Page 71 of Shai

I regarded him across the table. “What have I told you about using curse words at the dinner table?”

His lips twitched. “I don’t remember. Maybe you should tell me again

while you fuck me.”

I refilled both of our glasses. He was goading me. Interesting. Was that

what happened when you told someone they were special? I guessed it must be. I didn’t mind. It would give me the opportunity to remind Elijah who was boss. My gaze moved across the room to the spot on the carpet where I’d taken him for the first time. Maybe I’d even do it in the same place.

Elijah

THE OLD ELIJAH WAS DEAD. It was hard to pinpoint the exact moment of his demise. There were a few contenders for the prize. Was it when I’d slipped the poison into McIntyre’s food and become a murderer for the first time? Or when I’d slit a man’s throat whose name I didn’t even know with a razorblade? Or maybe it had been later than that. Perhaps I’d shed him along with the last vestiges of Void in my system when I’d spent a week locked in the room where Shai had put me to go cold turkey. A week that had made all the previous suffering seem like child’s play. A week in which I probably would have killed myself if Shai hadn’t seen fit to remove any object from the room that could have been used for that purpose.

Or maybe it had been that second week, the period of time where the physical efforts of withdrawal had waned enough that I could think rationally again, the full impact of Shai’s machinations hitting me.

I’d never been angrier than I was during that time, Taylor and Callaghan, the only two people I was allowed to see, remaining monosyllabic, neither of them responding to any method I’d employed in an effort to get them to release me, or to get Shai there, so that I could take out my frustration on the man who’d actually caused it.

All I knew was that the person who’d eventually walked out of that room was very different to the man who’d entered it.

After an initial adjustment period, the new Elijah didn’t find it at all strange to have fallen for a man like Shai. He barely even questioned it. It just was. Shai was the center of his universe. His lover. His mentor. His reason for being. And any negativity, any questions that deviated from that narrative needed to stay firmly in the past.

After the dinner to clear the air, or at least that had been my take on its

purpose, Shai had bent me over the table and fucked me. Then he’d had me moved back to my old room, things returning to the way they’d been before, where I had free rein of the compound. Something had shifted between Shai and me, though, our relationship different in a number of ways. He was more available and less guarded, the gradual takeover of the city having a positive effect on his demeanor, and the times where he needed violence and submission to make him happy were far fewer.

Only, for the last couple of days Shai had been unusually quiet, and

nothing I said or did seeming to break through the wall he’d erected around himself. It left me feeling adrift, feeling as if I wasn’t enough for him, and he might take back those words he’d said to me, the ones that might not have been words of love, but had nevertheless cemented our relationship as being something other than one-sided.

I went in search of him, finding him on the ground floor staring out of

the window. He didn’t turn as I approached him, and I took the liberty of winding myself around him. I pressed my bare chest to his equally naked back, my breath hot in his ear while my fingers danced over the defined abs that I’d grown to adore. He tolerated the uninvited intimacy and I took that as a good sign. “What’s wrong? And can I make it better?”

The silence that followed my question stretched for a long time before

Shai finally responded. “You have to ask after the last few days?”

My grip on him slackened slightly. Shai’s mother. Over the past week

she’d been a constant thorn in his side. McIntyre’s downfall seemed to have rejuvenated her to the point where she was constantly under everyone’s feet, Shai’s attempts to solve the problem by drugging her all coming to naught. She’d wised up to his efforts, only eating food she’d prepared herself, much to Gustav’s disgust at having to put up with her in the kitchen. The sleeping pills in her wine had no effect, Shai surmising that she made herself sick to get rid of them. Some of her mad ramblings had taken on a more sinister tone, with her spouting prophecies of “plagues of locusts, and rivers running with blood just like the old days.”

Sometimes I’d feel sorry for her, and then I’d remember that this was

the woman who’d fucked me in front of Shai’s men when I’d been close to death. She wasn’t the frail old woman she made herself out to be. She was a madwoman who’d spent years taking what she wanted, even from her own son without any concern for the consequences. And Shai took it because she was his mother, and blood ran thicker than water.

It was frustrating to realize that with the exception of drugging her, he wouldn’t lay a single finger on her. Shai should have been happy. He was well on his way to having the entire city in his pocket, and he had me. He deserved better than a constant reminder of a past he wanted to forget. What he needed was someone to solve the problem for him. “I can help you.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew it to be true, everything coming into crystal clear focus.

“I doubt that, Elijah.”

I untangled myself from Shai, backing off a couple of steps down the corridor, my mind whirring with possibilities. “No, I can.”

Shai turned to face me, his brow furrowing. “What’s going through your head?”

I didn’t bother to answer, spinning on my heel and heading for the kitchen. Shai called my name more than once, but I kept moving. I needed to do this before I thought better of it, before there was a risk of the old Elijah rising from the ashes to question my motives.

Gustav was at the stove as I burst into the room. I paid him little heed as I went over to the knife block on the kitchen counter and extracted the biggest and sharpest knife I could find, the blade glinting in the light as I tilted it to evaluate whether it was the right tool for the job.

Gustav turned to face me, his expression one of concern when he saw what was in my hand. “Now, why would you be needing that? You realize I’m going to have to let Shai know about this, don’t you?”