“Trust me, I know that look. Lots of girls give me that look.”
“Maybe if they know,” I gave a pointed glance around the table, “it’s because of the look you have on your face when you are around ME,” I gave him a smug smile.
“You might be right about that,” he conceded. “Let’s just say that it’s a good thing you’re the only one who can read my thoughts.”
I gave him a light shove in the chest and attempted a disapproving stare, but it was hard when, in reality, it thrilled me.
I’d been so engrossed in my mental conversation with Erik that, I didn’t notice that everybody else at the table had stopped talking. At first, my alcohol-muddled mind thought that it was because they were watching our exchange. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I followed the direction of their frozen gazes, and saw Donavon standing several feet from our table, staring at me.
My stomach dropped, and I had to fight the urge to be sick. I’d know that I would have to see him again one day, I’d just hoped that the day would be WAY in the future.
I stared straight at him, the alcohol giving me courage that I otherwise lacked. After several long seconds of awkward silence, Donavon finally spoke.
“Congratulations, Natalia. My dad told me that you leave for your solo Hunt tomorrow,” he spoke to me, but looked at Harris, the only friendly face for him at our table.
“Yes, I do,” I replied tightly, refusing to accept his sentiments. Erik’s hand tightened on my leg.
“Please be safe,” he mentally added. I closed my mind off to him completely, before I was tempted to reply, and turned my back on him.
“Nice to you see you guys. Harris, I’ll see you back at the cabin later tonight.” I don’t know if it was wishful thinking, or my newfound love of overanalyzing everything that guys said and did, but I swear he emphasized the fact he planned on returning to his cabin tonight – i.e. not staying with the blonde slut in the city – for my benefit.
Donavon’s presence put a damper on my celebration. Penny made an effort to get us back on track, by ordering Electric Shock shots, but I wasn’t in the mood anymore. Erik was good at affecting a care-free attitude, but the way his fingers dug painfully into my arm told me that he wasn’t pleased. I tried to take part in the conversation, but I couldn’t concentrate; I kept thinking about Donavon. My lack of verbal communication left plenty of time for me to down several more glasses of the lemony drinks, and I was completely toasted by the time curfew rolled around.
Penny asked if I wanted her to stay with me when we got back to Headquarters, but I insisted that it wasn’t necessary. She wanted to spend more time with Harris, and I wanted to spend the night with Erik.
I clung on to Erik’s arm as I stumbled to my room. He would’ve carried, I think he actually offered several times, but I refused, arguing that I was perfectly capable of walking on my own. Of course, I wasn’t, but Erik indulged me. He even sat crossed-legged on the floor of the elevator with me, when the ride made me too dizzy to stand.
It took me three tries to scan my palm to open the door to my room. Erik smirked, but waited patiently since I demanded that he let me do it on my own.
Once we were inside, I gave up my independent act and fell into Erik’s arms. He scooped me off of my feet and carried me to my bed.
“Did you have fun tonight?” he murmured into my hair.
“Yup!” I nodded my head vigorously as he settled me on my pillows.
He slid my shoes off of my feet, before kicking off his own and climbing in after me. He leaned over and bent his head down, until our foreheads touched. I giggled, as I reached up to pull his lips to mine. He hesitated for a brief second, then gave me one of his toe-curling kisses. I boldly reached for the waist of his pants to untuck his shirt. I ran my hands over the hard muscles of his stomach and back, and I felt raised, puckered flesh, marking scars from past Hunts that hadn’t been removed.
His heart was pounding against his ribcage in time with my own, he pulled away from the kiss for just long enough to pull his shirt over his head, and I stared in amazement as his muscles rippled with even the smallest movement.
I looked up into his eyes, and I saw the same indecision that I had the other night. I reached my hand out to him and he took it with only a little hesitation. He lowered himself down on top of me again, careful to balance most of his weight on his free arm. He never took his eyes away my mine as he released my hand, and reached up behind my neck to untie my dress. He slowly pulled it down. With one shaking hand, I reached up and traced the lines of his face. He gave me a huge grin, and pulled the dress the rest of the way down.
My mouth was dry, my hands trembling, and clammy. I couldn’t stop quivering with the mixture of nerves and anticipation. Waves of heat spread over me every time that his skin made contact with mine. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from saying something that I might regret. Erik’s eyes crinkled and his mouth quirked into a smile, enjoying the effect that he was having on me.
Once my dress was nothing more than a pile of gauzy fabric on the floor next to my bed, Erik sat back, looking me up and down. It’d always made me nervous when Donavon looked at me without any clothes on, but something about the way that Erik’s eyes drank in every detail made me feel special, and I didn’t mind at all.
A flicker of something that I couldn’t pinpoint flashed across Erik’s eyes. He hesitated, before bending down and kissing me, slowly, softly. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer to me, but I feared that he would never get close enough to satisfy me.
I’d never felt this way with Donavon, who I’d been so convinced I loved. Donavon, who I’d defended anytime that Erik spoke ill of him. Donavon, who I’d trusted, and who had made me question everything that I thought I knew in my life.
Suddenly Erik stopped kissing me. He backed away, stumbling backwards off of my bed.
“This is wrong, I can’t do this,” he stammered.
“W-w-w-what?” I stuttered, hot tears pricking the corners of my eyes. “Why?”
“You’re drunk Talia, it would be wrong.”
“Drunk?” I repeated. He had a point, I was drunk, but I would’ve wanted him even if I were sober. Since I was drunk, I actually said, “It doesn’t matter, I would still want you if I was sober. I mean I do want you when I’m sober.”
“No, this is wrong,” he said firmly, shaking his head.
I scrambled off the bed and moved towards him, only vaguely aware of the fact that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. I reached out to him but he kept backing away. The tears that had welled up in my eyes were now falling down my cheeks.
“Did I do something wrong?” I sniffled.
“No,” his answer was clipped. I did something wrong, I just didn’t know what it could be. I cried harder.
“What can I do? Tell me what I did wrong,” I pleaded with him. This is when I should have been biting my cheek, so I didn’t say something I would regret.
“Natalia, you’re drunk. I don’t think this is the best time to have this conversation.”
How could he do this to me? I might not have trusted myself with him, but I did trust him.
Erik started walking toward me. He grabbed my bathrobe off of the hook on the bathroom door and wrapped it around my shoulders.
“I should go, Tal,” he said kneeling down in front of me. My chest was heaving with my silent sobs. I couldn’t catch my breath, and my drunken brain feared I was hyperventilating.
“Please stay,” I begged. “I don’t understand what I did wrong,” I cried, but my words were incoherent, even to me.
Erik ran the back of his hand against my cheek and then stood to leave. I shot my hand out and wrapped it around his wrist, forcing him to turn back around and face me.
“What did I do?” I shouted, anger replacing humiliation. “You owe me that much.”
“Owe you?” the fury that flashed in his eyes scared me. Under sober circumstances, I probably would’ve shrunk away from him. “I do
n’t owe you shit, Tal.” He yanked his arm, but my grasp was firm.
“I was about to sleep with you, Erik,” I screamed.
“Why?” Erik demanded. He yanked harder and his wrist broke free from my grasp, but he didn’t make moves to leave the room again. Instead, he bent down with his face inches from mine.
“Why, what?” I asked, confused.
“Why do you want to sleep with me, Tal?” he demanded. His eyes were blazing and his face was contorted in rage. This time I did shrink away from him.
“I don’t know,” I stammered.
“To get back at Donavon?” his voice turned eerily calm, and I leaned further back away from him. I knew he had a temper, we both did, but his had never been directed at me. He terrified me, but I refused to back down. I straightened my spine.
“NO,” I screamed at him, shoving him hard in his bare chest. “Why would you even think that?”
“You know how amazing it is to be with you?” his voice turned gentle, but his eyes still had that if-looks-could-kill thing going on. “When I’m with you, I can feel how you feel. You project your feelings on to me so strongly that no matter what I do, I can’t keep you out of my head. And I don’t want too. It feels too incredible.”
“Then what’s wrong?” a fresh wave of hysteria rose up inside me, threatening to overtake me again.
“Donavon! There hasn’t been one time I have kissed you that you haven’t thought of him!” Erik screamed, pounding his hands against my bed, sending me bouncing up and down. If I thought his eerie calm voice was scary, it had nothing on his losing-his-temper voice.
“No, no that isn’t true,” I sobbed, hugging my knees to my chest. “I want to be with you.”
“Yes, Natalia it is. And I’m not going to be anybody’s fucking silver medal.” Every apartment in the building was soundproofed, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if my neighbors could hear us screaming.
Erik backed away from the bed, grabbing his shirt as he did.
“No!” I screamed after him. “Erik, please!” I briefly considered reaching out to his mind and mentally forcing him to stay with me, but thankfully all of the yelling had sobered me up enough to realize how terrible that plan was likely to turn out.
Erik paused near the door, and hope filled me. Then he pressed his hand to the interior sensor and the door swung open. My strangled cries filled the room when he walked out.
Curling up on my bed, I sobbed until I had no tears left to cry and my throat was so raw that it felt like it was bleeding. I choked on my sobs and dry-heaved over the side of my bed. I dreaded falling asleep, because every time I woke again, I’d have to relive the pain and embarrassment of what had happened.
Chapter Thirty
When I finally dragged myself out of bed the next morning my eyes were so swollen that I could barely see. I wandered into my bathroom, only to find that I actually looked worse than I felt. The purple color of my eyes wasn’t identifiable in my reflection. Makeup streaked my cheeks and across my forehead, from where I’d smeared it rubbing the tears away. My loose curls were tightly knotted and sticking out all over my head. I groaned.
I had several hours until I was due at the hangar for my flight to Nevada. I should’ve spent that time doing last minute preparations for my Hunt, but I lacked the energy. I had a horrible headache that I wanted to blame on the alcohol, but I remembered that it was supposed to be hangover-free, so I correctly attributed it to my uncontrollable hysteria over what had happened with Erik.
I filled my oversized bathtub with water as hot as I could bear, added scented oils that Gretchen had sent me. I plastered a cucumber-carrot cream over my entire face and slipped over the edge of the large tub and into the steaming water. The cream was one of Gretchen’s own concoctions; she used to slather the tangy-smelling lotion on both mine and Donavon’s injuries when we were younger to reduce swelling. It worked wonders, and I hoped it would do the same for my puffy eyes.
Floating in the scented water, I tried to clear my head of Erik, of Donavon, and of anything else that didn’t directly relate to my upcoming assignment. It was a fruitless endeavor. I couldn’t erase Erik’s accusations from my mind. Did I really think about Donavon that much? I guess I did, but most of my thoughts weren’t exactly friendly. And really, what did Erik expect? Donavon was the only guy that I’d ever dated. The only guy I’d ever kissed. The only guy that I’d ever done anything that a teenage girl does with a teenage boy. Of course I was going to think about Donavon, right? I didn’t still have feelings for Donavon, unless hate counted, right? Even if I did, was it really fair for Erik to expect me to just turn off my feelings for Donavon, even after what he’d done to me? And why was Erik fishing around in my head while we were making out, anyway? I didn’t reach in to his head. Sure I opened myself up to his feelings, but that was a lot different than rummaging around in his head, to find out how I compared with every girl that he’s ever done whatever it is he does with.
My bath ended up being less relaxing than I’d anticipated. When I climbed out of the tub, trailing watery footprints across the bathroom floor, I was less ashamed about the way that I’d acted with Erik, and more enraged about the way that he’d acted with me. Actually, I was more than angry; I was fuming. I threw my necessary belongings into my black regulation backpack with way more force than necessary, roughly packing my clothes and gadgets while muttering to myself the whole time.
When a knock on the door interrupted my angry packing, my stomach was suddenly full of butterflies. I wanted to open my mind to find out who was there, but I wasn’t sure if the fluttering in my stomach was because I hoped that it was Erik, or because I hoped that it was Donavon. The epiphany made me irrationally angry with Erik, for being right about the whole Donavon thing.
Instead of opening my mind, I used it to throw open the door. The door slammed into the wall, chipping the purple paint; the doorjamb had failed to even slow its swing.
“Hey,” Penny called, tentatively.
“Oh, it’s you. Sorry, come on in,” I called back.
“Nervous?” Penny asked, jittery herself.
“Huh? Oh, about the Hunt? Of course I’m nervous, but I’ll be fine. It’s just a graduation Hunt after all.” I tried to smile at her, but it came out strained.
“You’re distracted,” Penny said, matter-of-factly.
“I. Am. Not. Distracted,” I practically growled at her.
“Tal, I know you’ve done really well on your Hunts up until now,” she spoke softly as she slowly lowered herself to the floor to sit beside me. “But you really need your head in the game right now. This Mission is extremely dangerous, I’ve seen all the intel –”
“I’ve seen it all too, Penny,” I snapped at her, annoyed.
“Is it Erik?” Penny asked quietly.
“Yeah . . . kind of,” I relented, softening my tone.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” she suggested.
I gave her a hard look. As angry as I was with Erik, I knew that the minute I actually said the words out loud, I would be reliving possibly the most mortifying experience of my life. I thought it better to remain heated.
I intended to tell Penny I didn’t want to talk about it, but somehow I found myself launching in to a detailed account of the night before. I stared at my hands the entire time I spoke. The only thing worse than a drunken fight, was recounting a drunken fight while sober. I might as well have put it up on my wall screen, and played it back in slow motion.
Penny listened without comment. When I was finished, I finally looked up and met Penny’s green eyes, hoping to find something that made me feel better. Her eyes were full of concern, but I wasn’t sure what exactly it was regarding.
“Erik will calm down. He cares a lot about you,” Penny finally said. She hesitated before continuing. “Do you want Donavon back?” Her voice was so quiet that, if I hadn’t been sitting right next to her I wouldn’t have heard her.
“No. No, I don’t,” I said
with as much conviction as I could muster.
“But maybe it was a little too soon to start something with Erik?” Penny prompted.
“Probably,” I admitted.
“He’ll be okay when you get back, he just needs a couple of days to calm down,” she assured me. I nodded and gave her a real smile. “Now that you’ve gotten that off of your chest, will you please concentrate on your Hunt?” she insisted.
“Yes, I will. You’re right – none of this is important right now.” Penny’s point was valid. This was exactly what Mac had been talking about; if I really wanted to be a Hunter, I needed to start acting like it. Boys were the last thing that I should be devoting energy to.
Penny finished packing my stuff while I reviewed intel again. Together, we made our way to the hover hangar where I would board the craft that would take me to Nevada. We didn’t say much on the walk, but it was nice knowing that Penny was there.
Thanks to all of my mental anguish over Erik and Donavon that morning I hadn’t had time to get nervous about my Mission. But as soon as the hangar came into view, my stomach constricted, twisting my internal organs, as fear and anxiety set in. I reached over and grabbed for Penny’s hand. She gave it a reassuring squeeze, and I gripped hers tighter.
In a couple of hours, I could be face-to-face with my parents’ murderer. In a couple of hours, I might kill Ian Crane, or Ian Crane might kill me. None of these scenarios sounded very win-win to me; in fact, they all sounded lose-lose.
Best case scenario, I confronted Ian Crane. I don’t know if I’d be able to restrain myself from attacking him, but if I attacked him, my cover was blown. If my cover was blown, I’d better be sure that he died in that attack. If he died, it was unlikely that I’d make it very far before one of his men killed me. If I did somehow manage to Houdini my way out of there, it was unlikely that I graduate, since my official assignment was information gathering. All in all the outcome wasn’t likely going to be in my favor.
Mac was waiting inside the hangar with Captain Alvarez when we arrived. His face was set in hard lines, his dark brown eyes unwelcoming. At least Captain Alvarez appeared pleased to see me – his dark features lit up with a reassuring smile when he noticed me.