Chapter 24
Jade
“I want to be able to call my parents.” We were blasting down the highway faster than I had ever gone. I was too scared to take a peek at the speedometer. A heart attack was imminent if I knew. I closed my eyes and leaned back in the seat.
Ignorance is bliss.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Damian said from the driver’s seat. I didn’t bother opening my eyes to look at him. I would die on this hill.
“I told you that I would be willing to work with you, now I expect you to do the same.” I felt myself wanting to pout. My bottom lip started to pucker before I sucked it into my mouth. None of that. I couldn’t afford to get comfortable. I couldn’t afford for him to think I was flirting. I shivered.
“You don’t think your parents will want to see you?” He scoffed.
“Magic is a powerful force, I understand but you need to understand that eventually they are going to want to see me. Is your game a long one?” I opened my eyes and leveled him with a death stare.
He let out an exasperated sound. “Yes, relatively.”
“Then they will come looking. I don’t know how much you looked into me before you made your plans, but my parents fought to have me. They have hovered my entire life. All I know is them. If you don’t let me speak to them or see them, they will get suspicious and then your operation will crumble to the ground.”
He didn’t say anything back and I let him stew on it. There was no point in continuing to try to sell it. We had already been in the car for what felt like hours. I hadn’t realized where we had been playing pretend was so far from where we actually stayed. I didn’t even know what to call it. The compound? HQ? Hell?
As he pulled down a long winding dirt road, his eyes turned toward me. “Fine, you can call your parents and possibly see them. But you’ll have to tell them the same thing you told the Crimson Pack. You’ll have to explain you’ve taken up work somewhere else, or that you are required to travel because your boss wants you as his right-hand man.” He winked. “You can possibly twist it into a workplace romance if you’d like, if you think it’ll sell it. I don’t care.”
Hope flared brightly in my chest. Before I could stop myself, I threw my body across the little space separating us and wrapped my arms around him the best I could. “Thank you!”
His body tensed before he relaxed a bit and I had to remind myself that he was the villain here. That he had kidnapped me. But something in the back of my head reminded me that Rafe had still turned me without my consent. That was where the lines got blurred and I knew, if I wasn’t careful, I would fall right into the belly of the beast without any way out.
* * *
Lucas was waiting in my room with a deck of cards. He was flicking through each card when I opened the door. To the common, untrained eye they looked just like regular playing cards. But as I got closer, I noticed something different on the faces of each card. It was a tarot deck. I grinned. I wondered how he had managed to get that in here or if Damian was experimenting with the once witch.
He didn’t look up when I sat across from him. I had brought in a whole trove of clothes with me, except they weren’t for me. They were for him. He didn’t look up. His bronzed fingers worked through the deck of cards once more.
“You’ve been gone for a while,” His voice held no emotion as he shuffled the deck.
“I brought you back a gift,” I nudged the suitcase beside my foot.
He continued playing with the cards. “You sold your soul to the monster.”
I felt my lips stretch across my teeth in a predatory grin. “Lucas, the only monster I sold myself to, was myself. I might not have been monster material before, but I sure as hell am now.”
His eyes flicked up to mine before they looked over my body. “What did they do to you?”
I leaned forward like I was going to kiss his neck but instead whispered into his ear. “They showed me the one thing I am willing to fight for.”
He leaned back and planted his hands on either side of himself. His cards forgotten now. “What’s that?”
I ran the tip of my tongue over my canine. “Myself, silly.”
