Society Rules (36 page)

However, this was only for her own selfish reasons.

The cold truth was, that Cassandra cared for nothing and no one, and slithered through life with an extremely inflated sense of how appealing she was to others. Agent Baker was nothing more than something she wanted.

She found him to be very much to her liking, and his womanizing ways simply made for better sport, in her eyes.

She liked his sarcasm and his quick wit, not to mention his magnificent body. And she was determined to have him; at least for a tryst or two. Cassandra was smart enough to know that holding on to this man was improbable, to say the least, but that was okay.

She didn’t give two shits about winning his heart. What in the hell would a heart do for her? There were other parts of Shawn Baker that she could find very useful, she thought with a smirk. He had been the subject of her increasingly rabid and explicit fantasies for over a year now.

Shawn was young and exciting. Much better than his boring old office partner . . . what was his name . . . Will?

Ugh, she thought, making a face. Of course, Will
was
somewhat hot in a way, but he was such a rule follower; all calm and stoic.

Men who were rebellious and volatile were more her speed and Shawn beautifully fit that description. Her hungry need to be around him brought her around to their department much more often than was necessary, with obviously contrived excuses.

She worked on another floor in a much larger unit, but not for much longer, she hoped.

She’d been trying to get a promotion to the top-secret elite team on which Shawn and Will were players, for a very long time, and not just because she wanted to jump Baker’s hard, handsome body.

It was mostly that, yes, but the idea of being a member of this very special group was appealing as hell.

But for now, the one she was fixated upon had called and said that he needed her. What a breakthrough.

Shawn had said be there in twenty minutes. She would make it nineteen. After she put on her best face. This was her chance to flaunt her off-duty-true-beauty.

Cassandra perused her reflection in the huge, gothic mirror that hung on the wall adjacent to her bed, liking what she saw. She was proud and vain about her appearance. Little did she know that the world viewed her in a somewhat less flattering light.

Oh, most men found her attractive in their peripheral vision, but a closer look revealed something faintly repulsive.

Off-putting.

It was nothing they could name specifically, but it made most of them keep their distance, unless enough alcohol was involved.

Hell, after a few drinks, she wasn’t all that bad. Nevertheless, the light of day brings good sense back to the foolish, and they always made a break for it, when the princess slipped off to the shower.

Her physical description sounded good; petite, thin and blond. Her arms and legs were deceptively boney and frail looking, but she was a highly trained and vicious fighter. Everything about her was pointed and sharp.

Cassandra was all elbows, knees and sharply filed nails.

Even her hair, in its dated, seventies feathers, looked as if it could impale; the combed back wings stood out, the tips looking like shards of glass. Her eyes were the only thing round on her body. They were large and dark, always looking on the verge of spilling over with liquid, giving her the appearance of a Japanese anime drawing.

Just under her alarmingly large eyes was set a thin, pinched nose; a beak in the middle of her face. Her lips were thin as well, with sharp points at the top. On these lips, she quickly painted on a wet, pink gloss, carefully tracing and enhancing the sharp points, and fluffed her hair.

She turned her head left, then right, appraising her look. All she needed now was her lowest cut top. She might as well take advantage of the fact that this was an after-hours meeting, and she wasn’t locked into the frumpy restraints of any stuffy dress codes. The female agent shimmied into her formfitting outfit, and re-checked her face.

She then grabbed her keys and a slightly mashed pack of Marlboros.

As Cassandra darted to her car, she was giddy with curiosity. What was her bad boy Baker up to now, she wondered. Whatever it was, he had called the right person. Everything about Lockhart that made her a bad human being made her a great agent.

She was ruthless and fearless, with more than a touch of a sadistic nature.

She hated other women, could not stand children, and had contempt for most men. They had their uses, but that was about the extent of it. Baker was something entirely different. She was certain that they shared some sort of warped kindred spirit.
If
only
I
could
make
him
see
 . . .

However, he seemed oblivious to her advances, which had gotten less and less subtle with time as she grew more impatient.

Well, maybe he was beginning to come around, she thought hopefully as she leaped into her P.T Cruiser with a horrible grin.

Chapter 18

A Day of Firsts

Jackson was gone for nearly two hours, and Indie busy was doing an awful lot of nothing, while rejecting her brain’s demand to exercise its right to panic. The awful feeling of separation was pressing thumbtacks into her belly, and she had nothing left to serve as a distraction.

She had already horrified herself by peeking into every drawer, cupboard and cubbyhole that she’d found like a nosey neighbor, but she was hungry for any bits of information she could glean from her shake down of Jackson’s home. Indie wasn’t sure if she should be happy or disappointed when her Mrs. Kravitz impersonation turned up nothing Earth shattering.

She wandered through his bedroom, and inhaled the cologne that smelled delicious and sensual, like him. Indie stroked the silky softness of the cotton button-down shirts that he seemed to favor, which she found hanging in his closet.

She brushed her fingertips across the acres of CDs that were neatly lined on small shelves purchased just to hold them, noting with surprise that the majority of his music collection was made up of high energy heavy metal, and very ramped up alternative.

Killswitch, Blink 182, Disturbed . . .
Bullet
for
My
Valentine?
And what was this, White Zombie?

One CD was facing the wrong way so that the title wasn’t displayed, and stood out from the perfect order of the others. Seeking only to fix this imperfection, Indie slid the case out of the row and looked at the cover.

ABBA’s
Greatest
Hits.

She covered her mouth with the back of her hand to smother the laughter that escaped at this discovery. It was probably turned the wrong way for a reason, Indie decided. What self-respecting male would want to be caught with
that
on his playlist?

Finding this was the best. After all,
everyone
likes ABBA. You just don’t want anyone to see it proudly displayed in your collection.

It would be like getting caught jamming to “
Copacabana
.” With an evil little laugh, Indie carefully slid the CD back into place the correct way, title facing the world, and sat back on her heels as she surveyed the rest of the collection.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected. Choir music? Gospel? Chanting monks? Really, even a little
Train
would have seemed in order.

Can one stereotype the descendants of the angels? Apparently so.

She was finished admiring every corner of the house, which was decorated by someone with taste eerily similar to her own. Now Indie was restless. She longed for his return and was a little more than anxious about his main mission, which was to present Will with divorce papers.

Her heart ached as she pictured Will opening the envelope and finding what was inside. She wondered how they would reach his hands. Would Jax deliver them himself? Somehow, that didn’t seem likely.

He surely was not one to go looking for a fight, which his close proximity to Will with such paperwork staring him in the face would certainly prompt. Although Indie was gaining a sense that Jackson would have no qualms about leaping headfirst into a battle that was necessary, she knew that he was not cruel by nature.

Trying to smooth the worried crease between her eyebrows with her ring finger, Indie retraced her steps through the house once more, reaching the large bedroom where her belongings were still in the suitcase on the floor.

She rummaged through the duffle bag Jackson had packed and retrieved a pair of softly aged pajamas, pale pink and girlie. Indie was feeling girly for the first time in . . . well, pretty much her whole life. She had felt obliged to take charge and take care of others from earliest childhood.

Indie had warm and clear memories of her mother, in spite of the fact that she had died when Indie was so very young. Car accidents are an especially cruel trick fate can play on people, tearing away loved ones with no warnings, no chance to say goodbye.

You watch your mother get in the car, simply to run to the market to buy a forgotten ingredient for supper, and that’s that. You never see her alive again.

No closure, whatsoever.

Her father was a Marine lieutenant, who, although Indie had considered him a strong man, never recovered from the sudden loss of his wife. He’d sent Indie from family member to family member, and visited occasionally, until the alcohol finally overwhelmed his system. Indie was fifteen when she’d become a full-fledged orphan.

She then finished out her years as a minor living with an Aunt who was never home. Indie got herself to school and took care of the house, while her Aunt pursued various men, constantly changing careers and money-making schemes.

Indie filled her time by volunteering at the animal shelter, and the local nursing home. She didn’t mind helping out those that were truly in need, although she always tried to put forth an exterior facade of nonchalance and tough humor, to hide the insane fragility of her heart. When she was a child, anything could make her cry, and her sobs made people take notice. She was teased mercilessly for her easy tears whenever the facade slipped.

She decided early on that she should work in a field that let her care for others, and nursing fell into her lap with a scholarship and money from her father’s insurance. That was when she discovered her funny little gift for knowing the magnitude of a person’s illness or injury simply by touch.

This scared her at first, but then, people’s reactions when she wasn’t careful, began to scare her more. It seemed she could ease some people’s pain through her touch alone, which Indie initially attributed to the power of any touch having the ability to comfort, calming the “skin hunger” that people have naturally when sick or hurt. It didn’t take long, however, before she began to see that her peers didn’t have quite the same effect on the suffering of others.

Indie was glad that she had this gift, but at the same time, it furthered her sense of isolation, and of being different. It fed her unnamed angst; her sense of need that she could not calm. She felt obligated to swallow it down, and focus on being like everyone else.

Indie thought that love could save her. When she met and eventually married Will, she had secretly hoped it would put to bed those restless aches that followed her around, nipping at her heels.

Unfortunately, the similarities between her marriage and the intense passionate connections that she read about in her multitudes of romance novels, fell somewhere between none, and less than none.

She finally decided that she must be delusional, or even greedy to think that there was more . . . a different kind of fierce and unconditional love that a man and a woman could feel for one another.

But was it so wrong to need true passion, tempered with fun, humor and compatibility? A partner who inspired pride and respect?

Yet she wanted no one to misunderstand; Will was perfectly deserving of respect, and he did have that much from Indie. She
was
proud of him, in the way that he provided well for his family, had a strong work ethic and was well thought of by others.

Indie resigned herself to choking back the irrational feelings that surfaced nearly every day of her life. The feeling that somehow, she was missing a very important part . . . like
lungs
, or something equally necessary, but survived on a portable ventilator of sorts, that allowed her to walk around, continue to function, but on a much lower level than she knew she was capable of.

Indie was restless, but resigned until she saw
him
. She shuddered at the memory of her first glimpse of Jax, and how it made her feel. Indie sat on the bed, absorbed in her thoughts. She heard the front door open.

*     *     *

After Jackson’s mad sprint through the woods to get away from Will, he’d had to do a little deep meditation, gathering himself together before he could start his car. He’d rifled though the glove compartment, grabbed a small roll of Pep-O-Mint Lifesavers, and crammed two of them in his mouth at once, in order to scald out the acrid taste left in his mouth from the obscenities he’d inexplicably uttered during his verbal smack-down with Will.

Although Jackson was far from perfect, and had definitely dropped the occasional oath here and there in his lifetime, the “
f-bomb
” was one of the few that had never crossed his lips before, and he wasn’t feeling it.

Nope. Not feeling it
at
all
.

Now, Jackson knew that words are exactly that, and were created and given their meaning by man. Therefore, swear words didn’t particularly dismay the Elders, nor the Creator either, but
still
 . . . .

By Jackson’s understanding, the only thing verbal that goaded the Creator was any and all suggestions on who or what to submit to eternal damnation. He kept his own counsel on that subject, and was not impressed with input from humans on that note.

But the whole meaning and use of the “f-word” was distasteful to Jackson as a matter of principle, and swear words in general were simply discouraged by the Society teaching as a matter of using your education. One should have a decent enough vocabulary to be able to express one’s self without relying on crutches such as obscenities.

He had really almost lost it . . . until he’d gotten a glimpse into Will’s head.

Feelings only, but they’d hit Jackson like a truck. He was just happy he’d ended up not succumbing to the horrible urge to hurl, and his t-shirt remained unspoiled.

Finally, after impatiently crunching up the mints, and feeling the cleansing breeze of peppermint sear through his sinuses, Jackson fired up the engine. He carefully cleared his thoughts. Not to hide or deceive, but he knew Indie would be upset by the unintentional confrontation, and he sought only to spare her this sorrow.

Stopping only once, to commit a quick, violent act against a creature that had no business mingling with the Human Population, Jackson headed home feeling somewhat vindicated.

*     *     *

Indie!

She heard the anxious call in her head before he spoke aloud. “Back here, Jax . . . in the bedroom,” Indie called out, relief audible in her voice. He appeared in the doorway in a remarkably short time. She had to wonder with a little laugh to herself, if he had run through the house.

“Maybe we could call it a brisk walk!” He smiled down at her. She looked up and caught her breath as his calming eyes met hers. It took a second for her speech to return. He reached out and gathered her hand in his, pulling her off the bed to stand in front of him, then hesitated, and pulled in a deep breath.

“On second thought . . .” He pulled her around suddenly back to the bed, and took her down with him, wrapping the arms that were now Indie’s addiction, around her tightly. They stared at each other for a moment, and she felt her face begin to feel hot under his unwavering gaze. Indie started to pull away, but his arms tightened in protest.

“Please,” he pleaded softly. “Not just yet. I need to hold you.” He closed his eyes now, and buried his face in her hair and breathed deeply, his lips managing to graze her neck and ear, making Indie whimper involuntarily. She felt him sigh.

Rolling her to the side, he looked down at her, his eyes serious. “I accomplished what I set out to do today.” His face was taut with worry.

Indie tried to suppress the sick feeling that washed over her, as she again pictured Will’s face, contorted with humiliation and pain.

All of a sudden, she had a split-second image of complete and utter desperation pouring forth from the man, as the memory escaped Jackson’s thoughts, guilt twisting his gut once more. The sharp tightening of her throat burned, and tears stung her eyes. She tried to curb them, knowing that this would make Jackson feel even more anxious and guilty, but they could not be stopped.

As he pulled her up into a sitting position, and dragged her onto his lap, the tears became sobs. Indie curled into a tight little ball against his chest, overcome by her sorrow for Will’s suffering.

“I am so, so sorry, Indie,” he said softly. “Tell me what I can do? Your compassion for the suffering of others is your strength. Can you believe me when I say that I take no satisfaction in Will’s pain?”

“I know that. I really do.” Indie sobbed, “And I know
this
hurts you as well.”

He sighed deeply once more, crushing her tighter, and he shivered a little. She looked up at his face. His eyes were filled with her pain, as he looked back at her for a very long moment before finally speaking.

“It is too much? Was this worth it for her? And the man, Will . . . I think I’ve destroyed his
humanity
. What have I done?”

Jackson’s voice was nearly inaudible, as if in prayer. He was barely speaking aloud, but his eyes were no longer focused on Indie.