Paragon - Chapter 17: Chapter 17

I pulled up outside Henley & Bloom when the rush had seemed to pick up in the surrounding buildings. Mortals in expensive suits and key cards flitted in and out of the glass towers.
Quinn got out the car swiftly and turned to my passenger side which I descended the window of. She wore an easy smile like we had talked of no more than our weekend plans for the last hour and not the death of her boss or my icy touch. But there was still that lingering question in those bright green eyes.
"Thanks for taking the time... again." She emphasised, putting her hands into her winter jacket and drawing her shoulders up from the cold.
"Not at all. I know its been a lot to deal with. For anyone." I clarified, glancing behind her to see some movers shift new office furniture onto the street from a large truck.
"I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder." She smirked, "And if you were still up for it–"
I opened the door rapidly before she could finish and put myself between her and the car in a matter of seconds before one of the moving crews shouted across the street. She sucked in a breath.
A thick shelving unit had come crashing out of its bindings and stopped dead at my hand. A small dent appeared around my hand. I heard Quinn gasp behind me before I realised my mistake and set another hand on it to appear to at least be struggling to hold it.
"KARL! Get the other side now!" A worker in high vis shouted and appeared at my side to take the weight I already had. Another one pulled from the other side and the three of us set it back against the trolly loaded with more metal shelves.
The man in the hard hat turned to me too apologetic to even realise a young mortal woman shouldn't have been able to catch it with a hand like it was nothing... His grey eyes under the hard hat were wide and panicked.
"It's alright, try to secure them a little tighter next time." I remarked, casting him a cool look.
He shook his head and apologised again before pushing off with the trolly and relaying angered orders at more of his workers.
Quinn was still pressed against the car behind me with a rapidly beating heart. I turned to her slowly while she carefully pulled off the car. She shook her head stiffly.
"How the hell..." She trailed off before staring at me still not believing it. "You moved. In less time it took me to turn and lifted that like–" She dragged a hand through her hair.
"Honestly I just saw it fall and stopped–"
"No–no you can't give me a bullshit excuse this time." She stated curtly. "I wasn't drunk and I know what I just saw."
I stilled into a piece of stone. "And what exactly was that?"
"I–I don't know. Steroids? Red Bull?" She laughed without humour. "Fletcher I'm going to start asking more questions unless you start giving me some straight answers." She levelled me with her unbreakable stare.
I watched her back. Calculating. Deciding on what the hell I was going to do about this. I couldn't have just let her get crushed. A hit to the back of the head was enough to permanently damage mortals. Now I was stood before one that had seen me move like an immortal. Stop a tall metal shelf like it weighed nothing more than a bag of sugar and took two men to move.
"Fine." I cut out.
"Come with me." She cut back just as starkly.
When she turned to her building I sighed deeply at the pavement. Maybe it was time for a new city and a new passport, I mused seriously as I trailed the long legs of the Lawyer finding out too much about me.
She strode confidently through the revolving doors to Henley & Bloom. I trailed her a few metres behind while I tried to think of something that would explain my actions. I was drawing blanks every time. Good bone structure? Diet? A secret fitness routine?
I internally groaned. Even steroids was more believable.
"Yes, I've got a guest with me. Tara Fletcher." Quinn, told the front desk secretary without hesitation and took a pass from her.
She nodded and smiled to the blonde behind the desk before dangling it before me. I swiped it away and she turned for the glass security gates with black suited guards at both ends. I smirked at their serious expressions as I scanned my pass and the gate went green.
Quinn stoped before a row of lifts tapping her heeled foot.
A number of others also waited and I kept a healthy distance from her. It seemed like she was also trying to think of an explanation for me. I'm not sure she wanted her own imagination to get too creative.
A lift door soon pinged and a crowd of suits poured out of it in loud chatter and black leather folders. We slipped in with a few others.
"Thirty one please." Quinn answered a suit inside that offered.
I hadn't even taken note of a single appearance or scent in that metal box other than hers. Not that Quinn would remember our last encounter with elevators... She stood close to me. Close enough to even brush the arm of her jacket. I swallowed away the burning in my throat. But I could do nothing about that tempting proximity.
If she had met me in another century. Another me. I wouldn't have hesitated to push her against the wall and sink my teeth into her neck. I hadn't bothered with restraint for so long. My rage after the war deemed them all inferior and worthy of draining. I didn't fight my darkness until much later.
I clenched my jaw as we stopped at floor ten and then fourteen. This was taking too damn long could they not just take the bloody stairs. I mentally cursed every mortal suit that entered or left the confined space.
Quinn seemed to sense my discomfort and actively smirked at my clenched jaw before returning her eyes ahead. I fought a sigh when we stopped again at twenty one.
"This is all part of the fun working in a corporate building." She murmured low enough for it not to draw attention.
We kept our eyes forward as more walked into the lift and left.
"Your idea of fun and my own differ greatly, Adams." I murmured back.
"It's not like it's your first trip here." She noted, thinking of the night I met her.
"It's quieter at night." I finished.
We stopped at thirty right before her floor and I fought the urge not to throw the rest of the mortals out of the lift and close it behind us. Quinn laughed quietly beside me and I glared back.
"I didn't know you were so impatient, Fletcher." She whispered.
For some reason it made me want to press my mouth against her neck for longer. It was driving me insane in the damn closeness where the air smelled only of her. I thought it would help to train myself against it but it was not working... I desired the taste of her skin and her blood like it was the only reason for my existence–
The lift pinged. Finally.
I edged myself quickly between the bodies and took a quick gulp of purer air that wasn't Quinn flavoured before tucking my hands together and waiting for an amused Lawyer to step out.
"C'mon detective. Before you lose the will and throw yourself out of the lift next time."
We've already done that once. I thought with irony.
"Lead the way." I told her in a dark tone, enjoying the way her heart picked up in response. My eyes could turn predatory too easily. The striking blue with inner gold never ceased to make a mortal's thoughts cloud. Especially the Lawyer.
* * * * *
Quinn led me into her office, smoothly shedding her coat and throwing it behind the door before offering a hand to me. For a completely ridiculous moment, I thought she was offering me her hand to take my own. I stared for a beat too long before she cleared her throat.
"For someone so cold all the time you really keep wrapped up." She said dryly.
I flinched out of my stupor and shook my head, peeling off my winter coat quickly and moving for the back of her door to hook it on the coat hook. She lowered her hand with an exasperated look. Then she retreated to her modern oak desk and leant against it with her arms crossed.
I paused near the door staring at her posture.
She nodded to an empty leather chair before her desk.
"Sit." She ordered.
The demand in it made me smirk. I was in her playing field now and I was sure she was used to setting the tone early on with whoever sat in this chair before myself. But I was no quivering mortal in the realm of the corporate and I had more experience than any who had sat here.
"I've got to get some answers from you, Fletcher." She stated candidly without breaking my gaze. "Our paths are crossing too often and too coincidently for it to make sense anymore."
"Need I remind you, it was you that gave me your card." I drawled, leaning back in the chair and crossing my legs. "It was you, Miss Adams that found our station bar that night–"
"Forget the bar!" She asserted a bit forcefully before regaining composure. I fought a smile. "You met me right before my boss tried to sexually harass me in this office." She stated without holding anything back. "You appeared or didn't appear the night I was terrified he had come back to London to try it again. It seems like every time my life has almost–has turned to shit–you show up." She finished in a puff.
The usually perfect waves of brown hair were now ruffled from the amount of times she had pulled her hand through it. But the unkept look suited her too. She could pull off any look with sharp features, tanned clear skin and those burning green irises.
"You think I timed it all?" I asked calmly. But she was more on the money than she even realised. I just had to repeat it back to her to make her doubt it.
She didn't respond as she watched me with a frown. "That's not a fact. But the facts I've gathered so far aren't any more reasonable."
"I think the fact is that right now I am spending the time I should be investing on a criminal empire. Instead I sit in front of a lawyer trying to decide if she's got a case on me or not." I uttered unblinking.
"Alright then, detective." She responded too calmly. She stood from the desk and took the few steps necessary to close the distance to us while my being froze before her. She struck out her arm and rolled up her sleeve. "We're in a heated office." She said flicking her eyes around the room. "We've been in here long enough to dismiss any temperature change to our skin. So. You tell me. If you did the same, would your arm feel like mine does now?"
"Quinn, that's ridiculous it's winter–"
"Answer me." She interrupted slowly. I glared at her.
"I don't need to answer to anyone." I murmured in a lethal quiet. A stare that would normally send any mortal running for the hills with the threat of an apex predator in the air... but she didn't.
She closed the damn space until I had to retreat into the chair as she pinned both hands on the arms of it. Trapped. Before a mortal with a pulse. With a warm and burning scent. She was killing herself. She actually sort death.
"Quinn..." I barely murmured with the last amount of warning I had in my voice. It sounded weak. It sounded like my restraint was dying before us.
Her green eyes didn't break their hold on mine. She wanted her answer now. And I couldn't do a thing as she moved her palm as slowly as ever and placed it flat against my exposed neck. A place that should be warm under any conditions. A place where hot blood should race. Her hot skin met my cool stone-like, unbreakable skin and she didn't flinch.
She expected it.
Her eyes moved from my own to stare in shock and something else at my neck. It curiously drifted carefully to my jaw and I shut my eyes. My breathing ceased and I fought with every demon inside me not to kill her. Her heat on me was another level of torture I hadn't felt since I had been turned a century ago. I felt my teeth demanding to grow and tear her apart.
"Fletcher." She spoke softer than I had ever heard. While I was lost in an endless battle against my instincts. I didn't dare to open my eyes for fear of the monster she'd see.
"I knew I wasn't imagining it." She murmured as she finally removed that scorching hand against me.
When I felt her heat lean back to her full height and a safer distance I opened my eyes.
"I've never heard of a medical condition like that other than Raynaud's." She spoke more to herself as she glanced at my neck again.
I chuckled lowly despite it all, unable to meet her eyes. "Why not–for the sake of sanity–don't we agree it is poor circulation."
"Because I'm not an idiot. And you don't take me for one." She cut out simply.
I nodded and met her eyes again finally. "I don't. But I also cannot satisfy you by answering truthfully."
"Why not?" She demanded, with a deep frown. "You're not breaking a law by being different–"
"But I am." I interrupted quietly. Watching her face turn from irritated to shocked and confused. "It's not a law you learn about. But it's one I must follow."
"That doesn't make any sense–so what you're a bit cold?"
"I'm a bit more than that, Quinn." I told her more darkly. "I think you know that already."
Her heartbeat had started picking up again as she finally started to realise that my nature wasn't a condition. It was much more.
"You're strong and fast. You look... like you shoot the cover of Vogue daily." She admitted with a head shake. "–you speak like you're from a different time all together and... your eyes." She murmured, trailing off.
This made me raise my eyebrows in surprise. No one had ever commented on them before this mortal... perhaps none had got close enough to tell–
"They have this ring of gold I noticed one night. I've never seen anything like it." She mumbled.
I watched her silently as she effectively summed up my immortality before us. Where it left us after that–I had no idea. All I could think of was escape from her penetrating gaze and precision. I'd never been exposed before and I didn't think a mortal would do it in such short time.
"What are you thinking?" She pressed, with anxiety lacing her mind.
So I answered her truthfully.
"Of disappearing."
Her expression went blank at my words.
"What? Why?" She got out.
"Because the answers don't get any easier." I told her slowly. "And the more you know, the worse the outcome. You're opening a box worse than Pandora."
"And what if I stopped asking why..." She said quietly. "What if I just went along with whatever madness seems to come with you."
"What are you saying?" I probed, leaning forward on my chair.
"I'm saying that I don't want you to disappear." She said as plain as day, meeting my eyes. It stopped me in my tracks and made me question the room around us. "I'm saying that I don't think you make my life so awful." She tried to shrug it off but her heart betrayed her more than she knew.
I had to get through to this mortal. Make her understand what she was getting herself into by pursuing my company at all. I stood from the chair to my full height a few inches taller despite her heels. My eyes filled with the darkness I reserved for the night. My midnight black hair was held high and didn't interrupt the straight line of my neck. She didn't shrink but her adrenaline had spiked. Her hands did grip the desk for support behind her.
"I know you can feel it. The same instinct that tells you to run from a bear. The same sweat that would break from coming face to face with something that would kill you." I growled the last part. It made her shudder but her body refused to move away.
"I'm a different you can't quantify. Because it's unknown. You know this and you shouldn't want anything to do with it. Quinn." I finished, boring my eyes down into hers with only a foot left between us at all.
If it wasn't for my own anger at letting myself get so involved with her in the first place I probably would have lost my resolve then and there. Her blood could so easily be staining the carpets with one lapse.
She seemed so lost in her thoughts and fear spiked adrenaline that I decided I had done enough. I turned from her only to hear the damning words mumble out from her parted lips.
"I don't care."
I stopped. My back to her and I thought I had misheard. I turned slowly on my heel and stared her down again.
"You what."
"I don't care." She repeated, louder. More resolved. It would only get her killed later on. I'd seen it too many times with other immortals. I lost my patience. I closed the space rapidly moving and let my teeth draw out into sharp points before snarling at her.
"Do you still not care, Quinn Adams?" I demanded, inches from her face. "Do you see what I am now?"
She stood unmoving before me with an unreadable expression.
I thought it would have driven her from the room at least. Or an expression merely of raw fear. She barely breathed. She barely moved. She just existed. Before finally drawing a deep breath and bringing herself back again. I'd just shown her how inhuman I truly was. The darkest monster I was and she said nothing.
When she finally moved. It was again not what a sane, warm blooded mortal should do. She moved her shaking hand to my jaw. I watched her the entire time until her burning skin found my own again. Her fingertips turned my head carefully to the side and I let my jaw open to reveal a razor set of canines that could cut through just about anything–even my own skin.
She silently turned it the other way before I retracted them and clenched it shut. I waited for what felt like hours for the screaming to start. For a full tilt sprint from the room and news agencies to be slapping prints down of a crackpot lawyer.
No such thing.
"Well." She finally got out after a swallow. "You're nothing I've ever seen before."
I leaned back, awaiting her final judgement.
"You're something out of a story. I shouldn't want anything to do with you." She murmured, bracing both of her hands more firmly against the desk. I nodded slowly, finally gaining resolve that she saw sense but also dreading how it felt like a stab in the heart none the less. I had an undeniable interest in the way she was–the way she thought and how she tailored her words and had a natural curiosity for the obscure and a thirst for life. The way a mystery brightened the green in her eyes and the way fear darkened them. I liked the one photograph I owned with her. I liked how I looked stood beside her and now I would lose it–
"–yet I still don't care."
I still don't care.
She spoke the words that went through my head in a spin.
Because they made no sense.