Except…I did. A little bit.
“Let’s get started,” he said, not even bothering to deny it. My poor ego was going to take a real beating these days—I just knew it. But I’d been here before, and I’d survived. No reason why this time would be any different. So, I went and sat on the bed with my chin up, determined not to let him get to me. To focus on the job, nothing else.
“The guy I’m impersonating is Noah Bennett. His father, Michael Bennett, founded Bennett Technologies,” Dominic started.
“The Bennet Technologies?” I asked. The paper I’d read on it only referred to it as The Company. The report had no names, just a very vague description of what we were doing here.
“Yep,” he said with a nod.
I’d heard about Bennett Technologies—everybody had. They were the biggest weapons manufacturer in the States, and they had been slowly making their way into the European market as well the past few years. Their inventions were as extraordinary as they were dangerous. They’d already supplied most countries with their weapons, both for the police and their armies. Their latest invention, which the news had called groundbreaking and had written about for weeks, was a gun that shot bullets filled with venom that technically killed a person for a whole hour—before they came back. The venom apparently caused some kind of a clinical death for sixty minutes before it faded, and it left no side effects behind. They’d even made all the three-year-long trials available to the public. I hadn’t been too interested to look over them, but the word at the office was that the ODP was looking to cooperate with Bennett Technologies in the future, too. The human police who dealt with human troublemakers in the countries that had already employed these special guns and bullets had seen a drastic decrease in the number of deaths. Every criminal they chased after now got shot first, then asked questions later, when they woke up in a jail cell.
“I thought they were human.” Not that I expected the human news to classify them as a type of supernatural.
“Werewolves and high fae,” Dominic said, shaking his head. “Noah Bennett is a werewolf. He is currently in hiding in an unknown location. A couple of months ago, before his father died, he was spotted in various clubs in London with a pixie. The ODP has already spread rumors that all the data of their newest invention that Michael Bennett had been working on for the past two decades is secured in a flash drive, and his son keeps it with him at all times, around his girlfriend’s neck.”
For some reason, my hand wrapped around my own neck.
“Someone wants that drive. They’ve killed Michael Bennet for it and have captured and killed countless of his closest people.”
The more he talked the angrier he got, and this time, at least, it didn’t look like it was because of me.
“The ODP assumes that whoever these people are, they’re powerful. Most probably high fae. They’ve wiped their tracks before we could even get close to them in the past. That’s why we’re here.”
I nodded. “Bait.” I was bait.
Dominic flinched and, turning his head away, fisted his hands.
“Hey, it’s fine. I can pretend to be a naive, clueless pixie. And when they capture me, I’ll fight my way—”
“You can’t just fight your way out of this,” he cut me off.
“I can handle myself, Dominic.” I knew how to fight. My magic wasn’t the most powerful, but I was a pixie. I had plenty of tricks up my sleeve—and my mother’s powders in my backpack.
“You can’t handle yourself against high fae,” he reminded me. “We’ll catch them before they take you.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “And because they’re high fae, chances are that they will take me one way or the other. When they do, I need to be prepared for it.”
Suddenly, he strode over to me. “Teddybear, if they get their hands on you, no amount of preparation is going to save you.” He said it slowly, sadly, like he was sorry for me.
There was nothing in the world I hated more than the pity in people’s eyes. I’d endured so much of that look back home. Every time I’d failed at growing, failed at being a pixie, they’d all looked at me like that. All of them—except my brothers.
Maybe that’s why I was suddenly so pissed off.
“I’ll remind you that I’m an ODP agent, just like you,” I spit. “Why don’t you make sure you do your part of the job right, and let me worry about mine.” It wasn’t a question.
Dominic didn’t like it. His jaws clenched and unclenched, and he looked down at me like he wanted to rip me to pieces. Even though my heart thundered in my chest, and a voice in my head demanded I start running already, I held his gaze and didn’t even bat an eye. He thought I was some weakling pixie who couldn’t even hold a gun in her hand? Well, he was in for a surprise.
“If we can’t work together on this, we’re both going to end up dead,” he finally said.
“Exactly. So why don’t you stop treating me like a kid you’re stuck babysitting, and start treating me like your partner? Who knows—maybe it will even work out.”
Slowly, he squatted down in front of me. Like that, we were almost eye level. My breath caught in my throat at the look in his eyes from so close up. He looked like a man tortured, in pain, about to lose his mind.
Was I doing that to him? Did he really hate me so much that he couldn’t even stand to do one mission with me?
“All right, Teddybear,” he said in a whisper. “We’ll do it your way. I’ll lay your job out for you. The second we step out of this room, you’re going to be all over me. You’re going to hold my hand, touch me, whisper in my ear, even look at me like you’re in love with me. You’re going to think about me, smell like me, hang onto every word I say. Nothing out there exists for you, other than me. I’m your whole world.” He let that sink in for a minute—and, boy, did it sink in. All. The. Way. “You think you can do that, partner?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes.” My mind was already at it—sending image after image of my hands all over Dominic, of smelling his skin and whispering in his ear, keeping my eyes on him at all times. Pretending nothing else was out there except him.