Read Shaedes of Gray: A Shaede Assassin Novel Online

Authors: Amanda Bonilla

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Shaedes of Gray: A Shaede Assassin Novel (8 page)

BOOK: Shaedes of Gray: A Shaede Assassin Novel
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I brought the blade around in a movement so fast that it must have been a blur in his slow human vision. The steel winked at me, the tip glinting against the hollow of his throat, and I pressed gently against his tender skin. Propping myself on the other elbow, I glanced down at his hand still touching me.
He didn’t make a sound. Actually, he didn’t even jump. I had to give him credit: The boy had balls. His mouth spread into a slow, sheepish grin, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Giving a gentle shake of my head, I pressed the blade deeper into the recess of his throat. “May I ask what you’re doing?” I didn’t move the blade. Not an inch.
“Admiring you,” he said. “You look different when you’re asleep. Softer.”
Had he known I’d been watching him last night? Rather than push him away, my actions were only drawing us closer. I wanted to slap myself for being stupid enough to let Tyler kiss me outside of that warehouse.
“You know, it’s not advisable to molest a dangerous woman while she sleeps. You might find yourself bereft of your head.”
“I would never hurt you, Darian,” he said.
Here we go again
. I’d just told him that if he didn’t take his hands off me I was going to give his head a permanent vacation from his shoulders, and he said
he
wouldn’t hurt
me
. “Ty, you couldn’t hurt me if you wanted to,” I said in a voice gentle as falling snow. I wondered why he hadn’t pulled away from the dagger. All he’d have to do is sit up straighter, but he seemed to delight in leaving his life in my hands.
Sick.
I fought the urge to smile.
“Tyler.” I spared what little patience I had to offer. “Being as I’m naked under this sheet, it would be a good idea for you to take your fingers for a walk and give me a little privacy.”
His eyes widened, like he’d never actually considered what might be under the sheets, though I knew he’d gotten a nice, long look. He leaned in, pressing against the dagger as if he’d forgotten I was still holding it there. It pricked the skin, and a crimson drop bloomed and forked as one path followed the curve of the blade.
“Do you have a death wish?” I asked, watching the other trail of red make its way down the peachy flesh of his throat.
“Something like that,” he murmured, adding to the utter weirdness of the moment.
I pushed myself upright and felt the sheet give way, revealing a generous portion of my breast. Tyler’s eyes shone like someone had lit a candle behind each of them. I expected a thin line of saliva to trickle from the corner of his mouth at any second. The hand that he’d rested at his side twitched.
“Yesterday . . .” he started to say.
“Was yesterday,” I finished for him. “And today is today. We work together, Ty. That’s all. I shouldn’t have let you kiss me.”
“You liked it,” he said, pushing himself against the blade again.
Maybe Ty was less of a tough guy than I’d given him credit for, or maybe he was simply like all men—one thing on the brain.
“What I would or would not
like
to do with you is immaterial.” I argued my point in the most logical way possible. “We work together, and I don’t blur the lines between my personal life and business.”
Dismissing my argument, he reached out, ran the backs of his fingers across my cheek. “You don’t have a personal life.”
He did have a point. I didn’t have friends, family, or acquaintances. And there was a reason for that. My pulse picked up as his fingers left my face in favor of my arm, trickling slowly across my skin from shoulder to wrist. I wanted to return the gesture and just trace his skin with my fingertips.
His hand continued to wander as slowly as if he were approaching a hungry tiger, coming to rest on my thigh. A thin cotton sheet was all that separated our skin, and I can’t say it wasn’t exciting. The touch of his cooler skin permeated the fabric and left a trail of chills as he ran his hand along my thigh and up over my hip, curling around my waist.
I lowered the dagger. It wasn’t doing any good, and I found I didn’t feel much like threatening him anymore. When had my mouth gone dry? God, he was ridiculously beautiful. Tyler’s chest rose and fell with his breath, and I imagined what he’d look like without his shirt, his muscled chest beneath my hands. I gathered my bottom lip between my teeth. He took the action as consent and swooped down to lay his mouth to mine. I came to my senses just in time and rolled, taking the sheet with me. Tyler fell to the mattress, getting nothing but a mouthful of pillow.
By the time he sat up, I stood at the bathroom door. As I passed through the threshold I said, “Time for you to go, Ty. I’ll talk to you later.” I closed the door behind me and turned on the shower, determined to ignore him. Through the sound of rushing water, my keen hearing didn’t have to strain to hear the gate slam down over the lift. I leaned my forehead against the cool tile wall and let out a deep breath. The unique scent that was all Ty swirled in my memory, and I was less than relieved to be alone with my thoughts. No doubt Tyler was pissed.
He’d get over it.
 
I lay across my bed, arms and legs splayed out like a starfish. Clouds chased each other across the skylight. Patches of blue peeked between the fluffs of gray and white. Xander’s words played on a loop in my head, messing with me as I tried to comprehend all that I did not know.
I would have made a great poker player. I could bluff like nobody’s business. What Azriel hadn’t taught me could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and what I did know might have filled a tumbler, if I were lucky. Maybe if he’d done his job and given me some basis for my existence, something to define who and what I had become, I might not have been so hard. I might have actually given a damn about something.
I’d never tried to seek out another inhuman creature. Azriel told me there were no others. I believed him too. Stupid, blind faith. He’d never given me reason to doubt him, and I’d never seen proof to the contrary. What an idiotic notion. Had the Shaede population purposely stayed away? Had they known about me all along and silently spied as I lived my life? Jesus, the thought made me sick. Why show up now and ruin the illusion Azriel had so easily crafted? And if more Shaedes roamed the earth, what else existed beyond my scope of reality? I shivered at the thought.
For too many years I had simply existed. Going through the motions, making more money than I could spend, eating, sleeping, drinking, killing, finding pleasure when I wanted it. But I had not lived in a very long time. I had not known companionship, tenderness, camaraderie, and a sense of duty or purpose. I had not known love.
Xander said I was ignorant. He said I knew nothing of myself, my people, or my skills.
And he was right.
So it was no big surprise that I went out looking for him as soon as the sun went down.
I traveled as my shadow self for both speed and cover. I don’t know why I thought he’d be at the warehouse, sitting on that damned throne in the middle of an empty building. So I shouldn’t have been put out when I didn’t find him there.
After that, I checked the town house. Not a single light illuminated the lonely windows, and though his scent lingered, he hadn’t been there for at least a couple of days.
Beleaguered, I went to The Pit. I didn’t want to sit in my apartment and stew, so I decided to seek out diversion in the crowds of humans who went out night after night, trying to define their fleeting lives with even more fleeting encounters.
The club was packed with humans celebrating the end of the work week. They played their usual games, rituals that centered on flirty gestures, suggestive conversations, and the occasional flash of skin. I leaned against the bar and watched, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible. It would be only a matter of time before someone homed in on the faint glow of my eyes or my flawless porcelain skin and decided to throw their hat in the ring.
Levi, the bartender that night, slid a bright blue drink in my direction. The first one of the night was always on the house. Cute, preppy, and completely out of place, Levi looked like an Abercrombie ad. He also struck me as a good guy. He never came on to me and always flashed a friendly smile when I walked in. If he had any idea about my otherness, he never asked. He didn’t stare and gave me space, one of the main reasons why I favored The Pit.
The bar seemed to be the lake that most lonely single men fished from, so I left with my drink and gave Levi a silent toast as I walked away. I found a nice dark corner, and, with the help of my black clothes, melted right into the scenery.
Tyler showed up after I’d been there an hour. He must have had some kind of internal Darian tracking system, because he made a beeline for my table.
I looked away, watching the humans on the dance floor as if I were totally engrossed in their gyrations. Another thing I didn’t do. Dance.
I didn’t acknowledge him when he slid into the seat next to mine, and I tried not to pay attention to how great he smelled. Like an antsy kid, he fidgeted silently, waiting for me to look at him. I wanted to—those hazel eyes of his had a tendency to suck me in—but I’d learned pretty quickly that if you gave Ty an inch, he took about five miles.
Oh, man, he smells good.
“Aren’t you going to talk to me?”
The sensation of his breath in my ear sent a zinging rush right through my center. I refused to admit that Tyler had the most delicious mouth I’d ever tasted, and I banished the memory of our passionate moment to the farthest recesses of my mind.
“If Xander always called you, how did you get in touch with him to set up the meeting last night?” I stuck to business. Business . . . business . . . business.
“He called me right after you left here. I guess he knew you’d be fired up to meet him.”
My jaw clenched like a vise. Xander’s recent disappearance really rubbed me the wrong way. I did not wait at anyone’s beck and call, and the least he could offer for the inconveniences he’d caused in my existence was a few answers.
Turning away from Tyler, I centered my focus on the dance floor again. A very young woman pulled up her shirt and tucked it underneath her bra. She stroked her belly like it was a magic lamp. The guy next to her rubbed himself up and down her body. It might have been sexy if either one of them had been more coordinated—or sober—but as it was, they just looked ridiculous. I cracked a grin as I watched them bump and grind, thinking wryly to myself that at one time, the Charleston had been considered lewd.
Tyler’s hands moved up my back by small degrees, creeping against the thin fabric of my T-shirt and over my shoulders. His thumbs rested at the nape of my neck, and he wrapped his fingers around my throat. As soft as a spring breeze, his cool fingertips caressed my skin, fanning out toward my collarbone. I found the contact so completely erotic that I had to stop myself from throwing boundaries to the wayside and laying him across the table.
I didn’t have it in me to explain why this thing he wanted between us was not a good idea. And so I passed into shadow, not caring about the other humans scattered around the club, and moved silently through their masses to the exit.
 
Tyler wasn’t the only one with boundary issues.
I returned to my apartment to find Xander in my living room. For an oh-so-important king, he seemed to come and go as he pleased with little thought to security. Maybe I was spoiled by my heretofore solitary ways, because I wanted to knock him across the studio for the calm expression on his face.
“What are you doing here, Xander?”
He gave me the same treatment I’d given Tyler at the club, basically ignoring me to get some sort of rise. It worked.
“Is that how you address your king?” he asked, staring at the wall.
My king? My ass.
I still wasn’t excited by the idea that someone could hold dominion over me, no matter how much he insisted he could. I gave a quiet but derisive snort.
“My liege,” I began in my most regal voice, copying Anya’s from the previous night. “I am both humbled and honored that you have graced my hovel with your imperial presence. I am yours to command and wish nothing more than to serve you.”
The air in my apartment changed. Charged with energy, like a coming thunderstorm. Xander’s body became insubstantial, scattering in a violent pepper of black dust.
In a waft of sweet, fragrant heat, he reappeared to stand in front of me face-to-face, or, more to the point, face-to-chest. He stood so tall that I almost got a crick in my neck from looking at him. But I didn’t cower in the presence of anyone.
“You were looking for me tonight?” he asked.
With a movement so fast even I had a hard time tracking it, he ran his hands along my side, lifting up my shirt along the waist. My breath caught in my throat as he passed a warm palm along the gash in my side—almost completely healed, save for a thin white line.
“You’re healing well.” The sound of his rich voice lulled me, banishing any trace of anger. He pulled the shirt down and flashed a very unkingly grin. “What do you want of me?”
At that moment, I could have made a list a mile long and comprised of the different things I
wanted
of him. And then I came to my senses. I thought about Ty, sitting alone at the club, the things he’d said, the way his mouth pressed against mine, and my feelings for him, despite the rules I’d laid down for myself.
BOOK: Shaedes of Gray: A Shaede Assassin Novel
4.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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