Tempting Evil (Riley Jenson Guardian #3)(42)

Which he wasn’t, so I shouldn’t be feeling what I was feeling. Unless I’d somehow become even more attuned to him.
But I resisted the temptation to turn around and ask him what the hell was going on—or more precisely, what he’d done. I had training and a brunch to attend, and right now, they had to take precedence over emerging metaphysical and sexual connections.
Training for Starr’s arena was a whole lot easier than training with my brother. Most of the women who’d been brought in were shifters of some variety, and therefore had strength and speed. While many didn’t have any actual fighting skills, it really didn’t matter because it was mainly wrestling, and in mud at that.
Skill wasn’t a prerequisite. Good balance and intuitiveness was. The trainers matched us according to weight and height, which meant that at least in the initial rounds, I avoided both Berna and Nerida—who still managed to scowl at me down the length of the arena.
We practiced for two hours, and damn if it wasn’t fun. In fact, if I’d been training with men rather than women, it could have been erotic. I’ve never mucked around in mud before, but the sensation of hands and bodies sliding across mud-lathered skin was sensual, to say the least. I made a mental note to try this with a more suitable partner, and kept on fighting and following instructions. Afterward, we were escorted to the showers. The rest of the women were then taken to breakfast, while I was herded from the pack and escorted to the private elevator.
Which was more than enough time to realize my guard definitely didn’t believe in regular showers. Needing something to distract my nose from the overwhelming odor of stale, sweaty human, I lowered my shields a little and tried reading him. His thoughts were all over the place—one minute he was thinking about his night with one of the hookers, the next wondering what the powers that be were going to do about breakfast, because he was mighty hungry and hadn’t signed on to this crummy outfit to starve. And in between, he admired my tits and wondered if it was the red hair that was turning him off.
Not one of Starr’s great thinkers, obviously.
I re-shielded and glanced up at the ceiling. There were definitely monitors up there, and I had no doubt the psi-deadeners were present, too. So how come I was slipping past them?
Granted, it wasn’t as if there weren’t precedents for such events—Jack had proven it was more than possible a few days ago when he’d stopped Gautier’s attack on me. I wouldn’t have put my developing talent in the same league as Jack’s, let alone Quinn’s, but maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t just the onset of menstruation affecting my telepathy, but the ARC1-23 drug as well.
So what else was happening inside of me?
Part of me thought it might be better if I didn’t know. Because in not knowing, I could still believe there was the chance of a normal life—even if that chance was disappearing faster than water down a drain.
Yet I had to acknowledge that ignorance wasn’t bliss. I had to know what was going on, if only so I could plan a new future. To do that, I had to tell Jack everything. He needed to know, because I needed to learn control. I’d been at the Directorate long enough to know that anything else could be dangerous.The elevator finally arrived and the guard shuffled me inside. I watched the numbers slide by, wondering who would meet me—Moss or Merle.
It turned out to be neither.
As the elevator bumped to a halt and the doors slid open, Starr himself was standing there.
Again the sense of something depraved, something so evil it was beyond contemplation, swamped me. My insides froze in terror, and for several seconds, even breathing had become a luxury I couldn’t afford. Because to breathe, I’d have to inhale the scent of him, and even that felt like poison.
“Sir,” the guard said, as he straightened slightly. “Poppy Burns, as you requested, sir.”
“Thank you, Tarrent.” Though Starr spoke to the guard, his gaze was on mine. In those bloodshot blue depths, I saw my death. Or at least, the specter of it if I twitched so much as a fingertip the wrong way. “Follow me, my dear.”
He turned around and walked across to the other doorway, providing me with the perfect target, the perfect moment. And it was tempting, so very tempting. My fingers twitched, and the urge to grab the guard’s gun and shoot the hell out of Starr, to splatter his brains across the walls and bring to an end his bloody reign, was fierce. But the mere fact that he’d offered such a target had warning bells ringing.
Only a man who felt very secure about his safety measures would do such a thing. I flexed my fingers, vaguely hoping it would ease some of the tension running through my limbs, and forced my feet forward, past the guard and into the hall.
Only to discover Moss and Merle waiting in the shadows, both of them armed. I wouldn’t have gotten past cocking the weapon, let alone firing a shot. They would have splattered me across the walls, not the other way around.
I stopped. The elevator doors closed and darkness settled in. I didn’t bother switching to infrared. Moss’s and Merle’s inherent corruption stung the air, and though their scents paled compared to the man in front of us, the smell of them was still so thick and foul it quickly seemed to clog my throat. I certainly didn’t need to see them to know where they were.
The doors to the second elevator swished open. Starr stepped inside and we followed. It wasn’t a tight squeeze and yet, as the doors slid closed again, panic surged. Suddenly I felt caged. Trapped.
Sweat began to trickle down my forehead. I licked my lips and tried to get a grip. I’d been in far worse situations—though right now, I was hard-pressed to think of one of them.
I glanced around. Met Merle’s gaze, and saw the heat there. Iktar was right—Merle hadn’t yet finished with me. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or sad about that, though he was definitely the safer option of the two hetero men. The vibes I was picking up from Moss suggested anger—deep anger—over the events of the previous night. 
I swiped at the moisture running down my hairline and silently prayed Starr would either open the second door or get this elevator moving.
He did the former rather than the latter, and as the metal doors swished open, I got my first glimpse of the room beyond. It was like stepping back into time and coming out in the Middle Ages, in one of those vast, lush banquet halls so often seen in movies. A large wooden table, complete with rough-hewn, high-backed wooden chairs, dominated the far end, and behind that, lush wall hangings that depicted images of beauty and brutality. The rest of the concrete walls were brown, painted so that they resembled wood planking. A small arena of sorts lay in the middle of the room, though its base was rushes rather than the sand of the bigger arena upstairs. Scattered cushions and heavily padded benches were strewn haphazardly around the rest of the room. Heavy metal sconces lined the painted walls, these so laden with wax it was easy to believe centuries of candlesticks might have burned there. The candles were the only source of light, and the flickering amber glow added to the brooding, old-style atmosphere.
It should have been inviting, if perhaps a little mysterious, but it was neither. The smell of death rode the air and, as my gaze skirted the room, the faces of those who had died here seemed to step out of the shadows, filling me with their despair, their anger.
I stumbled under the weight of it, and would have fallen if Merle hadn’t grabbed my arm. The sick heat of him ran across my skin, overrunning all other sensation. When I looked up, the wraiths had gone. Maybe they were never there. Maybe it was just my imagination, my fear.
Maybe.
I swallowed heavily and wrenched my arm from Merle’s grasp. He chuckled, a heavy sound that itched at my skin. “You won’t be pulling away like that later. You’ll be begging.”
“Yeah, that you’ve somehow learned some technique overnight.” The words were out before I could stop them, and Merle’s face darkened. Even more so when Moss chuckled softly.
“The wolf has spunk,” he said. “Perhaps I might have to steal her back. Sounds as if she’d appreciate a man with a little more style.”
“What I have claimed you cannot have,” Merle growled. “You had your opportunity. You were too busy looking for new talent in the recruits.”
Moss’s face went red, and little veins began to stand out in his forehead. “I am not the ass-lover amongst us—”
“No,” Starr interrupted calmly, “I am. And if you two can’t shut up, kindly remember that I am not overly fussy about my partners being willing and that I am more than ready to try someone I have until now considered off-limits.”
As threats went, it was pretty darn efficient. The two men continued to scowl at each other, but otherwise fell silent. But they’d obviously been around Starr a long time, and would have had plenty of firsthand experience about how ugly he could get. And how far he would go.
Starr walked across to the table and took the middle seat. Moss headed left, while Merle motioned me to the right. Lucky me got to sit between death and his righthand man. Not a place someone with a stomach as fragile as mine was feeling right now should really be.
As I pulled the chair up closer to the table, I looked up at the ceiling then around the walls again. There were no monitors to be seen, but there were guards hiding in the shadows. Surprisingly, they weren’t Iktar’s kin, but gray things with scaly skin and human extremities. They were armed—candlelight flickered across the barrels of the guns they held inhumanly still.