18. Vesper #2
I frown. “Desire what?”
He chuckles and touches a finger to my hand where it rests on the bar. I don’t flinch away, but Locke tenses behind me. Only the relief that this is a safehouse and Stryker can’t hurt me here keeps me from doing so.
“Desire is not the answer,” he responds. “Desire is the question. It’s a promise.” He slides that finger along my vein. “Desire is a knife, a foreign object, lodged deep in your chest.” He leans closer, those ice blue eyes focused on mine. “Do you desire?”
I study him, absorbing his words, and try to search for the correct answer. My fight or flight tingles are screaming at me. Stab him! Run away! My body is in a confused war with itself, but still, I answer.
“I’m not sure anyone who comes from Dross could ever say they don’t desire,” I finally answer. “If they claimed otherwise, they would be lying.”
His smile says he’s pleased with my answer. When he smiles, I can see the sharp points of his canines, something I hadn’t noticed before. I run my tongue along my own teeth, feeling their natural dull shape. These should be sharper, I think.
My skin tingles where Stryker strokes his finger along my vein, teasing, calling my bluff. My skin crawls the same time as goosebumps rise and trail along my arm, calling me a fool. Despite the clear danger this man presents, my body rises to attention.
His eyes trail along my skin, intrigued, hungry. “You make me sick with desire,” he breaths. “With a desire to possess you.” His finger trails up my arm. “With a desire to wrap you around me like a coat.”
I narrow my eyes on him and glance over my shoulder at Locke, sensing his unease. With my eyes, I tell him I’m fine, and with my hand, I grab Stryker’s and thread our fingers together. My instincts scream violently.
“What’s your Glitch, Stryker?” I ask nonchalantly, as if I’m just having a conversation rather than trying to figure out how dangerous he is.
He grins, flashing those fangs at me again. “I could show you if you step outside this safehouse, Beastie,” he purrs.
“No,” Cipher says aggressively in my mind. One word. Nothing else.
“How do you know what my Glitch is so easily?” I ask curiously, taking Cipher’s warning to heart.
“It’s written all over you,” he says. He leans in and inhales deeply. “You even smell green and earthy.” His eyes flick up to mine. “You all taste the same. Just as all Bone Breakers taste of death and marrow.”
I meet Locke’s eyes. “Good to know,” I reply. I toss back the rest of the liquor in my glass and stand, releasing him so that we no longer touch. My hand twitches with the loss. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Stryker, we need to get some rest. You understand, of course.”
“Of course,” Stryker says, standing himself.
As we move toward the sleeping quarters on the other side, he moves with us, matching us pace for pace.
Locke is tense as we reach the doors, but I keep my body relaxed and casual as I turn to face Stryker.
I wrap my hand with Locke’s and he looks down at where I hold him and back up to me before focusing on the threat at hand. The very real threat.
“Have a good . . . day?” I tell Stryker. I don’t know what time it is. I push open the nearest vacant door and go to pull Locke inside.
“Oh!” Stryker says, his eyes dancing between us. “You two are . . . together?”
I jerk Locke against me, wrapping my arm around his waist and hugging him like we’re much more intimately acquainted. “Of course,” I say. “Was it not obvious?”
Stryker rolls his shoulders and slides up to me like a cat. Locke tenses like he’s going to get in between us so I squeeze his hand, keeping him beside me even as Stryker presses his chest against mine, forcing me to look up into his eyes.
“Care to have a third join?” Stryker breathes. “I’d do such . . . tantalizing things to you, Beastie.”
My heart skips a beat and for one foolish moment, I consider saying yes. Which makes me an incredibly huge fool. I’m not even sleeping with Locke to agree to something like that in the first place, but the imagery suddenly in my mind, of the three of us together, nearly knocks me on my ass.
“Sorry,” I tell Stryker instead. “We’re tired.
Maybe after we get some rest.” I glance at a clock nearby.
“Give us about ten good hours of rest and then knock.” I press a finger against his chest and trail it down to his amulet, making sure my eyes are convincing.
It isn’t hard. I do find this man attractive in some strange, twisted way. “Perhaps then, we’ll let you in.”
His hand wraps around my wrist, stilling it when I would have pulled away. He drags it to his lips and presses a stinging kiss against my knuckles. “I shall rest now so that you may utilize me then,” he purrs against my skin. “Your name, Beastie? So that I know who to call out to in my dreams.”
I stop breathing. I should lie. I should give him some random name so he doesn’t have any more information about me than he already does. But I’m a fool. I’m a stupid, fucking idiot.
“Vesper,” my lips form before I’m conscious of it. Locke’s hand tightens in mine, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Vesper,” Stryker repeats like a prayer. He presses another kiss against my knuckles, lingering. “I’ll be counting the minutes, Vesper.”
And then he releases me and backs against the door across the hall from us.
“Good rest,” I say breathily, my throat thick.
Stryker nods and reaches down to adjust himself in his pants where he’s clearly hard. “Good rest, Beastie.”
He opens the door, shoots one last lingering look at me, and then closes the door behind him.
I wait two beats, hear the lock, and then stand there some more.
Locke goes to move into the room, but I stop him, holding him still for five long minutes.
When Stryker doesn’t make any more noise from inside, I immediately turn and start dragging Locke toward the safehouse doors.
“We aren’t sleeping?” Locke asks, surprised.
“Are you insane?” I hiss quietly at him. “We need to put as much distance between us and Stryker as possible. I don’t know what he is, but he’s a higher Tier than us and he’s powerful. I could feel it buzzing along my skin.”
“Very good choice,” Cipher breathes in my mind.
“You could feel that?” Locke asks. “I couldn’t feel anything, not even when you two were eye fucking each other.”
“That was just a ruse to get him to go into the room alone,” I grunt. “I needed him to believe me.”
“Well, you were damn sure convincing,” Locke muses. “I almost believed you were about to fuck the two of us.”
I glance at him as we leave the safehouse with a raised brow. “And what? You were going to go along with it?”
He grins. “Well, who am I to shoot down a good time?”
The laughter that bubbles out of my throat is two parts shocked and one part intrigued.
I don’t tell him that though. Instead, I smack his arm playfully and we disappear into the Red Bloom Court again, rushing away so there’s enough time to escape Stryker and his ice-filled eyes.
We’re just going to have to keep moving without rest at this point. There’s no other option.
My hand continues to tingle long after we’ve left the biggest of the carnivorous plants behind.