Shadow Games Read online

  Tarin flicked hair back out of his face. “So enlighten me.”

  “No.”

  Tarin shrugged his shoulders and turned away again to resume hitting the punching bag. “No skin off my nose.”

  “Why do you want Katelyn?”

  “If you think we’re going to do this,” He panted hitting the back in a one two fashion. “And be civilized and talk like girlfriends,” another set of one two jabs. “Then you’re sorely mistaken. You want answers,” He panted with a quick set of four jabs in a row. “From me, then you need to give me some in return.” He dropped his hands and stilled the bag again.

  “And if I choose not to?”

  Tarin shrugged his shoulders and breathed out heavily. “Deal with shit in your own way then. See if I care.” He muttered bending down to pick up his discarded shirt. “Because I got my own set of problems to deal with.”

  I mulled this thought over and it the obvious occurred to me as much as it disgusted me to say it out loud. “We could work together.”

  Tarin shoved the end of the shirt into his back pants pocket. And he stood, glistening and defined, hard body on display, his hands on his hips looking at me like I was the crazy one in the room. “For what benefit?”

  “You want Katelyn. I want to know who wants me dead, you want to not get dead for failing at your job. Seems like we’re in the same situation and quite frankly, it’s all your fault. So I’m sure we can work something out.” And could we keep a clause in there about how he has to be shirtless for most of the time we’re together please? I blinked and rubbed my temples.

  When in extreme situations, Katelyn always had the ability to call on me. To awaken me from within her. It didn’t even need to be extreme situations really. She had managed for sixteen years, to keep me under her thumb. Under her control. None of the women who had come before her in her family, ever had as much control over their nature Katelyn did. Was I putting us both in danger if I teamed up with a shadow demon whose very nature was to deceive?

  “I’d say we don’t really have a choice in the matter, when you put it like that.”

  Shaye Armadel walked over to the two of us and looking from me back to Tarin. “Wow, you two are actually, sharing space and not killing one another. How, you know, normal of you both. Does this mean I can actually leave now and you’ll be fine together?”

  “Where are you going?” Tarin asked his brother.

  “To my place. It’s been an exciting day all around for everyone but I think it’s better if I get out of your hair. There is only so much feeling like a third wheel I can take.”

  Tarin rolled his eyes at his brother. “It’s not like that.” He muttered under his breath. “Asha is all yours if you want her.”

  I glared at him. “Fuck you. I’m not a toy to be passed around, motherfucker.”

  Shaye snorted a laugh back at him. “Dude, it is so like that. The sexual energy you guys are emitting is crazy. ” He said. I stared at him and glanced across at Tarin who did the same. “And I’d rather not be around for when you two kids finally decide how to deal with that. It’s going to be explosive by the feel of it.”

  “You’re full of shit.” I muttered as a defensively immature retort and turned on him walking away.

  “Shadow demon, my nature is desire. I can recognize it in others, want it and I feel it. So don’t kid yourself Asha. It spiked just now as you were watching Tarin box.” I kept walking off out of earshot. I refused to believe what he was saying, because I wanted nothing to do with the demon other than to bloody him up. The notion of a demi-goddess and a demon having sexual relations made me want to puke, continuously for centuries.

  “And you can give it too, so why don’t you, you know…” I heard Tarin say.

  “Because it’s Katelyn’s desire for you, not Asha’s.” I heard him reply. It was Katelyn who was seeping into me, it was her desire for Tarin that he was sensing. Because it wasn’t like we leaked into one another, her and I. We never had in the past. Maybe that was a partial effect of the binding that Tarin had put on us. “And I’m pretty sure if I lay hands on Katelyn you’ll kick my ass and it’s been a long enough, weird-ass day as it is, thanks bro.”

  6

  Shaye left us and for some reason, that made me suddenly feel vulnerable. So I stayed up on the second floor, while Tarin stayed downstairs, continuing to hit the crap out of the boxing bag. Neither of us wanted to be around the other one and so we stayed out of each other’s way. After a while I no longer heard the boxing bag being hit. It was replaced with the sound of the shower going on downstairs. My mind wandered with imagery of Tarin under the shower spray.

  No it wasn’t my mind wandering with lustful images of the demon, it was Katelyn’s. I shook my head and lay still on the bed. I needed to clear her simple feelings of lust out of me. I couldn’t even wrap my head around how she could feel that way not only towards a demon, but one that had for all intents and purposed, attempted to kill her. I wasn’t sure I was buying that he didn’t want her dead. Probably because he hadn’t given me anything else to go on, that might indicate otherwise.

  I stared at the ceiling and tried to think of all the possible enemies I or Katelyn could have that would feel so much for us that they wanted to kill us. I couldn’t think of many who even knew what Katelyn was. So really, the enemy list had to belong to me and that could go on for some time, given how long I’d been around on the earth and how many interactions I’d had throughout decades with people. I needed some way to narrow it down.

  The sound of a moan from within the fall of water, echoed loudly into the otherwise silent warehouse and I briefly wondered what Tarin was doing. Pretty sure I knew and at the same time, didn’t want to know. “Damn it Katelyn, let me think here, this is important.”

  You don’t go through life without someone not liking you. But there’s a difference between those that don’t care for you or your kind and those that outright want to hate you on sight or at the thought of you. Still the list I came up with of possible suspects was rather endless. Then a new thought occurred to me.

  “What if it’s not about me personally, it’s just about the bloodline? Just about taking out any, Asha Vihishta that they come across?” I smiled to myself. That felt like an epiphany.

  I was so wrapped up in what I was deeming a break through in all of the madness of being targeted for killing that I failed to hear the shower stop or Tarin Armadel make his way up the stairs and into the bedroom. Until I saw him, standing at the end of the bed, with a towel wrapped precariously low on his hips, and around his waist.

  His eyes looked upon me in a predatory fashion. “Let’s get this straight, I don’t want you, I want Katelyn.” He stated dropping to his knees on the end of the bed and crawling towards me. My eyes went wide. “So, we could both make this desire go away if you could just give me Katelyn.” He said crawling up and placing one hand over the opposite side of me so his body, partially covered mine as he move. The towel began to drop from his hips, I dragged my eyes back up to his face.

  “Can’t you just you know, pleasure yourself.” I muttered back at him as he got closer to me. My heart started beating wildly into my breast plate. Get a grip, Katelyn I told her, silently.

  “Tried that.” He said softly as the towel caught under his knee and pulled away. My eyes dropped to see his erection hanging predominately from him. Fully erect and ready to go. “Didn’t work.” He muttered heatedly as his mouth got closer to me. “Now if you would just let Katelyn out so she could do that thing, that she did the first night we met, that I liked so much, and we might get through this, alive and in one piece.”

  I didn’t believe him and Katelyn wasn’t letting me know what it was that she’d done to him that made such a memorable impression on Tarin. “What makes you think I need your help? You seem to be the only one suffering here.” I said keeping eye contact with him as he dipped his face closer to mine, but still didn’t touch me. It was maddening.

  “Shaye s
aid her desire was rampt up, so you feel through Katelyn right?” I gulped down a vat of saliva. Tarin dipped his head and ran his tongue along my throat under my jaw. “So don’t pretend you don’t feel the pull of this.” He pressed his naked body against my jeans, rubbing his erection against me, deliberately hard. “Just give me Katelyn and I’ll promise her and I can sort this out amongst ourselves.”

  I didn’t realize I’d hitched my breath until I had to take another one. “She isn’t ready to see you again.” Tarin started moving his cock against me, matching the pace of his tongue stroking my throat, with his hips, grinding against me.

  “I could blind fold you.”

  “That requires trust.” I said tensing my muscles up. “And you don’t have any of that with her, not anymore.” Tarin’s lips started kissing their way around my neck and throat. I kept tilting my jaw to better accommodate him, relaxing again.

  “She could blind fold me.” I felt Katelyn rise up then. She more than liked the idea. But I pushed her back down. I wasn’t keen on her getting into sexual games with the shadow demon again. After all, wasn’t that which had gotten us into trouble in the first place?

  “No.” I pushed Tarin and he pulled back from me. “You’re no good for her.”

  “Like you are?” He posed to me. “You have an inherit bias against demons.”

  “And you have a taste for truth-sayers blood.” I said watching him as he sighed and rolled off me and onto his back beside me. Reading Tarin when he was open to strong emotional distractions, appeared to be how I’d get my information out of him.

  “That was a long time ago. I’m different now. I’ve got it under control.”

  I laughed at him. “Isn’t that the universal argument of defense for addicts everywhere?” Tarin let out a heavy breath and put his arm over his face.

  “Fine. We won’t have sex then. But it’s going to be a hell of a long night, because I am sleeping here on this bed, like this.” My eyes looked over his body. He was not at all displeasing on the eyes. Hard, muscular and oh so attractive, Katelyn almost made me want to dive between his legs. With those big, solid thighs either side of me as I envisioned sliding him into my mouth and sucking the pleasure out of him. I hit the spare space on the bed beside me.

  “It’s only going to get worse Asha.” Tarin said laying there all gorgeous and tall, and still on the bed. Waiting to be taken. Waiting for me to take him.

  “It’s nothing. I’m not akin to the pleasures of the flesh, like you mortals.”

  “Good luck with believing that.” Tarin said before falling into silence beside me as I attempted to fall asleep, fully clothed, and sexually charged.

  7

  The problem came late at night. There was less resistance in sleep and it was all too easy to imagine all the pleasure that could be experienced, from the sleeping male beside me. His sent filled my senses and Katelyn rose up within and took over.

  Squirming in the bed and moaning lightly, I imagined his hands over me. His mouth on me and I found myself trying to get to my own sex, but restricted because of the jeans I was wearing. This woke me up, fully and I looked down at Tarin on the bed. A beautiful wild man, at peace with sleep with blonde waves of hair splashed around him.

  I was rather new to the concept of sex for pleasure and not for function of survival. In meeting Tarin and working with him, I’d gotten a taste of what it could be like to experience sex on a completely sensual, personal, level. And now I had a taste for it, I wanted more of it. I wanted more of him, despite what had happened to me .

  Part of me it seemed, believed his story or wanted to believe in him. I guess, it might seem pathetic and all too easy to say, I wanted to believe in us. There was an attraction between Tarin Armadel and me that I hadn’t ever had with any other male. I found it hard to ignore and found, really when I thought about it, I didn’t want to.

  I slipped off the bed and padded quietly over to the dressing screen and pulled down the blue silk scarf that hung of it. I slide back onto the bed and folded the scarf in my hands. It was cool and light, but most importantly, it was long. It was great for tying up hands, or blind folding a demon, in my case, literally, of my recent past, that despite the sexual energy that was building in me, my heart still wasn’t sure I could truly face, just yet.

  Tarin hadn’t hurt me physically when he’d tried to kill me. He’d hurt me emotionally. Sure I was blindsided by the attack but it was more than that. We’d been about as intimate as man and woman could get when he’d launched into it. He’d been inside me, in so many ways. That was where the hurt kicked in. I’d made myself vulnerable to him and he’d taken full advantage of it.

  I slid the scarf around his head, and moved to tie it at the back. Tarin twitched and I stilled, his face moved and a hand reached up to touch the scarf over his eyes. “What the?” He muttered sleepily. I stayed still and quiet watching him. “Katelyn?” He asked softly his face pointed at me.

  I let out a breathe “Yes.” I said as his hands reached for my body and pulled me into him, quickly. His hands roaming over the sides of me, down my hips, over my backside.

  “Gods you feel good.” He said holding me to him.

  “This is the only way this is going to happen, okay?” I said back at him.

  “Okay.” He said. I finished tying the scarf around the back of his head and slunk down into the bed, into his embrace with him. I remembered how this felt, when I’d been in his arms, in his bed, at his place. I’d felt so right and natural that we lay fitting each other so well.

  His mouth was upon me instantly and mine responded in kind. Hungry to remember the feel of those lips against my skin, his tongue in my mouth. The sounds of pleasure that came from him in decorating my flesh with his desire for me. “I’m so sorry.” He muttered between kisses. “So, so, sorry.” I barely heard his words because the feeling of being reunited with his passion was beginning to overwhelm my senses.

  I didn’t understand how it could be like this, how I’d never had anything like this before or why I was having it with a demon of all people. I just knew I didn’t want to let it go. Not easily anyway. Didn’t I deserve some pleasure in my life? “So sorry.” He kept muttering between drawn breaths and kisses over my skin. His hands move up over my top and cup my clothed breast in his hand as he pressed his lower body into mine, rocking his semi against me again. “Sorry,” he panted as he found my earlobe and sucked on it. “Never again, I promise. I’ll never do it again.”

  As great as it was feeling Tarin’s rush of lust for me, his words kept dragging that tiny, niggling, sensible part of my brain back to reality and I started to slow the frantic pace of our kissing and petting, down. I pulled back from his mouth and he paused, I could feel his heart beating madly into his chest, banging into mine. “What is it?” He asked me.

  “Why’d you do it Tarin?”

  He sighed and pressed his mouth together quickly before speaking again. “I told Asha all this before, do you remember through her? Do you remember anything when it’s her running the show?”

  “Asha?”

  “Yeah, that’s what Shaye and I took to calling, you know, you’re other half.”

  “Huh, never thought about a name for her before. It’s always just been her. Asha.” I said trying out the name and finding I didn’t mind it. “Yeah I see fragments of a things. They’re kind of jumbled and you have to make sense of them. But yes, I guess on some level I retrain information when she’s player number one in my body.”

  Tarin nose ran along my neck and he inhaled the scent of me, keeping me close and tight in his strong arm, embrace. “You look different when you’re her.” He said softly, sounding sad.

  “Oh, didn’t know that. How do I look?” I wondered if I had horns and a tail or was just downright ugly. Maybe it was about the reflection of my soul when Asha was around.

  “She wears you, like clothing she can’t get out of. So your body is the same, but her skin, the appearance. It’s like a dead face.
White with intricate markings like tattoos all over her face, down her arms. Only, it’s her skin, it’s her true form.” He said a finger lightly tracing patterns over her face. Was he drawing her tattoo’s on me?

  “Oh.” I tried to imagine what that looked like. “Shaye doesn’t see it. But I see it. I guess it’s got something to do with my nature and yours being bound together.” I fell into silence and thought about what the implications of that might be. We were essentially ying and yang. His nature was deception, he was born into it, had no way to fight it, because essentially it was who he was.

  I on the other hand, was the exact opposite. I read, saw, felt the truth in almost all things. If he could see into me, see the demi-god he’d dubbed, Asha, then could I see into him now? Read him? Reading wasn’t as automatic as breathing, or touching, thankfully. I had to open myself up to the idea of reading someone else, I had to concentrate if I wanted to know the answer to my own question. Did I really want to go down there?

  “Why’d you do it?” I asked deciding to sweep aside such an honest and scary thought process. I’d rather he just told me and meant his words. I wasn’t up for that much honesty about our situation, just yet.

  “It’s not me that I wanted you dead and I thought if I faked your death, then you’d be off the radar for good and I had fully intended to go back there and get you. But getting away from Rick without making it seem suspicious, kind of just dragged on and by the time I got back out to where we,” he paused unhappy with the words. “Left you, you were long gone.”

  “So Rick is in on this hit on me?”

  Tarin shook his blindfolded head from side to side. “I don’t think so, but I just couldn’t risk him knowing that you were alive. And every time I tried to leave the house he was asking if he could drive me somewhere. I was just trying to be cautious. I bound you to me before that night, so I could keep you alive. Honestly, you have to believe me. That was my only intention Katelyn.”

  “That’s a big ask Tarin. Asking me to believe you.” I said softly angry at him.