CHAPTER TWO
If he were a different
kind of man, Jace would have let the woman die. The hardened core
of him might still have considered it, just for a second, if it had
been anyone else. Anyone other than her.
But watching Samantha
Quinn fall to the ground, her long, silky black hair tangling
around her frightened face, obscuring those big brown eyes, Jace
couldn’t do anything but shoot the creature he’d been tracking for
three days. Even though killing the Ju Du demon would mean
forfeiting his bounty and facing a death threat or two if any of
the other hunters found out he was the one who put the thing
down.
The city wanted
demons taken alive or not taken at all. Once it had been decided
demons weren’t any more dangerous than other earthly predators,
scientists and conservation groups the world over had put pressure
on the infested cities to “humanely” dispose of the surplus demon
population. And royally fucked the bounty hunters in the process.
Gone were the days when a dead body was all a hunter needed. Now
there were licenses and quotas and different seasons for open
hunting.
Like deer season, but
with animals that could kill you. It was dangerously
absurd.
But absurd or not,
the city didn’t pay for dead meat, and his competition wouldn’t be
pleased to hear he’d taken out one of the rarest and
highest-bountied species to roam the Southie ruins. But he didn’t
have a choice. Sam wasn’t just a friend’s kid sister or a girl he’d
watched grow up in the neighborhood. Jace couldn’t say exactly what
she was to him, just that something inside of him threatened to
snap when he thought about a world without Sam Quinn. She didn’t
deserve to die like this; she and her brother had been through
enough.
Who does, and ain’t everyone? She’s still screwing your
capture, boy. You should charge her for being gracious enough to
let her live.
He could hear Uncle
Francis’s old-school Brooklyn accent ringing in his ears as he
exchanged his stun gun for the automatic at his hip—the stun wasn’t
guaranteed to immobilize prey with the first shot—but it didn’t
slow him down. He’d learned a long time ago that he wasn’t as
mercenary as the man who’d raised him would have him be, but he was
mercenary enough.
The fact that he’d
get only a couple of death threats for killing this demon spoke for
itself. Ninety-nine percent of the men working the ruins wouldn’t
dare cross Jace Lu, and it wasn’t just that his connections to the
old Italian Mafia or New York’s Chinese Triad struck fear into the
hearts of the competition. Jace was one scary motherfucker all on
his own.
He’d gotten his
Chinese father’s coloring and stick-straight hair, but the rest of
him was all Grandpa Joe. His petite mother’s dad had been a
six-feet-four muscleman for the mob from the day he turned sixteen
until the day he died of a heart attack at age sixty. He’d never
missed a day at the gym or a dinner at the family
restaurant.
Jace would have hoped
to make it a few more years, since he kept his manicotti
consumption to Thursday meetings and the occasional Sunday brunch,
but bounty hunting wasn’t a career known for its longevity. He’d be
lucky to make it to forty, and usually that was fine with him. The
struggle for survival was overrated at best, and damned torturous
at its worst.
Tonight, however, he
figured he should do his best to stick around. If he weren’t here,
Sam would be dead, which bothered him more than he’d like to
admit.
“Don’t move,” Jace
shouted as Sam curled into a ball on the ground, just barely
avoiding another set of poison quills the Ju Du shot from its spiny
underbelly.
The quills wouldn’t
kill her, but getting ripped open and eaten alive seconds later
certainly would. There was no time for strategy. He was simply
going to have to blow the demon away and hope Sam didn’t get hit by
any poisoned flying debris.
Sam didn’t scream
when he fired. Jace had to give her credit for that. She lay
perfectly still and quiet until the Ju Du was in pieces and the
sharp reports of gunfire had faded, echoing away down the twisted
corridors of the Southie ruins. But when he crossed to her,
satisfied to see she hadn’t been hit by any quills, she was
crying—big, fat tears that streamed out of her haunting
eyes.
Damn crying women. The sight sickened him. He
couldn’t help it. Seeing a woman cry made him nauseous. It made him
want to slam his fist into a wall, or run until his lungs exploded,
or kill something. Or maybe all three.
Even knowing why he
responded the way he did couldn’t help him get himself under
control. In fact, it was all he could do not to turn and run from
Sam and her tears. He’d been a bounty hunter since he was fifteen
years old and could count the times he’d run from a demon on one
hand and still have fingers left over. But facing down a demon
never brought those memories to the
surface, the ones he did his best to pretend didn’t belong to him.
Tears brought them back, big-time.
“I’m sorry. Sorry,”
Sam said, sucking in a deep breath and biting her bottom lip, as if
she could tell how her tears affected him. “Thanks, Jace,” she
said, tilting her chin until it seemed she was looking him straight
in the face.
It was hard to
believe she was blind when you looked into those wide,
melted-chocolate eyes. Sam’s eyes seemed to see everything. She
looked all the way to a man’s core and took his measure. When it
came to Jace, he could tell she’d never entirely approved of what
she saw.
He could understand
the feeling. It was one of the reasons he avoided
mirrors.
“What the fuck were
you doing back here?” he asked, not bothering to ask how she’d
known it was him. Sam always knew.
“I heard someone
screaming.” Her fingers tightened around the hand he placed in
hers. Jace hauled her to her feet, marveling at how light she felt,
even for a thin woman. It felt like her bones were made of
something more fragile than the average person’s, and Jace was
suddenly possessed of the urge to go buy her a sandwich. Something
big and sloppy, with lots of meat and cheese and mayo.
Instead, he dropped
her hand as quickly as possible. He didn’t buy women meals. He
didn’t buy anyone meals, even something as innocent as a sandwich.
Sharing food was an intimacy he reserved for the Italian side of
his family and no one else, and there were times when he’d have
preferred to skip Thursday dinners at the restaurant. Even with
family, he liked to keep a bit of distance. It was safer that
way.
“You didn’t hear
someone screaming. The Ju Du makes that sound when it’s hunting, to
scare the Sqat demons out of their burrows.”
“No, I’m sure I heard
a person. A woman, or maybe a girl,” Sam said, her fingers twining
anxiously in the gauzy fabric of her dress.
It was loose, but
transparent enough that Jace could see the outline of the bra she
wore underneath, which made him angrier. Someone should have told
Sam that her dress was almost see-through. She wasn’t the type who
would want to draw attention to herself. It seemed like someone
should give the blind girl a heads-up.
Too bad it wouldn’t
be him. If he wasn’t going to buy Sam a sandwich, he certainly
wasn’t going to bring up the subject of her underwear.
“I didn’t think
anyone else would be able to get to her in time. I guess I didn’t
get to her in time, either. I can’t hear her anymore,” Sam
continued, her voice trembling a bit, though her eyes remained
dry.
“Don’t worry,” Jace
said, strangely compelled to put her mind at ease. “I didn’t see
anyone in the ruins tonight. Except you. There aren’t any other
women stupid enough to come in here alone.”
“Thanks.” Her lips
turned down at the corners. “Maybe you’re right. I can’t hear her
anymore. And I can’t smell it….”
“Smell
it?”
“There was this
smell. It wasn’t just a demon smell. It was cold and … evil. I know
that sounds crazy, but—”
“What’s crazy is that
you decided you’d investigate the evil smell. By yourself. Without
a weapon.”
“I had a weapon. My
cane has a knife built into the end.”
“Yeah, I saw that,”
Jace said, glad his tone didn’t betray his admiration. He’d been
impressed to see that Sam had rigged a weapon into her cane, but
she didn’t need to know that. No reason to encourage this insane
idea that she was equipped to protect herself, let alone anyone
else. “And how long did you keep a hold on that? Two seconds, maybe
three?”
“I wounded the demon.
I bought myself some time,” she said, her usually pale cheeks
flushed with two bright spots of red he could see even in the
dimness of the lights the community watch had installed on the
outer edges of the ruins. “If I hadn’t tripped, there’s a good
chance I could have made it—”
“Made it a few more
feet before the Ju Du ripped you open?”
“I did what I felt I
had to do,” she said, tilting her stubborn little chin into the
air.
She looked like a
bird when she cocked her head to the side like that, like one of
those tiny brown sparrows that covered the statues in the park in
winter. Except prettier. Why hadn’t he ever noticed how pretty Sam
had become? It was probably the stupid see-through dress, making
him look at her in a way no one should ever look at a friend’s
little sister.
“What you did was
make a dumb call that almost got you killed.”
“Thanks,” she said,
hurt and sarcasm warring in her tone. “If you’re done telling me
how stupid I am, I’d like my cane, please.”
“I should tell your
brother what happened here tonight,” Jace threatened as he fetched
the cane from where it had fallen a few feet away. “I’m sure
Stephen would love to hear about his little sister wandering around
in the ruins by herself.”
“I don’t care what
you tell Stephen.” She snatched the cane from his hand with
surprising accuracy. “I’m a grown woman and I’ll wander wherever I
damn well please.”
“Well, you might not
want to wander much farther in that dress,” he said, before he
could think better of it. “It’s almost see-through.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Almost?”
“Yeah. Almost. I can
almost see … things I shouldn’t see.”
“Like what? My bra?”
Her smile was obvious now. It was a mocking smile, an amused smile,
the smile of a woman who knew her
goddamned dress was transparent.
And liked it that
way.
“Turn around,” he
said, his words as hard as the bulge pressing against the fly of
his jeans. He did not get a boner from girls like Samantha Quinn,
even if they were deliberately wearing see-through clothing. The
fact that his body was telling him otherwise pissed him off. “I’ll
walk you back to your place.”
“I’m not going back
to my place.” She twisted her arm, pulling free from the hand he’d
wrapped around her elbow.
“Oh, yes, you are.”
He reached for her, but she sidestepped, almost as if she could see
him coming.
“No, I’m not.” Up
came the chin again as she half jogged toward the street, cane
tapping quickly in front of her. “I have an errand to
run.”
“I don’t give a shit
if you’ve got an—”
“I have an
appointment!” When Jace grabbed her she tried to twist away from
him again, but this time he held firm. Still, even having at least
six inches and fifty pounds on the woman, Sam wasn’t easy to hold
on to. She probably would have given one of the smaller demons a
run for its money with her deadly little cane. It was only bad luck
that she’d crossed paths with a Ju Du.
“You can
reschedule.”
“I can’t! I’m late
already. Jace, let go of me.” She twisted in his arms, nearly
brushing against where he was in a most inappropriate state.
Fucking hard-on. He obviously needed to make time to stop by
Deanna’s for a quickie if a little mouse like Sam Quinn was making
him respond like this. “I have flowers hidden behind a
Dumpster!”
He laughed, a sharp
bark of sound that surprised him. “Behind a Dumpster?”
“I knew I had to have
my hands free,” she said, spinning to face him when he released her
arms. “I’m not totally stupid.”
“Just mostly stupid,”
he said, his voice harder than he intended. But the thought of her
doing something like this again scared him, and he wasn’t a man who
experienced fear often. He didn’t like it. He needed to be certain
she was going to make smarter decisions in the future. “I don’t
want to see you anywhere near this area again.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Stay
clear of the streets near the ruins. Call Stephen to come get you,
or call a car service if you need to—”
“Where do you get
off?” she asked, stepping closer, until he could smell the light
floral scent that clung to her hair. “You’re not my father or my
brother or my boyfriend. Hell, I wouldn’t have even said we were
friends, would you?”
Jace stared down into
those eerie eyes of hers, not knowing what to say, knowing only
that the outraged look on Sam’s face made him want to show her
exactly where he “got off.” And how he’d get her off, again and again, until she came so hard
she screamed his name and clung to him, those strong, smooth legs
wrapped around his hips as—
“Would
you?”
Would he what? He
couldn’t seem to remember the question. His thoughts were too
shocking, too wrong.
This was his friend’s
sister, a sweet girl he’d watched grow up since she was fourteen.
He’d been twenty when the Quinns moved into the neighborhood, and
she’d been a kid he barely noticed, a shy little shadow who haunted
the apartment above her brother’s bar. He realized she’d become a
woman sometime between then and now, but not the kind of woman he
took back to his place. Forget the fact that she wasn’t even close
to being his type; Stephen would kill him if he found out Jace had
gotten his dick within ten feet of his sister.
“Honestly, I’m
curious. Would you say we’re friends? Is that why you feel entitled
to order me around like a child? Or is it because of my brother?”
she asked. “Since he’s your friend, it gives you the right to play
big brother when he’s not around?”
She stepped even
closer, her chocolate-and-coffee breath warm on his chin. If he
tilted his head just the slightest bit, they’d be close enough for
him to taste her. And, damn, did he want to taste her. Badly enough
that he forced himself to take a small step back, putting a safer
distance between them.
“Or is this just the
way you are with all women?”
“I don’t know. I
don’t associate with a lot of women in my line of
work.”
“That’s not true.”
Sam’s tongue swept out across her lips, and her voice was breathier
than it had been a second before. “You associate with lots of
women, and you seem to like the ones who know how to take
orders.”
She couldn’t be
saying what it seemed she was saying. No one knew what he preferred
in the bedroom—no one except the women he slept with, and they
weren’t the types to talk. That was a big part of why he chose
them. They knew when to keep their mouths shut, when to submit,
when to … take orders, just like Sam had said. He wasn’t an
asshole—pleasuring his partner was always his first priority—but he
wanted that pleasure to be on his terms.
No, he needed it to be on his terms. He had to have
control in the bedroom—of himself, of his partner, of the entire
encounter. It was the only way to make sure everything stayed safe,
sane, and consensual. The few times he’d let himself go hadn’t been
good scenes. There was too much bottled up inside him that needed
to stay bottled.
“Well, I’m not so
good at taking orders.” Sam eased slowly closer, eliminating the
space he’d put between them. “But with the right man, in the right
situation, I think I could enjoy the alpha-male
thing.”
Hell, no. This couldn’t happen. No matter what she
thought she enjoyed, she wasn’t his type of woman. She was too
soft, too sweet, too … good. Especially for him. “Sam, I think
you’d better—”
“But not when the man
hasn’t earned my trust or my affection or even my friendship,” she
said, moving even closer, until her slim body was pressed against
his and the thick bulge of his arousal nudged the soft flesh of her
belly. But surprisingly, she didn’t seem shocked by the fact that
he had a hard-on for her that wouldn’t quit. In fact, she didn’t
seem to notice his cock at all. Her attention was still completely
on his face, her eyes boring into his own until he was positive she
could see every secret he’d never told. “So, in the future, if you
want to tell me what to do, you’ll need to earn the
privilege.”
“Is that right?” He
smiled. She frowned in response, making him wonder if she had heard
the amusement in his voice.
No matter how
troubled he was by his own response to her, Sam’s assumption that
she would be defining the terms of their relationship did amuse
him. It also made him want to take her home and show her who was in
control, to show her what an “alpha male” could do for her in the
bedroom.
Jesus. He had to get away from Sammy Quinn. The
sooner, the better.
“Come on. We’ve
wasted enough time.”
“Then leave. I’m not
asking you to stay,” she said, shifting her weight to her heels,
putting just a breath between them, a breath he didn’t like. Smart
or not, he liked feeling every inch of her pressed against every
inch of him.
“I’m going to walk
you home first. Let’s go.”
She shifted forward
again, pinning him against the wall. He could have pushed her away,
of course—she didn’t weigh much more than she had as a kid—but he
didn’t. “You need to quit assuming you’re the walking boss,
Jace.”
“So now you’re
telling me what to do?” he asked,
unable to resist the temptation to wrap his arms around her waist
and pull her closer, even though his gut was screaming that this
was a very bad idea. “I thought you said I liked to be the one
calling the shots.”
“Who said I cared
what you like?” Her breath rushed out as his hands trailed down
over the curve of her ass, molding her firm flesh in his hands.
“Besides, I don’t think you know what
you like.”
This just kept
getting more damned interesting.
“I like telling women
what to do, bossing them around like some bully over at PS 124,
right? That’s what you think.”
“Taking control in
the bedroom doesn’t mean you’re a bully. I know that,” she said,
her voice soft, intimate, and the way she lingered on the word
control nearly enough to make him
explode.
Jace was suddenly
beset by images of Sam kneeling on the floor in front of him, naked
and willing, her fingers sliding between her legs as he ordered her
to pleasure herself. To bring herself to the edge of completion and
then stop, waiting until he gave her permission to finish. Or,
better yet, until he finished the job himself.
What would Sammy
taste like when he lowered his head between her legs? What would
she scream when she came against his mouth? Would she be the type
to fist the sheets in her fingers or would she reach her hands down
and pull him closer, forcing his tongue even deeper into her salty
heat?
A groan escaped from
the back of his throat that he did his best to
swallow.
“But wouldn’t it be
interesting if things were a little more … challenging?” Sam’s hips
tilted forward ever so slightly, nudging where he was as hard as
the bricks behind him. “If you gave a real woman a
chance?”
“I’m a big boy, Sam,”
he said, gritting his teeth, forcing himself to maintain control,
not to let this go any further than it had already. “I’ve had
plenty of women.”
“I don’t think you’ve
ever had a woman. I think you’re afraid
of women.”
“Is that right?” His
body went tense for a moment before he forced himself to relax. Sam
had no idea how close she was to the truth, though not at all in
the way she was implying. That was one secret he’d never told
anyone.
Not even his uncle
Francis, who had flown to China to pick him up after his parents
were killed, who had been a father to him since he was eight, knew
why Jace avoided anything more meaningful than a casual screw. Of
course, Francis did his share of casual screwing—despite being
married for nearly thirty years—and he probably didn’t think twice
about his nephew’s lack of attachment.
“That’s why you sleep
with girls too young to know what they want.”
“As opposed to
ancient women in their early twenties?” He smiled again. Sam
couldn’t be more than twenty-three or twenty-four, and she still
looked like a teenager.
“I’m old enough to
know what I want.”
“And what is that?”
he asked, the feeling that he was crossing some forbidden line
making his heart beat faster than it had in years. Demon hunting
was dangerous, but not as dangerous as Samantha Quinn. And it
wasn’t the fact that her brother would try to kill him for touching
his sister. It was Sam herself. He’d had no idea she was so …
irresistible.
“I think it might be
you,” she said, standing on tiptoe, bringing her lips closer to
his.
“You think. You don’t
know?”
“Not yet, but I
will.” And then she kissed him. She
kissed him. He let a woman make the
first move for the first time in years and it felt inexplicably
right. Everything about Sam felt right—her ass in his hands, her
fingers digging into the back of his neck, her mouth hot against
his, her moan as he slid his tongue between her lips, tasting the
unique flavor of this woman who had totally blindsided
him.
Blindsided by a blind girl.
It should have been
an amusing thought, but Jace didn’t feel like laughing. This wasn’t
funny. This was a mistake, a huge mistake. But that didn’t stop him
from spinning Sam in his arms and pressing her up against the wall.
It didn’t slow his hands as he grabbed her behind the knees and
spread her legs, hitching her up around his waist. It only made him
feel like the very bad man he truly was. The last kind of man Sam
should even think about getting involved with.
If he were a better
person, he would have cared enough to stop. But he wasn’t. So he
didn’t. He just kissed her harder and let his fingers trail up the
silky smooth skin of her inner thigh.