Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,61
a sense of where to continue our investigation.”
I wasn’t at all sorry to leave the vacant labs behind. We passed another steel door to reach the front half of the building, which opened up into a pretty typical office layout.
A maze of dividers wove across the floor, separating out a couple dozen cubicles other than where a few had toppled over. The plain steel desks remained, but weirdly none of the chairs. A water cooler without its jug stood next to a dust-coated coffee maker just outside a small kitchen area. Doors along the opposite wall led into private offices, but the name plaques had been removed from their brass holders.
Snap immediately set off to sample all the impressions he could find. I veered in another direction, picking through the crumpled papers, long-dried pens, and other garbage the employees had left behind in case any of it held an identifying clue that didn’t require supernatural voodoo to discern.
Ruse followed the same course I did, inspecting the cubicles on the other side of the aisle. As Snap and Thorn drifted farther away, he glanced at me. I was bent over a desk, struggling to reach a paper that had fallen between it and the divider wall it appeared to be bolted to.
I half expected him to make a cheeky comment about my waving ass, but instead he blinked out of sight. The paper vanished into the shadows, and a second later the incubus was standing next to me, holding it out.
“Oh. Thank you.” I couldn’t stop my posture from stiffening a little at the warmth of his body right next to mine.
I took the paper, which turned out to have nothing but a couple of obscene dick doodles on it. Such amazing productivity.
Ruse stepped back, his mouth twisting into a grimace. His lips parted, and then he hesitated. “Sorsha,” he said finally when I started to turn.
“What?” The word came out terser than I’d intended, but I hadn’t been going for friendly either.
“I—” He let out a huff of breath, but from his expression, I got the sense he was frustrated with himself, not with me. “You can be angry with me forever if you want. I’m not telling you I didn’t fuck up. But I do want you to know I didn’t break your trust for kicks or to manipulate you in any way.”
“No? Why did you, then?”
Despite my still-terse tone, he looked relieved that I’d even asked. “I know what value I generally bring to the table where mortals are concerned—or rather, to the bed. When the act is over, I haven’t been in the habit of sticking around. No one’s ever complained about my leaving. When it seemed as if you meant for me to stay with you, I wasn’t sure whether I was only making assumptions or— I didn’t like the idea of overstaying my welcome inadvertently. So I looked before I could catch the impulse, just to make sure that really was what you wanted.”
The only thing I don’t want is for you to feel obligated, he’d told me the other night when I’d invited him into my bed in the first place. Remembering that and seeing the remorse that sat so awkwardly on his roguishly handsome face, some of the betrayal I’d been feeling crumbled away.
What must it feel like, being treated as if you had no worth other than your sexual prowess for centuries on end? Maybe it didn’t matter to him as much as it might to a human being, but shadowkind could still experience loss and loneliness. To have all the pleasure but none of the closeness and connection of falling asleep in each other’s arms afterward… Even the months when I’d been hooking up with Leland, the lack of actual intimacy had started to dull the fun parts of our agreement.
Ruse’s skills might have knocked my socks off, almost literally, but I’d take the full experience of human intimacy over supernaturally powerful passion alone any day. If I ever got a chance to have that for real, that was.
“Okay,” I said. “I can see why you might have slipped up. I still don’t want you slipping ever again.”
I looked down at my hands braced against the desk and decided that if he’d opened up, I could give him a little honesty in return. “Having my mind messed with is a particularly sore spot for me. There was this time—when I was seven, heading home one evening with Luna, another higher shadowkind