AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I couldn’t quite read the mix of expressions that flitted their way across his features, but I felt that Taavi-shaped space loosen when his lips settled on a small smile.
“You circled it,” he answered my question. “Deepwater Hephaestus. On the papers you left on your desk at work.”
“Doc or Ward?” I asked him, because I didn’t think he’d gone all the way in to Beyond the Veil just to track me down.
“Ward.”
God fucking bless that warlock. I owed him one. Or two. Or ten. Although he probably owed me one or two in return, so maybe someday I’d manage to pay him back enough to make us even.
“How’d you end up with Raj?”
“He called me.” Taavi glared at me. “You know I don’t check my email constantly.”
I did. I’d counted on it, in fact.
“Don’t you ever fucking send me an email like that again,” he ordered, and there wasn’t an ounce of teasing in his tone.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“I mean it. You have to say goodbye to me—” His voice broke again, and he swallowed, his eyes too bright. “You fucking do it in person, you hear me?”
I ran my fingertips around the side of his face. “I—couldn’t have,” I managed.
“Goddamn right you couldn’t have.” He rubbed his cheek into my fingers. “But if you’re going to be that much of a fuckingpendejo, you at least have thecojonesto do it to my face, you got me?”
I supposed I deserved that. “Got it,” I managed.
He pushed himself up to standing, then leaned forward and pressed his lips to a spot on my forehead that wasn’t a cut or a bruise. I hadn’t known I had one, but his lips were warm and soft and felt like the brush of butterfly wings.
Then he settled back into the chair, his hand gently running over my leg. “Raj called me, asked what you’d done.”
“With more curse words, I’d imagine.”
“Quite a few, yes, not that you get to judge.”
“Not judging,” I replied meekly.
“Good. You don’t get to judge anything about this.”
He was still mad. He probably wasn’t going to dump my ass, but he was definitely still unhappy with me. I kinda didn’t blame him.
He sighed again before continuing. “I called Ward to ask what you’d been doing before you left, he told me what was circled, and we came to find you.”
“You didn’t go to the office?” That’s where I’d gone first.
“Raj sent people there,” Taavi answered. “But it was after hours, so we didn’t think anyone would still be there.” He glared at me. “So we started trying their other properties. The gate was open at the quarry, and sound… echoes.”
Oh, shit.He and Raj had heard the tail end of my… interrogation.
“Are you okay?” I asked him, suddenly worried, remembering the snarling and yelling and the feel of Nico’s deadly boots.
He shot me a look that I wasn’t sure how to interpret. “Physically, yes, I’m fine.”
So just pissed at me. I could live with that.
* * *
“So I finally got to see youin fur,” I greeted Raj as he came into the hospital room the next afternoon. I was feeling considerably less like death warmed over, and I was working very hard on getting Taavi to forgive me.
