I did have more questions. He was all but inviting me to ask them. I shifted in the seat, feeling caught between two desires. “Maybe it’s better if we keep this professional.”
In the darkness he elongated his arms, stretching them out from his body. He never wore a shirt or footwear, only the same dark loose set of pants. Unlike Grim, his feet didn’t weird me out. I needed my boss to fit into an orderly box, that included his feet. But it seemed right for Xander to be like this, half naked and feral. In fact, I couldn’t imagine his feet being covered by socks or shoes. They were long and attractive.
Inwardly, I cringed. Sweet baby Jesus, did I have some kind of secret foot fetish going on?
“Keep it professional,” he echoed in a lofty tone. “Worried you are going to fall in love with me?”
I was the one to smile this time. “Hardly.”
He rocked back and then sprung forward up onto his feet with all the grace of some kind of jungle cat. Deft, silent, and positively lethal. A shockwave of unexpected heat hit me.
He sauntered out from the shadows. “Come on, I’m irresistible. Afterall, I’m a god.”
“And just as humble as the rest of the gods I see,” I taunted. “Real sexy.”
Unfortunately for me, I’d taken another bite of apple and when Xander fully came into view, I inhaled a piece, choking hard. Even as I fought for my very life against that bit of fruit, my heart ripped itself up at the sight of him.
I dropped the bag to the floor. Xander looked positively ill. Deep dark circles surrounded his hollowed-out eyes. His cheeks were sunken, and his normal golden pallor was a sickly grayish green. Fresh deep slices decorated his exposed chest. As if a rabid animal clawed at his chest over and over again. His chest was a mess of exposed muscle. Anyone else would be bleeding out from wounds like that.
“See? I take all the ladies’ breath away,” he said with a wan smile.
I somehow managed to glare at him even as I coughed violently, tiny apple pieces flying from my mouth. If I were vainer, I’d worry about how I looked spewing little chunks. But this was duty, not pleasure. I wasn’t here to impress a god. Just kill him.
When I got a hold of myself, I stood. “What happened to you?”
“I thought you wanted to keep this professional?” he taunted, throwing my words back in my face.
Fuck. He had me there.
Xander’s sickly smile widened into a grin. “Your glower is even more appealing than your frown.”
“I’m not—”
He interrupted. “I’ll save the trouble of defending your ire and tell you that I did this to myself.” He waved a hand over his grisly chest.
In less than a heartbeat, he’d thrown me off entirely.
As if some magnet pulled me forward, I took several steps closer to his grotesque form. Seeing him like this pained me in a way I couldn’t describe. “Why?”
The mirth bled from his eyes and face, leaving something stoney in its place. “Like I said, it’s been a bad day.”
“I’ve had a bad day too, but you don’t see me taking a razor to my arm,” I said, anger vibrating in my voice.
Xander's face smoothed in surprise. “Are you—are you mad?”
Why did it bother me so much to know he’d torn his own flesh open? Was I just taking the stress of my day out on him? Admittedly, a secret part of myself felt like I was letting off steam by going after him.
“Mad you mutilated yourself? You’re fucking right I am. I thought you were a god who’d lived for millennia, not a moody teenager who thinks this is the solution.” I waved a hand at his wrecked flesh.
Xander's eyes darkened. An oppressive force closed in around us like a pressure cooker, sealing all of the air inside. His skin seemed to ripple before my eyes, as if he were made of liquid that morphed and changed with every breath we took. My heart pounded in my chest like a galloping horse, and my breathing was rapid and shallow as fear slowly flooded my veins. I could almost taste the electricity in the air around me; feel the danger radiating from his pores.
In the blink of an eye, Xander had morphed before me into a scary, unpredictable god. And that was very, no good news for me.
He snarled and leapt onto the bars, several feet above me. The movement was as fast as it was erratic. He craned his neck at an unnatural angle, continuing to meet my gaze. “How dare you compare my pain to that of some pissant little teenager. You know nothing of pain. You sit there with your perfect neat little life and judge how I handle this shitty existence I’m enslaved too? Sweetheart, you don’t know what pain is.”
Despite my galloping heart and skittish nerves, I couldn’t take that lying down. I met him with an unwavering gaze, and took a step toward the intimidating, unhinged god. “You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know anything about my pain or my life.”
He raised an eyebrow, still sneering at me in a way that made my blood boil. Slowly he slid down the bars, coming closer to my level. “You clean your boots every night, don’t you?” Neither of us looked down to confirm what was obvious about my footwear. He went on.
