That’s when I decided to build us a safe house of sorts. Somewhere my family could go if we ever needed a place to hide out. I stocked it with non-perishables a while ago, but I made a call to Helen, the woman I hired as a part-time housekeeper, and had the fridge stocked with a variety of foods since I don’t know what Taryn likes. I also told her Taryn’s size and asked that she do some light clothes shopping for her, at least enough to get her through the week.
When I pull into my reserved parking spot, I cut the engine and take a second to appreciate the way she looks sleeping peacefully. I hate to wake her up so soon, knowing she could probably use a week straight of sleep, but she’ll rest better in a big bed after a hot shower.
“Taryn, we’re here,” I say softly.
It only takes a second for her to wake up fully. She blinks her lavender eyes up at me like she’s trying to place me and where she is.
“Hi,” I say, offering a smile. “Remember me?”
“Who are you supposed to be again?” she says wryly.
Her voice is smoky and smooth, like my favorite whiskey. I now have an affinity for both. “Just your friendly neighborhood hero.”
She snorts at that and straightens her legs to leverage herself up but pulls them back, hissing in pain.
“What’s wrong?”
Taryn rests her right ankle on the opposite knee to examine the bottom of her foot. A nasty cut slices across the arch. “Damn it,” she winces. “Must have cut it on something and didn’t notice with all the adrenaline and shock. I’m still too weak for it to heal.”
“You’ll get your strength back soon, but let’s patch you up in the meantime.” I grab the large black duffel bag that’s always in the back seat and open it up on my lap. I bypass the dozen or so coiled sections of different colored rope for the first aid kit, then gather the supplies I need before tossing the duffel in the back again. “Sit sideways and prop your foot on the arm console here.”
She visibly bristles. “I can do it. I’m weak, not helpless.”
I hold her gaze. “I know. But it’ll be easier for me do it, so why not let me take care of it?”
The tension in her shoulders melts as she turns and sags back against the door, propping her foot on the console. I don’t take her reluctance personally. She’s made it more than clear that she doesn’t entirely trust me, despite watching her brother make his oath, so even a capitulation as small as this is a win.
I can feel her gaze on me as I set to work cleaning the cut with squares of gauze and my bottle of water. Most people would feel the need to fill the silence—Tiernan practically breaks out in hives if there’s even a pause in conversation—but I find comfort in the silence. I learned a lot when I was younger by being quiet and observing. And sometimes it gets the other person to talk, even if they don’t necessarily want to. It’s a strategy often used in interrogations.
Not that I’m intentionally doing that now, but if the silence encourages Taryn to open up, I won’t be mad about it.
“Were you born on this side of the veil?” she finally asks.
“I was. I’ve never seen anyone from the Elemental Courts before. Not in real life, anyway. I’ve seen tons of paintings and sketches, but you never know how accurate they are. Your eyes, for example.”
“What about them?” she asks warily.
I pause in my task to meet her gaze and lose myself in the very things she’s wondering about.
“The color,” I say in a low voice, as though I don’t want to disturb my own thoughts. “The art always depicted deeper shades of purple, harsher. But yours are soft lavender with flecks of violet you can only see up close. I’ve never seen anything like them.”
Her full lips part slightly in a moment of vulnerability before she clears her throat and affects a bored expression. “My eye color is common. Everyone in Tír Tairngire has them.”
“I don’t think anything about you could be considered common, upryamaya zhenshchina.” Lowering my head so she can’t see my smile, I finish gently cleaning the blood and dirt from the bottom of her foot.
“Ty ser'yezno tol'ko chto nazval menya upryamoy zhenshchinoy?” Did you seriously just call me a stubborn female?
I look up at her and grin. “Da.”
Taryn sucks in her cheeks to prevent the smile I can see trying to make an appearance. I pretend not to notice as I rip open an alcohol packet. To her credit, she barely flinches at the first touch and holds still, albeit tensely, until I’m sure it’s disinfected. Then I slather a bit of antibiotic ointment on it to finish it off. “There. Now I’ll just wrap it up and it’ll be protected until it heals on its own.”
The word “wrap” triggers images of her wrapped in my intricate designs and knots, the way the different colors would look against her light umber skin, posing her body into its own work of art…
“You know Russian.”
The simple statement wrangles my wayward thoughts and yanks them back to the safer task at hand. “I speak several languages; I’m what you’d call a perpetual student. I like learning things. I didn’t take up Russian, though, until I started working with your brother. But I’m close to fluent already, so don’t think you can get one over on the thickheaded Fae-American jock,” I say with a wink.
“Fair enough,” she says, her expression one of reluctant curiosity. “What’s with the duffel bag full of rope? A lot of females trying to escape your self-proclaimed heroics that need tying up?”
I chuckle. She’s only partly right. It isn’t only females I tie up. I’m an equal opportunity player when it comes to rigging, topping, and fucking. I enjoy all genders and races, whether human or other. And escaping my ropes is the last thing any of them want. But discussing my kink specialty with her is only going to start my mind going in the directions it has no business going, so I do what fae do best, and avoid the questions we can’t—or won’t—answer.
“I don’t know why you assume people don’t want to be around me. I’ll have you know I’m a very likable guy.”
Taryn pulls her newly tended foot down from the console and rolls her eyes. “Uh-huh. I’ll take your word for it.”
“Come on. Everything we need is already in the safe house.”
We exit my truck and I give her a second to test her weight on her injured foot. When she nods that it’s okay, we walk over to the private elevator which takes us to the top floor with my access code. When the doors open, we enter a small vestibule reinforced with walls made of steel a foot thick so it’s not just as easy as blasting your way through with guns. You’d need a ton of C4 to get through here. I place my palm on an access panel and lower my head for the retinal scan. The locks disengage with loud metallic clicks, then I open the door and usher her inside making sure to reset the security system once we’re inside.
The foyer opens into the great room that was designed with our growing family in mind. Plush couches with built-in recliners face each other in the center of the room with a pair of large armchairs completing the U-shape. The far wall is comprised of a bank of windows made from bullet proof glass. They’re mirrored on the outside, so while we’re able to see out, no one can see in. That goes for all the windows in the bedrooms, too.
“You just casually have a safe house designed like Fort Knox that no one knows about in the middle of Vegas?”
“After Edevane made attacking us his new hobby, I wanted a place my family could go if we needed it, and it needed to be big enough that we weren’t on top of each other. Especially now that they both have mates and Bryn is pregnant.”
“Who’s Bryn?”
“Caiden’s mate. She’s due in the next month and my brother’s going out of his mind with worry. It’d be funny if it was a normal pregnancy, but the baby seems to have powers in utero which are making Bryn’s powers as a Darklight unpredictable.”
