Chapter 5 #3
She followed him back to the bike, reaching into the other saddlebag to help him carry the food he’d brought.
“Nothing? You’re not gonna build a house?
Maybe live here someday?” She paused with a container of strawberries in her hand, her face screwed up in thought.
“It would have to have a basement, I guess. I don’t know if they could dig that far into the ground here.
It’s all limestone.” She grabbed the loaf of French bread.
“You could have it basement-like on the first floor. No windows. No way for the sun to get in. A sealed entrance. Then have a second floor that’s nothing but windows.
With a deck that has stairs that lead down to the water.
And you could put in a dock…” She wandered off to put her haul of food on the blanket.
A striking image of Devon standing on the deck with a glass of wine in her hand, her curves silhouetted against the setting sun, shot through his head.
Or lying in the sun down by the water in nothing but bikini bottoms. He could almost feel the warmth of her skin, and taste the saltiness of the sweat glistening between her breasts.
Sorrow filled him that he’d never be able to witness such a beautiful sight.
Kohl cleared his throat as she came back to the bike. “I’m not sure. Maybe. Someday.” He took the wine bottles from her and went to the blanket to arrange their picnic.
But she wasn’t done yet. “So, you own all of this property, and you’re just going to…do nothing with it? Just leave it wild except for this area by the water?”
Shoving his hands in his front pockets, he smiled. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
Kohl shrugged. “So no one else can build on it. It’s a safe place.”
“Safe for whom?”
“For me. For the animals that lived here first.”
She eyed him strangely for a moment, and again, he wished he could reach into her head so he’d know what she was thinking.
Then she looked down at the food he’d spread out on the blanket.
Her stomach growled, and she kneeled down on the edge, brushing off the loose grass before she sat cross-legged and picked up the bag of sliced French bread.
She layered soft cheese on top, folded it together, and took a bite.
“This is amazing, Kohl,” she said between bites. “Thank you. I’m starving.”
“Are you cold? I can build a fire.”
“I’m good.” She patted the blanket beside her.
Kohl sank down beside her, leaning back on his hands and stretching his legs out in front of him.
He watched her mouth as she ate. Watched her eyes close with pleasure at the taste of the food. Her joy with something so simple was palpable. “I’m glad you like it. I wasn’t sure what I should bring.”
Her hands, each holding a chunk of bread and cheese, fell into her lap as she looked out over the water and sighed. “This is perfect.”
She was beautiful sitting there in the glow of the lantern.
And when she looked back at him, her eyes exuded a warmth Kohl wasn’t sure what to do with.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t been with women before, of course he had.
He’d had his share of women all over Texas.
Not that they would remember, because he’d always had Hawke wipe their memories when he was finished.
But he’d never been this affected by them. Not like he was with Devon.
Needing something to quench the thirst that had suddenly erupted in his soul, he reached for the closest bottle of wine and popped the cork. Tipping it up to his mouth, he took a healthy swig.
Devon was staring at him when he lowered it again.
“What?”
“You can drink wine?”
Puzzled, he just nodded.
“Do you eat?”
He shook his head. “I thought you knew about us. About me.”
She grabbed a French fry he’d gotten from the fast food joint down the road from her apartment and took a bite, chewing thoughtfully. “I never worked directly with…people such as yourself.”
It was the perfect opening to find out what he needed to know, but he wanted to tread carefully. “You worked at Parasupe, right? What did you do there? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I worked internally. With network security.”
“So, you’re a hacker?” It was hard to imagine.
She gave a small shrug. “Sort of. But mostly I just kept the network safe so no one could penetrate our system. Of course, to do that”—her lips curved up in a little smirk—“I needed to understand how they did it.”
He handed her the bottle of wine and watched her look around for a glass, then tilt the bottle to her mouth when her search came up empty.
There were cups in his saddlebag he’d forgotten, but he found he liked watching her drink from the bottle.
Or, maybe it was knowing her lips were touching the glass where his had just been. “Can I ask what happened?”
Lowering the bottle, she licked away a drop of wine from the corner of her mouth.
Kohl’s upper lip twitched, his fangs quickly descending just from that tiny gesture with her tongue. He forced himself to focus. He wasn’t here to get off. He was here to get information. That was all. Devon wasn’t a woman he could fuck and never see again.
“I found out my boss and her minions were doing something they shouldn’t have been doing.”
“Something against company policy.”
“Something against my policy.” She took another drink. “And, technically, the company’s. It was just…wrong.”
He waited, giving her time to decide how much she should trust him. It didn’t take her long, and his patience was rewarded a few seconds later.
“The company was created by the U.S. government to keep an eye on supernatural creatures, and to suppress any danger to humanity. To remove it from the equation if necessary. But only if it was absolutely necessary. We weren’t there to play God.
” She brushed her hands off on her jeans and took another sip of wine before passing it back to him.
“And after all, starting a war with vampires wouldn’t exactly be conducive to keeping the general human population in the dark about who our neighbors really are, now would it? ”
“I take it employees of the company weren’t real concerned about that.” It wasn’t really a question. He knew damn good and well the company didn’t follow what they preached. It wasn’t made up of enforcers. It was made up of assassins.
Devon shook her head, and Kohl watched, entranced, as the breeze lifted her curls until they danced around her face. “No. They weren’t. Not all of them.”
“So you turned them in,” he guessed. “And that’s why you were at trial.”
“At the time, I was in disbelief. And I was angry that anyone would take it upon themselves to just wipe out souls on a whim.” She looked away, out over the water. “Now, I wish I’d kept my damn mouth shut.”
“You did what you thought was right.”
“I did it to get back at my boss for cheating on me.”
Kohl frowned, thrown off by the confession.
Her fingers twisted in her lap and she shifted uncomfortably.
“I was sleeping with the head of my department. But apparently I wasn’t the only one.
When I found out about it, I went to confront them in their office, and I overheard a conversation I shouldn’t have.
I turned around and went back to my desk to check out what I’d just heard.
That’s how I found out what they were really doing. ”
Heat rose within him, hot as blue fire. Whether at the thought of anyone hurting her, or the fact someone else had touched her intimately, he didn’t know. But he was going to find this male who had taken advantage of her. After all, accidents happened all the time. “He was a fool.”
Devon nodded. “Yes, she was.”
His murderous thoughts didn’t diminish because the lover who hurt her was female.
She continued her story, unaware of the murderous contemplations roaming around in his head.
“I started digging into her files. Anything I could find or crack on the network—her emails, her reports, her private correspondence, everything. Some I had access to, some I didn’t.
But I didn’t care. I found what I was looking for and made it look like I’d stumbled across it accidentally, and I turned her in.
She was the one leading the hunt. So, I set up a meeting.
My mom’s best friend was involved with the creation of Parasupe, and her recommendation is how I got the job there.
She’s known me since I was three, and I knew she would probably be the only one who would believe me.
As soon as I told her what I’d found, she was on the phone.
Within an hour I was secluded in a room and put under protection.
I told the lawyers I would testify, and I was kept under wraps until the court date.
The trial took place in a closed court, and the public was told there was a breach within the company.
Something to do with not following some serious environmental laws. ”
“She got exactly what she fucking deserved, Devon. Not all of us are monsters.” Himself excluded. Not because he purposefully set out to hurt anyone, but because he couldn’t control the beast within him.
Meeting his eyes for the first time since she began her confession, she smiled slightly.
“She did. But she also ruined my life. As soon as the trial was over, she set out to destroy me from her prison cell. Before a week had gone by, my face was plastered all over social media, and not in a good way. In the inner circles of the company, I was blasted as a liar, a Supe-lover, a traitor to humanity. To the rest of the world, I had used my position in the company to carry out my own anti-environmental agenda. They even said I wasn’t a citizen, that I was, essentially, a spy.
Here to bring down this country all by my little old self.
I couldn’t go anywhere without being harassed.
Death threats appeared almost daily in my mailbox, under my front door, and once I left my house in the morning to find “cunt” and a hangman’s noose spray-painted down the side of my car.
” She paused, and took a deep breath. “I had to get out of there. So, I moved here to Austin. And I’ve been laying low ever since. ”
She looked up at him with a rueful smile. Her eyes widened. “Kohl? What’s happening to you?”
He was gonna hunt down and kill every one of those motherfuckers, that’s what was happening.