Skins & Needles (COMPLETE)

Nowhere, Arizona Part 1

Charlotte

"Aren't you worried about me knowing where your super-secret-criminal-lair is located?" I asked as we drove. We were out of the city now, and I couldn't have made out the road signs through the darkened limo windows anyway, but it seemed silly that he would chance me memorizing the route.

"Are you going to tell anyone?" Arsen questioned in return, but I could see his half-grin even in the darkness.

"Of course not!" I mock-exclaimed. "But if I wanted to..."

"I just find it funny that you think I have a lair," he told me, kicking his feet up on the seat next to me. "We aren't super villains."

"I mean, you are getting driven home in a limo." It seemed a reasonable enough assumption.

"Eh, that's just for Solstice," he said with a wave of his hand. "On regular occasions, when we aren't trying to show up other circles, we drive our own vehicles."

"Do you have a batmobile?" Now I was just talking to distract myself from the pain of broken ribs and a fresh bullet wound. I hadn't taken any of the pills yet, but I was tempted to have my two then.

"I'm not a hero either, Charlotte. Far from it."

I swallowed and tried to look out the window, but it was too dark to make out more than vague shapes.

"Where are we going?" I asked again. "Nowhere, Arizona?"

"Pretty much," he chuckled. "Most of us don't live in Phoenix. We just do our... business there."

"I guess I don't really know anything about all this." I wasn't even sure I wanted to. I just knew I didn't want to not be a part of this. Of them. Of anyone.

"It's safer that way," he told me, predictably. "Once you know, there's no going back. Your view on everything would change."

"Jeremy knows," I recalled. That had surprised me. Whatever the big Know was, he was in on it. Maybe not a part of it, but respected enough to be invited to Solstice and have friends in all the families. Organizations. Circles, as Arsen had called them. I'd never heard that one before.

"I wouldn't get too wrapped around the axel about finding out whatever it is you think you don't know," Arsen told me, and I turned back to see him watching me with something dangerous in his eyes. Something primal. It sent a chill down my spine and I caught my breath.

"I'm not." I was. "I just... It's hard to explain."

"You know we're dangerous." That wasn't a question.

"Of course."

"You know we deal with the criminal underground."

"You are the criminal underground."

"Exactly. And that's all you need to know. Anything else, and your world will be irreversibly knocked off its axis."

He said this with a finality that shut me up, and I didn't say anything else until we made it to his place.

The house didn't appear all that spacious as we pulled up, but I immediately took a liking to the spooky, lodge-like aesthetic. It was built from long, reddish beams of wood centered around a black door, with matching black shutters covering the windows. It wasn't a wide building, but it was two-story, and had a narrow, peaking roof that likely sat above a sizable attic. Bone accents adorned the window frames and the railings leading up the front steps, and wrought-iron solar lamps lit the walkway.

"Do you live alone?" I asked as I slid out of the limo. "Slid" is the word I am loosely using to describe "exited with great struggle and grunts of pain."

"I do," he replied. "But the other Volkovs all live in their own houses in these woods. None too incredibly far, but distant enough that we all have privacy."

"I like it," I told him as I slowly approached his front steps. "Did you build it yourself, or was it here before?"

"When I moved out of my parents' place, I designed it." He said this with a hint of pride in his voice that made me smile. "What about it do you like?"

"The cedar, the black, the bone..."

"You like the bone?"

In response, I lifted one side of my loose shorts to expose the antelope skull tattoo that sat on my hip.

"Always loved the look," I said with a grin. "You've probably already seen that one, huh?" I meant it as a joke— I knew he probably helped with the surgery, and I wasn't ever a shy person— but Arsen ran a tense hand through his hair as he walked past me and up his steps.

"Be careful with that," was all he said. I felt my face pull into an evil smirk and let my shorts drop back down to cover my ink. The stay at his house was going to be far too fun if he was going to react like that to mild flirting.

The limo pulled away as soon as Arsen unlocked his front door, the headlights illuminating the sparse trees and cactuses. We really were in Nowhere. Maybe I'd get some artistic inspiration from the scenery.

"Coming?" Arsen asked, and I turned back to him with a sly smile.

"Not yet." I slipped past him through the front door, and waited in the dark while he locked it behind us. A shiver rattled up my spine as I heard the deadbolt click into place, realizing full-force that I was alone in a house in the middle of the woods with a very dangerous man. An incredibly sexy dangerous man, but a professional criminal nonetheless. Oh Charlotte, you've really dug yourself in deep this time.

I felt Arsen's body brush against mine for the briefest of moments while he reached for the lights, and then everything was bright, and I could breathe again.

A wooden walkway led straight back to a set of curving stairs, and a door to a porch just past them. To my left was a carpeted living room, complete with a sectional, an entertainment center, and a high ceiling. Hanging around the wooden fan in the center were various skulls and antlers entwined with a live, climbing plant, and I gasped aloud. It was beautiful and eerie, like something you'd find in a fairy tail, and it made me want to sketch. To my right, past a wall of coat hooks and a bench, was a large kitchen and dining area with a sort of country-industrial look to it. The whole place looked like I built it for myself, and I felt the crush I'd been biting down trying to claw its way up.

"Wow," I said almost to myself. "Nice place."

"I'm glad you approve," Arsen laughed. "Not to immediately disappear, but I'm going to shower and change. You sort of bled all over me."

"Right. Ah, sorry about that?" I mean he didn't have to pull my ass outta that pool.

"Well, we're sort of holding you hostage for the time being, so we'll call it even." He kicked his shoes off and headed toward the stairs, turning back when he reached them. "Make yourself comfortable. I don't have a guest bed, but Nathan says the couch is comfortable. At least, he has no issues sleeping on it drunk."

"Thanks," I said, a little awkwardly. "I guess, good night?"

"I'll be back down to discuss some things with you later," he assured me. "Just don't think about going anywhere."

"I can't go anywhere when we're nowhere!" I told him cheerily. "Now, go get dry."

He didn't waste any time, shooting me a small smile before retreating upstairs.

---

I loveeee the beginning of this chapter. It used to be the teaser for the book. 

Happy Sunday, and happy reading!

-Haybails