Equal Parts (26 page)

Realizing how futile this whole exercise was, I didn’t fight as he caged me in with both arms, his face inches away from me. I was smart enough to recognize a losing battle when I saw one, and this was definitely a losing battle. His presence fogged my mind, warmed my blood, kept the darkness at bay – maybe because he was the darkness itself.

“Of course,” he whispered, his breath warm on my cheek, “I still to make a few things up to you, so I’d appreciate if you didn’t hate me
too
much.”

“What … what are you going to do?” Oh jeez, was that breathless, needy-sounding voice seriously coming from me?

He chuckled, and the sound reverberated against my skin. “Darling, you know for a fact that actions speak louder than words.”

Then his lips met mine, and I forgot what we were talking about entirely.

His hands left the wall to cup my face, every callous and line pressing into my skin. I was hypersensitive all over again, but this time it had nothing to do with medical reaction and everything to do with pure chemistry. His tongue dipped against mine, and before he could get the final upper hand over me, I bit down on his lower lip and sucked hard enough to draw a ragged groan from his chest.

This was different to the time in his bathroom – less vicious, less hurried. He kissed me as though he had all the time in the world, as though we weren’t surrounded by drunken club-goers, as though he knew me inside out and wasn’t afraid to use it to his advantage. He didn’t push for physical contact; his hands remained on my face, his body crowding but not stifling me.

But before I could test the limits of his self-control, he pulled away. His face-paint was smudged on
his lips, mixing to a slight gra
y that made him even more menacing. “Later,” he said in a broken voice. “Not here. I’d much rather convey my feelings at home.”

“Where’s home?” I managed to ask past the haze clouding my vision. I didn’t need morphine as an excuse when it came to my desire for Achilles –
he
was a drug, just by existing.

He stepped back, hands fisted at his sides. “I can’t tell you.” I went to argue, but his fingers pressed against the lips he’d just all but devoured. “
But
you’ll find out soon enough.” Sliding the fingers to my neck, he blinked. “You have paint on your mouth, darling.”

Absentmindedly, I tried to wipe the black paint from my lips, but he stopped me, rubbing his thumb over my lower lip. “Leave it. I…” Another confused blink. “I like it. The debauched look suits you.”
There
was the Achilles I was used to.

A smile broke across my heated face and I aimed a smack at his chest. May as well have smacked a brick wall. “Pig.”

“Prude.” He actually smiled back at me – a rare, genuine smile that I liked to think was reserved just for me. Jeez, I had it bad. “So, are you coming home with me?”

“Do I have a choice?” It was a fair question, in my opinion. I knew he planned on keeping me ‘safe’. Whether or not that meant he was caging me up for good, I didn’t yet know. Part of me was content to stay in his circle, to be provided for by this quintessentially
bad
man. But another part, a deep echo, knew I would never be truly free if he insisted on imprisoning me, even if it was for my own good.

He studied me with a frown. “I suppose not. Why doesn’t that give me the satisfaction I thought it would?”

“Careful now – you keep up the compassion and someone just might think you’ve turned
good
,” I told him in a mock horrified tone. “Next thing you know, you’ll be delivering puppies to orphans and getting a BFF tattoo with Finn.”

As I expected, he pulled me close to him once more. “Darling, you keep up that attitude and you’ll see how bad I can really be.”

“I’m terrified,” I whispered against his ear.

“You should be,” he replied against my own.

“Felicity?” came a voice from behind us. Quick as a whip, Achilles’s hand went to the weapon at his hip, his tall form shifting to block me from view. How …
sweet
. Yeah, definitely had it bad.

“It’s okay,” I told him when I recognized the voice. Pushing him aside, I came face-to-face with a rather wide-eyed Lucia. “Sorry, he’s just a bit skittish. You know, like a mouse. A cute, girly mouse.”

“Keep pushing,” he growled against my hair. I grinned, despite myself. Then, to my shock, he held a hand out to Lucia. “I’m Achilles, by the way. I think I owe you thanks for keeping Flick safe since she … left.”

Lucia looked like he’d announced he was actually a woman. Her eyes flicked to me. I shrugged. She closed her mouth with a
snap
and tentatively gripped his hand. “You can pay me back by making sure she
stays
safe.”

“Done,” he agreed. Well, that was easy.

“Um, I’m guessing you’re not coming back with me?” Her eyes lingered mischievously on the black smudge on my mouth, obviously trying not to giggle. I had to tamper down the same urge. “Because I can just take a cab –”

“We can give you a lift,” said Achilles. “The car’s just outside. I’ve had to be a bit picky about my drivers since…” His arm tightened around my shoulders. “Since Flick was with me.”

He led the way back through the club, his presence splitting the sea of people, Lucia and me trailing after his long-legged strides. Hugo appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and kept pace with his employer.

“He’s different in person,” Lucia commented. “And you’re different around him.”

“How do you mean?”

Her smile was nothing short of sly. “You’re more …
you
. Confident. Happy.”

“I…” I wanted to deny it. I wanted to say the happiness wasn’t mine to own, wasn’t of my own making. But why, then, did Achilles make me
feel
? He made me feel all other emotions – why not happy? “I … am happy.” It was a weird statement, but it made me feel lighter just to say it.

“Then do something you haven’t done in a long time and
enjoy yourself
. Who cares what anyone else thinks?”

Achilles waited for us to catch up outside the club doors, drawing whispers and curious stares from people waiting in the line. As soon as he turned his head to stare at them, everyone quieted. How I wished
I
had that effect on people.

Hugo got into the driver’s seat of a car parked on the curb – a massive tank of a vehicle, with black windows and wide enough to fill the living room of my old apartment. Achilles slid into the passenger’s seat, while Lucia and I climbed up to the backseat.

“I live on the corner of Flinn and Grange, just near the –”

“They know,” I interrupted Lucia, rolling my eyes. “Turns out Achilles’s superpower is stalking.”

“It isn’t stalking if you like it, darling,” commented Achilles, not turning to look at us.

“
Darling?
” mouthed Lucia at me. I just shook my head dismissively. His pet name for me didn’t carry any significance – he’d labeled me with it the day we met in the gazebo.
Still, it didn’t stop me from noticing that word above
the rest of the sentence
when he said it
.

Hugo sped down the city bypass, back towards Lucia’s house, and came to a screeching halt outside her front fence.

“Just in case anyone comes here asking for Flick, you can tell them she’s with me,” Achilles told Lucia, finally turning those impenetrable eyes to face us. “Say I took her by force if it helps. And if
that
doesn’t work…” He fished a card from his jacket pocket – what
didn’t
he store in there? – and handed it to Lucia. “Tell them to call me personally.”

“Business cards? Seriously?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Never know when you’ll be bumping into a prospective investor. I’m prepared like that.” A wicked grin. “I seem to recall you going by the same motto, when I went through your wallet.”

Suddenly my cheeks were blazing hot. Subject change, stat. “Lucia, be careful. You run into any trouble at all, just call me, okay? I’ll be there.” I slid across the seat to pull her into a rib-crushing hug. She returned it tenfold.

“Same goes for you,” she told me. “No more tears, yeah?”

I knew she was talking about herself as well as me. “Deal.” I looked to Achilles. “You sure it’s safe in there?”

“I’m sure. Molten does his own dirty work, and he wouldn’t risk being caught like this.” When my concern failed to waver, he sighed. “Hugo, to ensure Flick doesn’t worry herself to death, could you check the place out before we leave?”

“Sure thing.” Hugo parked the car and left us, heading up to the house.

“Insanity,” mumbled Lucia. With a last squeeze, she got out and followed the big guy into the shadows.

Minutes of silence ticked by, until finally Achilles asked, “What did she mean by ‘no more tears’?”

Of all the questions to ask… “It’s been a bit of a rough month. Since Finn got me out, I haven’t been … I didn’t handle it so well.”

“Handle what so well?”

He was fishing for something he already knew, and it should have annoyed me. Instead, it helped lift the remnants of sadness from my shoulders. Maybe because I knew that, at least on some level, he genuinely cared about me. “Being away from you.”

Maybe it wasn’t the answer he expected, because while his face remained impassive, I saw his knuckles turn white as he clutched the edge of his seat. “When we get home, I have something to show you.”

And the silence took over once more.

I should have been terrified by the prospect of him showing me ‘something’. Any normal girl in the backseat of a monster car, trapped with the worst villain in Carova, in a dress like the one I wore, would have shown fear in the face of his statement.

But I wasn’t normal. Never had been, never would be. In this instance, for once, it seemed to come in handy.

Hugo got back to the car within minutes. “Nothing. No signs of break-in, nothing suspicious. If he was going to act, he would’ve done so by now.”

“Feel better?” Achilles asked me.

“I guess,” I grumbled. I had to convince myself Lucia was safe, had to trust Achilles with my only friend’s safety. If he said she would be okay, then she would be okay. He might be a killer, but he was also brutally honest, and unlikely to let an innocent die if it wasn’t to his benefit in the end.

We darted through the quieter suburbs of the city for a good ten minutes, before pulling up outside a standard white picket fence house on a street that screamed
Stepford Wives
. The grass was clearly artificial, even under the
streetlights
; its garden was neatly kept, with rows of roses bracketing the path up to the front door.

“Whose house is this?” I asked, hopping down from the truck.

“A friend’s” was Achilles’s reply. He entwined his fingers with me as we walked, and the touch brought me more peace than I’d had in a month.

There were lights on in the rooms upstairs, but no voices could be heard from inside. Achilles opened the half-dozen locks on the door with different keys, noting my raised eyebrows. “This whole neighborhood is a house intruder’s nightmare, I tell you.”

“And none of the neighbors have called the cops yet?” I asked, glancing up and down the street. Even now, in the glum darkness, I was sure eyes were watching from behind lace curtains, heads poking over hedges at our arrival.

Achilles just snorted. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

As soon as we were inside the expansive house, Hugo took off towards the kitchen, sending me a wink on his way out. I could now hear the low echo of voices from the back rooms, an occasional masculine laugh and sound of beer cans cracking open the only giveaway.

“Upstairs, darling,” said Achilles, leading me by the hand up the flight of mahogany stairs and through a hallway to a bedroom twice the size of his old one in the police station. Most of it was still black, with only the bed having changed, this time laid out with soft blankets and a leather-studded headboard. An ensuite and walk in wardrobe branched off to its left, both almost full-sized rooms in themselves.

Somehow, suddenly, seeing that bed was enough to get my knees trembling, both in anticipation and nervousness. Sure, I knew what I was getting myself into by coming home with Achilles, but I hadn’t expected just to jump into bed with him. Truth be told, I really wanted to just talk to him for a while.

Maybe he saw some of the panic in my expression, because his hand slipped from mine to give me some space. “I’m ruthless, Flick, but I’m no monster. I just brought you up here to show you my … surprise.”

Right. Not a monster
, I reminded myself firmly. He wasn’t expecting anything of me. Once again I was struck by the way this so-called ‘villain’ made me feel safer than I’d felt in a long time, by the way he insisted on taking care of me, not advantage of me.

Forcing myself to relax, I perched on the edge of the bed, watching him expectantly.

“You aren’t going to like it, but as I said, actions speak louder than words. Just don’t freak out, okay?” With that puzzling statement, he disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.