Ruin Box Set (32 page)

“You said I did, isn’t that enough?”

She gasped a laugh looking up at the ceiling then turned her gaze to the floor, shaking her head. “I am so pathetic aren’t I? Willing to believe you love me without your bloody consent.” She spun back to her drawers. “I am such a moron. Maybe Scriber will love me, hmm?”

“Isadore,” Ruin warned.

She spun, her eyes flashing. “What’s wrong? You can’t love me but at the mention of Scriber loving me you want to shit a bird?” She pointed between them. “You…me…” she dusted her hands, “Fini.”

Ruin groaned and grabbed the tattoo on his side.

“Oh poor baby, your homework is calling you.” She began putting clothes on and Ruin didn’t like her choice of attire. Blue jean shorts and a white muscle shirt.

“That’s too revealing, Isadore.”

She paused on her way out, mouth hanging open. “I’m sorry, Jaaayyyy D, but only men who love me get to tell me how to dress. Now excuse me, I got some motherfuckin’ floors to mop.”

Ruin stood there with his eyes closed, various pains making him rigid. He got dressed, his limbs barely wanting to move as he went down. He found Isadore race mopping, seeming to be paying particular attention to the spot where Mr. Thibodeaux had been. While he really wanted to ponder how in the universe he could possibly not know what love was, he needed to leave. And he really dreaded taking her. Perhaps he could slip—

“You ready, I’m done,” she huffed, still mopping furiously. “Just a few more spots and we can head out.”

Like all was fine now? He knew better. He’d just over disintegrated Mr. Thibodeaux right before her eyes, and were now keeping company with an onyx statue of not-so-natural qualities. Which…wouldn’t that explain her strange behavior? Of course. Running upstairs and getting naked in the closet then seducing him wasn’t exactly what one does right in the midst of the supernatural chaos. Unless they’re on the edge of their mental cliff. And how stupid could he be to just indulge her psychosis? But seeing her naked did that to him. The beautiful shock had zapped his sense right from him.

Fine? Hardly. He walked to the back wall of windows, looking out. Was he supposed to wait for Scriber?

“I’m here.”

Isadore yelped at the sudden sound of the being’s silky voice and Ruin spun to find the onyx statue perched in a dark corner behind the stairs. And just how long had he been there? Why was he hiding? Ruin didn’t think he’d watch Isadore, but the idea that he could have, bothered him. He didn’t really know the being very well. “I’m assuming you’re coming?”

“Yes.” He stepped out of the shadow, his black face not a bit brighter for it. “You are not to perform any assignments without me.” The unspoken understood? was well inflected in his silky tone, along with the reminder of who screwed things up and was to blame for the whole babysitting necessity.

“Oh good,” Isadore said with a bubbly joy. “Scriber is coming!”

“Yes.” Ruin barely managed the nonchalance while the rage from earlier reignited. The look in her eyes confirmed her ploy; she was going to pay him back for his ignorance about love, and really he didn’t mind that so much, but using that one thing? Anything but that.

“Well, isn’t that nice,” she smiled, hand on her cocked hip. “Should we eat first? Scriber, do you eat food?”

“I can.”

Ruin understood him to mean he could but didn’t need to, but the way Isadore hurried to the kitchen, he could, he would, and he was famished in that second. “We don’t have time to eat. I have to leave now.”

She straightened from inside the fridge, staring in contemplation at him before shrugging. “Okay. We can always grab something on the way?”

“You should change.”

She looked down. “Why? This is fine.” She looked at Scriber with a sweet smile. “Is this fine?”

Ruin raised his brows as Isadore followed Scriber’s exit right out of the house, ignoring the question, or seeming to. “Guess he’s not that interested.”

She turned her head with a dramatically odd swiveling, and held him with a hard gaze. “I’ll get my boots on.” She marched face forward to the bathroom, banged around a bit then came out strutting for the door with her nose up. Without looking she grabbed her purse hanging on the wall then jolted to a halt when the strap didn’t obey her little cocky flick of her wrist. She yanked this way and that then threw the purse into the air only to have it land exactly where it was when she started.

Ruin fought a grin as he walked over to help her with her war on physics only to be warned away with a glare. He raised his hands. “I’ll…just wait in the truck while you finish getting your purse.”

“You do that, Jaaaay D.”

Ruin stood outside the door, waiting for her. The second she walked out, he followed her, wanting to explode something. He couldn’t believe how fucking sexy she looked. Muscle shirt and perky breasts, those shorts, that ass. The ridiculous cowboy boots that demanded he smash her obstinacy with seven dimensions of reckless pleasure. She was an extreme danger to him and the mission. She was bad judgement bait.

Guaranteed.

Chapter Six

The problem of seating hit Ruin even as Isadore hopped in the truck, scooting to the middle. It took all his strength not to insist she drive. He had no logical reason to suggest it and so took his place behind the wheel. To his surprise and relief, Scriber jumped into the back of the truck.

“You can ride up here,” Isadore said, “there’s plenty of room.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I don’t care for small spaces.”

“Hm,” Ruin said.

“Hm yourself, JD.”

“Don’t think I’m going to let you start calling me that Izzy.”

“Sure JD.”

“What are you going to do, spank me in front of Scriber? Maybe you’ll ask him to hold me down?”

He grit his teeth until his jaw hurt, wanting very much to drag her back inside and make her apologize. Make her call him by his right name. While he sucked her fucking clit and commanded those pleasure spasms until she bucked on his face and became that woman she was so ashamed of. 

And Scriber likely sensed Ruin’s ‘issues.’ Another humiliation. To have his powers screwing with him at a time like this and in front of the being was not something he needed added to his list of failures and inadequacies.

Isadore scooted away from him, slammed the door and remained sitting right on it. Good, the last thing he needed was to have to touch, smell, and taste her right in the middle of a crisis. Maybe he should try focusing on his homework, take the job seriously. He might not know all the details, but he felt its importance at an instinctual level. More details would be nice to help speed along the urgency he desperately needed to counter his Isadore affliction, but that didn’t seem to be in the perks for him.

Ruin headed in the direction his power pulled. North-east, in this case. They drove in silence and Ruin remembered Caliber mentioning the commander of Daguire’s Guild. Who was that anyway and how was he connected to him, and why. As usual, there was no shock and awe when contemplating it. Any of it. Him being a Carnificem, born into a human body, a whole man and not of a woman... It all felt natural to him. Normal. Even though logic said it clearly wasn’t, whoever he was, before his humanity, was with him, and that piece of him knew things that Ruin didn’t. It was what his instincts responded to, like everything about him knew what was going on except his conscious mind. The wall, he assumed.

He glanced over at Isadore, the wall giver according to Caliber. She chewed her thumbnail and watched the afternoon slowly fading around them. Ruin checked on Scriber in the rear view then glanced back when he didn’t see him. The being seemed to be asleep on the bed of the truck, head on the spare tire.

Ruin allowed his gaze to dwell on the endless expanse of flesh leading to the top of her shorts. The way she sat with one leg on the dashboard screamed slide your fingers inside me until I orgasm on you. “You’re quiet,” Ruin said, wishing she’d be just a bit closer. She didn’t answer and Ruin grimaced when the coordinates on his assignment bit into his ribs telling him they were close. Where could they possibly be going? “Are you thirsty?” He was ready to stop and find a reason to get near her before the assignment.

She still didn’t answer.

“Come on, you’re not going to talk to me? Ever?”

“Why should I?” she mumbled.

“Well, I was more helpful to you than this on your assignments.”

“You do not need me and you know it,” she muttered again.

He took a deep breath, glad the following was true and even said it with a measure of pride. “No…I actually do need you.”

“No you don’t,” she threw right back, positively.

“Yes, I do.”

“No. You don’t.”

“Yes. I do.”

“No you don’t.” Her sighed response and monotone said she was prepared to repeat it another thousand times, no problem.

Ruin shook his head. “You’re so damn obstinate. And for what? Because I don’t know what love is? Are you sure you should fault me for that? Seeing as I’m not really human?”

She gave a light miffed noise but he sensed an advantageous break in her wall.

“I assure you if I were entirely human I’d know what it is you think I should know.”

“What should you know?” She looked at him now. “Say it.”

“What love is.”

She squinted her eyes and turned away like she’d expected him to have a hard time answering what it was that he didn’t know.

“Don’t you see that because I have no issue saying I don’t love you it’s actually a good thing?”

She did that head swivel thing again, squinting at him. “Come again?”

“I mean if it me not knowing love was bad, then I’d know that.”

She turned her squinty gaze forward. “Wait… so it’s good that you don’t love me because if you did, it’d be bad?”

Wow, how could she…“What? No. If it was bad that I didn’t love you, I’d know. I don’t feel like it’s bad.”

She gasped. “Well I feel like it’s bad! What about how I feel! Is this all about the awesome and powerful Ruin with the endless muscles and-and sexy green eyes and Wiley ways with women?” He couldn’t keep from smiling and she jabbed a finger at him. “And then you laugh at those misfortunate enough to be ensnared by your sick bag of tricks, laugh at people who are…” She turned toward the window.

Ruin wanted to stab his eyes out when her voice had gone hoarse and she couldn’t finish her sentence. “Isadore, I am sorry that you’re hurt. I wouldn’t say that if I wasn’t, you know that.”

“Well whoop tee doo,” she barely managed in a tiny voice. “You’re sorry. You’re sorry that my heart is ripped into two bazillion pieces and thrown in the trash.”

“Angel,” Ruin whispered around the stabbing pressure in his chest. “I don’t like that I don’t love you any more than you do.”

“Stop!” she gasped, looking at him like he was a monster. “My God, stop saying it! I can’t stand it. I’d rather be shot in the ear than hear it. At least then I might actually die instead of having this stupid hole in my chest that doesn’t bleed, it just sits there like a stupid hole with no reason but to… make me wish I was dead.”

“Jesus—“

“Don’t you dare say that name to me,” she shot out, “you don’t even believe in God.” She jabbed her finger repeatedly, as though realizing something. “And that is no doubt why you are broken mister. You are broken because you are defiant against God.” She nodded incessantly before turning away with a tiny squeaking, “And here I go falling in love with you.” She tossed her hands in her lap. “Falling in love with a broken angel, that’s me. Can’t do anything right, always manage to find a way to fuck shit up.” She wiped her face with the back of her arms.

Her pain was suffocating him and he rolled down the window to breathe around it. “How is it that I hurt the one I need to protect more than my own life?” he wondered to himself.

“Like a puppy, that’s what I am to you. A clown puppy. Pathetic and weird who likes to mop her problems out and dissect mice brains and say it’s to help save the world when really it’s to try and figure out what’s so wrong with me that nobody can love me.”

“Fuck, Isadore! Stop!” he gasped. “You’re so wrong.” But so much of what she said was true and frustration to analyze which, tore him. “I don’t even like animals!”

“Oh,” she cried lightly, flopping her hands again, “and he misses the bloody point.”

“Well quit saying things that don’t apply.”

“Well I thought you did your homework with your goddamn idioms!” The words growled out like a rabid dog as Ruin pulled into a parking lot. “Now, what are you doing?” she whispered, wiping her eyes, looking around.

“This is it.”

“A…retirement home? A retirement home is your assignment? Are you supposed to kill old people or something?” Like she’d lose the rest of her fragile mind if it were.

“Is that what this place is?” A living graveyard? What. The. Hell?

“Well…what are you supposed to do here? I don’t get it?” She looked at him, her eyes worried and wide. “You think maybe you get a chance to make it right.”

He looked at her, not needing more senseless mysteries. “Make what right?”