Page 18 of Demon Touched (The Demon Syndicate #2)

Nova

W atching Dex with her parents felt like she was in some alternate dimension. He smiled and laughed and talked with them as if he’d known them all his life. Her parents treated him the same and Nova couldn’t stop watching her dad.

This was the same man who’d trained her until she’d cried, telling her to get back up again or he’d make her run laps in the forest, but her dad had always managed to balance his job as her trainer and her father well.

The second their workday was over he’d sit down and talk with her, making sure she was okay while her mom healed whatever wounds she’d sustained that day.

They’d bonded those nights over hot tea while he told her stories or asked about her video games. Her dad had always taken care of her in every way.

That didn’t mean she thought he’d trust her judgement when it came to a relationship. Mainly because they both knew she didn’t always understand people and Nova had a hard time connecting.

She’d lost count of the times she’d called him while at the university to ask why someone would do or say something and every time he’d patiently explain.

The council was the first time she’d ever gone against his advice and now she was regretting it.

But if she hadn’t done it…then she never would have met Dex.

“It’s getting late for me,” her mom said. “Are you leaving tomorrow?”

“As soon as she wakes up,” Dex replied.

Her dad gave her a look. “Even if the sun is up?”

“My sunglasses will be fine.” Nova shrugged. Dex had to be back in time for work, and the council couldn’t find out she’d left Seattle during a mission without letting them know.

“Then I’ll make sure you have what you need before you leave,” her mom said before kissing the top of Nova’s head. “Everything is where it was before.”

“Thank you.” Nova appreciated that her parents weren’t asking a million questions and that they really did trust her to make her own choices.

Her dad didn’t say anything, he just squeezed her shoulder and kissed her cheek, leaving her and Dex alone in the kitchen.

Nova got up and grabbed the dessert plates and coffee cups, setting them in the sink. She turned on the water and Dex came up beside her with a dishcloth.

“I’ll dry.”

She didn’t bother hiding her smile as she handed him the first plate.

His emotions were all over the place, but he’d tempered them and waited her out. It was an interesting tactic and she wondered how he knew how to deal with her so instinctually. Nova couldn’t help but feel flabbergasted and yet impressed.

“What did you decide?” he asked after they’d washed dishes in silence for a few minutes. She hadn’t expected him to wait so long.

“I haven’t decided yet,” she admitted. “I’m going to take the key to unlock the spell because I want the option, but maybe it’s for the best that I can’t access it.”

Dex didn’t say anything. He just put the dishes away and she leaned against the sink to watch him.

He was almost too big for the kitchen, but the entire farmhouse had been built to handle whatever a hunter might need, including a prison cell in the basement that could hold just about anything.

“What if it gets out?” Dex asked. He turned and raised an eyebrow when he saw her watching him.

They studied each other in the warm light that didn’t hurt her eyes. It made his golden skin even warmer, like gilded honey. She would never get over just how attractive this man was, even in a hoody.

“I guess I’ll deal with that when it happens.” Nova shrugged. “Are you sure you’re okay sleeping here?”

Dex ran his eyes over her from head to toe – long and slow. He didn’t try to hide the hunger in his gaze either. “It’ll be fine. Where though…that’s the real question.”

There was absolutely no fucking way she was going to sleep in the same bed with Dex at her parents’ house. Even though her room and the spare bedroom were on opposite ends of the house as her parents, it wasn’t something she was interested in doing.

“Come with me.” Nova turned off the lights as she left the kitchen and checked the weapons caches around the house as she made her way to the bedrooms.

“This is where you’ll sleep,” she told him, throwing the door open to the spare bedroom. “Or the couch in the family room. Whichever you’re more comfortable with.”

Nova studied the space, trying not to see what it used to be.

There was nothing in the room that reminded her of Gianna, but still…she remembered it like it was yesterday – how their beds had shared the same wall and they’d used morse code to talk to each other at night.

So many times, she’d crawled into bed with her sister until Dad had woken them up for training. Nova had only watched those first few years and a few months after she’d joined them, Gianna had died.

“Anyway,” she said, interrupting her own thoughts. “The bathroom is across the hall.”

Nova went down, moving the picture frames to see her dad had kept the knives and ammo in the same places. She stopped and pulled open the drawer of the hallway table to see the magic nullifying zip ties were still in there.

“Clever,” Dex murmured, checking behind the family portrait – one that had Gianna in it. He put it back and stared at the photo, inspecting her sister just as long as he did her. “You know, I thought you were born with heterochromia? I had no idea both your eyes were blue.”

Nova nodded and studied the portrait.

Gianna was so beautiful. She’d been better at everything, prettier, and just…perfect. It was hard to live up to that, to do her memory justice.

“It’s part of the reason I hate it so much,” she admitted. “I used to look like my sister, but the demon took that from me too.”

Opening her door, Nova made sure it creaked still, and then sighed in relief when she saw that everything in her room was exactly the same.

Her parents were amazing, even if they’d lied to her. They did so much to make sure she could handle the world she was forced to live in.

“You still look like her,” Dex said, leaning against the doorjamb as he watched her. “You just have purple hair now. I doubt a hunter would have lived as long as you without a single scar.”

Nova smiled. “I suppose that’s true.” She sat down at her desk and powered up the PC. “It’s hard to tell though. She was so young.”

“So, this is where you grew up.” Dex studied everything in her room with a critical eye, and she wondered what he saw. “It’s somehow not surprising, and yet…is that a gaming PC?”

“It is.” Nova pushed so the chair twirled until she was facing him. “Why isn’t it surprising?”

He shrugged and considered the room again, opening her closet. Dex looked almost surprised to see clothes in there instead of weapons.

“You’re very mysterious. I’d thought maybe your safest place would give me some insight into your personality, but the fact that the walls are bare, and the bedding is black seems to fit you. The gaming setup though? Hadn’t expected that.”

Nova grinned, knowing it was absolutely ridiculous with the three massive monitors and the TV above it.

“Gaming helps me relax. Almost everything I do revolves around being a better hunter even if it’s just for fun.

I even learned to ride a motorcycle because it would help me escape faster. But this? This is useless.”

Pulling up the latest Call of Duty game, she turned on the TV and selected the streaming service she wanted.

“Are you propositioning me with video games and anime?” Dex asked. He raised an eyebrow at her, but he was smiling too.

“If that’s what you want to do.”

The look in his eyes made her stomach drop. “How about we both just get ready for bed? The earlier we leave the better.”

“All right. Anime until we get tired?”

She checked her various games for updates and checked on some of the people she played with. She responded to a few who messaged her when they saw she was online.

“Nova…are we going to be okay?”

The way he asked the question nearly broke her heart, but she couldn’t tell what he was feeling. It didn’t smell like fear, but…more like he was nervous? She’d thought it was because of her parents, but maybe it was actually because of her.

“Why do you ask?”

Dex ran his hand through his hair and plopped down on the edge of her bed. “You scare me.”

So, it was because of her.

Nova resisted the urge to ask why again. “Because of my demon magic, or because of what you saw today?”

Dex tore off his hoody like it was suffocating him and she forced herself to keep her eyes on his face, but the way he tugged his shirt down over his abs almost killed her.

“You left in such a way that I couldn’t follow,” he admitted.

Instantly her mind tried to shut down again as she remembered the look on his face when he’d seen her hand. She shoved back the numbness and pressed her hands into her thighs hard enough to keep them from shaking.

“My father said some things I had to process.” Nova still had a lot to figure out, but she felt like maybe everything would be okay. She had her parents and she had Dex. They were friends and anything else would just be a bonus.

But the way his golden-brown eyes practically glowed with their own inner light and the way the shadows flocked to him…Nova felt like he was holding something back, and if she wasn’t careful, she was going to shove him over an edge she couldn’t quite see.

“Your father asked me the same question,” Dex admitted. “So, tell me, could you leave?”

She stopped breathing.

Her dad had really asked him that?