His stood there stunned at her words. This could not be happening. His memory was blank because he was looking for it in the wrong database. Whatever Rita just told him indicated that that blank piece of his memory was in the wolven part of his conciousness. Selene, this was bad! He plopped down on a seat across from her with his head in his hands whilst she curled herself in a ball on her seat.
“How did you get me back to my place?” he asked.
“I drove you in my car after we snuck out through the back.”
“And your leg?” he asked looking at how gingerly she held it.
“Still stings a little.” she replied. A lie.
“Did anything else happen at my apartment?” he asked. Her fifteen seconds of silence had him thinking the worst.
“You gave me the choice between falling off your balcony or dry humping you again while keeping your fangs at my throat. I don't think you finished. You collapsed after that.”
He gripped his face harder. Hell! Another round of silence followed. “So you're saying someone saw us when we were on the stairs.”
She did not say anything, just continued to hug her knees to her body and nodded. He did not know what was going on inside her head but he could take a guess.
“Did I–did I do anything else?” he was not sure if she would answer or if he actually wanted to know. But he needed to. He needed to know how much he fucking screwed up. She did not answer.
He did not go close to her when he said his next words. He knew how she would react. “Rita I need to know everything that happened yesterday.”
Still nothing.
“Please Rita. I know this must be hard for you but you need to tell me everything.”
It took a long while before she did anything. That being to shift further away from him and curl into herself even more. “I–i–i c–can't.”
The dread in him skyrocketed and he swallowed harshly. “Do you want to go home?”
Her gaze turned to him but it was for only half a second before she brought it back to the floor and quietly nodded.
“Ok. You can take time off the rest of the day.”
****
She had not expected him to come in to the office at all. Not after– Not after how hard he had gone down last night. There was no way around not telling him about what happened last night. Someone had seen. She did not want to go through the whole thing with Theo all over again. Everything from last night came too close to it.
He wanted all the details so he could save his own skin, nothing more. Even now as she slipped into her car wondered if he was telling the truth or just pretending. Everything hurt from her leg, her ass to her back. Her neck and the insides of her thighs were dreadfully sore.
She drove home. Last night playing in her head.
≈ She watched him as he eyed the trail of crimson running down the length of her leg. His expression was a blank sheet but his intent was clear and cold spikes of fear spread across her skin and turned on her adrenaline.
He brought his knees to the floor and caught her leg in his grip with that stupid speed. He lifted it by her knees and she had to hold on to the wall for support. She watched in horror and morbid fascination as his tongue peeked out of his mouth and laved at the blood on her knee. He rolled it in his mouth before bringing his tongue back to lick up the rest upwards. He licked the long stretch of the wound on her thigh and she flinched in pain.
When he was done licking the blood off, he went to the bottom of the slash and planted kisses all the way up to the top of it. He let go of her leg and stood up from the floor.
She stood from the wall as well. Both their eyes searing into each other, refusal on her part and critical examination on his. Looking for chinks in her armor. She needed to leave before he found them. All of them.
Rita kept her eye on him as she descended down the stairs, one step at a time, ready to run if the need arose. One step, two, three, ten steps and he just stayed put watching her leave.
On the twelfth step, she raced down the raced and ran out the emergency exit. She sped walked to her car so she would not draw attention to herself and when she finally reached her car, she cursed herself for being stupid. Her purse was gone and she could not remember for the life of her were she had it last.
She put her head against the window and tried to recall where she had last seen it but it was not working. A tap tap on the other window had her eyes open and she froze. On the other side of the car was Samuel looking right at her, a clawed hand resting against the glass. Fuck he was fast.
He raised his other hand to the glass to reveal her purse. She gawked at it from her side of the glass. A toothy smirk crossed his face and made him look every bit of the wolf he had not physically turned into. Although he said no words. She heard him loud and clear. Come and get it. ≈
She had not expected him to climb in with her and for that she was an incredibly foolish idiot. Going into his apartment had been the biggest foolishness of all. She willingly stepped into the trap and she had paid the price for her stupidity.
She walked into her house, took off her clothes and rushed into her bathroom. The mirror on the mocking her with the images of her torn body. The purple splotches and faint bite marks on her neck, the claw marks on her back, the handprint on her ass, the bruises on her thighs and the slash on her leg that started at the top of her knee and ended close to the top of her thigh.
She looked away, turned around and twisted on the shower knob. She stepped into the warm spray wincing when the water touched her wounds. He could hear him laughing in her head. Her father. All of a sudden she was back to being thirteen, crying in the shower as the water ran over her, after she had locked herself in. Him out there laughing, waiting with the fucking belt in his hands.
Her tears mingled with the shower water and she hugged herself.
****
Samuel looked through the security footage of his office and found the coffee incident. It was not her fault. It was his. He played it over and over and there was no denying it.
That would explain why she had been avoiding him like he had some kind of contagious disease since then. Never looking him in the eye unless she absolutely must. Refusing to step into his office alone. Always two, three or even six feet away from his person.
He pulled up the security footage from his apartment and he wished to the moon above and back that he was watching was fake. But it was not.
Dear Selene what had he done.
A message popped up on his screen and he opened it by accident. The message contained a single video and it was addressed to him. Suspicion settled in his lap and he played the video.
His mouth fell slightly agap from the video's start to finish. The video made sure to highlight Rita's struggles and her clear refusal and his force and indifference. He checked the address and tried to track it but whoever sent this sent it through a public server.
Shit! Shit! Shit! He fucking screwed up. He was fucking screwed. And whoever was in possession of this video was going to be the one to screw him over.
*****
The blood in his veins and every fibre of his being screamed for retribution. How dare that mutt touch what was his?! How dare he touch his lily?! His goddess! He watched the footage from the event that Flavio Randazzo, his current employer, had made the terrible mistake of showing him and an even bigger one by commenting on his Lily like she was some low whore he could pick off fucking Tade street.
He shot him in the head point blank five seconds after the disgusting words left his flaky lips. The shot alerted his bodyguards outside, he could hear their footsteps rushing in. He grabbed the flash drive before he crushed the tablet in his gloved hand and threw it into the fireplace before he phased out of the house.
He heard Flavio's bodyguards rush into the room just before the tablet exploded, setting off every other explosive Flavio had been so keen on keeping in his office setting the whole wing of his mansion in flames.
He teleported to the top of a building twenty blocks away and watched the blaze from afar. Well, at least he had been paid in full. Flavio had been the one who hired him to kill Rowena Dale and several others in the last two days. He was a crime boss from three cities over that wanted to extend his influence. He found out that in Alvas he was nothing more than a little fish swimming in a shark tank.
Fifteen years and he was still lurking half dead in the shallow end. Well, past tense. Had been lurking in the shallow end with enough debt hanging over his head that turned him into nothing more than an errand boy for any crime lord in the city who cared. The biggest plan he had was to get back at the Delezes or whoever really controlled this city. Currently, that was Samuel Princeton and Carmilla.
Flavio was a greedy bastard with no eye for business and no idea when to quit. Carmilla would not mind if the human was gone.
But that was the least of his worries. That fucking mutt had touched his lily! He held the flash drive in his left hand. Flavio's plan had been to blackmail the mutt out of his power and influence. It may have worked. Emphasis on the may. Princeton was not that much of a fool. He would rather the video got out. Fucking FDSA be damned. He could not let that happen to his lily.
The only reason she responded to the mutt Princeton was because she had gone so long without him. That would not be the case any longer. He brought out a picture from his leather jacket and longingly gazed at it in the neon lights of the signs around him. It was a picture of his lily eight months ago. She had been at a party somewhere. He could not remember. Eight months. That is how long he had been unable to be close to her until a couple of nights ago.
She had such rich skin, like freshly tilled land just after a sprinkle of rain. A smile spread across his face mirroring hers in the picture. Her smile was so infectious. He could almost smell the day the photo had taken. Mango and bomb shots. He had lick it off her chest before letting her Arsen's minions take her home.
He had wanted everything to be fully prepared before he approached her in the open but now he could not and would not wait any longer. He was going to finally introduce himself and leit her know that he was the better choice.
He caught his reflection in a piece of broken glass leaning against the chimney. His wavy black hair, his olive skin drowned out by the neon lights, irises glowing a misty amethyst.
He had spent time getting most of his features just to her liking. He would not let all his preparation go to waste. He would personally deal with Princeton. And make sure he regretted ever even looking at his lily for merely a second.
He watched his irises as they changed to an eerie silver before the piece of glass shattered to a million pieces. His phone rang and he fished it out of his pocket. It was Carmilla. He did not have caller ID. Too dangerous to have with his line of work. He recognized the number. He answered the call but said nothing.
“Get here.” she simply said and cut the call.
His guess was that she wanted a full report of what happened with Flavio. There were things in this dimension you just could not help. One of them, at least for him was answering to Carmilla.