Chapter 34
Cillian
We’ve christened the sofa, an armchair, her shower, her bed, her area rug, and her ab bench.
I have never in my life felt this out of control with lust. I don’t even know where my dick and balls get their stamina. All I know is that every kiss leads to fucking.
The only place we’ve yet to christen is the one place I love the most in a house: the kitchen.
I’m saving it for tonight—for after the three-course meal I intend to whip up while she and Calanthe are getting fitted for their dresses. The ones they’ll wear at the Hadezes’ wedding.
The wedding I’ve been invited to.
In Atlantis.
For a second there—right after she asked me to be her date—I thought it might be a setup.
Like she rode me bare, giving me the best sex of my life, just to loosen me up.
Get me talking. Get me to admit my name isn’t Cillian, my job isn’t gym coach, and the story about getting struck by lightning the first time I saw her is a complete fabrication.
When I didn’t answer fast enough, she’d gone pink and tried to climb off my lap, making me realize it was all nerves and not manipulation. I’d finally belted out a “yes” so full of enthusiasm it sounded like the answer to a marriage proposal.
I hadn’t cared if I seemed unhinged. All I’d cared about was clearing the blush from her cheeks and making sure I sounded less opportunistic little shit and more lovesick fool who’d travel to the ends of the earth with her.
Which I would, since Atlantis was probably going to be the end of the line for me.
“Hey, son, does this read coriander or nutmeg?” the old woman browsing the supermarket spice aisle beside me asks.
I glance at the glass jar. “Nutmeg. Is that what you were looking for?”
“No. I need the coriander.” She tries to set it back on the shelf, but her hands tremble too hard, so I park my shopping basket on the floor and help her.
“That’s the one you want.” I grab the coriander and put it in her shopping cart.
“Thank you.”
“What else is on your shopping list?”
I end up going around the grocery store with her, only leaving her side once all her purchases are tucked in the trolley she’d left beside the register. She pays me back in stories about her life as a military spouse, first in South Korea and then in Germany.
I learn that she now shares a home with her youngest, an elementary school teacher married to a fiction author. A very famous one. That her three other kids followed in their father’s footsteps—one is currently deployed abroad, while the other two rotate between US bases.
I considered enlisting at twenty so I could travel the world and fight another type of evil than the supernatural kind. But I’d wanted a break from violence so I could create instead of destroy.
As I turn away from the door to resume my shopping, my gaze lands on a familiar figure.
Electra stands with her arms crossed, a soft smile playing on her lips. I find myself smiling back as I approach her, the two spice jars I picked earlier rolling around my otherwise still empty basket.
“You really have a way with older women. I’m a little jealous.”
“Are you really?” I step right into her body, forcing her arms to loosen and her head to tip back. I lower mine for a chaste kiss that awakens the beast in my pants.
This girl, with her crisp scent, mismatched irises, and soft skin, has turned me into a sex fiend. At times—like this morning when I woke curled around her in bed, dick already hard—I forced myself to study her runes and recite the names of the four Hunters she’d killed.
A reminder of who she is. Of what she’s done.
Except this isn’t all she is and all she’s done.
When I’d entered through her lobby the previous evening, having run over instead of driven to burn off some energy, I got to talking with her doorwoman, Liz. In the span of ten minutes, I’d learned everything about Liz, but also many things about Electra. Surprising things.
Like Electra getting Liz her job after they met at a woman’s shelter where Liz worked and Electra volunteered.
Or Electra spending the afternoon with Liz’s daughter to write a recommendation letter—something Liz credits for the subsequent acceptance and full ride.
Throwing money at things isn’t a feat. But spending time with strangers, caring about them…that doesn’t fit the monster narrative that I was spoon-fed as a child and that I carried into adulthood.
If it weren’t for Quinn’s release hinging on the Atlantean mine’s destruction, I’d like to think I would’ve called off the mission and put miles between myself and this woman who’s slowly but surely making me lose my fucking mind.
“What are we shopping for?” Electra asks.
Her question—more the way she phrases it—tightens something in my gut. One week, and Electra and I have become a we. I keep waiting for it to fall apart, for her to admit she’s also conning me, because why else would she have welcomed me so fast into her life and onto her island?
I coerce my mind to quiet and slide my fingers through hers, towing her toward the seafood counter. “How do you feel about Chilean Sea Bass?”
“Like you feel about older women.”
I shake my head, draw her to a stop, and kiss her right there in the baking aisle, between flour sacks and honey jars. It’s not chaste. There’s tongue, teeth, saliva, whimpers, groans. It’s wildly inappropriate, but so fucking hot I don’t consider stopping.
Thankfully, she does. “That kind of entertainment usually comes with a cover charge,” she murmurs, straightening the backward cap on my head.
I grin like the pussy-whipped man I’ve clearly become, wind my arm around her waist, and resume our trek toward the back of the grocery store. “How did you find me?”
“You texted me you were going to the supermarket down the block just as I was leaving the dress fitting, so I asked Diego to drop me off.”
“How was this dress fitting?”
“Long.”
“Wish I could’ve been there.”
“To keep me company, or to help me out of the dress?”
“Both, but also to see you in it. I love it when you wear dresses.”
“Well, you’ll see it soon, since Labor Day is right around the corner.”
Will it be the last thing I see? It wouldn’t be the worst way to go, I suppose.
“Speaking of which…” Electra smooths a hand down my white tee. “You need a suit. Dorian recommended a tailor. Tell me your availabilities, and I’ll make an appointment.”
Even at my last job, I wasn’t brought into the fold this quickly. Accepting her kindness so easily doesn’t sit right. If only I were wired like Trenton—devoid of conscience and full of ego.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll rent something,” I end up saying, because I’d prefer to deposit what little money I’ll have left by then into the bank account I set up for Quinn.
“He’s on retainer,” Electra says.
My chest prickles—or rather, my ego does. “You’re not buying me a suit.”
She sighs but drops it.
At the seafood counter, she watches me select two prime fillets and chat with the fishmonger about origin and sourcing.
The offerings aren’t the freshest, but they’re the most convenient.
After he’s wrapped up the sea bass steaks in wax paper, Electra and I wander over to the produce section, where I bag a plump summer squash and a bunch of snap peas.
“You’ve never worked in a restaurant?” she asks, as I sort through the heirloom tomatoes until I’ve found the ripest, meatiest ones.
Since the best lies are founded on truths, I reply, “I have. I had a stint as a dishwasher. It let me watch the line cooks from the sidelines.”
She bobs her head like she’s buying my story.
I tie a knot in the produce bag and slot it beside the fish, then start for the fruit stand when I clock a girl standing on the other side of the display table—one with a serrated smile, a blonde braid, and gloved fingers curved together to form a heart.
I jerk my hand to the small of Electra’s back and press to steer her away from the leering Hunter. My pace is so clipped that Electra’s eyebrows wing up.
“Forgot the barley, and there was only one bag left when I passed by the aisle earlier,” I mumble.
She scrutinizes my profile, before throwing a look over her shoulder.
My lungs shrink to the point of pain, and my knuckles close so hard around the basket handles that the metal will permanently dent in my flesh. I ready an explanation—that I spotted the girl from the club, the one with the boundary problem, and didn’t want her to recognize me.
But when I look over at Electra, she’s not staring at a fixed point. Her eyes are roving…scanning.
Lara is gone.
I roll my neck, but it remains stiff. Did Trenton send her to check on me, or did she volunteer? Either way, it’s a fucking shit move. Completely reckless.
In a small town, running into the same people is normal. But not here. Not in a city this size. It’s like they want me to fail.
I try to shake off the dread my theory pours into my gut, but it only hardens with each passing hour, settling there like a block of cement. I’m still dwelling on it as I flick on the broiler. Usually cooking brings me peace, but not tonight.
Tonight, I feel so wound up I’m as likely to cause a kitchen fire as I am to pound out of Electra’s tower and head to the deli for a fucking explanation.
Arms lock around my waist. A cheek presses into the space between my shoulder blades. “I’m sorry I suggested taking you shopping. I didn’t realize you’d take offense.”
Electra’s unguarded apology undoes more than my irritation. It undoes me.
I hate that she thinks this is on her. That she’s likely been turning it over in her head, convincing herself she did something wrong.
I feel like the asshole of all time.
I twist around, the tension melting out of me faster and harder than if I’d hunted down Trenton and Lara.
I cradle Electra’s jaw, smudging her skin with the spice mixture I sprinkled over the sea bass. “It’s got nothing to do with your offer of getting me a suit. It’s a work thing.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.” I back her up onto the island. “I don’t feel like talking right now, but I do feel like getting out of my head. Can you help me with that?”
Her lips curve into a tentative smile even as her stare remains guarded.
I want to torch away that guardedness. I tell myself it’s for a selfish cause—to preserve my cover. But deep in my gut, I know that’s bullshit.
Truth is, the closer I get to Electra and learn about her, the more this mission feels doomed.
I need to pull away and reinforce the walls I’d so carefully constructed. Kick Reeve out and welcome Cillian back in.
Cillian can fall for Electra.
Reeve sure as hell cannot.
When she starts to sink to her knees, I hoist her back up. “No, babe. That’s not what I need.”
“I thought—”
I help her out of her leggings and thong, then sit her down on the island. “This is what I need.