Tenants and Tyrants (Book 5 of The Warden series) (3 page)

“Lot of history to consider.”

Heaton shrugged. “It’s just a job.”

Daniel could feel the heat of anger rising inside of him. It was not the kind of anger that came from being insulted. It was the kind of anger that came from being injured by betrayal. It was not a good anger for him to have.

He looked over at the bar to Nevia. She was sitting patiently with three beers waiting for some kind of signal to return. The look he gave her must have indicated urgency, because she was off her stool and through the crowd in three seconds flat.

She set the two pale ales and the dark ale on the table and slid them to their destinations. “Heaton, you want to dance?” Nevia asked, but he just shook his head and drank his beer. He saw right through her attempts to get close enough to read him. At this point, Daniel was willing to strip him to bare balls and hold him down, so she could find out what was driving his rogue behavior.

“Yeah, he does,” Daniel said with the intention of goading him into it. “Heaton would love to dance with you, Jordan.” Heaton glanced between them. “He was just telling me how he wanted to shag you.” Daniel did an internal cringe when he saw Heaton stiffen with shock.

“What the fuck, dude?” Heaton set his beer down.

“It’s alright, Heaton,” Nevia said sitting down. “It’s not like I haven’t considered it.”

Heaton and Daniel both looked to her slack-jawed. She shrugged. “What? If it’s crossed your mind, don’t you think it’s crossed mine?”

“You would do him?” Daniel pointed at Heaton.

“Again, dude, what the fuck?” Heaton glared at him.

“Sure. I don’t think we should, but I would.”

Heaton’s attention returned to her, as if he was trying to calculate what he needed to say to get passed the “I don’t think we should” part of her statement. “I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be, your hot. Asking myself if I would consider sleeping with you, is like asking myself if I’d like to have another beer. Of course I would, but depending on when that beer is offered, and how drunk it’s going to make me must be taken into consideration.”

Heaton must have understood that or at least pretended to, because he gave her a head bow of appreciation. “Truthfully, the only reason I told him that was to watch him panic.” Heaton motioned to him, and for a split second Daniel wanted to defend himself, but forced his face not to react. “He didn’t much care though. He pretty much told me to go for it.”

“I didn’t say that.” His eyes flashed to Nevia to see if she was mad. Her damned blank stare of observation told him nothing. “I said I have no room to judge. I never implied that he should or shouldn’t. If anything I suggested against it.” Daniel looked back at Heaton and saw the smug smile of a man pleased with his turn of tables. He gave him a glare and turned back to Nevia, but she was already scanning the room.

He sat back and drank his beer, annoyed that he had just embarrassed himself on cue. He was usually more suave than that. Heaton was putting him on edge with his aggression. Nevia was putting him on edge with her frigid temperament, which for whatever reason was so damn alluring to him. He couldn’t be himself, at least not with them. With a stranger however…

4

It didn’t take long for Daniel to find someone to cruise. He had started to develop a reputation as the pub man-whore. All he had to do was wait for a woman, drinking off a bad day, to wink at him, or smile coyly and he was up from his chair offering to buy her a drink.

Tonight’s fancy was a tall big haired blonde. Her bosom was big, her butt was round, and she had plush lips and clean teeth. It was a pub crawler’s paradise sitting across from him. He breathed in her clean powder fresh scent.

Best of all she wasn’t about pretenses. She had all but told him she needed to get laid. Normally, he would have skipped the next round of drinks and suggested they go back to his place so he could accommodate her, but there was one problem.

Heaton had long since left the bar. He always had a few women on speed dial, and didn’t like messing around with foreign waters at the pub. He liked consistency to Daniel’s variety. Nevia on the other hand, had not headed home. She had caught the eye of a twenty something and he was fishing for his own invitation from her.

Daniel couldn’t help but be disgusted by the way the lanky blond turned his chair around to sit in front of her. She was still relaxed at the table with her feet up. He couldn’t see her face, but the twenty-something kept smiling at her and laughing whenever she said something he thought was funny.

Nevia was fun when she drank, but she was also a little candid. She might have simply been speaking honestly and he might have decided that it was a joke and laughed at it. If that was the case her thin smile would soon vanish and she would make an excuse to use the restroom and not come out for a long while.

He had seen her do it with several men over the last few months. She would come out holding her stomach looking uncomfortable. When they saw her again, their overly happy smiles would fade and they would inevitably ask what was wrong. He wasn’t sure what excuse she gave: stomach flu, diarrhea, or menstrual cramps, but he could see their faces turn green.

It was an ingenious way to get rid of the men. First off, any man that was willing to try to screw a girl with bathroom sickness of any kind was total slime. Second, if they weren’t slime they didn’t get offended when she wanted to leave without them. Third and most important, after such a turn off, the guys would never try to hit on her again.

There were only a few times she went home with the guy, or at least left with them. He had been making a habit of sticking around until last call just to see if she was going to or not.

“Hello,” his would be one night stand waved her hand in front of his face. “Are you still with me?”

He turned back to her and smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I was just checking on my…cousin. I don’t want her to get taken advantage of.”

The big-haired blonde shifted to get a good look at the back of Nevia’s head. She turned back to him with a wry smile. “Look I’m game for whatever you want to do tonight, but if you’d rather be sportin’ slim over there, then let me know. I can always catch a ride somewhere else.” She winked implicating the type of ride she would be finding.

Daniel looked her over admiring her features. He was a fool not to take her home with him right then. He took her hand, and kissed it. “I’m going to regret this in the morning, but could I get a rain check.”

She looked disappointed, but she nodded politely. She leaned over and kissed him on the lips giving him a taste of what he was missing. As she slipped off the bar stool to find another suitor she murmured by his ear. “I hope she’s worth it.”

He smiled on the outside, but he cringed on the inside. He was an idiot. Nevia had made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want him, and yet he was pining for her like a damned school boy. He had not been loyal to one woman his whole life, aside from his mother, but that never counted.

What made him so damned irritated, was that she wasn’t even his type. He liked bountiful bouncy busts and butts, not boney little girls. He tried to remind himself of that, but every time he tried to disillusion himself about her beauty, he just wound up thinking about how good she felt on top of him while he kissed her petite pert breasts. The whole exercise left him more entrenched in his obsession with her.

Daniel heard Nevia laugh. She rarely laughed. He stared at twenty-something with venomous thoughts. He wondered if she could smell his irritation. He wanted her to.

Disgusted with his waste of a perfectly good lay, he slipped off the bar stool and went back to the table. It was time for him to give up on this game. He was losing miserably, but what was worse, she wasn’t even playing.

He half set, half dropped his glass on the table. The sound made Nevia jump and a little part of him was glad. She pulled her feet off his chair and pushed it out so he could sit. He glanced down at the chair, as if it were another temptation to an addict. He looked at twenty-something. He was young and stupid, but he looked harmless enough. Nevia would be able to smell if he intended to do her harm. She didn’t need his protection.

“I’m going home. You need anything?” he asked hoping that maybe the answer to that question might be, “yes.” Followed quickly by, “I need you.”

She didn’t say that. She just shook her head, as if it was strange of him to ask. He locked eyes with her a moment, hoping that some part of her sensed how painful it was to leave her there with that guy. She waited for him to speak, since he had opened his mouth to do so. “Good night,” was all he said, but it might as well have been, goodbye forever, as final as it sounded.

He couldn’t say goodbye to her forever, since they were partners, but he could say good riddance. He could finally give up and walk away with whatever dignity she had left him. He could bury this emotion in a pile with all the rest that he didn’t want, didn’t need, and hadn’t even felt until she came along. She probably gave him a nod or a wave, but he had turned away and walked out before he saw it.

Outside of the pub, he paused, feeling the brisk air wake him up. He hated walking home from the bar. It was better than running over pedestrians with his car, but he hated losing the buzz.

He headed around the block and made his way toward home.

5

It took him a few blocks before he stopped clenching his jaw in anger. He was still mad, and the little boy inside of him wanted to cry, but he felt better. He was done with her at last. It was going to be a hard recovery, but admitting you have an addiction is the first step.

A block from his house he heard feet pounding the pavement. He didn’t usually worry about muggers, since he could shed their skin with a strong enough look. Since they got back from the prison, Nevia had been sniffing out transmorphs left and right. He had gotten so much practice with his skill in the last months, that he was confident he could shave a cat without so much as a burn.

Granted he was still dangerous, but at least he could keep from killing and maiming people. The only skill he hadn’t improved on was his reversal power. He still couldn’t heal the damage he had done. At least not to the extent that it could be considered healing.

It took him a few seconds to realize that the light footed trampling was right behind him. He turned prepared to flay whoever it was, or at least disintegrate their clothes, but it was Nevia. She skidded to a stop at his threatened stance, and held up her hands. “It’s me!” She knew very well what he was capable. She was fascinated by it, and perhaps a little turned on by it, despite the fact that she didn’t act on it…anymore.

“What are you doing coming up behind me like that?” He scolded.

“Sorry,” she panted and he realized that she must have run all the way from the bar to catch him before he got home. Not only did she hate running, but she also hated losing her buzz too, and running was a surefire buzz kill.

“What’s wrong? Why are you running?”

She shook her head. “To catch you, duh.”

“Yes, but why? Aren’t you supposed to be walking Mr. Smiles home?”

“That didn’t work out.” She swallowed hard. She was probably trying to make the dry burning feeling in her throat go away. He resisted the urge to offer her a drink at his place.

He also resisted the urge to ask her about the twenty-something. He just shook his head and continued on without her. This seemed typical of a woman. He had just said “be gone with you,” and now she was here. He didn’t know what she wanted, but the fact that
now
she wanted anything from him pissed him off.

She stepped in line with him, just a half step behind him, but still within his peripheral. “I wanted to talk to about Heaton.”

“No, just get over it.”

“Why are you being so pissy?”

“Scratch and sniff not working tonight?”

“I can smell that you’re mad, but I can’t read your thoughts. I can only make educated guesses based on what I know of you. Most of what I get from people is from my profiler training.”

“Fine, I’m pissed because you ran all the way up here to talk about Heaton, and I have no intention of discussing him with you.” He picked up his pace, just to make her work a little harder to keep up.

“What did he say at the table to make your eyes go pin-point?”

He swung back around so fast she ran right into him. She backed away to recreate the distance she needed to not crane her neck looking at him. “What about my eyes?”

“What did he say?”

“Tell me about my fecking eyes.”

“Tell me what he said first. I couldn’t smell you in there, what were you feeling?” He looked her over carefully. He thought she was running after him to keep his interest in her. He hoped she wanted to have a night cap with him. He hadn’t expected that she was doing another one of her science experiments with him.

“Go back to your twenty-something scanger. I’m not your lab rat.” He was about to turn around, but she grabbed his coat collar.

“There! You just did it again.” Before he could respond, she ripped open the few buttons that were actually buttoned on his black shirt and started smelling his chest. He didn’t know what to do. Should he push her away in disgust? Should he be turned on? Before he could decide her face popped up from her investigation of his scent. She stepped away and examined him. “You’re hurt.”