Page 370 of The First Taste
I dart a look at him. He’s been moving non-stop for two days straight, ever since we ran from our villa in Valencia. His tie-dyed hoodie is rumpled. His hair is loose and it streams around his head now, a shock of dark against his tanned skin. He looks straight ahead, and he still wears the fluorescent orange sunglasses that I bought at the gift shop.
Under all that, though, I can sense how tired he must be.
“Are you all right?” I ask. I draw my hood up to keep the wind from whipping my long hair around my head madly.
“Aye,” he says grimly. “I was hoping that ye would talk to me a little. We’ve only got about ten minutes more to go. I’m just not as alert as I’d like to be.”
“Of course.” I stretch my hands up over my head. “I didn’t think I would sleep for so long.”
Something like humor flits across his face. “Ye seemed like ye needed it. I’m used to crisscrossing the globe when I need to do it. I forget that other people aren’t suited to the lifestyle that I lead.”
I scrunch up my face. “No offense, but it doesn’t seem like much of a life. Never the same people. Never the same places. How can you live so…” I pause, trying to think of the right word. “I would say you’re like a nomad, but even they travel to the same places every year.”
He shrugs a shoulder. “I have my brothers.”
“Don’t you long for a piece of land with a big house and a cute dog? Where will you put down roots? Where will you like… have a family?”
I squint at him. He just shrugs again. But I do notice that his body language is tighter, more closed off. I screw up my face.
“I want to live in a massive, old, rambling French farmhouse. And I want all kinds of animals… cats and dogs, chickens, ducks and horses. I’d like an orchard, too. Oh, and a great big studio in the attic space above the house. The closest people will be miles away. That’s the kind of house that you raise a family in. The place where you grow old.”
Hades snorts. “That’s yer fantasy?”
My cheeks tinge with warmth. “Isn’t it everyone’s?”
“Not a chance.”
He turns off of the windy coastal highway we’ve been following, nosing the car down a small, paved road. I glance to see how close we are to the city and find to my surprise that it is much closer now. I can make out the tall white buildings. Behind them, a stark white wall of stone dusted with emerald greenery seems implacable.
“Are we going into the city?” I ask.
“No. I’ve arranged to meet a friend just outside. I asked him some time ago to procure a place where ye can do what ye came here to do.”
My heart starts beating fast. It isn’t like I had forgotten that I was here for a reason. My brain has just been scrambled over the past forty-eight hours. It seemed almost normal at this point that I should be on the run with this ruggedly handsome arms dealer.
You could get used to anything, given enough time.
Hades pulls the car to a stop in front of a set of docks in obvious disrepair. The docks themselves had rotted and were half fallen into the churning ocean. There was an ancient piece of machinery, overturned on its side and grown brown with caked rust from contact with the sea air. Scanning the vacant-looking warehouse standing a bit further back from the water, I purse my lips.
“What are the chances that your friend is going to kill us and sell our organs on the black market? Because this place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“I’d give the over-under at one to ten.” He climbs out of the car, his face contorting. Only now do I realize how freaking uncomfortable he must have been, jammed in that small convertible. “Jaysus.”
“I guess your friend is running late.”
“He’s on his own schedule. He’s from an old money family with connections to everyone in Monaco. He owns half the damn real estate to be had here.”
I look down the beach to the line of the steadily lapping water where it surges against the land. What little shore there is seems rockier here, with less sand and a lot of white pebbles of varying sizes. The water is the perfect hue of deep marine blue.
It’s beautiful, absolutely no doubt about it. Then again, the last two locations Hades has dragged me to have been charming, too.
A sleek black limousine pulls up, its tires crunching on the sandy gravel. Out of the back pops a dark-haired man in a blue pinstripe suit.
Lithe and muscular, he reminds me of a once-pretty professional mid-weight fighter. He has a scowl on his proud, Gallic face as he approaches us, sizing us both up. Whatever he thinks is a mystery to me though because he doesn’t seem like the type to share anything.
He’s more like a shark. Always on the prowl, forever assessing who is a threat and who is his next meal.
Instinctively, I move a little closer to Hades.
