Ethan laughs again and claps my shoulder just as hard as his uncle does. “I’m glad we got that cleared up.”
The door to the utility closet opens and closes, and we both glance that way, watching Drew walk back toward us with a bottle of water in hand. He shoots Ethan a flirty grin and heads back up the stairs. Ethan watches him until he disappears around the corner, then he smirks. “‘Scuse me,” he says and jogs up the stairs, chasing the housekeeper.
I sigh, mentally adding a meeting with Drew to tomorrow’s agenda. I can’t have the housekeeper getting harassed and not reporting it for fear of losing his job.
First, though, a meeting with Maxime to make him aware of a possible problem. I pull my phone out of pocket and send a text message to Maxime alerting him of my need for a short conversation at his earliest convenience. I don’t get a reply backimmediately, so I set to the task of getting the cleaning supplies for my chore for today.
“You mind grabbing that for me?”
The question comes just as I spot the tarot card on the floor directly in front of me. I stare at the card that looks like a dark version of the one in my pocket. He keeps dropping this specific one: a gargoyle drawn to look humanoid with bat-like wings walking in the void of space backlit by a bright star, smiling as they traverse space with a rucksack and an animal companion that looks like a mix between a ferret and a bat. It’s a beautiful card with silver foil, and I wonder where he bought it. Not that I want or need my own tarot deck. I don’t really believe in that kind of thing.
After picking it up, I turn to find Thoren staring at my ass, like he always does when his cards mysteriously drop out of his pouch (snort), and despite myself I blush. He looks so good. The size difference between us just does it for me, and the butterflies in my stomach take flight all at once when he holds out his hand. The barbells in his nipples have silver chains hanging from them today, and fuck do I want to pull on them. I bet he’d follow me anywhere if I got a grip on him like that.
Shut up, Dec. No thinking about Thoren like that!
I hand it back to him and back up, hiding my butt from his perusal as I walk backward toward the utility closet. I will never admit what knowing his eyes on my ass do to me. Ever. “You should keep better track of those,” I suggest.
“They seem determined to drop every time they see you.” The tiny smirk that lives at the corner of his mouth, guarding what I think might be dimples if he ever gave in and smiled fully, makes me blush as much as what might be innuendo in his words.
I don’t know; maybe he’s being suggestive, but he sounds so earnest that I don’t know if he’s teasing me or not. “Try putting a rubber band on them.”
Thoren shakes his head. “I would never. I want these cards to like me.”
“So you’re really into Tarot then?” I glance back, reaching out to grab the handle of the utility closet.
He shrugs. “It’s a good focus. We chose Tarot because it was one of the better tools available to us when we—well, that doesn’t matter. I’m thinking Dec is short for Indecent.” He waves at my ass like that’s at all appropriate.
Of course my stupid brain thinks it’s wonderful to get sexually harassed by the hottest man alive. Not that brain, the one that lives in my pants.
I shoot Thoren the dirtiest look I can call up. “I think I would have chosen to shorten my name to Indie if I’d been blessed with such a name.”
As soon as the words leave me, I slip into the utility closet and shut the door quickly, locking it just in case he thinks he should follow me in here.
Good god, he’s way too sexy for his own good.
Chapter six
Thoren
(Why am I the way that I am?)
Ifinish reading thereport on the latest expansion efforts of a species on our watchlist, the tinkral. They’re a reptilian species that have plagued this galaxy for longer than I’ve been alive. I’m not sure when their planet rejected them, and no one knows for certain where they came from, but they arrived in the Milky Way some time in the last thousand years and have been systematically colonizing. They’re adaptive as a species, able to live in a variety of environments, and colonize every planet they find that suits them.
They’ve been mining in the Kuiper Belt for a couple of years, but when they first arrived in the solar system, we warned them that Sol’s planets and moons were protected by the IPPS. They haven’t made a reach for Earth, but we watch them closely. They’ve just successfully completed an invasion and subjugation campaign on a planet in a neighboring solar system. Thankfully, they only successfully conquered one of the habitable planets in that system. The other successfully repelled them.
The tinkral take their wins, but they never fight wars of attrition. They give themselves a standard amount of time to conquer a planet, and if the planet manages to hold them at bay, the tinkral move on to easier targets. This is probably why the Alliance of Species hasn’t taken more drastic action than levying fines on them when they fail their campaign. The tinkral pay the fines and move on to their next campaign. They probably account for half of the alliance’s income, and they don’t seem to care about paying the reparation price for their unsuccessful campaigns.
I shuffle my tarot deck. “What do you think about the tinkral?” I mutter as I shuffle them twice more. The cards are more cooperative about protecting Earth than anyone else’s deck, and when they give readings for our work, they pull from the collective power of our family rather than only from me.
I deal three cards in a row and turn them over one by one: The Lovers, The Fool, and the Two of Cups.
“What the actual fuck is this nonsense?” I demand, staring at the reading.
The Lovers is my card. It always comes up in reference to me. I’m family oriented and it makes sense that the cards designated that one to represent me. I’ve been focused on my brothers since our hatching. We bonded with Uncle becauseIdecided he belonged to us, and everything I do is a reflection of the dedication I have to this family.
I’m beginning to suspect that The Fool is the card this deck thinks represents Dec. In which case, the Two of Cups is absolutely ridiculous.
“Are you suggesting that I start something with Dec? Do you dare suggest that I might be romantically interested in a human, of all species? They can’t evenseemagic. I could walk out of this office wearing nothing but my gargoyle skin and they literally wouldn’t be able to perceive me.” I’d be completely invisible tothem. I could walk around in my natural form moving things around and the humans in the house would assume it’s haunted by an invisible poltergeist even if I was literally moving things in the same room as them while they were watching.
