CHAPTER TWELVE
She was so beautiful, so
perfect. Kissing her was like nothing he could name. It wasn’t just
a physical sensation—lips against lips, tongue sliding over tongue.
Kissing Sammy was like having a conversation—a slow, lingering,
passionate conversation where no secrets were concealed, where
there was no place to hide from her … or himself.
He felt exposed and
vulnerable in a way he hadn’t even when he’d been facedown on the
filthy ground, waiting for the men he fought to finish him off. It
wasn’t a comfortable feeling or one he’d experienced in … ever. It
made his heart race, his lips buzz, his body tremble, and spilled
tendrils of fear into his blood.
Fear for Sam and
of Sam. She made him feel both, had
since the second he saw her in the ruins last night.
Fear for her, he
could manage. But this other feeling, this sensation that he was
spilling over into her, the very heart of him merging with the
heart of her as their bodies strained together toward some goal
bigger than orgasm—he wasn’t sure he knew what to do with that. He
still didn’t feel that familiar darkness sneaking up on him, but
what if he was wrong? What if he lost it, the way he had when he
was younger? Mind-blowing sex wasn’t safe when you had skeletons in
your closet, personal demons eager for the chance to come out and
play rough.
“Turn over,” Jace
said, pulling away from Sam’s lips and forcing himself to slide
away from the clutching heat of her pussy.
God, her pussy. He’d
never tasted anything so sweet. So damned addictive.
“No,” she said, and
arched beneath him, the aftershocks of her second orgasm still
making the soft flesh of her stomach tremble beneath his palms as
he gripped her hips.
“Now, turn over.” He
made sure his touch was gentle as he guided Sam over, onto her
stomach. It would be better if he couldn’t see her face, if he
couldn’t be tempted by those lips.
He’d thought
pleasuring Sam would help him keep the upper hand, that making sure
she came once or twice before he allowed himself to push inside her
would ensure he didn’t get to this point. But he should have known
better. He’d realized Samantha was trouble from the first time
they’d kissed. She was a fire he shouldn’t be playing with, but he
couldn’t help himself. He’d never wanted anyone, anything, as badly as he wanted this
woman.
It was a sobering
realization, one that steadied his hands as he gripped Sam’s hips
and drove slowly into her from behind. Damn.
just … damn.
Sam moaned and arched
her back, sending strands of glossy black hair spilling over the
pale skin of her back. A part of Jace wanted to fist his hand in
that hair, to force her head back even farther as he plowed into
her, fucking her until they both lost what was left of their minds.
Luckily, his cautious side won out. His hands stayed on her hips,
fingers digging into the soft flesh as he pumped in and out, in and
out, keeping his rhythm slow and even until Sam wiggled her
hips.
“Please, harder,” she
said, her voice husky, thick with satisfaction. She sounded like a
well-pleasured woman. Hiswell-pleasured woman.
Smart or not, the
thought of Sam being his made his cock even thicker, made his
entire body ache with the need to give her exactly what she was
asking for. Too bad he didn’t trust himself.
“Harder,” she
demanded again, shoving back into his next thrust, surprising him,
showing him he could get even deeper into her slick heat. “Fuck
me.”
“I am,” Jace said,
driving quickly in and out, once, twice, making her
moan.
“More.” She reached
back, digging her nails into the top of his hand. He winced at the
slight sting of pain and gripped her even harder, until she cried
out.
Shit. He couldn’t do this. “Sam—”
“No, I like it. Hurt
me a little, just a little. Please, I—”
“No. I can’t.” He
pulled away from her and stumbled off the bed. His cock immediately
sprang up to his navel, voicing a silent, aching protest at leaving
Sam’s welcoming body. But that was fine. His cock could protest all
it wanted. The cold sweat between his shoulder blades and the tight
clench of his jaw encouraged him to keep backing away until he put
a healthy distance between him and Sam.
He couldn’t do this,
not when something vicious inside him had been so savagely excited
to hear her plea for him to hurt her. He could practically feel the
way his hand would sting from punishing her ass. It wouldn’t just
burn; it would throb, because he wouldn’t be able to give her just
a little pain. That dark thing inside of him, whatever it was or
wherever it came from—anger, childhood trauma, inborn kink—wanted
to hurt her. Truly hurt her, until her skin bore the marks of his
use, until she was completely bent to his will.
“Where are you
going?” she asked, spinning around, wide eyes searching the room.
For the first time she looked as helpless as her brother was always
insisting she was. “Jace?”
“Are you crying?” he
asked, trying to keep the question neutral, not to let on that the
telltale shine in her eyes made the angry thing inside of him want
to slam a fist through the wall. It didn’t matter how old he was,
or how much time had passed; women’s tears always reminded him of
her tears.
His mother had hidden
him under the sink, but there had been a hole big enough to see
through, big enough for him to watch while the demons tortured her.
They’d fed on her for days, playing with their food, eating her
alive piece by piece, until she’d begged them to kill her, until
her rational mind broke and she started screaming every time they
left her alone for a second. And Jace had watched, forcing himself
not to cry, knowing they would find him if he did. He’d greedily
drunk the water that leaked from the pipes and watched while his mother died.
He’d never forgiven
himself for that, no matter how many people told him there was
nothing an eight-year-old boy could have done against a houseful of
demons. He’d been so traumatized by what had happened that he
couldn’t even remember what kind of demons they were, or recall
much about the event except the sight of his mother’s blood and the
sound of her tears, so obviously there was nothing he could have
done.
Still, he couldn’t
keep from blaming himself. Just like he couldn’t keep from turning
his anger outward, unleashing his self-hatred on the world at
large.
“Jace. Are you
listening to me?”
She’d been talking.
He hadn’t been listening. Not that it mattered. He didn’t need to
make nice or make up; he just needed to get out of here. “Sorry.
I’ve got to go.”
She sniffed. “What’s
wrong? I thought—”
“Nothing’s wrong.
I’ve just got to go.”
“Jace, stop,” she
said. “Talk to me.”
Talk to her. They
were at that point already. It usually took him at least a few
months to get to this place with a woman. It took them that long to
sense that he was pulling away. Or, more accurately, that he’d
never been with them to begin with. But Sam had felt it right from
the start, felt that he was holding back, and wanted what he was
too afraid to give.
For the first time, a
part of him actually wanted to talk, to tell a woman what he was
afraid of, to see if Sam might be able to understand. To … help him
somehow.
Jesus. Help. He was hoping for help from a woman
who couldn’t even help herself.
“I’ll call you
later.” He reached for his pants and shoved them on, his dreams of
a shower and a good long nap entwined with Samantha Quinn
forgotten. He needed to go talk to Francis, to make sure Sam was on
her way to being safe.
Then he needed to get
the hell out of her life, before the nastier parts of him
overwhelmed the nicer ones. It was already almost impossible to
resist the urge to go to her, to force her back onto the bed and
fuck her with every last ounce of rage and frustration simmering
beneath his skin.
“You can’t call me,”
she said, crossing her arms at her chest, concealing the flushed
breasts he’d been dying to get his mouth on a few minutes earlier.
“You don’t have my number.”
Damn it. She was right. But he couldn’t stay here,
couldn’t look at her for another second, or he would lose the last
of his control. He pulled on his shirt and grabbed his jacket from
the floor. “Give it to someone at the front desk. I’ll call back
later.” He charged toward the door, pausing long enough to shove
his feet into his boots, but not bothering to tie
them.
“Shit, Jace,” she
said, her breath drawing in on a gasp and her pale hands fluttering
to her throat. Was it really that much of a shock? Hadn’t she
guessed that there was a reason he never brought the same girl to
the Demon’s Breath two times in a row? “Don’t move.”
He turned
away.
“I’m serious. Don’t
take another fucking step.”
“Right,” he said,
muttering the word beneath his breath. They’d already moved on to
the hurling-expletives-at-his-retreating-back phase. His Sammy did
move fast.
No, not his Sammy.
She could never be his. He wanted her too much for it to ever work
between them. He needed a woman who didn’t drive him crazy, who
didn’t keep him on his toes in and out of the bedroom, who didn’t
bring out the best or the worst in him. He needed the female
equivalent of dry white toast: flavorless, but safe for even the
most volatile stomachs.
At another time the
comparison would have brought a smile to his face, but not this
morning. The thought of making do with toast when he really wanted
the four-course meal of the woman behind him made his stomach
cramp.
“Please! You have to
stay.” She scrambled off the bed. “If you leave, you could
die.”
He turned around
slowly, trying not to notice the way the morning sun lit Sam from
behind, making her look like an angel sent down to warn him to
change his wicked ways. “What do you know? If this is gang related,
you have to tell me—”
“No, it’s … That man
we saw, that man on the street.” She licked her lips and her eyes
once again zeroed in on his in that eerie way she had. “You never
told me what happened to him.”
“I’m not going to
tell you. I’m not going to tell you anything until—”
“He’s dead. Isn’t
he?” she asked, her voice not much more than a
whisper.
How the hell had she
guessed? He hadn’t said anything to lead her to that conclusion.
Jace did his best to think of some evasive comment that would
enable him to put this conversation off until later, but Sam read
the truth in his silence.
“Oh, God, he is
dead.” She sat down hard on the side of the bed, hands flying to
her mouth as if to hold back a wave of sickness.
Shit. This was
exactly what he’d wanted to avoid, but it was too late for a denial
now.
“Yeah. He’s
dead.”
“But you … you didn’t
kill him.” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement, but one he
felt obliged to confirm.
“No, I didn’t,” he
said, pleased to see a bit of the tension ease from her face. She
believed him. No matter what a jerk he’d just been, she still
trusted him. And cared about him.
It was all the excuse
he needed to tell the story he had been planning to spare her. He
wasn’t worthy of her trust or her affection, and it was past time
for her to get the memo. “But someone else did. I found him in a
back alley. His eyes had been ripped out—while he was still alive,
judging from the expression on his face.”
“Just like the Choes
…” Sam swallowed and paled visibly. “So he wasn’t the one who
killed them.”
“We don’t know that.
He could have been,” Jace said, figuring now was as good a time as
any to grill her on what she’d been hiding from him. Maybe it would
distract him, keep him from dwelling on how beautiful she looked
sitting there on the bed, the dark chocolate of the quilt beneath
her contrasting with her white skin, making her look like something
straight out of a museum. “Someone higher up in the Death Ministry
could have given him the order, then decided to take him out to
keep him from telling anyone about the hit.”
“That’s the gang that
distributes demon drugs, right?”
“They’re famous for
screwing each other over, especially if taking out one of their own
means a bigger cut of whatever they’re running at the
moment.”
Sam shook her head.
“But that doesn’t make sense. Why would they pull out his
eyes?”
“To make it look like
there was a serial killer on the loose. To deflect attention from
themselves. It’s not a bad idea, even though—”
“No.” She sounded
sure of herself, too sure. “That isn’t it. A gang isn’t responsible
for this.”
“Then who is? Tell
me. Who is your brother in with who would—”
“My brother? What
does this have to do with Stephen?” She seemed genuinely shocked,
which blew a huge hole in Jace’s theory that she’d somehow
overheard Stephen talking with one of his drug connections about
murdering the Choes. “What are you two hiding?”
“I was going to ask
you the same thing.”
“I’m not hiding
anything.”
No, she wasn’t, not a
damn thing. She sat there chatting with him, completely in the
nude, oblivious to the fact that he couldn’t keep his eyes from
drifting down to her breasts, and to the soft tuft of black hair
between her legs. Damn. Just thinking
about the way she’d responded when he’d tasted her was enough to
make the ache in his balls edge closer to full-blown
pain.
He cleared his throat
and forced his gaze higher. God, what had they been talking about
again? Hiding things. Right. “You didn’t tell me you felt one of
those invisible demons at your apartment. Or that the woman told
you to run, not—”
“There was also a man
there, but he was speaking in some other language. Except when he
told someone to get the woman or catch the woman or something like
that. I can’t remember exactly.”
“What? What the hell,
Samantha. I’ve been trying to help you; don’t you
think—”
“I’m sorry! I
couldn’t find a good time to tell you.”
“Bullshit.”
“Fine, I didn’t think
you’d believe me, so I didn’t tell you the whole story.” She licked
her lips and reached for her sweater, as if she could sense that
he’d been distracted by her nakedness. She pulled it over her head
without bothering with her bra and then picked her panties off the
floor, stepping into them as she spoke. “But I’m not going to hide
anything from you. Not anymore. I want you to know that you can
trust me as much as I trust you.”
Great. Just what he’d
been doing his best to avoid. “Listen, Sam, I’m not this nice guy
you seem to think I am.”
“Yes, you
are.”
“I’m not,” he said,
making his voice as hard and hateful as possible. “I’m not your
friend. I’m not even nice to women—”
“I know you’re
not.”
“Did you know I spent
a couple nights in lockup for breaking a woman’s arm?” he asked,
his tongue cramping as he spoke, as if it could physically keep him
from saying the words.
Sam was silent for a
moment. “On purpose?”
He shrugged and
forced his clenched jaw to relax. Might as well let Sammy know the
truth, let her understand what she’d be getting into if she spent
much more time with him. “No. It was during sex. We were … And I
lost it. I didn’t mean to, but that didn’t make a lot of
difference. Her arm was still broken. In two places.”
“That was the only
time that happened?”
“It was the only time
I let it happen. You wanted to know why I like a certain kind of
woman.” He cleared his throat, shocked at how emotional he was
getting. “I like women who don’t get me too close to the
edge.”
“I want you to come
to the edge with me,” Sam said, emotion in her eyes that made a
crazy part of Jace want to lay his head in her lap and cry like a
baby. “I know you won’t hurt me.”
“I will hurt you.
It’s only a matter of when.”
“Then why have you
been helping me?”
“Men do what they
have to do.”
“Don’t try it, Jace.
It’s not going to work.” She smiled a little. The expression made
him scowl. “You could have had me up against the wall last night
and we both know it. You didn’t need to pretend to care to get in
my pants.”
He scowled some more,
angry with himself. He couldn’t remember ever feeling like such a
fool. It only intensified the urge to flee, but he held his ground.
He would hurt Sam a lot more if he left and allowed her to keep
assuming he was one of the good guys than if he stayed and saw this
through.
“You’re right. I do
care, but I don’t want to,” he said, the words foreign in his
mouth. He’d never said anything like this to a woman. To anyone. It
brought that terrifying, vulnerable feeling to the surface again,
followed swiftly by a fresh flush of anger. “I’m not a good man,
Sammy. I’m really not.”
“I think you’re
wrong, but I can see I’m not going to change your
mind.”
The hands he’d
unconsciously fisted at his sides loosened a bit. Maybe this
wouldn’t be as hard as he’d thought. He’d reassure her that he had
his family working on keeping her safe and then remove himself from
the situation. It wouldn’t be easy—he already felt oddly
responsible for Sam—but it would be the best thing for both of
them. “Listen, I’ve got my uncle looking into—”
“I can also see that
your shirt’s on backward,” she said, crossing her arms and twining
her bare legs around each other, the self-conscious movement
distracting him for a second from realizing the full import of her
words. “The tag is sticking up by your neck.”
His hand flew to his
neck. He flinched when he touched the scrap of fabric. This
couldn’t be happening. “You can … you can see me?”
She let out a shaky
breath and nodded. “Just you, nothing else. Just like I saw that
man on the street, and how I’m betting I would have seen the Choes
if I’d made it to their apartment last night.” She took a step
closer, her blue eyes honing in on his own. Shit. They were blue
again, just like they’d been last night. He’d been so distracted by
the rest of her, he hadn’t noticed the change in color, but he knew
damn well she hadn’t had the chance to take out a pair of contacts
or anything that would provide a reasonable explanation for the
phenomenon. “I think I can see the people these things are going to
kill.”
“The aura demons?”
Jace asked, disbelief warring with caution. What if she was right?
What if there was such a thing and she did somehow have some sort
of connection with the creatures? There was clearly something
extraordinary going on with Sam, something that couldn’t be
explained away by drugs or confusion or even madness.
“They’re real, Jace,”
she said, closing the last of the distance between them and taking
his hand in hers. “And they’re going to try to kill
you.”