“Jesus, what fucking now?” I groaned. My head was spinning, and I just wanted to go back inside for another drink before heading back and facing the guys. I’d judged Caleb too harshly, and I knew he deserved an apology. But... later.
“Look,” he sighed, scratching at his chin and staring after Bridget, who was waiting at the taxi rank further down the street. “Some of the stuff she said was a shock to me, and some of it didn’t quite ring true.” My brows shot up, but he was quick to reassure me. “Not about Caleb; I truly believe she was magic doping him to keep him compliant. That’s one of the things that has me most concerned. It’s a huge violation of magic to do that without someone’s knowledge...”
When he trailed off, thinking, I prodded him in the arm. “So, what’s your point here?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “But just watch yourself. Don’t trust anyone outside your dianoch. Not even me.”
“But trust my dianoch? Despite everything with Caleb...?” I was exhausted. The idea that my newest bonded guardian was untrustworthy had felt like a hot poker right through my stomach.
“All of them. Including Caleb. He’d never, ever have kept this from you if magic weren’t at play. Believe that.” Nicholai patted me on the shoulder in a decidedly parental way, and I wrinkled my nose. “Stay alert; keep your eyes and ears open. Got it?”
“Got it.” I nodded slowly, then watched as he jogged to catch up to Bridget as a taxi pulled in to the rank where she waited. The two of them got in, and I stared after the retreating vehicle for a long time before sliding down the wall and resting my head on my knees.
I’d just taken on a whole insane amount of information, and it felt a bit like my head was about to explode. Everything with a grain of salt, of course, but one thing remained clear no matter which way I looked at it.
Caleb. He hadn’t betrayed me. He’d made a stupid mistake by accepting the confidentiality spell in the first place, and it had just snowballed from there. Sure, I could be mad at that first action, but he’d been driven there out of desperation and out of love for me. He wanted so badly not to be a danger to me that he’d blindly accepted the help, no matter where it had come from.
Those weren’t the actions of a betrayal. If anything... it was the opposite. He’d taken a huge risk, first in accepting a mentor he knew nothing about, then in risking my ire when I found out. But he wasn’t doing it for selfish or nefarious reasons. He was doing it to protect me and the guys.
Yep. I officially jumped the gun on storming out earlier.
Groaning, I hugged my knees and tucked my face down low. I probably looked like a drunk or a bum, but I just needed a few moments to gather myself.
24
The familiar smell of a bonfire and the warm stroke of a hand down my back was what finally pulled me from my mental hurdles.
“Hey,” I smiled softly, looking up at Vali where he crouched beside me. “I figured it wouldn’t be long until you found me. Are the guys mad?”
He smiled back at me, his gray eyes soft and full of concern as his hand stroked soothing lines up and down my back. “No, they’re fine. You did the right thing, pinging your location and keeping your phone on you. After all, you’re not our prisoner. You have every right to leave the hotel alone if you so choose.”
“This is true,” I agreed. “But still... you know how they get.”
Vali chuckled, tucking a loose piece of my hair behind my ear. “I do. Such worry-toads. Don’t they realize you’re stronger than all of us?”
This made me laugh. “You mean worrywarts and exactly! Thank you! Finally, someone understands that I’m not some damsel in distress waiting to be rescued all the time.”
“If it helps,” he offered, “I think they do it because they love you, not because they think you helpless. I know that’s why I try to protect you.”
His words made me pause, but before I could push any further for clarification on what I thought he’d just said, he was standing up and holding out a hand to me.
“Come on, let’s go inside and get a drink. You look like you could do with a little fun before we head back.” When I took his outstretched hand, he tugged me up to my feet and politely brushed some of the dirt and crap off the back of my jeans for me.
The little ass squeeze might have been my imagination... or might not have been. It was so quick it wasn’t clear. Either way, I wasn’t complaining as Vali threaded his fingers back through mine and led the way back into the bar and straight to my green-haired friend.
“Back again?” she asked me when she finished serving her customer and came over to us. “I saw you deck your sister earlier. She the reason your night was so shitty?”
“Yup.” I nodded. “She sure fucking was.” There was no sense in correcting her to say that was my mother not my sister.
“Well, your night certainly looks like it’s taken a turn for the better.” The bartender batted her eyelashes at Vali and twirled her bottle opener on her finger. “Hot damn you are one sexy piece of ass. What are you, like six-four? Six-five?”
Vali smirked but ignored her aggressive flirtation as he ordered. “Could I get a whiskey sour? And for you...?” He looked at me, but the bartender was already bobbing her head in acknowledgement.
“On it, same again, Red?” She grinned at me, and I found myself smiling back.
“Please.” I watched her for a while as she mixed and shook the ingredients, before turning back to my companion. His fingers were still threaded through mine, our palms hot as they pressed together, but I wasn’t complaining.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked him, curiously. “I’d thought you would have dragged my ass straight back to the hotel... but here we are having cocktails. What gives?”
My big, scary, Romanian crime lord threw his head back and laughed, then needed to pay for our drinks before he could respond. After leaving a heavy tip, he dropped my hand—sadly—and took one drink in each hand.
“Find us somewhere to sit,” he suggested, and I looked around the room, spotting a booth that was in the process of being vacated by several girls in mini-dresses.
Pointing it out, I led the way through the crowds and arrived just in time to slide in before another group of girls got to it.
“Long island, huh?” Vali mused, watching me as I stirred the Coke through the sour, alcoholic part, then took a long sip. “I pictured you more as a vodka cranberry kind of girl.”
“Um,” I pondered aloud. “Is that a compliment or an insult? I can’t tell. But besides that, I only just recently found out I was twenty-one, remember?”
Vali gave me a wicked smirk. “Oh yes? And you never consumed alcohol when you were underage? How silly of me to think you might have.” I choked a little on the sip I’d just taken and had to cough in a seriously unsexy way to clear the alcohol from my windpipe.
“Don’t do that,” I growled at him when I was finally able to speak again. No doubt my face was bright red, too. So hot.
“Don’t do what?” he asked, sipping his own drink and shuffling a little closer to me in the booth so that when he draped his arm over the backrest, his fingers were brushing my shoulder.
A shiver ran through me at the light touch of his fingers, and I tried to focus. “Don’t say funny things when I’m not expecting them. I could have drowned on that mouthful of iced tea, and then where would we be, hmm?”
“You don’t expect me to be funny?” He looked genuinely hurt, and I cocked my head to the side, considering him.
“Mmm,” I mused. “It’s not that you’re not funny. It just shocks me sometimes. Like, you’re this big, bad, scary, powerful criminal dude, who is almost always serious, and then you whip out these sarcastic lines... It just throws me for a loop sometimes.”
“Huh.” He frowned. “Well then, I should make more effort to be less serious.”