Blood Oath (Ruby Rose/Ares fan fic)

Eight

Behind me, Ares walks from here to there: from the kitchen to her bedroom, from the couch to her bathroom and back to the kitchen. In the meantime, I pretend to type focused on my job with one of my cats on my lap; to be honest, I still have a terrible headache and I'd love to lie down for a bit but I don't want to give explanations of everything I do to the assassin, so I have a map showing the Middle East main roads on my screen and I pretend to follow the movements of the arms dealers in the area. I swallow hard and wince when I feel my sore throat. The swelling's gone down a little with the help of her frozen towel but my neck skin is turning from red to purple at an alarming rate, with her fingers clearly marked on one side. After the ice melted, she cooked a light soup and forced me to eat it slowly, then she gave me a painkiller that allowed me to work fairly well till noon, but now it's starting to wear off and every muscle in my body aches. "Ares can cook, new information to add to her fucking file," I think while I sigh exhausted.

Finally, I hear her behind my back going upstairs, probably she needs something that she has in her car: this is the perfect opportunity. I take my phone and leave the cat on the floor, I go to my bedroom and close the door. Immediately I can hear Josie meowing offended because I've slammed the door in her face. She wants to come in... and then she'll want me to let her out again. Damn cats! With a sigh of resignation I leave the door open a little, enough to let them get in and out when they want. I hope Ares don't think that this is an invitation for her to do the same, to be honest she's been very kind to me since the crazy episode from this morning but I' not sure how to behave around her. Is not that I fear her now that we've reached an agreement but I don't feel like joking with her either, I think that the best I can do is to maintain a professional relationship and forget about my infatuation with her: she's my bodyguard and nothing else. I take my jeans off to make myself more comfortable and I lie in bed with the T-shirt I've been wearing all day; I get under the blanket, leaving my phone at hand on the nightstand, just in case. My sore body relaxes finally and I fall asleep in less than a minute.

I don't know for how long I've been sleeping, it's difficult to monitor the time down here since there're no windows so you have to check the clock every now and then, but I think I've manage to sleep for a few hours. I try to turn so I can lie on my back but something stops me: a tattooed arm is around my waist. "What the hell...?" Ares warm body is glued to my back, her leg has slipped between mines and her hot breath fans my nape. I fidget on the bed and her hand immediately slides from my waist up till she lets it rest under my breasts; she hugs me tighter, trying to keep me in place. "What is she doing?" my head is spinning confused, I don't understand what is she doing in my bed, but before I can ask her my phone starts ringing with the distinctive ring tone I've picked out for Winston: 'The Imperial March' from Star Wars. Behind me, the assassin chuckles when she hears it while I sit down on the bed and answer my phone putting my boss on speaker.

"What do you want?" my voice is barely a hoarse whisper.

"Oh my, have you caught a cold?"

"Yes, that's right," I answer while seeing Ares raising an eyebrow out of the corner of my eye.

"The phone company repairman has been here... again."

I can't help rolling my eyes hard: a few times a year the police department, the FBI, the DEA or any other State security force try to sneak in the Continental to bug it and tap into the phone line. I don't even think they know what they're looking for, they only want to snoop around the hotel and see who can they nab, Winston or any other big shot doing illegal business, they don't care as long as they can arrest someone. When the so-called phone company repairmen leave the Continental is my turn to go, check what they've done and wreck it. Fortunately, after the first time I gave Charon precise instructions and now he only lets them get into the room where the switchboard and several routers are. It usually takes me hours to get the system clean again, it's a total waste of time for me and the only good thing about it is that later I can have a delicious brownie at the restaurant. Last time it happened I was so mad that, instead of getting rid of their spy gadgets, I led them to believe that all the hotel guests were having some kind of orgy visiting porn webs, the lowest rated pages I could find. I almost felt sorry for the intern that had to watch all those horrible videos just in case we were using them as a code to send messages or something like that.