“Karma has seriously let me down. I hope there’s a hell, and she’s burning in it,” I complained.
He lost his smile, his gaze turning dark. He still hadn’t come to terms with the things my aunt had done to me. Not that we talked about it. As far as I was concerned, that part of my life lived behind a locked door, and I was never opening it again. Out of sight, out of mind. As a coping mechanism, it worked most of the time. Like when I was awake.
“Believe me, if there was a way to get at the bitch, I would already have done it,” he said in a stone voice.
“I know. And I appreciate it.” I stroked my fingers over the back of his hand. He grasped mine. “The idea of making the estate a sanctuary appeals a lot to me,” I said, returning to the subject at hand. “Lorraine could potentially move her vet clinic there and focus more on rescues if she wants, and I could fund the whole shebang. I’ve got to talk to the gargoyles, though. The place is their home more than mine, and they deserve the deciding vote on what happens there.”
He nodded. “They will appreciate your consideration.”
I shrugged. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“For you. Many would disagree.”
“Apparently, many are psychopaths, then.”
“Agreed.”
Just then, his phone bleeped with a text notification. He glanced at it and his expression darkened. His jaw knotted. “Excuse me a minute,” he said. “This can’t wait.”
I watched him stalk away, lifting his phone to his ear. Damon’s entire body radiated tension. Foreboding stirred in my gut, an all too familiar feeling.
I drew a slow breath and let it go, trying to relax. No good. My rational brain had lost all control, and my primal self had taken over. A life of constant threat combined with endless torture had honed my survival instincts. It didn’t matter how nebulous my uneasiness was, or that I had no good reason to think trouble was on its way. Primitive me had decided to circle the wagons, raise all the drawbridges, and load all the weapons. In the space of a few seconds, the new, defenselessly happy me vanished and the old me—scarred, jaded, and suspicious—returned.
In an effort to distract myself, I sent a couple of work texts while keeping a covert eye on Damon. He’d begun to pace, his free hand balled into a fist. Ajax made a protesting sound, his ears pricked like little satellite dishes as he also watched Damon.
I stroked his head, infusing my voice with a calm I didn’t feel. “Easy now. Everything’s okay.”
He visibly relaxed, and he looked up at me, his light brown eyes softening. He rolled onto his side so I could scratch his stomach. I obliged with a little chuckle. His eyes drifted shut.
Ever since I’d helped Lorraine rescue him, he and I had pretty much been inseparable. He'd become just as much family to me as Jen, Stacey, and Lorraine. Luckily Damon didn’t mind sharing the bed with both of us, as Ajax tended to want to snuggle at night.
I smiled to myself. Even if Damon did mind, he’d have to get over it. Though how we were going to manage to have sex—if and when that time came—I didn’t know. I didn’t want an audience, furry or otherwise, and if we locked him in another room, I don’t know if Ajax would rip down the wall, thinking I was under attack or something.
I planned to be a noisy lover.
“Something funny?” Damon returned to the table. He didn’t sit down and his dark expression was the polar opposite of his lightly spoken question.
“What’s going on? You look pissed, and I want to note for the record, this time it wasn’t me.”
He didn’t even crack the slightest smile. I wasn’t sure he even heard me. He was tapping out a text. “Problems at home. I’ve got to fly back, and I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
I hadn’t known Damon long. A few months is all, and he’d seen me through some near-death experiences, so we’d bonded pretty quickly. Enough that he’d told me he loved me a few weeks into our acquaintance, plus invited me to live with him while my loft was getting rebuilt.
I’d begun to think of him as a fixture in my life, as reliable as the ground or the air, so with that kind of news, I naturally expected to anticipate missing him. What I didn’t anticipate was the shaft of hurt that stabbed through me, threatening to double me over. For a second I couldn’t even move.
Problems at home. The phrase rattled around in my skull like a pinball in a clothes dryer. Because his home was not here. Damon actually lived across the country and had houses in Europe and South America. On top of that, he'd been looking for real estate around here. It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d leave eventually and I wasn’t prepared for the idea.
He just said he didn’t know how long he’d be gone, I reminded myself.He’s planning to come back. You’ve been whining about having some time to yourself. Now you get to have it, so quit being such a baby.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I was reading way too much into the situation. I was a walking soap opera, not to mention a complete nutcase.
I decided that silence was the best way not to make a total ass of myself. I got up and disposed of our garbage. Damon was still tapping away on his phone as we started back toward the hotel. He fell in beside me, barely looking up from his screen. Since he was in a hurry, I kept a brisk pace, Ajax trotting happily beside me.
I’d already decided I didn’t want to figure out new doubts to torture myself with while Damon packed. As we approached the elegant boutique hotel where we’d been living, I slowed. “I’m just going to head out.” I nudged my chin toward the entrance to the parking garage. “You don’t need a ride to the airport, do you?”
He tore himself away from his phone long enough to glance at me. “No. I’ll have the hotel shuttle take me.”
Shuttle. As if. It was a limo.
