Raven (Kindred #1) (14 page)

She cared about him, but it was unlikely that he was referring to himself. Especially if she factored his scowl into the equation. “You would kill me for revealing you to anyone?”

“Me or anything I tell you, yes, I would.”

Exhaling, she averted her focus while considering that she might have misjudged him. “A threat, well… today is the day for it,” she muttered.

“What?” he asked, pressing her cheekbone to force her gaze back. “Who threatened you?”

“Nothing, never mind,” she said. Grant probably hadn’t meant his threat any more than Raven did. At the time, it shook the foundation of her belief in him, but she was coming to learn that she was ignorant about many things in her life.

“I shouldn’t say this, but…” he blinked his eyes away and when they came back the darkness swirled in them. “I have… skills… that can facilitate the elimination of threats.”

Just because he didn’t use explicit terms didn’t mean she was oblivious to his meaning. “Have you killed before?”

He didn’t blink, but the line of his mouth curled at one end. “It’s one of my two specialties,” he said.

“I think I know what the other one is,” she said, linking her fingers behind his neck. “Why do you keep your jeans on in bed?” Elevating her legs, she ran the inside of her feet up and down his thighs, which were encased in denim again.

“This isn’t home turf,” he said. “I’ve got to be ready for a threat to walk through that door any second.”

Living on constant alert must be exhausting, but at least she didn’t have to develop a complex or worry about flesh-eating diseases. Accepting this, she began to stroke again and he dropped onto his side. Pulling her to his chest, he kissed her hairline. Their limbs tangled and with her face against his collarbone, she exhaled and closed her eyes, ready to sleep with this man wrapped around her.

“Will you betray me?” he asked with his mouth in her hair.

Shaking her head, she sought his closest hand and squeezed his fingers. “No.”

“My inner circle is small, very small, and if you’re in my circle, you can’t be in anyone else’s. There is no way to play two sides in this war. You give me your loyalty and no one else. You have to be willing to die rather than give up the secrets of the Kindred.”

“The Kindred?” she asked, tipping her chin. She couldn’t see him, but her forehead rasped on his stubble.

“If we make it through the night I’ll give you one more chance to back out. After you’re in, Zar, you’re in.”

She didn’t know if she’d have to swear a blood oath, or if their association would be fleeting. Giving them both a chance to sleep on the prospect of this alliance was a wise decision. But if he were still here in the morning then she would be more assured that he wasn’t an apparition of the night and he’d have another piece of her heart.

That morning Raven’s ringing cellphone had woken them up. Before the first ring had completed its drone, he was up, seated on the edge of the bed answering the call. With a brisk, “Hang on a minute” into the handset, he’d put the device to his shoulder and turned his face in her direction, though he didn’t twist his body far enough to actually look at her.

When he’d told her that he had to take the call in private, Zara forced herself out of bed with a yawn and wrapped herself in her kimono. She got as far as the kitchen before she realized she had been dismissed from her own bed. Since there was no point in arguing with him while he was on the phone, she went to work making breakfast, which it turned out she had plenty of time to do because it was half an hour later that she saw him again.

She was filling a glass of orange juice when he came out of the bedroom. “Good morning,” Zara said, setting the full glass on the breakfast table next to the place she had set for him. Busying herself with presenting breakfast and setting the table took her mind away from the questions this development in their relationship raised.

Asking him to spend the night had felt like a good idea at the time. But daylight was harsh and brought out every neuroses. They’d met under unusual circumstances and Zara wasn’t even sure what a creature of the night ate for breakfast or how comfortable he was with being here. Had he stayed because he was interested in building a relationship with her or was it just for the mission?

She wasn’t even sure what she wanted from him. It was obvious she would have to rely on him to guide her through whatever Grant was doing, yet he’d made no declaration that he would do so. Hanging on to the fact that he’d come to her even after saying he wouldn’t, Zara figured this situation wasn’t clear-cut for him either.

“Morning,” he returned, but stayed close to her bedroom door, twenty feet from her current position next to the table in front of her open plan kitchen. He didn’t move much, she’d noticed that about him before. But his eyes scanned the space, left to right, up and down, but she had no idea what he was looking for.

Choosing to ignore his quirk, she tried to put him at ease with conversation. “Who was on the phone?” she asked.

“An associate,” he said. Observing how he was fully clothed, and keeping his distance, she thought he might try to rush off. But before he did, she had to confirm one fact that had occurred to her while making breakfast.

Exhaling through her nose, Zara propped a hand on the back of the chair beside her and flicked her hair from her face. “Look, I know this is a dumb question to ask now, given, you know...”

“But?”

Loosening in deference to the inevitability of her question, she asked, “Are you married?”

Divulging no hint as to the answer, he stayed still. “Didn’t you ask me that already?”

“No,” she said, raising a finger and cocking a hip to swoop around the table toward him. “No, I asked if you had a girlfriend and technically a wife wouldn’t be a girlfriend, would she?”

“Technically...” he said, tilting his head in a way that could concede her point.

She shrugged. “You seem like the kind of guy to whom technicalities would matter.”

“I am,” he said. “But I’m not married.”

Getting her chance to look at him in the light, she paused to squint and brought her hands to her hips. Tall and broad she’d already known, but she hadn’t realized how his dark brown hair had lighter tones through it that caught in the early morning sunshine flowing into her living room. The darkness remained in his eyes, but his complexion was warm, and the hard angles of his face fit with the image she had of him in her mind.

Rough around the edges, he had straight white teeth and keenness in his manner. Seeing him like this in the natural light, he became a completely different animal. Not a less dangerous one, but somehow more real, more human, like a man she could hold on to.

“That was a long call to be all business,” she said. “Are you going to give me an excuse now and run out of here?”

“I kept my end of the bargain,” he said. “I stayed until breakfast.”

She didn’t want him to run away, not when she felt like she was making progress. “You haven’t eaten anything,” she said, glancing back at the table. “I made blueberry pancakes. There’s fruit and toast and juice.” Zara silenced herself before she went into full-on rant mode.

“And coffee?” he asked, but he had to be able to smell it.

Smiling, she took that question as interest. Even if all he stayed for was the coffee, it was a start. “And coffee,” she said with a nod. Tiptoeing over to him, she curled her fingers around his wrist and began to walk backwards, guiding him the direction of the table. Being with him here, like this, without the intensity of night, was strange. Still, he seemed as assured as ever, leaving her nervous about voicing her uncertainty. “You told me your word was the most precious thing you could give.”

Implying he might be reneging on the deal was enough to provoke a frown. “Do I have your trust?” he asked, seizing the chance to talk business. Taking control of their movement, he grasped the back of her neck and turned her around to push her forward, though with his elbow bent, she was bumped along by the breadth of his rigid chest too. “You said if I stayed until breakfast that I would.”

Business was his comfort zone and that was something she could identify with. “Sit and eat,” she said, pleased, at least, for the chance that she might get some answers. “And tell me what the hell we’re mixed up in.”

Zara tried to move away, but his grip on her neck tightened to hold her against him. Burying his face in her hair, Raven dragged in a long loud breath that made her shudder and her thoughts of business diminished. “You smell like sex,” he mumbled.

He spoke so matter-of-fact, but her waist quivered and lightened in response to his statement because it reminded her that they’d been naked together all night.

“I haven’t been in the shower,” she said, twisting around to face him so she could extricate herself from his grasp. Sweeping her hair from her face, Zara prodded a finger into his chest to delay making eye contact. “And neither have you.” In the light, she hadn’t been this up close to him, and it was unsettling that his stature was no less formidable during the day. She was imprisoned between him and the table. He let her go and leaned over to rest his hands on the back of the dining chair pressed to her spine, eating up the last slither of space between their bodies. “Which of course you wouldn’t have because you don’t get naked anywhere that isn’t your home.” Her mumbled words were a return to her previous awkwardness.

“Disappointed by that, aren’t you?” he asked. Curling his fingers around her neck again, he tried to angle her face upward, but he had to use his other hand to tip up her chin and make it happen. “Come here.”

On her tiptoes, she still had to crane her neck to meet his mouth when he kissed her, but her stiff muscles ceased to object when she got a taste of him. Although not a plundering kind of kiss like those he bestowed on her in bed, his tongue still felt the same. His strength reassured her enough that her feeling of being intimidated waned.

She felt herself falling, like she’d just slipped from a cliff and was hurtling toward the rocks and waves below. One landing would kill her, the other would set her free, and she had no idea, which would be her destiny. His kiss erased her anxiety and reminded her of all he’d done to protect her. He might be a thug most of the time, but he kissed her like she was his sun, the source of energy he needed to be as strong as he was. It could be that her feelings were a symptom of his impressive physique, because every time he touched her, he reminded her of his vigor. When he kissed her, he singled her out to be the center of his world. With him shielding her from harm, she felt like the most precious jewel in the world.

“God, you’re tall,” she said when he slid his finger away from her chin. The corner of his mouth tipped up, and the affect that small change had on the intention of his gaze made her almost choke on her own breath.

Leaving her place in front of him, she moved around the circular table. He kept hold of her neck for as long as he could, but his fingers eventually drifted away. Retrieving the coffee pot from the kitchen, she filled two mugs that were on the table. Zara pushed one across the table to the position opposite hers, then seated herself and gulped her hot caffeine.

“Are you going to sit down?” she asked, lifting her eyes over her mug.

He was examining the table in such a way that provoked her to examine it too, except she saw nothing that would warrant such scrutiny. “I don’t… I don’t traditionally do breakfast around a…”

Glad that she wasn’t the only one unnerved, and that she had the chance to put him at ease, Zara laughed and reached over to put a piece of toast on a plate. “Then I hope you enjoy this.”

Straining his eyes toward the window, Raven blocked the daylight with an open hand and pulled out a chair. Sitting sideways in the chair, he put an elbow on the table and snagged the coffee mug to glug down the liquid, keeping his hand up and his attention on the window the whole time.

“I thought that spies liked to be able to see the door,” she said, putting jelly on her toast, then pointing her knife at the front door which was in the corner behind him.

He didn’t turn. “Someone comes through the door I’ve got plenty of time to turn around and shoot him in the heart. This here,” he said, waving an arm at the wall of windows. “This is a fucking death trap. Have you considered window treatments?”

“How do you know what a window treatment is?” she asked, putting aside her knife to bite into her toast.

His gaze flicked to her. “Window treatments save lives, trust me. They’re a pain in the fucking ass for a guy like me… and a life saver.”

“I never would’ve expected you to say anything like that, beau,” she said, picking up her coffee in the hand that wasn’t occupied by her toast.

His sneer stuck to the windows. “The light shines clear in this window too,” he said. “You’re at a serious disadvantage in this place.”

Having had similar thoughts about the sniper who took out Tim, she glanced at the windows then back to Raven before offering an explanation. “I love my windows and I love the light.”

“You can love it when I’m not here,” he said, pushing his mug onto the table and springing to his feet. “Do you have a hammer?”

“A hammer?” she asked, lowering her toast before she bit into it.

“Yeah, you know, bang, bang, nails, wall… I’ll use the butt of my gun if I have to, but if I shoot a hole in your ceiling in the process… Do you have upstairs neighbors?”

Shoving away from the table, she put aside her toast and mug. Retrieving her toolbox from under the sink, she brought it into the living room and his expression lit when he took it from her and dropped it onto the floor. Falling onto his knees to scrape around in the haphazard arrangement of tools, Raven muttered something to himself. Eventually he rose with a hammer in one hand and a couple of loose nails in the other. He snagged the throw from the back of the couch and went to the window.

Zara sat back down and continued with her breakfast, catching an occasional glance over her shoulder at him as he nailed her throw to the wall in order to cover two of her windows.

“Better?” she asked when he was finished and was discarding the tools.

“The material isn’t thick enough to provide complete cover,” he said, backing away to admire his work. “Not with full sun working against us… But it will have to do.”

Grabbing his coffee mug, he didn’t sit opposite her, he came around and sat at the place beside her, but he pulled his chair closer to hers and sat side on again, still facing the windows.

“You hate windows,” she said. This was the worst place in the world for him to be if he had a window or sunlight phobia.

“I just want to be closer to you, baby,” he said, but he wasn’t even looking at her, he was studying the uncovered windows further down the wall. He closed one eye and she touched his forehead, sweeping her hand in a crescent around his face to his chin.

Hoping to alleviate his concern, she made a suggestion. “Do you want to go back into the bedroom? There’s only one window and it has a curtain. The sunlight won’t bother you.”

“If we go in there, we’ll fuck, and we don’t have time for that,” he said. He removed her hand from his face and held it in both of his to kiss the back of her fingers. “Fuck it. Now is as good a time as any.”

Further perplexed, she frowned. “For what?” she asked, her toast now forgotten.

“Death,” he said and his eyes bounced to hers where he must have read her surprise. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually…”

She smiled, not worried about danger while Raven was around. “Awake in the daylight, I get it.”

He dropped her hand and shunted his chair back so that they could no longer touch. “Who threatened you?”

His words were as clear and determined as his eyes and it was as if his previous agitation had never existed. Apparently, once he decided he was ready to die, everything else became irrelevant.

That he remembered what she’d said about being threatened surprised her, but again it hinted at the prospect of him caring for her. “Grant,” she said, brushing crumbs from her hands. If this was it and they were going to be honest then they both had to answer some questions, so she wasn’t going to play around.