Chapter 4 #2
My chair rolled smooth as silk. The armrests were cool under my fingertips.
The lacquered desk reflected the faintest movement, pillar-straight pens and folders perched in precise alignment along its edge.
A diffuser ran in the corner, pumping out a grounding, woody mix of cedarwood and frankincense into the space.
Where I enjoyed the familiar nostalgia of stepping back in time to our Egyptian homeland in the chambers of judgment below the hotel, I appreciated the modernity of my office.
It was a refuge of order and efficiency, a pristine temple of contemporary design, where my mind could find solace and clarity amidst the chaos of the world.
Though I failed to feel that clarity with Aaron hovering over the corner of my desk. He picked up one of the pens, rolling it between his fingers.
A vivid memory of his dexterous fingers wrapping around me flashed hot and bright, hitting me right in the solar plexus.
I cleared my throat against the sudden heat building inside. “I need you to tell me what Seth is planning.”
Aaron shrugged with indifference even though his clear blue eyes stayed glued to me with an unerring focus. “He’s putting on a show. He’s hyping me up. Making me famous, I guess.” He set the pen down, askew on my desk.
The off-kilter position of it burgeoned a faint pressure that settled between my eyes.
Aaron wandered over to the bookshelves, unbothered.
I stood up and rounded my desk to pick up the errant pen and set it back in the cup with the others.
“And you want to be famous?” I prodded.
Aaron regarded the rows of old tomes. “I guess. It doesn’t really matter much to me.” He picked up a glass paperweight shaped like a pyramid then set it down on a shelf below before walking on. This time the bridge of my nose prickled with an irritation I could not explain away.
“All I really want is to feel the rush, you know what I mean? And since becoming a vampire, I can do a lot of crazy shit.” He tossed me a grin over his shoulder.
Like I should be impressed with his wild death stunt habit.
The vision of his leather-clad body in that helmet descending from the sky, straddling that bike now took on a whole new tenor in my memory.
Why did his recklessness pull at me? I could never logically understand why that part of him appealed to me. Or maybe logic wasn’t part of it.
It was just...all of him. The way he’d tease me when I’d go to get my coffee from Perkatory.
The grin that lit up his entire face until it felt like I was looking at the sun itself.
Even when he got stuck in a stutter, he never seemed to let it bother him, and I never minded waiting until he got his bearings.
There was such warmth that rolled off him that I felt my cold immortality melt and flex underneath it, until I came alive.
That same grin now had me brusquely clearing my throat as hot tingles swept up my arms and shoulders, moving up my neck and landing in my ears, which were no doubt a bright red.
“Yes, but you don’t know Seth, not like I do.
” I crossed over and moved the miniature pyramid back to its original spot.
“He can't be trusted. He’s been looking to usurp Grim since the beginning of time.
I have no doubt he is up to something, and I wouldn't put it past him to use you to get what he wants.”
Seth had tried to grab the power for himself over many different lifetimes. I could only assume he was attempting to try again, thinking I’d be the weak link he could tear through to get at what he wanted. Ultimate power so he could run things more to his liking.
I couldn’t help but think he was using Aaron to meet those ends, though I had no idea how that would be possible. There were plenty of vampires in circulation now and their relationships with gods were carefully watched and monitored.
Or they were monitored by Vivian, before she went off with her husband, Grim, merrily into the Afterlife with her reaper companion, Cupcake.
Which meant someone needed to look into this dynamic a bit closer. That someone would have to be me.
Aaron pulled out another book, flipping through it absently. My grip tightened reflexively, then refused to loosen.
“Would it bother you more that Seth wants your throne, or that he might be using me to do it?” he asked.
I wanted to correct him that it was Grim’s mantle, but who knew how long before he was back? I was, in fact, the acting God of the Dead. And I could be for years to come. There was no guarantee Grim would return at all.
With Grim now reporting to Osiris in the Afterlife, he might find himself reassigned to entirely different duties for all eternity—leaving me stuck here weighing the worth of souls until the end of time.
Before I could think too hard about that or before Aaron could move yet another one of my items to the completely wrong spot, I took the book from his hands. “Is that what he’s doing? Using you? How is that possible?”
I needed to know. I had to stop Seth before he started something. My position was too new to believe that Seth wasn’t looking for a way to take advantage of the vulnerability of my position.
Aaron’s face was oddly void of expression. “It was a hypothetical question.”
Oh.
He had been asking me which I cared about more.
Aaron was fishing. He wanted me to say I cared if he were exploited.
Suddenly, I found myself holding the book too tightly.
I carefully reshelved it. Did this mean he wanted me to want him?
Aaron was the one to walk away, not me.
Not that you’d given him a real chance, something in my head whispered with merciless observation. You told him you could never be together so many times. You might as well have told him to leave town.
“I’m bothered by all of it,” I end up saying noncommittally.
Aaron flicked the highly accurate replica of the Nanchang Star Ferris wheel in China. My patience thinned to a wire.
I stopped the turning wheel by covering his hand with my own.
“Could you stop?”
“Stop what?”
“Stop...touching things.”
His lips curved up, lined with mischief.
“Oh, I see how it is.” I rolled my eyes, finally catching on. “You are driving me mad on purpose.”
“Only because it’s so easy to rile you up. And you should think of it as a favor. I’m trying to help you loosen up, Timothy.”
All my focus narrowed to where my hand was on his. No longer warm when he was human, his flesh was cold but still strong. I should pull away, but I couldn’t.
Judging by the way Aaron’s pupils expanded outward into dark pools, I wasn’t the only one affected by the touch.
Aaron stepped closer, and again I was drowning in the heady mix of his cologne and skin.
“I have another show coming up,” Aaron said in a low voice that suddenly hushed the room into a close intimacy I couldn’t ignore. “I’d like you to be there.”
“Why?” The question came out hoarse, affected.
“You know why,” he pressed. Aaron’s eyes searched mine with fervor as his brows knit in pleading distress.
He wanted me to come for him.
Even without speaking, Aaron broadcasted his need.
He wasn’t over me any more than I was over him.
His finger lifted under mine so it parted my knuckles, wedging it there.
I fought the urge to shut my eyes. I swallowed hard, throat clicking in the silence.
How long had it been since I’d touched anyone much less the man I’d been left haunted by for the last three years?
Four years since Vegas, since the warmth of his skin met mine, and now even his vampire’s touch burned cold fire up my arm, igniting my every desire and want.
I stepped back abruptly, the very skin on my hand aching and screaming as I separated it from Aaron’s.
“You are bonded to Seth,” I said, more to remind myself.
One crack in my resolve, and Seth would pry it open wide enough to topple everything I had been entrusted to guard.
Or worse, if Seth caught even a whiff that Aaron mattered to me, he would weaponize him against me in an instant. He’d dangle Aaron as bait, or snap him like kindling, whatever broke me faster.
Aaron’s face shuttered. The heat in his gaze vanished all at once, leaving nothing behind.
Ice filled my chest as I was transported to that morning at my place. He wore the very same expression as he told me he was leaving Vegas.
“I should go,” he finally muttered.
“Yes,” I said. “You should.” My heart hurled itself against my ribcage in protest, not wanting to let him go.
Aaron left. The door shut behind him as final as a closed tomb.
On numb legs, I walked to sit behind my desk. My hand closed around the now-cooled coffee cup. I didn’t bring it to my lips, just held it.
Everything in me was tearing in two.
Should I have said yes?
Should I stay close to him to better keep tabs on Seth?
Should I stay away from Aaron to make sure Seth never finds out what he is to me?
I stared at the cup in my hand, willing myself to chuck it at the far wall, so that the milk and espresso exploded everywhere in a furious outburst. But no matter how I tried, it remained on the desk, in my hand.
Controlled, secure.
It’s what I did. It’s who I was.
And suddenly, I hated it.