Thief (12 page)

Axel shifted his intense gaze my way. “You hit him?”

I winced. “It was part of the deal.”

Axel smirked. “Good.”

“What?” Raven made a fist and planted it next to his temple. “It’s not okay to tease her but it’s okay for her to beat the shit out of me?”

“She’s a girl. If she manages to ‘beat the shit out’ of you, you’re going soft.”

“Hey,” I said, unsure which one of us that was meant to insult.

Axel turned on me, he opened his mouth and then stopped as his gaze lowered from my face to my shirt. I thought at first he was checking out my boobs, like most guys do when they look down.

Instead I followed his eyes. My shirt was covered in soda. Even my shorts were soaked.

Axel’s mouth dipped in the corner. “Your clothes are ruined.”

“It’s her own damn fault,” Raven said.

“It’s no big deal,” I said. I wiped my hand across the shirt, and then felt guilty as cola dripped to the floor. I eased the jacket off my shoulders.

Axel pinched the edge of the jacket. He passed it to Raven. “Get this cleaned. I’ll get her some new clothes to wear.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I said.

“You won’t walk around in soda-drenched clothes this in this apartment,” Axel said. He made a wide step to get around soda, and snagged my arm. “Come on.”

Corey was sitting at one of the computer desks now. He closed a screen as we walked by, turning to us. “What happened? Do you need a hand?”

“Do your thing, Cor,” Axel said with such an ease and at the same time using that stern tone, as if suggesting that he had full command of the situation and has had it all along. “I’ve got her now.”

I swallowed.

I followed Axel to the other side of the apartment, toward his bedroom. I hesitated a moment, already stressed about this situation and now heading into the inner sanctum of a guy who barely knew me at all. It was a wild thought for me to have in the moment, because I had already followed a group of guys to their apartment without knowing much about any of them. Did I consider him separate from the others? He didn’t seem older than any of us. Slightly over twenty perhaps. Maybe it was because they called him “boss”.

And what was he the boss of, exactly?

Maybe I was intimidated because the first time I ever met him, he was completely naked, and I didn’t really hate him for it. It didn’t feel like at school when boys occasionally flashed their parts, or that he did it with any sort of malice. Rather, it felt like he didn’t care in the moment.

And why did his nonchalant attitude make me feel all weak in the knees?

Axel opened the door to his room, stepping aside. He continued on and I paused, hovering in the doorway. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Axel being naked the first time I saw him made it hard to figure out who he was. His bedroom, however, was far beyond what I imagined.

There was a single bed, barely bigger than a cot, pushed to the far side of the room. Above it and next to it were rows of shelves filled with journals, notebook and binders chock full of paper. Some pages were folded and stuck back into the binders, sticking out and baring clips and stabled notes. There were piles of textbooks in a tall floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in topics like biology and physics. There was a desk in the middle of the room, with a laptop and a printer, covered with additional notebooks and binders that were open. All of the handwriting appeared the same on all binders and paper with any writing on it, so I had to assume he wrote every bit of it.

A low dresser and several tables around the room held a collection of glass aquariums. As Axel went for his closet, I moved closer to the dresser, examining the contents. A couple were fish tanks with small fish swimming together. Two aquariums held frogs, one a scorpion and the other I couldn’t see anything inside, but was filled with water and a layer of algae covered rock at the bottom like the fish tanks.

“You’ve got to step up to Raven,” Axel said as he poked around in his closet. “If you let him walk over you once, he’ll do it forever. It’s that Russian blood. They figure out who the alpha is and try to establish the hierarchy immediately.”

“What’s in this one?” I asked. I pointed to the empty tank. “Is it hiding? Or are you going to put something in it?”

Axel leaned out of his closet and looked at me, his eyebrows going up for a moment as if he wasn’t sure what I meant. His eyes followed my pointing finger to the tank. “They’re there,” he said.

“They?” I asked.

He walked back out, having removed his shirt, revealing his very fit, tan body. There was a little bit of hair around the crest of his chest. Probably missed seeing it the first time because he was naked and my eyes had been drawn elsewhere. It disappeared and then there was the firm formation of his upper abs. My eyes followed it to the tiny trail of coarse hair that led down toward his pants.

He wasn’t as tall as the twins, but it was the way he carried himself that made him seem more powerful. Like his voice, every inch of Axel was unyielding and exuded a precise calm without having to say a word out loud.

He flicked off the light from the closet and crossed the room. He pointed to the empty fish tank and reached for the bedroom light switch. “Stand there. Don’t move,” he said.

Oh god. I realized a little too late he was going to turn off the light. The bedroom door was closed. My heart started to thunder and my body tensed, ready to throw punches if this was a trick to try to hurt or rape me. I didn’t get that vibe from him, but I didn’t want to not be prepared in case I was wrong.

He flicked off the light. The room went dark and it was the first time I realized the window that was near the bed must have been covered over underneath the blinds. It took me a moment to readjust my sight, making out just the thin sliver of light coming from around the bedroom door.

I sensed Axel moving closer. I stilled, waiting for something to happen.

Axel caught my arm, wrapping his fingers around my elbow.

Fear and distrust caused me to pull away, wrestling myself out of his grasp.

“Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you.” He reached, slower this time, and wrapped his fingers around my wrist. “I know you’ve probably heard this before, but trust me.”

I relented, letting him take my wrist. His thumb trailed over the underside, right below my palm, in a reassuring motion. If my heart could quiver and then stop and relax at the same time, that’s exactly how he made me feel.

He held my arm out with his to hover over the tank, and then as if reconsidering, moved to take my hand in his, his palm to the back of my hand, intertwining our fingers.

“Here,” he said, his voice as quiet and as calm as ever. “I’ll do it with you.”

“Do what?”

“You’ll see.”

With that, he lowered our joined hands into the coolness of the water in the seemingly empty tank.

A shiver went through my spine, but it wasn’t totally from the chill of the water. I held my breath. Anticipating.

He stopped when both of our hands were inside. “Watch,” he said.

He moved our hands together, shaking up the water.

A glow emanated from the water. It was faint, like glow-in-the-dark stickers, but it was there. Blue. Ethereal. The more violently he shook our hands, the brighter the glow became.

“Holy crow,” I breathed, as if speaking out loud would stop the reaction.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” he asked. He released my hand in the water. “Go ahead. Shake it up yourself.”

I did, feeling the smoothness of the water passing by my fingers, and playing with the level of the glow depending on how quickly my hand moved. If I stared hard enough, I thought I could see the little things clustering against the rocks, illuminating together.

“Certain creatures have unusual reactions to different environments. The tiny creatures in that tank get that glow effect from ...”

“Bioluminescence,” I said, excited by the idea he had this in his bedroom. “Defense mechanism? That’s why you have to shake them up to see it?”

Axel studied me quietly. I wondered if it was because I interrupted him. “I thought you dropped out of school,” he said.

“They let me take my GED early so I could get out and take care of my younger brother after my mom died,” I said. “I’m not an idiot.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound surprised. Most girls I’ve met usually hate it when I talk about science.”

“Not all girls are the same,” I said. I stopped the movement of my hand, letting the light fade in the tank. “What is this? What’s the name of it?”

“
Noctiluca scintillans
,” he said. “The common name is Sea Sparkle.”

“Is that why you’ve got the scorpion?” I asked. “And the frogs? You’re studying glowing animals??

There was a movement and the light flicked back on again. Axel’s face carried a softer, interested smile. “You know about those, too?”

“Scorpions glow all weird under a black light. And certain types of frogs glow. It looked like a couple of your fish started to do it, too, while the light was out. What are those? Firefish? Or... um... sorry. I can’t remember the name. Are they supposed to do that? No, that has to be a genetic manipulation. Those don’t glow on their own naturally, do they? Or is it a new breed?”

A dark eyebrow shifted. “Are you sure you’re Kayli Winchester?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He held up his hands, palms up. “If you’re that smart, why the hell are you picking pockets?”

I huffed, drying my hand on my shorts. “It’s complicated.”

“No shit.” He moved back to the closet, flicking the light on. “Come here and find a shirt you can wear. We’ll wash your clothes.”

I grunted, but moved forward.

His closet was as big as the tiny bathroom we had at the hotel. There were boxes along the floor on either side and cartons of notebooks and folders and more textbooks on the shelves. Shirts and jeans and other clothes hung up along the two racks on either side, but I got distracted by some of the equipment in the back. “Is that a diving suit? What’s that shotgun for?”

“Will you stop being nosy for a minute?” He yanked a black button up shirt off of one of the hangers. “Here. Take that shirt off. And those shorts. This should be long enough.” He passed the shirt to me and then snatched another one in a deep green color, and stepped out of the closet, turning around. He started threading his arms through the sleeves.

I turned my back on him. I was wearing a pretty modest bra and panties. If he could parade naked in front of me, I wasn’t going to pretend to be that modest about him seeing my back and butt.

I bent over a little, slipping the white tank top off. I inspected my bra, checking for wet spots but didn’t see any so thought I could keep it on. I looked for a place to put down my shirt so I wouldn’t get soda on some notebook or his other clothes.

A hand touched briefly at my shoulder blade. I jumped in my skin, and turned quickly, holding my shirt against my body.

Axel hovered over me. His firm jaw set in a rigid expression. His eyes had gone dark. “Turn back around,” he said, the smoky and severe tone returned.

I lifted an eyebrow, wondering why he was telling me to turn when he was the one that poked me. I faced the back of the closet, unsure of what he wanted.

His fingers returned to my skin, and traced along a spot just under my shoulder. “Where’d you get that scar?”

My heart raced, mostly from the touch of his fingertips smoothing over my skin. It became difficult to remember what he wanted to know. “I ... elementary school, perhaps? Some kid knocked me off of a platform on the jungle gym.”

“And that one?” he asked, his fingertips glided down, to one along the edge of my ribs around the height of my elbow. He traced at the scar with the edge of a fingernail and then repeated backward with his thumb pressed a little harder, like he could massage it out.

“A fight in school a couple of years ago. Wasn’t my fight. I was just walking by but got slammed into a staircase.”

His fingers lowered along my spine, sending a gentle ripple through my body. I stared hard at the back of his closet, at the diving suit. At the shotgun. At the boxes of folders. At the life of someone I’d just met not an hour ago, and here he was poking into my past. I dreaded the next question, even when I could guess it was coming.

He traced the scar that was at the start of my hip, the one that continued down along my butt. “And this one?”

My eyes closed. I wanted to answer him as coolly as I had the others questions, but for some reason I couldn’t find the nerve. And with his fingertips on my skin, I couldn’t think of a lie. “I don’t want to tell you.”

Axel’s voice deepened. “Are there more?”

My lips glued shut. I wasn’t going to let a complete stranger rip the past from me just for showing me glowing fish.

Someone started knocking on the door. Axel grunted. “What?” he bellowed.

The bedroom door opened. “Is Kayli in here?” Corey asked.

Axel drew his hand away, and I turned to see his eyes locked on mine. His were quietly telling me I could tell Corey to go away if I wanted.

“What do you need, sugar?” I asked, willing to do anything to stop Axel from prying.

Footfalls sounded in the bedroom, and I half turned to meet him while I unbuttoned the shirt Axel had given me so I could slip it on.

The moment Corey’s gaze met mine, his eyes widened then lowered down my body, walking over my breasts, down to my hips in the shorts, and the thin line of my underwear that peeked out. “Ah,” he stammered, and turned, facing the door frame, but his eyes kept sliding to my body. “Oh. Sorry. I mean ... I just wanted ...”

“You’re fine,” I told him. I threaded my arms through the sleeves of Axel’s shirt and started buttoning it. I tried not to puff out my chest at his adorable modesty on my behalf.

Axel sighed and then took my soda-stained shirt from me. I slipped my shorts off under the shirt that fell to my thighs, covering me enough. He collected the shorts, too, and my socks. He filed past Corey.

Corey only watched, his blue eyes curious and his mouth working like he wanted to comment but couldn’t come up with anything. The lower hem of the shirt was long enough that if I was wearing really short shorts, it would have covered them. Did he not know girls who wore shorts like that often? I didn’t imagine it was a problem for him. Despite the nerdling exterior, he was pretty stunning.