not being obnoxious with that. I’ve spent all day thinking about what happened between you and me—and what didn’t. Guilt has a funny way of dimming a man’s performance, and you clearly don’t want me to contact you.”
He shook his head as if she’d switched languages on him. “I’m not following what you’re—”
“You lied to me, didn’t you. You’re with someone.”
“No. I’m not mated.”
Jo rolled her eyes and shrugged out from under his heavy palm. “Married. Whatever—”
“Where are you going?”
“I really don’t have to answer that. If you can’t even be honest with me about where you live, what you do for a living, who you really are, and who you’re with? I don’t have to tell you a goddamn thing about myself—”
“I don’t want you to know the truth about me.”
Jo froze where she was. Then blinked. “So I was right. And I’m afraid that I’ve got to go. I don’t have the energy for any of this, especially not being the side piece to your significant other—”
“I’m not mated.” Syn put his hand on the jamb of her door, preventing her from opening it. “And you’re in danger—”
She put her forefinger right in his face. “I am getting really frickin’ tired of men telling me that tonight.”
A frown landed on his forehead like it had jumped off a bridge. “Who else said it?”
“It’s not important—”
“You will answer me right now.”
“Excuse me?” She stepped in real close. “You don’t use that tone with me. Ever. And you can take that demand and blow it out your ass.”
His eyes gleamed with anger. “Do you think this is a joke?”
“No. I think you are.”
Syn didn’t move. She didn’t move. And it was not sexual tension that kept their faces so close together.
All at once, that headache of hers came back and she groaned as she put a hand up to her temple. “Just leave me alone, okay.”
“You shouldn’t go out there by yourself,” he said remotely.
“What?”
Syn looked away. “This is a fucking mess.”
Before she could give him another push-off, he released her door. “Let me come with you. If you let me . . . ride along, I’ll tell you everything. Everything.”
Jo crossed her arms over her chest. “How will I know?”
“That I’m with you?”
Like that isn’t going to be obvious? Jo thought.
“That you’re telling me the truth,” she said in a bored tone.
“You have my word.”
Great, for whatever that was worth.
“If you lie to me, I’ll know.” She leveled a stare at him. “I’m a reporter. I’m going to make it my business to find out what’s going on with you one way or another, and if you lie to me tonight? You better never come around me again. You taught me where to best shoot someone, remember?”
“Yes,” he said gravely.
“Good.” Jo wrenched open the driver’s side door. “Because thanks to you, I know how to kill a man.”
And boy, that sounded like a really great idea at the moment.
So start talking.”
As Jo put the command out, Syn pulled his seat belt free of his chest and then let the strap come back into contact with his pecs. The fact that they came up to a red light seemed apt.
When the thing turned green, she didn’t hit the gas. “Well.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Pick something random—like birth,” she said dryly.
“I fear your knowledge of me.” He looked out of the side window. “I want a better story than the one I have to give you.”
The beep of a car horn behind them had her moving them forward. “We all want a better story. But that’s marketing, not reality.”
Syn thought of the hut he had lived in with his sire, the one he had burned down. He thought of the fact that he had slept next to his mahmen’s dead body for a decade, after it had rotted with a terrible stench for three months. He thought of the drunken, slobbering, abusive tormentor he had had to endure until he had sliced the male into pieces and let the sun do the work of ashing the remains.
Maybe start with the present, he decided.
“I’m a soldier. You’re right about that.” He looked at the local shops that they passed, and reflected how he would have so much preferred to be detailing a life where going into a store and choosing which gift, which bottle of wine, which piece of cheese, to purchase was the most strenuous decision and consequence faced. “I’m a soldier and some other things I’m not proud of.”