Love Me to Death (Underveil, #1)(12)

He blanched at the acid in her tone. “I didn’t cloak you because it takes energy to hide a human in the human world. The energy caused by teleporting dissipates, but cloaking leaves, for lack of a better description, a trail. Simply cloaking my clothes will leave a weak signal. Cloaking you would leave a much stronger one.”

That made sense, she supposed, but she still hated it…and him. She looked around the room again and spotted the open bathroom door. She really needed to use the restroom and take a shower. Surely he’d untie her for just a moment. “I swear I won’t run. Please untie me so I can have some private moments in the bathroom.”

“No.”

“So I can’t even pee?”

“Of course you can. You may do whatever you wish. Shower, relieve yourself. Hell, pleasure yourself for all I care. The cord remains.”

“Until I’m dead.”

“Yes.”

She really didn’t have a choice. Unless he killed her in the next two minutes, she was going to pee herself.

“Let’s go.” She entered the bathroom and realized the cord was long enough for him to remain outside while she used the toilet. She closed the door in his face with a slam and stifled a grin. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

He would have to come in if she were going to shower. Though it probably wouldn’t be that big a deal. Even though it was obvious from the perpetual bulge in his pants he was male and she was female, he had made it clear he hated her—or he hated whatever it he thought she was. Tears stung the back of her eyelids. Clearly he considered her beneath him.



Nikolai leaned his forehead against the closed door. He wanted to have this woman beneath him. His body all but screamed it out loud. He had to have her. No more games. No more waiting. She was his, and he would make it so.

He stared at the pulses of his soul as it traveled the exposed inches of the cord before disappearing behind the closed door. There had been fireworks when their souls collided on the cable between them. There would be fireworks when their bodies met as well.

She had flushed minutes ago. He knocked. “My turn.”

There was no response. He tried the door to find it locked. What the devil was she up to? He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a lock pick, and popped the door on the first try. He found her sitting on the closed toilet lid, knees drawn to her chest, sobbing and trembling all over. He crouched in front of her, but she buried her face in her arms.

“Hey.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “You okay?”

A choked laugh came from her. “Am I okay?”

He ached to see her like this. “Yes. That was my question.”

She lifted her head and met his gaze directly. “No, I am not okay.” She unfurled and sat up straight. “I can’t believe you have the balls to ask me that. How can you even imagine I would be okay?”

Nikolai swallowed the lump in his throat. “I simply wanted to—”

“To what?”

He could hardly believe it himself. “Calm you.”

“Calm me? What, before you kill me?” She pushed to her feet, and Nikolai stood as well. The air was charged with her anger. “Because that’s what all of this is about, isn’t it? Killing me.”

He didn’t know what to say. That was how it started, certainly, but things had changed.

“Let me tell you about my day, and you tell me if I’m okay,” she said.

He moved to sit on the toilet lid and give her free reign to rant. Perhaps, like Aleksandra, letting it out would make her feel better.

She held up a finger. “First, my * boss berates me for not being productive enough, which is total bullshit, but tells me he’ll look the other way if I go out for drinks with him.” She switched the finger she held up to her middle one, making a crude gesture. “Right. Drinks my ass. My ass is what he wants. Not a chance.” She straightened her forefinger again, leaving two fingers up. “Second. I have a hideous blood sugar attack and stop to buy a candy bar, but get killed by some freak instead. You’d think that would be the happy ever after ending, but no. I get revived by…” She gestured to him. “Whatever you are, taken to the hospital, interrogated by cops, assaulted by a crazy lady, transported to my house to be murdered, then moved here to be murdered instead, all the while being insulted and degraded.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “Oh yeah. I’m just great. Any other questions?”

There was so much power inside this tiny human. He wondered what she would be like if allowed to come into her immortal powers. He stifled a smile. She would be a force to be reckoned with, for certain. But his orders were clear. He must destroy her, which hardly seemed just since she had no involvement with his father’s murder whatsoever. Fydor’s intel could not have been that faulty. Why had he lied to him?

While she caught her breath, Nikolai watched the blue and silver threads of their souls dance along the cord. What a cruel trick of fate that they were bonded. If only there were a way to release himself from her and release her from her execution. He must find a way.

She dropped to her knees at his feet. “Please. Please let me go. I’m not what you think I am. I’m just a human trying to make a living and get by.”

He wished he could set her free, but severing the cord would mean death for them both. “No. And you are not human. Not entirely. You see under the Veil. I think you will become something else with the right trigger.”