Home > Treasured(4)

Treasured(4)
Author: S.J. Himes

American accent, shy. A bit tired and worn from anxiety. And slightly familiar. Tarquin wondered at the familiarity, thinking he might have walked past the young human when he came in, but then Cariste had said Alaric was late due to the weather, so that wasn’t it. He hadn’t met the young man when Cariste hired him the Friday before, but perhaps he’d heard him while he was in the office for his interview. His voice matched his appearance, the way he moved, and was just as appealing to Tarquin as the human’s jewel-toned eyes and brilliant copper and gold hair.

Tarquin sat again once Alaric was settled, the human watching him just as avidly as Tarquin stared back at him. He forced himself to concentrate. Tarquin opened the file, made sure it matched the information on his tablet, then handed it across the desk. Alaric hesitantly took the file after a short moment, slim fingers trembling, yet Tarquin was sure the young man didn’t even spare the file a glance, so focused was he on staring back at Tarquin. What fear and anxiety he may have had when he first came into the office was gone, replaced by a little bit of awe and what Tarquin thought might be curiosity.

And desire. He was a dragon—desire was something he knew intimately, a part of his nature down to his bones. The human wanted him, too. He sensed it in the air, the way Alaric trembled with the faintest of shivers, his eyes wide and dilated, cheeks flushed, tongue darting out to wet his lips. Not unusual—most humans were attracted to him, even if he scared them as well. He knew humans found him handsome and his wealth attracted mortals even more so than his appearance. What was different was how much Tarquin wanted Alaric in return.

Want felt like such a small word compared to what he was feeling. He had to fight with everything he had to keep the conflict off his face and out of his voice. He would not scare Alaric or presume to act on what he was feeling, not here and not now.

“Alaric Keening. Sophomore at Boston College until recently, twenty years of age.” Tarquin gestured to the file. “Those are your test scores from your former college. They rate your clairvoyance as touch-activated, no proximity detection. Is all that information correct?”

Alaric shook his head slightly, as if remembering where he was, then spared a longer glance down at the papers he held. He looked back up, eyes no longer as dilated. “Yes, sir. Master Tarquin, I mean.” Alaric swallowed then elaborated. “More powerful clairvoyants can glean things from just being near certain objects or people. The more powerful they are the farther away they can be and still get a reading. I need to be touching something before my talent can manifest, and I can’t read any person that has the means to shield themselves mentally or physically from me.”

“Hmm,” Tarquin hummed, not disagreeing. It matched the research Cariste did before hiring him. Tarquin had no need for a stronger clairvoyant, whose abilities would make maintaining his privacy difficult. And since he’d met Alaric these past few minutes, the idea of hiring someone else was out of the question. “Your first task for the company is to ascertain the validity of a few early twentieth-century deeds relating to several blocks of historical downtown property here in Montreal. The corporate entity selling the properties has an unfortunate track record of attempting to swindle prospective partners and buyers. If the properties weren’t so lucrative I wouldn’t be bothering. I wish to avoid court fees and lawyer bills and see if the deeds are legitimate. Is this something you can do?”

Alaric was nodding along eagerly, the task laid out before him clearly excited him from the way his scent grew heady, tugging at Tarquin’s senses. “Yes, sir. I can tell if they were made recently, and what the creator was feeling at the time. Stronger impressions like visions of previous handlers of the item in question, too, or even if something was wrong at the time the impressions were left. If it’s passed through many hands since it was made, it might take me a few hours or days to clean up the residual impressions and find what you need.”

“We have time,” Tarquin said, and he got to his feet. Alaric followed suit and stood nervously, fidgeting with the file. He gentled his motions so as not to make him more nervous, and Alaric responded, moving in tune with Tarquin in a way he was certain was entirely instinctual on the human’s part. “We’ll be leaving immediately then.”

“We will?” Alaric asked, slightly confused, but he followed Tarquin as he came out from behind his desk and headed for the door.

The door opened and Cariste entered partway. “Master Tarquin, your car is waiting for you and will take you to your lawyer’s office.” Cariste held out one arm, a coat and a dark satchel hanging in their grip. “Mr. Keening, your belongings.”

“Oh, thank you.” Alaric took the offered items and Cariste headed for the closet and retrieved Tarquin’s coat. He didn’t need it, but it finished off the polished look he was going for and kept the stares to a minimum in inclement weather.

Tarquin accepted the coat and waited for Alaric to get ready. They walked side by side out of the office and toward the elevators. Alaric’s proximity teased at Tarquin’s awareness of the young human. The human’s natural scent was sweet and somehow shy, making him wish he could lean down and slide his lips along the gentle curve of Alaric’s neck right above his slim shoulders, seeking more of the scent that called to the wilder nature coiled just beneath Tarquin’s skin. Elderberries and something else, something beneath the cosmetic scents, tugged at his senses and he breathed in deep, wondering.

Everything about Alaric made him wonder.

 

 

Alaric did his best to control his nerves. The last several weeks had pushed him to the edge, and pretending to be a functioning, composed adult was taxing his reserves. Never had anyone affected him like Tarquin did—just standing next to him was enough to disturb his equilibrium. Not that he had much to spare. Running on caffeine, stress, frayed nerves, and a dwindling supply of hope, this job was the break he needed, and mooning after his boss was a fast way to get in trouble and lose his chance.

Alaric wrangled his wayward thoughts into order as best he could and made sure he didn’t get too close and invade Tarquin’s personal space.

Alaric’s training in using his gift was no more than the basics—the minimum required by public schools in the States. His gift was minor enough that it would have been cost prohibitive to get further training with his gift in college, and he let it languish. He knew enough to get through his day without being bombarded by residual impressions left on railings and elevator buttons and coffee cups. Thankfully, his gift was minor enough that he needed to exercise effort to call it into use—he needed to be careful in areas and places that experienced extreme emotional distress, areas like where someone was murdered, or hospitals and funeral homes. Those places had enough residual emotional energy that it could overwhelm even his small gift, but he wasn’t worried about it in a corporate setting. The most he might sense in an office environment would be frustration and the fleeting desire to throttle an annoying manager.

And the intense, predatory, captivating attention of a dragon.

What he wasn’t prepared for was working directly with the CEO of GHH. Tarquin, no last name, was a dragon. Not a shifter like werewolves and wereleopards and bears—he was a dragon, a magical being of immense power that elected to assume a human form and wasn’t a dual-natured being like most shifter species. They were born from eggs as dragons, and their abilities grew as they matured. What little Alaric knew for certain was that a dragon could become anything—a cloud, a plant, a rock formation, hell, even a mountain.

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