Page 114 of A Shade Too Far
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My hands foldedon my belly, I stared into the murky depths of Tatiana’s small pond, the occasional flash of goldfish scales reflecting in the moonlight. Laurent and I couldn’t go on as we were. The ball was in my court, but I didn’t quite have the guts to pick it up and run with it.
I was forty-two years old and more nervous than the first time I’d ever had sex. Not that sex was some foregone conclusion. I mean, he seemed attracted to me but I’d believed that Alex had been as well so I might be zero for two. Zero for three if I counted Ben, my sweet suitor, who’d ended up dybbuk-possessed.
Who was I kidding? If I went to Hotel Terminus, we’d totally have sex. I stretched out my legs, cool grass slipping between my bare toes, and pulling out my phone, started a new list.
Pro: hot sweaty sex with a younger man.
Con: hot sweaty sex with a younger man.
Would I freeze up? Was I even programmed for hookups? I’d never done friends with benefits.
A cockroach scrabbled up out of the dirt. It stayed in one spot, its antennae twitching as if overwhelmed.
“I feel you, cockroach,” I said.
Eli and I had had an amazing sex life and once we’d finally slept together, our lust had hit us both like an addiction. I’d ended up getting such a bad rash on my chin from his stubble due to making out with him for hours that my friends staged an intervention. Jude had ribbed me about that for years, but I had no regrets. Even now, I remembered that time very fondly, but I wasn’t in my early twenties anymore and the tension between Laurent and me wasn’t a precursor to him courting me with dates and flowers.
I resumed typing.
Pro: I didn’t want a romantic relationship. With everything I had on my plate, that was a clear line for me. He wasn’t offering that.
Con: he wasn’t offering that? No. No con on this point.
Sex with Laurent would eclipse anything I’d ever experienced, a wild storm that would devour me. I squirmed, crossing my legs beneath my ankle-length sundress, a jolt of liquid heat shooting through my core. But I typed and deleted both pro and con multiple times on that one, eventually settling for a question mark.
Pro: if I simply wanted to be friends, Laurent would respect that.
Con: see above.
I clenched my phone, hating my tendency to overanalyze everything, but after forty-two years, the habit was hard to break.
A text came through but I didn’t read it, scared it was Laurent asking me to come over. Equally afraid it was him telling me not to.
The message consisted of three words. Blood Alley. Now. Wow. Zev wasn’t even couching his order as a request. I could be walking into a death sentence though I doubted it. I clearly wasn’t a party to the theft, and I’d saved both the gloves and Tatiana like he’d decreed. Which left a minuscule glimmer of hope that he’d reward me by redoing the ward once the Kefitzat Haderech lifted the ban.
Rubbing the sign face tattoo on my arm, I buried that hope in seventeen layers of doubt and disbelief, then went to tell someone where I was going, in case body retrieval was necessary.
Tatiana had been subdued on the way home and through our Thai food dinner. She’d gone to bed early, claiming she wanted some alone time to read, but she was clearly shaken.
We all were. The burn mark on Tatiana’s arm was gone and she was out of danger, but our anxiety and adrenaline required time to fade.
Even Ryann’s text that I didn’t have anything to worry about with Elizabeta barely registered with everything else on my mind.
Tatiana’s bedroom door was closed with no light slipping out from the crack between the door and the carpet. My boss was a tough lady, but she was also eighty.
“She asleep?” Emmett whispered.
“I think so.” I drew him away from the door, so we didn’t wake her. “What are you going to do now that this assignment is over? Go back to Laurent’s?”
I crossed my fingers even though I wasn’t sure which answer I wanted.
“Not unless I’m forced at gunpoint.” The golem glanced down at his feet, before bashfully raising his eyes to mine. “You think I could stay here? Tatiana’s the only one who’s ever wanted me around. I mean, I know it was for her safety and all, but…” He shrugged.
Jude had brought him to life but then couldn’t wait to get rid of him. The vamps didn’t want him and neither did Laurent. All the time I’d felt like a house divided, worrying about how to get all my relationships aligned, Emmett had felt alone.
“She’s not the only one who wants you around,” I said. “I don’t have the space for you to live with me, but I like working together.”
