Page 11 of Demon Huntress
“I will have to talk to my employer,” she blurted. “I am content working alone.”
The excitement in his eyes faded, and he looked away but maintained his position sitting near her.
“I understand that,” he said. “Flash and I come in a pair, so if you do speak to your employer, let them know about that, please.”
His voice was gentle, as soft as pearls she had rolled around once in her hand. It shook her to her very core with such intensity that she had to force her legs to move out of the room. She paused, standing under the archway, still engulfed by the scent she had passed through like a waterfall.
It took her a moment to notice she was holding her breath. Cassandra knew better than anyone that it was a risk to involve more than one person with such potential for volatility. Considering it was not just one but two shifters whose very nature fell under that category, she may as well have been throwing gasoline on an open flame.
Still, the idea was thrilling.
She called to him before disembarking from the entryway.
Chapter6
Cassandra
Standing in the entryway,Cassandra decided to do something she rarely allowed herself to do ... be impulsive.
She turned to Slade and told him that they had a deal. As long as they allowed her to start things off, to obtain the proper information, and they listen to her instructions, things should go smoothly. Slade agreed, nearly leaping across the room to shake her hand.
If he had pressed any harder, the bones in her hand would surely have become dust.
“You won’t regret this,” he said with a sly smile on his face.
Cassandra made a point to race out of the house, making sure that she didn’t run into Flash and begin a whole new game of sexy avoidance. It stifled her to the point where she once again didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she let it out inside the darkness of her car. She touched her chest, feeling the warm blush of arousal surging through her like lava from an erupting volcano.
She drove home, trying to think about what she would wear the next day to Phar-Scape that would make her appear not only uninteresting but also uninterested. But the thought of both Flash and Slade with their strong hands upon her kept sneaking in, tasty images of their strong, capable bodies taking turns with their mouths between her legs, then fucking her hard and fast until she bellowed to the stars in heaven …
“Fuck,” she gasped, fingering herself through her clothing.
She showered after the ritual, which was a ritual in itself, meant to rid her of the energy of the day and to sleekly guide her into the next. Except, it didn't work, nor did the selection of the jean-shaded pencil skirt and plain crisp white blouse. Cassandra had strong muscled legs, so selecting tall heels would obviously go against her desire to fade into the background.
But she imagined one of the men she had met seeing her in the outfit. By all the annoying stereotypical standards that women had to constantly abide by, the outfit was acceptable, maybe even bordering the line of boring. But if she straightened her hair, allowing it to fall in its full length to her shoulders, and let one little button come undone on her blouse. In that case, it could easily be transformed into something she could see piled on Flash and Slade’s bedroom floor.
She bit her lip, tightening her thighs again at the supremely dirty thought. It wouldn’t make sense for the mission, but hell, it had been a while since Cassandra had let herself feel sexy, intentionally anyway.
Fucking them was a nice thought, but sex with coworkers was almost an assured recipe for disaster. Since they were working together, she needed to keep her urges at bay.
But she still held the heels in her fingers, knowing for a fact that her calves would look like honey-ham-hocks in them, just as tantalizing and delicious as Sunday dinner.
She laid black, six-inch shiny heels next to her ensemble and proceeded to get very little sleep.
The next day, Cassandra was welcomed into Phar-Scape for orientation. She arrived at nine a.m. sharp with four other hired workers, three of them young men with a dream in their eyes, while the other was a woman likely her own age. She looked like someone who had intentionally wound up here to hide in the world of intelligence to save herself from the glaring eyes of men, to find there was nowhere to hide from that at all.
She had orange-red hair tied up in a bun and lingered in the back of the group along with Cassandra, who stood tall and unshakeable. The woman clutched at their orientation packages, likely questioning her choice of career path.
Cassandra did her best not to be distracted by the woman’s clear timidness and focused on the mission at hand. She was someone who was always aware of the effect she had on men, no matter what she wore. Her posture was constantly impeccable, her eyes never diverted from a question, and she spoke directly and assertively.
Whether subconsciously or consciously, men were drawn to her for this. But she was quick and able to bat them away like irritating buzzards.
The day was mostly straightforward and without excitement. It reminded Cassandra of the days of yore. Before she took on the familial crest of a demon hunter, she worked in a restaurant and a clothing store. The orientations were always the same, packets full of pages to sign that no one really read, along with long and outdated welcome videos. She sat next to the red-headed woman with her leg bouncing up and down beneath the table.
Before the team was set to head off to lunch, their orientation leader gave them a tour of the grounds. They were escorted to a tower that looked positively medieval, then shown around the inside of the labs along with a long row of rooms that each looked to be carved out of Orwell’s1984classic. Noticing a lab toward the back with a door sitting ajar, Cassandra jumped to take a chance.
It seemed like a freak occurrence, but she needed to get something out of her day. So she lingered, pretending to look around like some empty-headed commoner, then slipped into the room once her group had disappeared around the corner.
Cassandra had been trained in information extraction long enough to know that time was of the essence. The lab tech may have accidentally left the door open, maybe to go to the bathroom. She slipped a USB key out of her skirt hem and jammed it into the slot, quickly downloading any information that particular terminal had on file. She didn’t have time to search through it, and she would hate to come away empty-handed.
