Page 50 of To Crave Darkly
After making sure neither of us looked like we were just rounding second base, or possibly even heading onto third base, Jasper opened the door. I was glad Alec was polite enough to knock because that door sure as hell wasn’t locked.
Alec walked in looking as suave as usual but with a grin plastered across his face like he knewexactlywhat we were up to.
“Well, I guess, I’ll… um, see you later,” I say as I headed through the door, trying to gather my wits that seemed to have fallen all over the floor whilst Jasper was kissing me senseless.
“Remember what I said Lori,” Jasper called after me. I didn’t turn around. His words hurt, and even though I knew he was saying them for his benefit, it was still painful to hear him reiterate how much he didn’t want me. I felt his gaze burning a hole in my back all the way down the corridor until I eventually turned the corner and disappeared from his sight.
Chapter 20
ALEC
I still didn’t know what to make of Lori. She’d been here for almost a week and already she felt like she had always been part of the team. I was fiercely loyal to my teammates which came with being a Hound. I had always had an innate need to protect any family I was a part of, and my team was my family. At first, I wasn’t all that keen on Lori joining us. We were a well-oiled unit and we worked well together. We had each other’s backs and I knew I could entrust my life into the hands of any one of them, but Lori was an unknown. And that worried me. She threatened the functionality of the team and if there was something unbalanced when we were out in the field, that would be dangerous, maybe even lethal.
The fact that we still didn’t know everything she was capable of was also fucking scary. She was a Sin Reaper for pity’s sake, and they were the stuff of nightmares. Then on top of that she had been singled out by a high-class demon, probably even one of Lucifer’s inner circle. I’d met them all and the lot of them were bastards. They enjoyed torturing and tormenting souls that needed punishment, and to be honest they were worse than Lucifer. I had always had a begrudging respect for the Ruler of the Underworld. Yes, he was egotistical and unscrupulous, but I always felt he had a bit of a rough bargain. I have always believed that no one is inherently good or inherently evil. The world just isn’t that black and white. Granted, I’d never really had a chance to talk to Lucifer, I was never high enough up the hierarchy in Hell to be worth noticing, but to me, he always seemed like he just wanted to uncover truths and wrongdoings. He just went about it the wrong way, which earned him the reputation of enjoying punishing people. He was overzealous in his quest for truth. He manipulated people and coerced them into fulfilling their desires at whatever cost; all for the satisfaction of discovering the pure truth of a person’s soul.
I turned my attention back to my task at hand. Saskia and I were on cleaning duty, which meant all the tactical gear and weapons were to be serviced and cleaned, ready for inspection.
As I was cleaning the barrel of my rifle, Lori walked in from her morning run with Jasper. I saywalkedbut it was more like she collapsed in a heap on the chair on the opposite side of the table where Saskia and I were working. Her head hit the table-top and a painful groan emanated from her.
“That bad, huh?” I asked sympathetically. She just groaned again which made me laugh. I felt her pain. Jasper was ruthless when it came to training. He pushed and pushed until you were ready to collapse, and then he pushed some more just for the fun of it.
“You know that he’s doing it to find your breaking point?”
She looked up at me, her dark eyes blazing with defiance. “Yes. But I am not going to break. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.”
“That’s my girl.”
Her eyes narrowed at me and I could tell she didn’t like me saying that. I liked to flirt and flirting with Lori was fun because she just got angry with me. But I liked that she had fire in her. It showed she had passion and part of me wanted to explore that with her very much. The other part of me liked being alive. I knew Jasper would never sanction Lori and me sleeping together, so I set the line firmly in the sand. I would flirt but no more. No matter how much those scintillating curves of hers had my hands itching to touch them, or how her eyes blazed with fury when she was mad. I liked to piss her off just watch her anger burn. It turned her into a goddess and Hell help me I wanted to take that fire of hers and explore it between the sheets. Even now, when she was all sweaty from her run, it just made her more appealing to me. Her lavender scent was wrapped in that musky natural smell of her and I had a sudden urge to lick her skin.
But I couldn’t.
I would never be able to have her so I would just have to settle for being the flirtatious jerk. I could do that; it came naturally to me after all.
Lori glanced across the wide array of weapons laid out on the table. “Do you guys seriously use all this stuff?”
“Thisstuffhas saved our lives more than once. Without thisstuffwe wouldn’t be able to protect the Conclave or the people who need it.” It annoyed me that she dismissed the tools of my trade so easily. I bet she looked at us and saw vicious mercenaries, which was true, but hell, we did good things too.
“What Alec means to say is, yes, we do. And you will have to learn how to use it all too.” Saskia turned to me and grinned. “Lori is totally a blade girl.”
That I could imagine. She didn’t seem the type to be comfortable with a gun. I had always preferred blades. Guns were loud and brash. Any idiot could point and shoot a gun, but it took a certain type of skill to use a blade. They were silent, and to kill with them you had to get close to your victim. It was an intimate way to take someone’s life.
“Have you picked your weapon yet?” I asked, stopping my work and focussing on Lori. She tilted her head to one side, her big brown eyes swimming with confusion. She was so easy to read; her emotions were written across her face as plain as day. She would need to work on that. It could get her into a whole world of trouble. “We each have a weapon we favour or have a certain knack for. I prefer blades but I am an expert with a rifle. Saskia is a phenomenal archer; Cassian doesn’t really do weapons, he’s a more hands on kind of guy. Jasper has his sword and Fenris prefers to just use his magic, but in a tight spot he’s more than happy to shoot you.”
Her mouth set into a grim line at my words. She was so fucking sweet it was unreal. She looked terrified at the thought of having to choose a tool that could possibly take someone’s life.
“Other than favouring knives over guns in our training sessions she’s not really shown an affinity for anything,” Saskia commented.
An idea popped into my head as I looked over at the Sin Reaper. I knew the perfect weapon for her. It was a little on the nose perhaps, but surely a reaper needed a fitting weapon.
“Saskia, have you shown her the Silent Soul?”
Excitement flittered across her face, and she practically bounced out of her seat. “Dammit. Why didn’t I think of that? It’s fucking perfect.” Saskia’s squeal followed her out of the room as she ran to get the weapon. The panic written on Lori’s face was hilarious. Poor thing. She was way out of her depth. Pity formed in my gut and something in me had a sudden desire to see if she was ok.
“How are you finding the Conclave?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I can’t say that I’ve seen very much of it. The base is nice.”
“Is your room ok?” Why did I suddenly care?
