Fallen (4 page)

I could shoot him. Such an act of violence seems totally appropriate, and yet we find ourselves doing something entirely civilized instead. We don’t leave right away. My parents, Lacey, Zeth and I sit around the kitchen table, and my mom pours Lady Grey for us all from an actual teapot like she’s the goddamn Queen of England. Zeth Mayfair’s gigantic hands somehow manage to navigate my parent’s best wedding china without breaking a single thing or spilling a single drop. And I feel like I just dropped acid.

This…this just can’t be happening.

Things get weirder when Lacey lays her head on Zeth’s shoulder, smiling happily to herself, and my father nearly chokes on his mouthful of tea. He obviously assumed that Zee and I are together, so Lacey laying on the affection must really be throwing him for a loop. I don’t bother explaining. I’d have a hell of a job even trying; I still don’t get what’s going on with their story from Zeth’s side of things. Yeah, Lacey is his sister, but he doesn’t know that. Maybe I should ask him one of these days. Maybe I should actually swallow my pride and forget about the fact that he’ll think I’m jealous long enough to figure out what the hell the deal is with their whole living arrangement.

“So, Sloane tells me you guys have found Alexis?” My mother. My poor, poor mother. I know her; I know how her brain works. She doesn’t care what Zeth looks like—how big or tall or scary or tattooed he may be. He could be a convicted serial killer and it wouldn’t matter to her right now. All she cares about is my conniving shit of a little sister.

Zeth clears his throat, shooting me a loaded sideways glance. He’s missed the part where I fibbed through my teeth about Lexi, so he has no idea what I’ve told them. “Yeah, well. I met her. Briefly. I’m really just Sloane’s road trip partner.”

Nice. The bastard’s just too damn smooth. Shirk all knowledge of the situation with one small, very concise bending of the truth. Zeth, my road trip partner. Zeth, my constant major headache, more like.

“Oh, yes. Right. Of course.” My mom takes another sip of her tea. Silence follows after that. The kind of silence that causes physical pain to those it’s inflicted upon. Polite as ever, my mother persists in trying to fill that silence. “And Alexis…she looked…well?” This question is aimed at both of us. Lacey sniffs, stands from the table, glancing around quickly with another contented smile, and then she leaves. Just leaves, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. Why the hell didn’t I think of that? But I can’t leave. God knows what Zeth could say to my parents. Or what they might ask him in my absence. I practically cringe at the thought.

“Yeah, last time I saw her she looked…healthy,” Zeth informs her. Another sip of tea. He picks up and bites into the cookie my mom gave him, meeting my gaze and smiling ever so slightly. Who the hell is this imposter, and where the hell has he hidden the body of the terrifying Zeth Mayfair? Because this guy…he is cookies and cream compared to the sharpened steel version of Zeth that I know.

I scowl at him, trying to communicate my severe annoyance at him barging in here and scaring the living shit out of me, and he has the audacity to wink in return.
Wink!
I’m getting suitably hot and bothered about that when he does something even worse. I feel a bump against my leg. Oh, he did
not
just…but when I feel strong fingers clasp around the top of my knee, I know that he did. He grabs hold of my thigh under the table. I lash out with my foot, intent on kicking some sense into him, but my aim is a little off.

“Ow! What on earth!” My father yelps like a kicked dog, reaching down to clasp at his leg. The leg I just booted.

“Oh! Sorry, Dad. Muscle spasm,” I explain weakly, grimacing. Zeth’s hand slides farther up my leg. I can’t help it—I shoot him a scandalized look. What the hell is he thinking right now? He’s behaving like an angel above the fine china my mother has laid out for us, but beneath the table he’s his usual self—the devil incarnate. I slide my hand under the table and locate his offending digits, rapidly traveling northwards, heading straight for dangerous territory.

Of course he would do this. This is totally him. Come barreling into my parents’ home, pretending like butter wouldn’t melt—information security? Yeah, right!—and all the while he’s trying to pervert me just a little bit more. Because under no circumstances have I ever imagined I would be sitting down to talk with my mother and father while a guy does his best to finger me under the table. I snatch ahold of his hand, grabbing onto the first finger I find, and I bend it sharply, doing my best to cause him pain. It feels like I’ll break the damn thing if I bend it any farther, and yet when I look up at Zeth he’s still smiling mildly, looking as though he doesn’t have a care in the world.

With one easy and careless motion, he twists out of my grasp and locks his grip around my wrist, tightening his hold. I do my best to stop myself from yanking my arm free, but it takes serious work. Dad looks a little confused, like he can see there’s something strange going on with me but he can’t for the life of him put his finger on it.

“When will Alexis be home, then, Sloane?” he asks.

“Soon. Really soon. She just has some things to organize back home. At her
new
home. It’ll be a couple of weeks maybe?” This news is going to kill them. After waiting so long and then, miracle upon miracles, finding out Alexis is still alive, they’re going to want to see her right away. My mother’s face falls, but my father just nods, as though all this is to be expected. In fact, he looks a little too calm. That doesn’t make much sense, but I have other things on my mind right now—mainly freeing myself from Zeth.

I tug on my arm, trying to disentangle myself from his grasp, but he only holds on tighter. Very slowly, he pulls my arm toward himself. He squeezes my wrist, just enough so that I can feel my blood pumping fiercely in each and every single one of my digits, and then he places my hand, palm down, into his lap.

My surprise at what I feel there sends my knee smashing up into the table; four sets of teacups rattle against their saucers and Lady Grey spills everywhere. A hard-on. He has the beginnings of a hard-on, and he’s angling his hips upward into my hand, pushing the thing against me as my cheeks suddenly burst into flames.

“What on earth is going on with you?” Mom gasps, reaching out to settle the various trembling items on the table.

“I’m sorry, I—”
I’m trying to tell you about your daughter, and I have a handful of dick
. The inappropriateness of the whole situation just makes it seem all the more surreal. What kind of person gets turned on when sitting down to make nice with the parents of the girl they’re fucking? Not only make nice, but to tell them the daughter they’ve suspected dead for so long is actually, in fact, alive? Zeth apparently. I shouldn’t have even bothered posing the question in my mind. Zeth is definitely the kind of guy to get serious kicks out of me squirming around like a fish on a hook. “I’m just fidgety after the long car trip.”

My dad’s eyes light up again. “Ah yes, the car. That’s right. Care to explain where you’ve left that?” There’s more interest in his voice now than there was when he’d been speaking about Lexi—something’s officially off about that. Really off.

“Yeah, your car. Right. Well—”

Zeth shoves his hips up into my hand again, pressing his now rock-solid cock into my still-pinned hand. “Yeah, that’s entirely my fault, Dr. Romera. I wanted to go off-roading and I didn’t want to damage your vehicle. I appreciate a well-maintained car, y’know. And it’s not often you see a station wagon in such pristine condition. That wood paneling…” Zeth puffs out his cheeks, and my dad makes a delighted sound of approval. Little does he know that Zeth isn’t in love with his wood paneling. The truth of the matter is that Zeth hates his freaking car and hates the seventies wood paneling most of all.

“Well, I have to say it’s great to meet a fellow car enthusiast! So where did you leave her?”

Why the hell is he not questioning me more about Alexis? I want to scream at him for being so callous but I’m too freaking stunned. That damned car. Meanwhile, the lies continue to pour forth from Zeth’s mouth without a hitch.

“Back at my parents’ place in San Jacinto. My friend Michael’s going to bring it down for you within the next couple of days. I hope you don’t mind?”

“Oh, no, not at all.” My dad beams at Zeth, completely unfazed by the out-and-out falsehood that just popped out of his mouth. Seems as though this has been a morning for them. I’m simply dumbstruck by the idea that I’ve just witnessed Zeth lying, when he said he always told the truth. Always. Like it would be a cardinal sin for him to do otherwise. Not that a man like Zeth would be much bothered with cardinal sins, as far as I’m aware. He’s done much, much worse than lie in the eyes of the church. And society in general. He doesn’t seem too bothered about that.

Lacey reappears in the kitchen, her small bag slung over her shoulder, bulging with unevenly shaped objects. She drops it at her feet, exhaling deeply and smiling at the group. “So,” she says. “This has been fun, huh? We should probably go now.”

We’ve been driving in almost complete silence for five minutes before Sloane speaks. “Do you really think that was appropriate?” she asks, tapping her fingertips against her bare knees. From the back of the car, Lacey pauses in her gentle humming and leans forward.

“Think what was appropriate?” she asks.

Sloane and I answer at the same time.

“Nothing.”/ “Sloane was playing with my dick under the dining table.”

Lacey slumps back into her seat, gasping in a scandalized fashion. “No, Sloane. No, I don’t think that was appropriate behavior at all.”

Sloane’s face reddens, either from embarrassment or rage, I’m not sure, but she curls her little doctor hands into fists and raises them high enough to make me think she’s considering hitting me. The prospect of being wailed on by Sloane does remarkable things to me; I give her my most salacious smirk. “Bring it, angry girl.”

She scowls, lowering her fists. “Do you think you could at least tell me where you’re driving to right now? I notice we’re headed north. There’s not much up there apart from Seattle, and I know you're not seriously taking me back there.”

She doesn’t realize that Seattle is the only place we can go. We could travel anywhere in this country and it wouldn’t matter—Charlie would find me. Charlie would find the both of us. No, the only option is to go home and face the music. I have to do my best to get her on board with the idea while not frightening the shit out of her at the same time. “What’s up, Sloane? I thought you liked your job. Your house. Don’t you wanna go back to that?”

She wrinkles up her nose, looking up at me with such blatant incredulity that I think she might start laughing. She doesn’t, though. She just shakes her head slowly.

“Are you completely mad? Have you forgotten about your ex-employer? Ah, but then again you were nice and safely out of the picture when he started sending people around to my house to kill me. Not much of a surprise that you'd want to head straight back to your crazy sex pad as soon as my sister’s found.”

Ahh, if only she could see inside my head. She’d have been surprised by my little
Sloane Romera no longer needs you bit
earlier. Actually fuck that. That would be a nightmare. “I don't live in my crazy sex pad. And I haven’t forgotten about Charlie, either.”

“Then why are you in such a rush to head back there? It’s not safe. They know where I live, Zeth. They know where I work.”

Lacey pipes up from the back again, confident and sure of her words. “You're going to come live with us for a while. And Zeth’s gonna keep you safe. Aren’t you?” She shoves a hand up into the front of the car and prods me forcefully in the arm. I could kill her. Yeah, so I was gonna broach the subject of Sloane coming to stay at the warehouse for a little while, just until things with Charlie resolved themselves one way or another. But I was going to do it more subtly. Try and make it seem like her idea. If she actually came to me wanting protection...how would that change the dynamics of our relationship? It would change things massively. The truth of the matter is, I have ways of getting what I want, and Lacey has just totally screwed with that. She’s completely fucking up my game.

“Sloane can stay wherever she likes.” I affect an air of total indifference. I know the reaction this would normally provoke from a fiery woman—I’ve had an awful lot of time over the years to study people and their reactions to different situations. They would say hell no. They’d rather die than come and stay with me. Even for a day. A single night. Half a fucking hour. But with Sloane, I can never rely on what I’ve learned from other people. She never reacts as I think she’s going to. I’m half thinking she’ll turn around and say okay to the whole thing.

She snorts, cracking her thumb knuckles, awkwardly shifting in her seat. “That’s an incredibly valiant offer there, Zeth, but I think I’ll give it a miss this time, thanks ever so much."

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t too far off the mark with my first guess. She prettied it up a little, but the response is still a
hell no
. It’ll be about ten thirty by the time I get a text from her, telling me to come get her. She’ll be mad. Angry. Probably say something about how since it’s entirely my fault that she’s jumping every time the house creaks, then I could at least have the decency to look out for her. I bite back the smile that wants to bloom across my face.