Chapter 25
Cyan woke to the aroma of coffee.
Yawning, she looked at her wrist comms. Five-fifteen in the morning. She blinked. Looked again.
Five-fifteen in the morning ? On a freaking Sunday?
Swinging her feet off the mattress, she groaned at the ache in her muscles and the tenderness between her thighs. She and Stryke had gone several more rounds during the night, the sex both leisurely and urgent as he discovered everything he’d been missing out on his entire life.
“Teach me,” he’d growled into her ear, his deep voice rumbling all the way to her core. “Keep my brain busy.”
She’d taught him, all right. He was a quick, eager student too. He was a practice-makes-perfect kind of guy, and once he mastered something, he used that knowledge to devastatingly erotic effect.
Only once had things taken a dark turn. They’d both gotten up for a glass of water, and after they’d quenched their thirst, they’d ended up with her against the kitchen wall and him between her legs. Pumping his hips in slow, grinding circles, he’d brought her to the brink—
Then stilled. Shadows crept into his eyes as the color drained from his face.
She’d quickly reached up and brought his mouth down to hers, then wrenched him away from the wall and took him to the floor.
“Fuck me, Stryke,” she’d growled as she rolled her hips and lifted until only the tip of him was inside her. Then she slammed back down.
He’d gripped her waist and lifted her up and down, his gaze fully engaged with hers again, the moment of distraction forgotten.
Afterward, he’d said the position had brought back his time with Popcorn Girl, and his body had sort of shut down. He’d thanked her for yanking him out of it and making their time on the floor something new for his brain to process.
So, yeah, they’d had a busy night. But he was up at too-dark o’clock, making coffee.
Yawning, she reached for the black satin robe he’d given her. Apparently, he kept one in every closet for Masumi. She tried to work out how she felt about the succubus as she slipped into the garment, but truthfully, she wasn’t sure. She hardly had the right to be jealous, not when Masumi had kept him alive for years. She’d supported him, cared for him, and given him doses of truth he needed to hear. Cyan should be grateful, and she was. But that didn’t mean she wanted him to be with Masumi going forward.
She put the Masumi issue aside and padded down the hall toward the kitchen, where she found a cup and a note next to the coffee maker.
There’s coconut creamer in the fridge .
Wow. He really had done his research on her.
Impressed by his thoroughness, she prepared her brew to a rhythmic pounding coming from the open stairway just off the kitchen. When she was finished, she took the steps down and halted at the bottom so suddenly she nearly spilled her drink.
Stryke had an amazing laboratory down here. And, off in a well-lit cove, a second but smaller state-of-the-art gym, where he was destroying a punching bag.
“You know it’s Sunday, right?”
He shot her a glance before pummeling the bag with a jab-cross-jab combo. “I’m aware.”
“So, you don’t believe in sleeping in?”
“I have to go to work.”
She sipped her coffee. “Why? Is there an emergency?”
Jab-jab-uppercut. “I work every day.”
Ah. “Why am I not surprised?”
Jab-hook-slip. “Because it’s in keeping with my workaholic personality.”
“It’s also in keeping with your need to keep your mind busy and off other things.”
He stopped mid-strike. Stepped back from the dummy and dropped his hands.
She peered at him over the rim of her mug. “You know I’m right.”
For a moment, his jaw and fists clenched as he worked out the truth of what she’d said. So much of his life was about avoidance, but he actually seemed honest with himself about it.
“You’re right,” he acknowledged. “But I am obsessive about work. I have to be doing something . I’ve never been good at doing nothing.”
“Then why don’t you take today off? We’ll do something you’ve never done.” Silence. Just more clenching. “You don’t like your routine disrupted, do you?”
He smiled, and her heart hitched a little. Gods, he was gorgeous when he did that. “You know me too well.”
“I recognize the issue. My mom was like that,” she said. “She liked structure and routine. It’s where I get it too. Just…not to your extent.”
“So, what do you propose we do?”
She thought about that for a minute as she looked idly around his lab. The equipment was interesting, sure, but she’d worked with most of it and was familiar with the rest. No, what caught her interest were the personal touches.
Nowhere else in the house had them, aside from maybe the liquor cabinet and the dart board in the living room. But even those didn’t reveal much about him.
But down here, in his obviously beloved lab, he’d revealed a lot.
Like the chess board. Maybe she should challenge him to a game. She was pretty good.
“How are you at chess?” she asked.
“Very few people can beat me.” He worked at removing his boxing gloves.
“And by few, I mean only one.”
She laughed and then realized he was serious. “Okay, but I don’t recall seeing you on the list of world chess champions.”
“I don’t want the attention.” He carefully placed his gloves on a rack near a set of free weights. “But I’ve played with every living champion, and I’ve beaten them.”
She gaped. “Every one?”
He shrugged. “Money gets private games.”
Wow. “Who is the one person who can beat you?”
“Ares,” he said. “He can take a game off me now and then. But he’s also thousands of years old and a master tactician.”
So…chess was not an option. She kept looking.
One wall featured all his degrees and awards, interspersed with framed magazine covers. But the other three walls, lined with shelves, held a wide array of items, from a crystal skull…probably one of the crystal skulls…to models of NASA space shuttles and rockets. What appeared to be ancient artifacts from all over the world and Sheoul took up a lot of real estate as well.
Maybe they should visit a museum. He’d probably been to them all, though. Her gaze moved back to the space shuttle.
“I saw pictures of you at NASA headquarters a long time ago,” she said, remembering the photos of him surrounded by security that had been plastered all over the cover of a sleazy tabloid. The hit piece had questioned why a government entity with highly secret tech and sensitive information would allow a demon anywhere near one of its facilities, let alone work with one. “Is that where you got the models and patches?”
He strolled over to the shelf and ran his finger fondly over one of the rockets. “The NASA director sent them to make up for not hiring me. Or paying me for my designs and research. They couldn’t be seen collaborating with a demon, you know.”
“You sound a little bitter.”
One shoulder twitched in a dismissive shrug, but he couldn’t hide the wistfulness in his expression. “Growing up, it was my dream to work there. But that was a long time ago, and I have more money than they do, so that takes a lot of the sting out of it.” He smiled before dropping his hand to his side, his expression turning sad. She knew he was thinking about Chaos. “Besides, my life went in a different direction.”
She hated that he’d had so little joy in his life. A couple of months ago, she’d have thought his existence was basically nothing but joy. He had money, fame, power. Females wanted him, and males wanted to be him. He had everything.
Everything except happiness.
Meanwhile, she’d led a charmed life, but her recent losses had made her focus on her grief instead of the joy of the years before.
She wanted that joy back, and she wanted it for Stryke too. But how?
She contemplated the model rockets. Obviously, she couldn’t get him on a real one, but she did have an old friend at Kennedy Space Center who owed her a favor. A big one.
And Cyan was ready to call it in.
“I can’t believe you’ve never been on a private NASA tour,” Cyan said as they arrived at her apartment.
“I can’t believe you have a high-level contact who owed you a favor,” he said. “What did you do to earn that big of a payback?”
“I helped her bury a body.” She eyeballed the biometric scanner.
“Seriously?”
“Yep.” Her door whooshed open. “I told you we went to college together,” she said, and he nodded. “Well, one night we were working late on some research, and Jamie went home before I did. I only lived a few blocks away, so I always walked, and I was almost there when I heard someone sobbing behind an old house. I found her in a shed.” She ushered him through the doorway. “She was naked and bloody and scared to death, and the guy who assaulted her had a hatchet buried in his rib cage and was taking his last breath.”
“I’m glad he’s dead,” he growled as the door clicked shut.
Instantly, the scent of winter holiday spices dulled his anger and filled him with comforting warmth, one of the few scents that didn’t annoy him and he associated with pleasant childhood memories. His family, close and extended, loved the holidays, and they went big. Lots of gatherings at the Four Horsemen’s places, and lots of festivities and feasts at his parents’ house. Unlike his brothers, Stryke had never cared much about the food, music, or games, but he’d enjoyed the feeling of family. The closeness. The laughter.
He…missed that. For the first time in over a decade, he actually missed it.
“I don’t know if you heard,” she said as she dropped her purse onto the entryway bench, “but I told Jamie that NASA should be consulting with StryTech a lot more than they are.”
“Once they hear about my newest project, they will be.” Hell, NASA and every other space agency, private or government funded, would soon be clamoring to be involved.
“And what’s that?” she asked as she started toward the kitchen.
“I’m funding an operation to colonize the moon.”
She stopped dead in her tracks and swung around. “Are you serious?”
“You know Armageddon is coming, right? It’s not a vague concept anymore. There’s an actual timeline.”
“A timeline that’s kept from the public.”
“For good reason. People would panic if they knew there’s only nine centuries left.”
“Actually,” she said as she resumed her mission to the kitchen, “I would argue that after an initial panic, things would die down. Humans don’t seem to care about generations to come. They’ll just put off the problem until it has to be dealt with. And by then, it’ll be too late. Don’t need a crystal ball to see that one.”
“Hmm.” He hadn’t considered that. Humans baffled him sometimes. “You might be right.”
“So,” she said, “you mentioned Armageddon. Are you saying you want to put a population in space in case it doesn’t break our way, and the planet is taken over by evil?”
“Yep.”
“That’s pretty cool. Why not Mars?”
He looked around her apartment as he spoke, committing everything to memory and taking note of anything that might help him understand her more. And to his dismay, he understood that she liked bright colors and fluffy pillows.
“Mars is far less inhabitable than Earth’s moon,” he said, wondering what all the boxes were about. Was she moving in or out? “And the distance and logistics involved make it unfeasible, given the short amount of time we have to get it done.”
“Got a timeline?” She pulled a couple of Belgian beers from the fridge. “Like, during my lifespan?”
“Your lifespan is similar to mine, right? Five hundred years or so?”
She fetched an opener from the drawer. “Give or take. Can you reserve me a spot on the first rocket off this shithole?”
He laughed. “I think that can be arranged. We can make the trip together.” He kind of stumbled over that, seeing how he’d just implied that they were a couple. A thing. And that they would still be in the estimated two hundred years he needed to establish a colony.
Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, she ignored it, sparing them both an uncomfortable moment.
“Thank you for bringing me home,” she said as she popped the tops off the bottles. “You didn’t have to do that. I’m only a block from the Harrowgate.”
He took one of the offered drinks. “I wanted to see your place.”
She gave him a you’re-full-of-shit look. “You wanted to see how I live.”
There was no point in denying it. “You can tell a lot about someone by what they keep in their personal space and how they treat it.”
“And what does my personal space say about me?”
He used his ale to gesture at the pile of boxes. “Are you in the middle of moving?”
“Shanea was.”
Of course. Shanea had been her roommate. Now, he had no idea what to say, and he wasn’t usually left speechless.
Finally, he managed a soft, “I’m sorry.”
He expected a snarky reply or, at the very least, a hateful glare. Instead, she just stared at all the moving materials and looked sad. “I miss her.”
Unsure how to respond, he checked out the books on her shelves—mostly scientific and engineering texts, as well as a lot of spell books and tomes about magic. Completely expected. There were pictures of people he assumed were her parents, as well as a couple of college photos and lots of pictures of her with Shanea and her fiancé, Draven.
And, on the floor, were some torn-up pictures of Stryke. Magazine articles. She’d also done a confetti job on an aerial photo of the StryTech facility.
She came over and looked down at the mess. “I was really pissed at you.”
“I see that.”
“I told you; I admired you, Stryke.” She looked over at him, her cheeks flushing an adorable pink. “I mean, okay, maybe I was a little obsessed with you for a while. You were my rock star crush, you know?”
He hated that he’d let her down the way he had everyone else. And he hadn’t even known her when it happened. It was quite the feat. Stryke really was good at everything, wasn’t he?
“And then I disappointed you.” Fuck. Stryke stood there, feeling dazed. He’d spent most of his life knowing he was different. Above average in a lot of ways. Enviable for his looks, intelligence, power, and wealth.
And yet, an utter failure in so many other aspects of his life.
He was socially inept in situations where he wasn’t in charge. He didn’t care what people thought of him. He was okay with being an asshole. So, yeah, he failed basic personhood.
Why would anyone consider him their rock star crush?
He wasn’t sure what to think or say, and uncertainty made his chest tighten, and his head throb.
“I’m, ah…” He jacked his thumb toward the front door. “I’m gonna go. It’s getting late.”
“You don’t have to—”
“No, no…I do.” He set his bottle on the kitchen island. “My brain feels like it’s about to malfunction.”
“Have you tried turning it off and back on?”
Her attempt at tech humor made him laugh, releasing some of the turmoil. He liked how she could do that to him so easily.
“I had a good time today,” he said, meaning it to the depths of his soul. “It’s been a long time since I did anything fun.”
“That’s because you’re so busy taking care of the world that you don’t take care of yourself.”
“I take care of myself,” he protested.
“Really?” She rocked her head toward the door. “So, just right now, were you planning to leave, take an injection, and then work in your lab for a few hours instead of stripping me naked and actually enjoying yourself?”
Guilty as charged. He’d injected himself once during the time they’d been at NASA, and he’d need either sex or an injection within the next hour.
For the first time ever, he envied Blade. Blade would know what to say right now. He’d know what to do. But this was all new territory for Stryke. His idiot brother might not know the difference between a neutron and a kangaroo, but he knew his way around the females.
So, yeah. Look who’s the idiot now .
“Look,” he started before pausing, hesitant to reveal how little he knew about relationships. “I’m comfortable in my lab. I’m comfortable being alone. I’m not comfortable in unfamiliar situations. Like now.” He shoved a frustrated hand through his hair. “I don’t know what’s going on between us. I’ve never done this before. I don’t even know what this is.”
“That makes two of us,” she said, making him feel a little better. “What do you want it to be?”
He had no freaking clue, and it left him unsettled. He hadn’t had time to process the last few days, let alone his feelings about them.
“What do you want it to be?” he asked, hoping she was better at this than he was. Which made him realize he knew nothing about her past relationships. Now, he wanted to. What kind of males was she attracted to? How many had she been with? Had she ever been in love?
Had she slept with Parker?
The idea made his jaw clench and his blood steam. Maybe he didn’t want to know about her past after all.
Bracing one hand on the counter, she appeared to consider his question. “I don’t know. My feelings about you have changed, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
They were so alike in that way.
“Maybe,” she continued, “we should just play it by ear. You know, see how things go for the next couple of weeks. I’ve got a lot of work to do in the lab, and I’m sure you have a mess to deal with between the Gehennaportal, the WCSG’s investigation, and your company. Let’s wing it.”
“Wing it?” Fucking wing it ? He was wrong about her. They weren’t alike at all. “I don’t wing anything.”
“You did today,” she pointed out. “You played hooky from work and went on a last-minute boondoggle. It was all very spontaneous.”
Sure, he’d give her that. But he was willing to adapt to changes under certain conditions. Like the fact that it was Sunday, and he didn’t have to go into work.
And he’d wanted to spend time with Cyan.
“But I get it,” she said. “You need some structure.”
“And rules.”
Her skeptical expression amused him. “I didn’t think you followed rules.”
He grinned. “I don’t. But I need to know them, at least.”
“I can respect that.” She folded her arms across her chest and settled in for what looked like a negotiation. Those, he was comfortable with. “Okay, how about we agree to meet at least once a day?”
Sounded reasonable. “Agreed. Are we exclusive?”
“That would make us an official couple. Are you ready for that? Because I don’t think I am.”
He didn’t see himself being with any other female, but the idea of being in an official relationship was too much. “Agreed.”
She nodded. “Good, because I’m supposed to meet Parker for dinner sometime this week.”
Jealousy burned a hole in Stryke’s chest, and when he spoke his voice sounded warped. “Are you dating him?”
“Nah.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “We’re just meeting to discuss a few aspects of our project over a pizza. I owe him for bringing me food the night I got back from the Sea Storm .”
The male had been here ? Inside her apartment? Sudden, possessive anger flared hot, and Stryke had to tamp it down before he did something stupid. Like fire the guy. Or have Behvyn blow some bad luck his way. That was always amusing.
“So, are we good to go?” she asked.
Stryke could live with the agreement. But her dinner with Parker had better be her last. “We are.”
“Good.” A slow, naughty smile made his groin tighten as she stripped off her shirt. “Now, let’s make it official.”