My Dangerous Pleasure (14 page)
The screaming didn’t come from everyone she encountered—just a random few. It could be someone walking down the street or maybe a customer in the bakery. Sometimes the effect was low-key, like what happened with Iskander coming home; her chest got to vibrating, and almost always someone showed up who she knew had set her off. Sometimes the reaction was far worse. The screams deafened her; they slivered her nerves. She wanted to rush at the source, whoever it was, and reach inside them to make the awful sounds stop.
Compared to what was happening to her now, her mother was merely eccentric. She did her best to quarantine that part of her mind from the healthy part. If there were other people around when she had one of these experiences, she carried on as if nothing had happened—because, of course, nothing really had happened. The screamers were more difficult to ignore. Their wails broke through the mental walls she built. Her best defense, she learned, was to get as far away from a screamer as possible.
Right now, she concentrated on the part of her she knew was sane and blocked off the rest. She understood who she was and where she was. Her name was Paisley Nichols. She knew the date and time and who was president of the United States. She owned her own business. Aliens didn’t exist and, except for Rasmus Kessler, the world wasn’t out to get her.
While she concentrated on her breathing, her chest vibrated in the same place that had flexed when the eggs fell. That meant that any minute now, she’d hear the rumble of Iskander’s heinously old pickup. She stood, head bowed, while she waited.
Three.
Two.
One.
The sound of Iskander’s truck was unmistakable.
She grabbed a bowl and cracked four eggs. This time they stayed cracked. While she chopped ingredients, the garage door motor revved up. That was him walking to the house. Coming inside. His keys clattered when they landed on the little table by the back entrance.
“You’re home early,” she said when he came into the kitchen. The first omelet was in the pan, bubbling away.
“Not much to do today.” He never elaborated on where he went, and she didn’t ask because his personal life was none of her business. She wanted to be a good housemate. Quiet. Respectful of his possessions and privacy. Sane. No one wanted a crazy roommate.
He opened the fridge and stared into it.
“You can’t live on takeout,” she said. The only thing he kept in there was root beer and leftover pizza or Chinese.
“Sure I can.” As usual, he was casual in jeans and a navy-blue Cal Berkeley T-shirt. His dark hair was pulled into a ponytail. Their relationship was strictly platonic, of course. He never made a move on her. They were friends. Just friends. Sure, there was flirtation once in a while, but they both knew nothing would come of it.
“I’m making you an omelet.” Her voice shook, but she covered it with a fake cough.
He wheeled around from the fridge, a slice of cold pizza in his hand. “You okay?”
“Why eat that crap when you can have fresh eggs from happy, dancing, free-range chickens?”
He stood there, grinning at her, and she felt better. Almost normal, just because he was smiling. Sometimes she remembered how she’d felt when she’d cried in his arms, and she wanted to feel that way again. Like there was someone who would hold her just because she needed the reassurance.
“Drop the pizza,” she said. “You know you want to. Come on.” She lifted the omelet pan. Iskander was a total pushover when it came to food. She used that against him as often as possible. “Hot, fresh cheese omelet? Yum.”
His eyes followed the pan back to the burner. “What kind of cheese?”
“Raclette. Garlic, heirloom tomatoes, and basil. Plus, I’m cooking it in butter.”
He threw his pizza into the compost she insisted on having. “It smells great,” he said.
“I have a fruit salsa to go with it and butter cookies from the bakery. Grab a plate.” He did, and she slid the omelet onto it, then arranged her fruit salsa garnish with a fresh basil leaf on top and a dollop of sour cream to the side. “Here. OJ in the fridge. Help yourself.”
Iskander took the plate and breathed in deep. “I’ve never had anyone look after me like this.”
Had he ever been in a relationship that lasted longer than eight hours? She gave him a gentle push in the back. “Eat.”
He gazed at her over the steaming plate, and for a minute he looked sad. Like his heart was broken. Then the look was gone and he smiled. “It’s nice,” he said. “The way you cook for me.”
“That was our deal.” She put her hands on her hips. “I love cooking for someone who likes food as much as you do.” That was absolutely true, too. Urban, her disaster boyfriend, as she liked to think of him, the man she’d loved to distraction and who had broken her heart, was a chef himself. Cooking for him had been a contest she could never win, even when she really did do better than him. “Eat before it’s cold.”
After he sat at the kitchen island, where they ended up whenever they happened to eat at the same time, she started another omelet. Behind her, Iskander groaned in delight. “This is amazing. You are amazing.”
Lord knows those words had never come from Urban’s mouth in any context. “Thank you.”
A few minutes later, over the sound and smell of butter and garlic sizzling in the pan, he said, “How’s the new phone working? Any problems with it?”
“No.” She gave a quick stir to the garlic and butter sizzling in the pan. “I like it.”
“You sure?”
She faced him while she whisked up more eggs. Iskander’s arrangement with the phone numbers turned out to be clever. Brilliant, actually. “Yes, I’m sure. Why?”
“You looked upset when I came in.” He had excellent table manners, though he did use his knife and fork in the American manner, switching the fork between hands and keeping the tines turned down. “I thought maybe Rasmus was getting through somehow.”
“No.” If Rasmus was calling her, he wasn’t getting through to her new number. She poured the eggs into the pan and raised her voice so he could hear her while she faced the stove. “I can finally leave my phone turned on without getting inundated with phone calls from him. So thank you, for your genius suggestion.”
“If there’s something going on, you should tell me.”
“No.” She turned around. Lord, but that shirt of his made his eyes look especially blue. “Nothing’s going on.”
“Not nothing.” He lifted his eyes from his last bite of the fruit salsa. He had that strange, intense stare she found so unsettling.
“Just worried. About Rasmus.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Well. Thank you, of course.”
“You don’t believe me.” He shrugged, finished the salsa, and took his plate to the dishwasher. “But it’s true.”
“It’s not that.” She got her eggs onto a plate, and she and Iskander did a little dance while she was heading to the island with her breakfast and he was heading for the fridge. “Bottomless pit,” she told him while they adjusted their trajectories. Iskander slid his hands around her waist and pulled her close. Her stomach did a little loop-de-loop. She ended up near enough to him to catch the faintest whiff of a flowery perfume. “Ooohhh,” she said, leaning in to sniff. “Who is she?”
His smile slowly vanished. “It’s not what you think.”
She took a step back, but he left his hands on her hips. “None of my business, Iskander. You need to have your fun.”
“I was in a relationship once.” He let go of her and shoved his hands into his front pockets. “A long one.”
She recognized the wreckage left behind by a serious relationship that had crashed and burned. “Me too.” She made a face in order to lighten the mood. “In fact, my ex is coming here. Urban Drummond. I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
“You’re getting back with him?”
I
skander didn’t understand what made him blurt out something like that. What a stupid thing to say to her. If she wanted to get back with her ex, that was her business. Not his. But strange that he would even think of objecting. Which he did.
“No,” Paisley said. But she answered too quickly, and he wasn’t sure she meant it. He thought probably she didn’t. From the way she looked, he didn’t think she’d been the one to end the relationship. “Believe me, we’re over.”
He didn’t believe that, either. They gazed at each other for a while, and Iskander knew he should say something to break the tension. But he didn’t.
“How long?” she asked. She carried her omelet to the counter and sat down next to him. “Your relationship, I mean.”
Way to turn the tables. “A long time.”
“Can I ask what happened?” She held up a hand. “It’s okay if you’d rather not talk about it.”
“What happened with your ex?”
“We were talking about getting married at the same time he was cheating on me.” She took a bite of her omelet and then used her fork to make patterns in her fruit salsa. “I found out about her, and that was more or less it. Took a while to make it final, but if he meant it when he said he was sorry and that it was over, why was he still seeing her? You know?”
He poured more OJ into his glass and pushed it to her. “No cooties, I promise.”
“Boy cooties is all.” She drank some. “So. What about you?”
What could he say? The woman who had been, literally, his other half, betrayed him to a fucking mage. “We were together a long time, but it didn’t work out.”
She arched her eyebrows at him.
No one had ever asked him about losing Fen. Not even Harsh, and in a way, Harsh had lost her, too. “She left me.”
“Urban and I lasted three years. Sounds like you were together even longer than that.”
His chest got tight. He wasn’t used to needing to figure out the right thing to do instead of doing whatever would feel good right now. “She left me for Rasmus.”
Her fork clicked on her plate, loud in the silence. Her eyes flicked to his, and his gut twisted. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
She pushed away her plate. Not hard, not like she was pissed off, but still. “When?”
“Couple of years ago now.” He knew this was heading into dangerous territory, and there were things he absolutely could not tell her without explaining things he wasn’t supposed to tell her. “She started up with him a while before we actually split.”
“Is she still seeing him?”
He had no idea how to answer that, so he grunted. He’d just screwed himself where she was concerned. He didn’t want to lie to her any more than he had to. “I don’t know. Probably.”
“Does him stalking me have anything to do with you?”
He met her gaze straight on. “Maybe.”
“Does she know he’s insane?”
“I don’t think he was crazy when she met him. Maybe he was, though.” He gave a rough laugh. “I didn’t know him then. Even now, I only know
of
him.” On impulse, he reached for her hand, folding his fingers around hers. His skin was several shades darker than hers. “It was a fucked-up time for me, and the truth is, I’m still fucked up over it.”
They weren’t sitting close, but they weren’t far apart, either. He expected her to move away, but she didn’t. She leaned toward him, leaving her hand where it was. With her head turned toward him, she gave a sad smile. “Falling in love with the wrong person is awful.”
“Sucks,” he said. He shouldn’t be thinking of starting something with her. Things were complicated enough already.
“I’m sorry you got hurt,” she said.
He shrugged. “It won’t happen again.” What mistakes had he made with Fen? She’d been his blood-twin. How the hell did you make a mistake when you were practically the same person?
“I wish I was as sure as you about that.” She leaned her other arm on the counter. “Urban was… not who I wanted him to be. I should have realized that sooner than I did. Then I thought Rasmus might be a good place to start over. Bless my own heart. I went from one cheater to another. That doesn’t say much about my judgment, does it?”
“Doesn’t count. You didn’t really date Rasmus. You figured out pretty quick that he’s nuts.”
“Not soon enough.”
“Besides, from what I’ve seen, it’s your ex who blew it. What kind of idiot would break up with a woman like you?”