Chapter 44
Cold Fingers
I stood up and whirled toward him.
Too handsome.
And he knew it, because he was smirking again.
“Turn around,” I barked and pointed behind him. “If you so much as even peek, I’ll shoot an arrow right through your skull. And I know you can’t heal if the object is still inside of you, so you’ll just be dead until I say so.”
Soren pressed his lips together to smother a smile. Then I got a nod, and he turned away.
I tried to change as quickly as possible, which was not very quickly at all, considering the broken fingers and the state of my torn-up skin. All sorts of grunts and curses spilled out as I finally freed myself from my top and put the dry one on.
“You alright back there, Xiao Ying?” Soren asked with a clear smile in his voice. “Need any help?”
I picked the bow up and cocked it audibly in answer.
“Alright,” Soren said with both hands in the air, the wings on his back fluttering over the movement of his muscles. “Don’t shoot. Just trying to be a gentleman and help a lady out.”
“Yeah, right,” I grumbled as I wrestled with my shorts.
“That’ll be the day. I’ve heard the rumors about your gentlemanly ways and have a few instances of my own for proof.
” Images of what Marigold liked to brag about with her redheaded friend in our survivalist class made me queasy.
I was only slightly less grumpy and way more out of breath when I finally put on the dry clothes. “Okay, perv. I’m done.”
Soren turned around and eyed me from head to toe, making me feel just as uncomfortable as if he’d watched me undress. Just as heated, too.
“Sit,” he nodded toward the clean patch of tile behind me. “You need to eat, drink, and sleep before we head out. This might be the last time we have a safe place to do so for quite some time.”
“We need to find the others. They’ll be waiting on us.” I moved toward the bag, now halfway between us, ready to grab it and start off again. I needed to be anywhere but alone with Mr. Smoldering Eyes.
Soren beat me to the pack and snatched it up, holding it above my reach with ease.
“Rest,” he commanded. And, ugh, that gravel in his voice. “There’s a hard way and an easy way to do this. I suggest you be a good girl and choose the easy way.”
My nose scrunched at the words ‘good girl,’ and I faked a retch.
My insides were definitely turning, but not in nausea.
They were turning traitorous at his low commands and suggestive innuendos.
To further cover my own thundering pulse, I rolled my eyes at him and shook my head while crossing my arms.
Soren ignored my attitude and unpacked a self-inflating mat, a nutrient bar, and a canteen.
Apparently, the ire of a teenage girl wasn’t enough to ruffle his inky, black non-feathers.
Of course, he would continue to take care of me.
It was his job. As unprofessional as he was, he enjoyed forcing me to do things, whether such things were good for me or not.
“Drink it all,” he instructed as he passed the canteen to me. “The canteens filter water. I’ll refill it when you’re done.”
I stared at the mat with reservation. I shouldn’t relax around this guy. Last time we were alone and not running for our lives, he nearly ravaged me.
“Do you need me to make you sit?” he asked, daring to cock a half-grin at me.
Then, reluctantly, I crept toward the mat, wiping my feet on the wet shorts before curling onto the soft surface. “Thanks,” I muttered.
Soren took my old, empty canteen, knelt by the water I’d nearly died in, and refilled it.
“Where are we, anyway?” I asked, halfway through a nutrient bar. “Is this some kind of river that runs under the city?”
Soren glanced at me as he handed back the refilled canteen. “It’s the sewers. We’re under the city right now.”
“But where are the wires? Shouldn’t there be cables or something?” I looked up instinctively—as if I could see The Tower through the solid stone of the sewer ceiling.
“Sewers back then weren’t for power grids,” he said, eyeing the canteen in his hand. “They were for…water systems.” Something about the way he said that last bit made me want to do more research on Ancient sewers once I had access to a library again—if I ever had access to a library again.
I shoved the rest of the bar in my mouth and pushed up from the mat. “Okay, snack break’s over. We’ve got people waiting on us—”
“Sit.” His voice cracked like a whip.
I flopped back down with a groan. “I rested!”
“You need sleep, Little Shadow. You’re human.
And this is the last place I can guarantee we’ll be safe enough to sleep for a while.
Besides, the air is cleanest down here, and sleeping in the toxic fumes that The Tower has been pumping into the city for 3,000 years would probably kill you.
You might only last a day or two. We’ll stick to the sewers for as long as possible and only surface once we get close to The Red Room. ”
He laid our wet clothes out beside the water on a patch of tile he’d cleaned off, then added, “Adriel will send a signal when the others reach the city. Until then, we wait.”
“How will you know how to get there?” I asked. “And how do you know so much about The Last City? I thought Adriel was the expert.” Resigning to defeat, I tried to lie back, only to yelp and immediately roll to my side and off of the painful gashes lining my back.
Soren’s brow furrowed. He grabbed the pack and came to kneel beside me. “Lie on your stomach.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
Without warning, he pressed a hand to my shoulder and rolled me over.
Cold fingers crept beneath the hem of my shirt. Yet, the chill felt much closer to burning flames.
Oh, no!
“Try not to get too turned on,” he muttered with a soft chuckle as if he knew, sliding his hands up my sides to push the fabric out of the way with too much purpose.
I wriggled instinctively, both from the chill and from something else I didn’t want to name.
Okay, it was pretty obvious even without a name. Soren touching me was the most awfully magnificent feeling I think I’d ever experienced. No way could I allow him to have that much power over me.
“What are you doing?” I slapped at his hand as it reached halfway up my ribs to bunch my shirt just beneath my breasts.
Both of his hands disappeared, only to return around my wrists. He twisted gently but firmly, pinning my arms above my head in one swift motion.
“What are you doing?!” I shrieked this time, my voice echoing off the sewer walls.
Soren’s hot breath grazed my ear as he leaned over me.
“I’m trying to take care of you,” he whispered. “Now, be a good fucking girl and be still for me.”
I swallowed hard, my voice barely a whimper. “I-I can take care of myself.”
“I’m just applying medicine, Eliana. No need to get all worked up.”
Easy for you to say, you cold-hearted bastard. You probably touch a different girl like this every day!
Meanwhile, I could count on one hand the number of times a guy had touched the bare skin under my shirt, and none of those times had my blood pressure climbing through the roof like now.
Soren held my wrists but shuffled behind me, rifling through the pack.
Instead of simply relishing in the relief from his attention, I strained my neck to watch him, but only caught a glimpse of his hair hanging by his face and his free arm reaching off to his side.
It was hard to move into a better vantage point with the grip he still had around my wrists.
“Now, if you can agree to stop getting in my way,” he said, “I’ll let your hands go.”
I exhaled and let out a soft hum of agreement.
The next time his hands were on me, they were wet and slippery and running across what felt like a chasm in my skin. I hissed in a breath and bucked involuntarily.
“Stop moving,” he warned.
“It hurts,” I bit out.
He paused for a moment. “It’s because I used to live in this city.”
“What?”
“I know so much about The Last City because I lived here. With Adriel.”
“You guys lived here? Why?”
“It wasn’t The Last City back then,” he said, voice quiet, fingers moving again. “It was called Shanghai. It was one of the world’s most populous cities. I was born there. Adriel moved there as a teenager to attend school while his parents worked for the Chinese government.”
Well, that was a good way to distract me. I twisted just enough to shoot him a wide-eyed look. “Wait. You mean to tell me you and Adriel are both over 3,000 years old and used to live in a place called Shanghai before The Tower was built on top of it?”
“Stop wriggling,” he said dryly, resettling his hand on my back. “You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be.”
I stilled, but repeated my question. “So you and Adriel are over 3,000 years old then?”
“Technically,” he said as his fingers skimmed over a deep gash, “I’m twenty-three.
I just made a decision 3,000 years ago that has left me practically frozen in time.
Now I don’t age. Adriel is 21. His transformation wasn’t his choice at all.
It just happened to be his shit luck to get bitten by a vampire queen right before the world ended and eradicated most of the vampire population. ”
For some stupid reason, the idea of him not aging and me turning into an old, wrinkled hag flashed through my mind as if there were any reason at all for me to care about that scenario.
“Vampire?!” I croaked.
Soren pressed the heel of his hand against my shoulders, now bunched up as I propped myself onto my elbows. It was only after I flattened myself back down again that he spoke.
“Yes. How else could he have survived being my friend for this long? He doesn’t have an actual soul for me to absorb, which is why the asshole thinks he can talk shit all the time.
” Soren’s deep chuckle set something fluttering behind my naked ribs.
“You didn’t know vampires were real, did you?
Even after learning about angels and succubi? ”