He gritted his teeth so hard, his fangs squeaked together. “Hm?”
“Your wooing will go a lot better if you take a shower. You smell like shit, boy.”
ChapterEleven
In hindsight,maybe running from the orc into the middle of nowhere wasn’t the wisest choice she’d ever made. Then again, at the time it hadn’t seemed like much of a choice at all.
By some miracle, Kazimier hadn’t hurt her yet, but it was only a matter of time. He’d killed three people in less than five minutes right in front of her. He had her cuffed and locked her in his stolen car. There was no good outcome to the situation she found herself in — which was to say,entirelyscrewed.
Atria strained to keep her eyes forward as the orc climbed back into the driver’s seat. The vehicle rocked with the sudden shift in weight.
He’d been gone a long time, presumably acquiring them a room or something more nefarious, but that time hadn’t proved to be the boon she hoped. No matter how she wiggled, no matter what lever she pulled or button she pressed, she was telekinetically stunted and locked in.
Was it normal to be more pissed off at your captor than afraid of him? Atria wondered if it was all the adrenaline making her brain fuzzy or if it was something broken inside her that made her want to ram his head into the car again rather than cower.
Sheshouldhave cowered when he returned to their stolen car, tucked one hand behind her headrest, and reversed away from the curb. At the very least she should have tensed.
She didn’t, though. Instead, she ground her teeth together and kept her eyes on the dash as he slowly pulled around the building and into a parking space. Her eyes lifted to stare at the motel room door, which the headlights threw into stark relief. The place might have looked cute if she wasn’t suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that he apparently expected her to go in that room with him.
At her limit, Atria sat back in her seat and announced, “No.”
“Princess, I do not have the patience to fight with you right now.” The orc’s voice was delicious — a low, low purr that made her insides tumble — but even his beautiful voice couldn’t disguise the curtness of his tone. “You are going into that room. You are going to shower. You are going to let me treat your scrapes. We aregoingto talk. Then you are going to sleep. Got it?”
“First of all, I am not a princess. I’m ascientist.” Atria turned her head to glare at him. She found him already glowering at her, his beautiful face smeared with drying mud and his eyes narrowed. She would have found the sight of the mud more satisfying, but seeing as she wasalsocovered in it, the effect was mostly lost.
“Second,” she continued, her exhaustion, discomfort, and fear finally compounding to make her temper explode, “how often do you kidnap people? Do other victims really just listen to you when they’re tied up and locked in a car? Because I find it hard to believe the others were any more willing to follow your orders than I am!”
The stubborn bastard didn’t bother answering her. Instead, he killed the engine and hauled his huge body out of the car. The slamming door rattled the frame. It was the only outward sign that he was upset at all. His face, gorgeous as it was, revealed nothing. If she didn’t have her gifts, she would be completely blind to what lay just under the surface.
Annoyance. Disgust. Confusion. Anger. Loneliness. Determination. Exasperation. Amusement. Lust.
It was that last one that made her skin prickle and her stomach tighten into knots. It shouldn’t have. He was her captor, after all, and she knew exactly what kind of violence he was capable of.
But when he opened the passenger door and leaned in close to unbuckle her seatbelt for her, she was forced to take in his scent, faint but noticeable beneath the muck — one that conjured images of dark rooms full of leather and cigar smoke, with the tiniest bite of citrus underneath. When his fingers, gloved and covered in matte black claw-caps, deftly unlatched the mechanism, they brushed her stomach, her sides. His hair, black as a raven’s wing, was like spun silk when it skimmed her cheek.
The knots in her stomach tightened until she felt like she could no longer breathe.
His tone was tightly controlled when he said, “I am not going to hurt you, Atria. Right now, I’m probably the only person in the world you can trust — so I suggest you start doing it.”
“What are you talking about? I have plenty of people I can trust! If you’re so sure that I’m in danger and you’re just trying to help me, let me callthem.You can be rid of me.”
He let go of her seatbelt with a flick of his claws. It clattered against the door frame as he hovered there, his face only a handful of inches away from hers. She could feel his breath puff against her cheeks and in the weak glow cast by the car’s dome light, she could just make out the black slits of his pupils against his dark, dark blue irises.
Wait. Slitted pupils—
“I hate to break this to you, princess, but you reallydon’thave anyone you can trust. Those gargoyles didn’t just happen to stumble upon your flight information. I didn’t either. Someone is leaking your whereabouts to a lot of bad people, and in my professional experience, those folks tend to be the ones closest to the target. Family. A best friend. Aboyfriend.”
Atria felt something in her soul recoil. Speaking in a suddenly small voice, she replied, “But I don’t… I only have one person I’m close to.”
Once, she’d been close totwopeople, but things between her and Norman had been strained for over a year. They were cordial, of course, and he had completely moved on from their relationship, but she never could manage to be totally comfortable with him after their spectacular break-up, no matter how hard she tried to rebuild the friendship they’d lost.
The orc’s jaw flexed hard enough that she could see the shifting muscles under the green skin of his cheeks. “Boyfriend?”
Her eyes dropped to where a long smear of flaking mud disappeared under the collar of his black t-shirt. “No.”
“Then who?”
“My research partner, Ruby Goode.”
