrapping itself around me like unseen smoke cocooning me.
A dominant, fresh, and citrusy aroma, with hints of bergamot and amber.
And the way his arm tensed around my waist, as if on instinct, made me wish I had the freedom to moan at his dominant hold and what it did to me.
The sight of those perfect lips twitching as he fought a deeper grin.
Those dark eyes that a woman could lose her sanity in as they tugged at the secrets in her soul.
It all acted as a weapon against me. And speaking of weapons, the strongest one of all was thrown my way in that dark, deep, commanding voice of his.
“Because I need you in perfect health and right now, you are not,” he stated, making me grit my teeth and instantly want to argue.
“I feel fine.”
To which he called bullshit, but for not the obvious reasons I would have expected, as he lowered his lips closer to my ear and whispered, “Is that why your heart is beating fast, and your breathing is labored… Because you feel fine?” He mocked, using the word fine in a hissed breath, making me swallow hard.
But because I wasn’t willing to let him see any weakness his close proximity invoked, I lifted my chin in defiance and told him once again, “Like I said, I feel fine.”
He actually grinned in response, as if he enjoyed my fire.
But then, he also liked the game we played, especially when he knew how to win it.
I knew this when his arm unwound itself from my waist and lowered to my injured leg.
His hand then landed first on my knee, making me jerk beneath his possessive touch the second he gripped my flesh.
Then, without taking his eyes off me, he inched his palm upward, slowly applying pressure as he did so, gauging my reaction as he crept closer to the source of my discomfort.
I tried to hold perfectly still and school my features the best I could, which wasn’t easy and not just because of the pain.
Just having his hand gripping the top of my thigh as it rose higher was enough to push against my need to react.
Like the way my mouth wanted to open on a breathy sigh and the way I wanted to inch forward as my body opened itself up to him.
It was as if he held some unknown power over me, and the second he made contact, I was hopeless to resist. And as I tried to fake my nonchalant response to him, one glance at the way my fingers were curled into fists at the table’s edge was enough to give me away.
As for his own, his large, gloved hand curled around the top of my leg, making me moan when he finally reached my hip.
“Ahh.”
He eased the pressure instantly before rumbling, “Exactly as I thought, now remove your pants before I do it for you,” he ordered, stealing my breath once more.
And this time…
I wasn’t sure I would ever get it back.