Page 13 of Cerulean Truth (Sapere #1)

FIVE

EMMA

James, the Jerk. The insufferable jerk. The arrogant asshole with his holier-than-thou attitude. Who did he think he was? The man had even gone so far as to threaten my life! He had threatened my life, for crying out loud! I was fuming! If I were a cartoon, there'd be steam coming out of my ears.

James, with his arrogant, egotistical demeanor and hideous behavior, was clearly someone I had no choice but to utterly loathe .

With his annoyingly piercing green eyes.

Urgh . His infuriatingly broad shoulders, and well-muscled arms, also irritated me to bits.

He really had to be that tall and athletically built?

And then, to top it off, there was that ridiculously handsome face, clearly chiseled by angels before birth.

He had that sharp jawline with a slight stubble, which made him look aggravatingly attractive.

The man could’ve been a model with those features if he didn’t look like he’d blow up the runway just to watch it burn.

He was incredibly hateful. So why oh why did he have to be so unbelievably good-looking? It was so unfair.

There was an undeniable darkness surrounding him though. I could sense it, not just in his words, but in the tone of his voice, in his demeanor even, as though he could take a life without a second thought.

Most chilling of all was the darkness emerging from his eyes whenever he cast his gaze on me. Of course, the death threats didn’t do much to ease any suspicions I had about his intentions.

And there was no doubt he could’ve easily carried out his threats. His toned, muscled body, which I could discern through his shirt, could probably crush me half to death with just a hug.

Last but not least, there was that sinister tattoo etched on his right forearm—an inscrutable design which made my skin crawl.

If ever there was a man who embodied the essence of an assassin, it was him.

All my instincts yelled at me to never go near him, not even in broad daylight.

But he was too hot to ignore, and after fuming about his sense of self-importance during those initial ten minutes after our encounter, all I could dwell on for the rest of the day was his dark hotness—or hot darkness, I honestly couldn't decide which was more captivating—enveloping my body in ways which were far from innocent.

Having watched so much porn in the days leading up to our meeting certainly didn't help.

He also unmistakably carried himself with an air of dominance, as if he were accustomed to a position of power in life. He had that attitude, expecting others to look up to him. He was the kind of guy you instantly hated, yet secretly craved his approval.

Undeniably, he was the most striking man I'd ever laid eyes on, and it took immense effort to divert my gaze away from him during our entire conversation at the coffee shop. I wasn’t particularly proud of it, but even as he was uttering death threats, my mind had ventured into some rather non-lethal fantasies involving him.

I'd done everything in my power not to stare, which was precisely what I had longed to do—like a love- struck puppy.

Well, not love, only raw desire. A desire-struck puppy.

Which is exactly why I'd refrained from being friendly in any way. Because if I had, he might have reciprocated, and if he had, I might've found myself asking him to properly “you know what” my brains out in the bathroom of that coffeeshop.

I really needed to lay off the porn.

Naturally, I didn't hesitate to take his phone number. I mean, no one in their right mind would ever pass up the chance to get the phone number of the hottest guy on the planet. I had accepted it without any intention of ever using it. I simply wanted to be done with the entire conversation.

During the rest of the day, I tried to distract myself, though James and his phone stayed on my mind despite my best efforts.

It was weirdly shaped—the phone, not James—it couldn’t have been much larger than a lipstick or a USB-stick, and it had vanished entirely into his hand.

I’d only caught a brief glimpse of it, but it seemed to resemble a small, serpentine handle or something.

I couldn't help wondering about it, what kind of role it played in their world.

"Senses and emotions," I mumbled to myself. So what, if I encountered an unpleasant smell, I could transmit the scent to someone else? I grinned at the idea. That could actually open up a world of amusing possibilities.

I glanced at James’s contact information. One thing was for sure, the number he'd given me appeared perfectly ordinary. Deeply sighing, I realized I was losing a very important battle against my own mind.

When they had inquired whether anything unusual had happened to me in the past, I’d had no intention of sharing my experiences with them, but as I’d walked back to my office from the coffeeshop, my mind had been racing, and it had unearthed all those memories I’d buried.

By the time I went out for lunch, the "unusual events" which had occurred throughout my life came flooding back to me with such vivid clarity…as if they had unfolded only the day before, even though they both had taken place over a decade ago.

There was the fall over a cliff at sixteen, an incident I had miraculously survived by clutching onto some branches sticking out.

However, deep down, I had always known there had never been any branches.

I had somehow…hovered. To be completely honest, I’d fallen off the cliff in the first place because I had been under the influence of ecstasy, so I had dismissed the whole hovering incident as some sort of drug-induced hallucination and promptly forgotten about it.

Then, there was the highly traumatic incident a year later, where Lisa and I had been held up at gunpoint, when miraculously, all the bullets had seemed to disappear into thin air upon being fired. I had brushed it off as pure luck, assuming the guy had mistakenly fired blanks or something.

I still pondered the possibility Stephen and James might be completely off their rocker.

But my accident... I had known from our very first meeting Stephen had been spot on about it.

The car never hit me and I distinctly recalled jumping.

And no ordinary person can jump over a car.

But to label it as magical? What would it even mean?

If what they were asserting held any truth, if I did indeed possess some form of mystical abilities, which I was still highly hesitant to accept, it had only manifested itself on those three occasions over the course of more than a decade.

It would be absurd to relinquish everything I had worked for just to prevent something which solely occurred when I was in a life-threatening danger and only happened once every few years.

Was I spiraling into madness? If anyone had told me a week before my accident I was a maga or whatever they called it, I'd have laughed right in their faces.

Yet here I was, genuinely considering it.

There was no denying it, I was heading down the path of complete insanity.

But darn it, I couldn't help but be intrigued.

As a child, I used to read Harry Potter like most kids.

And, naturally, I'd wish for something like that to happen to me.

Especially during high school, I yearned for someone to sweep me away.

But now, I was on the brink of making a name for myself in an exclusive world, one where I would rise to the top through connections, education, intelligence, and unwavering dedication.

Why was I allowing myself to become distracted?

I tried to go about my day as if nothing unusual had happened, as if I hadn't crossed paths with two magi.

However, my feeble attempts at normalcy turned out to be absolute failures.

After hours of incessant overthinking, I came to the conclusion I had to numb and dumb things down. Which meant turning to the bottle.

To stop thinking is to start drinking.

So that evening, against my own better judgement, I went out with some of my colleagues.

Everyone at the firm frequented the same bar every Thursday, aptly named "Thirstdays."

Really, who comes up with this stuff?

I typically refrained from going out with them because a, it was lame, and b, I was still an intern who didn’t want to overstay her welcome. But if one cannot drink away their magical troubles, when does one drink anyway?

Which is how I found myself in the dreadfully trendy Thirstdays, surrounded by pompous drunk lawyers, who were mostly also high on coke.

If they weren’t full of themselves yet, the coke would certainly up their capacity for it.

The bar itself however didn’t look all too bad.

It was a small bar, illuminated by tasteful green mood lighting at each individual table.

They served everything from sweet cocktails to expensive whiskeys, and every drink was accompanied by one or two small tapas, as befits any chic place.

The bartender winked knowingly at me and I noticed he was good-looking, but he had nothing on James, who still remained on my mind despite my best efforts.

I shot down my first whisky, which burned my esophagus.

“So Emma, how are you finding our small firm? Feeling at home already?” Some guy from corporate was sliming his way through conversation, while trying not to stare at my boobs too obviously.

He failed epically at both. Though I always tried to convey my intelligence through my big blue eyes, most of the male attention went straight to my big pale breasts.

I smiled back dryly and skipped happily away to some other colleague of mine.

James’s face came to mind and I wondered how it would feel to kiss him. I shook the idea out of my head; that was certainly never happening. No reason to dwell on idiotic fantasies. Why did he have to be so hot?

Second whisky down.