by Mandy Rosko
"Okay, I'll go and park it in the back," Jamie said. "I'm pretty sure I saw a bunch of trees and shrubs where I can hide it."
That was enough to make Ethan relax, though not too much.
Jamie didn't move, however. He stared at Ethan with those intense blue eyes, the color of shimmering snow in the night. “Would you have...?" Jamie didn't finish.
Ethan was curious. "Would I what? Have gone to save you?" Or turned him in?
He hoped the question was the former one, because Ethan didn't want to be honest about what he would've done if Jamie asked the latter.
Jamie was doing that thing he did when he tried not to look at Ethan, but then couldn't help it so there were a lot of sideways glances. "Just forget it."
Ethan sighed. He couldn’t forget it. "I would've gone after you," he said. "I wouldn't let anyone hurt you, Jamie. Not even a chick with scary, crazy, flesh-ripping powers."
He was fairly lucky that the only thing wrong with him at this point was that he'd lost some blood and got queasy. He'd never hunted down someone who could control flesh like that. It was a strange and rare power, also incredibly painful. It took a lot for someone with flesh manipulation abilities to be able to kill another person, but that was the horrifying thing about it. It was supposed to be like experiencing the death by a thousand cuts.
Ethan would recover soon enough. His limbs already didn't feel so stiff.
"If she hadn't been caught and taken in, in the first place, she might not have been so out of her mind."
What the hell? “You’re actually defending her?”
Jamie didn’t look at him. Or maybe he couldn’t. “It’s true,” he muttered.
"You don't know that," Ethan said. "She could've been killing people long before she went to the labs. Paranormals aren't usually picked up unless they draw attention to themselves. That's how we find them."
Jamie said nothing.
"I'm serious. I can't just look at a person and tell they have powers. I can't look at you and see that you'll electrocute me if I shake your hand. You have to do something before someone can report it. That's when we do the pick-ups."
"I wouldn't electrocute you," Jamie said sullenly.
"You wouldn't?" Ethan asked.
Jamie glared at him. "No!"
"I didn't mean on purpose. You did suck the power out of a couple city blocks."
"That's different," Jamie said. "When I get nervous and antsy, sometimes it can be harder to control, but for the most part I'm all right. I end up sucking up energy without meaning to instead of just letting it loose. I can hold it back for a long time."
Jamie looked to the nightstand. There was an electric clock on it, and it was still on. The big red letters stated it was one in the afternoon.
"I guess you're not nervous or scared now."
Jamie shook his head. "You should've seen me when I brought you in here. The power flickered a little. I had to relax before I started stitching you." He lifted his hand just then, and Ethan got a good look at that glowing, white-blue energy sparking from his fingertips. It looked like tiny bolts of electricity that waved in random patterns, like in one of those round lightning lamps.
That was the same stuff Jamie had launched at Allison and the two paranormals with her, scaring them away even though they'd had Ethan's weapons. "I'm better at controlling it than I used to be. It takes a lot to scare me into having a reaction like that nowadays."
Ethan tried not to read too deeply into that, but it was impossible. With what Jamie had just said about draining the power in the motel, Ethan could take that to mean that the man really did care about him. A lot.
"What had you so scared that you had such a bad reaction in the city? Was there another hunter after you?"
Jamie lowered his hand and shook his head. "No, I couldn't get a hold of a friend. That's all I'm going to say about that, but I really wouldn't hurt you. I've touched you enough for you to know that."
"I know," Ethan replied. He thought of the times Jamie had touched him, and how he’d looked forward to more of those touches. The light roughness of his hands always brought a shiver to his spine when they came into contact with the sensitive flesh of his cock.
Jamie had also touched Ethan with his tongue many times, always warm and wet, sliding over Ethan’s abs. Jamie’s hands against Ethan’s thighs, fingertips barely touching Ethan’s skin as they traveled to his cock. Each fingertip a separate sensation of its own, leaving a trail of goose-bumps in their wake before his hands would cup Ethan’s balls, stroking him to insane pleasurable heights.
Just thinking about it was enough to make Ethan’s prick stir. Jamie was very good at putting a smile on Ethan’s face with his touch. Fuck if he wasn’t missing that, aching for it, right about now.
"I still had to go after you. When I realized what you were doing—"
"I know what I was doing. It was an accident, all right?" Jamie snapped. "I didn't mean to drain power like that, but you don't have to put people in shackles and then send them off to labs to be studied."
Jamie was getting angry now. There wasn't electricity sparking from his skin or anything, but his eyes were hard and his nostrils flared. Ethan knew the reason why.
"I'm sorry it was such a shock that I'm a hunter."
It must’ve seemed like such a betrayal. Ethan could just imagine how Jamie had felt. Ethan had been pretty stunned himself when he'd found out Jamie's little secret.
Jamie snorted. "Yeah, well, it was more of a shock that you would try and chase me down. I thought you...I don't know. I thought you liked me better than that."
Sucker punch me in the gut and rip my heart out. Jamie was proving to be good at that.
Ethan had liked him. So much. And then it turned out that Jamie was the type of man who wouldn't even leave someone behind to be tortured and maybe even killed by other angry paranormals. Jamie was also really good at making Ethan feel like an asshole. "I have to bring in anyone I recognize as paranormal, but I try not to do it all the time. I only go after the ones with outstanding warrants," he said, and Jamie stared at him as if he'd been slapped. Ethan had to be quick about this. "It wasn't that I wanted to bring you in, but with what happened in the city, I thought I had to."
"Bullshit," Jamie said.
The quick dismissal was irritating, but it was deserved, so he pressed on. "I'm being serious. When I got the call that there was a disturbance in the area, I volunteered to be the first on the scene. I didn't know it was you, but even if it hadn't been, I know how rough some of the others could be, and I didn't want that for whoever it was. I didn't want it to be you. I didn't want to hurt you or chase after you like that."
"Yeah, and instead you ended up shooting me with a tranq gun."
He was clearly still pissed about that.
"And you blasted me with enough electricity to shock me unconscious. That really fucking hurt, just so you know."
"Not more than the flesh ripper, I'll bet."
"That's not the point, Jamie. Any other hunter could've had you euthanized for that."
"You're still wrong about sending paranormals to the labs. And you're wrong about that girl. Maybe she is on the wrong side of crazy because of what happened to her, but her friends looked scared out of their minds. You were in a net and screaming and they still wanted to get away from you."
"I'm not so sure it was me that the boys wanted to get away from."
Jamie still looked angry, and Ethan was tired of this. "I don't want to fight anymore."
The silence in the air sucked. The fact that Jamie was sitting so close, and Ethan couldn’t even touch him, was the absolute worst.
"Are you hungry?" Jamie asked. "I ordered a pizza and some sodas."
Ethan managed a smile. "Of course you would order junk food."
"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Jamie asked, but at least he was smiling now.
"It means that I noticed all the takeout boxes in your fridge that one time you had me over. Pizza was definitely a favorite
of yours," he said, wincing only a little as he shifted into a better sitting position. However, he didn't take his eyes away from Jamie's face.
Now that the man was smiling and even blushing a little, Ethan was reminded of just why he'd enjoyed being around Jamie so much.
He was so damned cute, it should've been sinful.
"Not exactly the best for a recovery, but it's the best food to butter you up with so you'll let me go later on," Jamie said, still grinning, like he didn't realize what he'd just said.
Was he under the impression that he was in Ethan's custody? That was the last thing that was happening here. If anything, Ethan was at Jamie's mercy. Didn't he see that?
"Pizza should be just fine for a recovery."
Jamie frowned as though he didn't believe him. "Really?"
Ethan nodded. "Carbs, protein and fat for my body to burn would be great right about now."
Jamie lit up. Not literally or anything, but his smile was certainly bright. "Okay, great!"
How could he have ever thought to bring him to Head Office? A guy who smiled like that didn't belong there. "I'm not going to turn you in."
Jamie's eyes popped open wide. "What?"
Ethan took in a deep breath. "Don't ever repeat this to anyone. None of your paranormal friends can ever know. Just...say you got away or something. You got lucky and escaped. I won't turn you in."
"Why not?" Jamie asked. "You were so gung-ho about it before."
Jamie still sounded so hurt and offended by that. "I wouldn't say I was gung-ho about it, but I don't want to hand you over to the collectors after you saved me from basically getting thrown into a meat grinder either."
Jamie again didn't say anything for a few seconds. In the short amount of time that they'd been dating—or, well, been meeting up to fuck each other—Ethan had realized that the man was the sort who liked to think before he spoke.
Didn't mean he always did a good job of it, though.
"So, you're going to let me go because you feel you owe me," Jamie said, and it wasn't a question.
"I guess that's the reason," Ethan replied.
"And it had nothing to do with us?" Jamie asked.
The bright lights of a vehicle flashed across the windows and the room, cutting through even the shut curtains of the motel room they were in, and Jamie tensed up. The man almost came right out of his seat, as if getting ready to run in case the lights came from a collector's van that was here to take him away.
Ethan watched him. When nothing happened, Jamie relaxed into his seat again as the car drove off.
Ethan's heart was speeding like it was on a thrill ride, and it had nothing to do with the fear of being caught by the collectors. It was everything, Jamie's scared-as-a-rabbit reaction, his words, his actions.
Fuck. Jamie might as well have punched him in the gut. The man had actually liked him, and not in the little-kid-with-a-first-crush sense of the word either. In the few times they'd been together, Ethan had been hopeful for calling Jamie a friend, and maybe even, eventually, more than that. Meanwhile, the whole time Jamie had thought of him as a boyfriend.
Ethan hadn't realized that things had progressed so quickly for the other man. He might not have been inwardly calling Jamie his boyfriend, but he had hoped for it. He'd enjoyed meeting the man, and looked forward to seeing him the few times they made plans together.
And the sex had been fucking amazing. Ethan had to think all kinds of disgusting things at that very moment just to keep his cock from getting hard beneath the sheets as he recalled some of the fun they'd had: the look on Jamie's face as he'd moaned, his eyes squeezing shut, the smell of his musk hanging in the air as Ethan thrust inside of him.
Now everything was so fucked up between them that Ethan could hardly see straight.
It was better that Jamie not know about all of that. It would be too hard when it came time for them to part ways, and this was already hard enough for Ethan. No point in rubbing salt into the wound.
"We hung out a couple of times and had sex. That was it," Ethan said. "It's better if we don't try and make anything more of it than that."
There. A perfectly logical explanation to the completely illogical situation they were in. It shouldn't have made him feel so damned bad, or made him not want to look Jamie in the eyes.
That hesitation pissed him off. He was making something out of nothing and reacting badly to it. Like a bratty child not getting his way. Had this been any other break-up, if it could even be called that, Ethan wouldn't have felt like such a prick and his mouth wouldn’t be so damned dry. He needed to get over it.
Jamie didn’t have to cringe about it, though. Another thing to send the guilt signals flying inside of him.
“That was it?" Jamie asked, not looking at Ethan either, not even looking at the bed.
Ethan shook his head, glad that Jamie wasn't looking at him. He wasn't sure he could handle looking into those sad frost blue eyes. Jamie really could look like a kicked puppy when he wanted to.
Jamie took in a long, deep breath, and then he let it out and nodded. "Okay," he said.
The room was so damned quiet after that.
Then they looked at each other at the same time. Ethan didn’t know about Jamie, but it felt to him like his body had forced him to crane his neck over so that he had to look at the other man.
More romance novel bullshit, as if they were meant to suddenly be staring into each other's eyes or something. If this was a real romance novel then Jamie would have tied him down onto the bed, or handcuffed him with his own shackles to the crappy bed posts, spreading him out and making him helpless, while simultaneously fighting off the lust that putting a former lover into such a position would've naturally produced.
Ethan shouldn't be thinking about things like that. Imagining sex while tied up was just making things stir down below, a fantasy he wouldn't have minded otherwise was causing him problems now, so he had to stop. He told himself he was going to stop.
So then why was he having trouble not looking at Jamie’s mouth, or imagining them at work on Ethan's body? Jamie’s eyes were very clearly flickering down as well, his blue gaze lingering on Ethan’s lips, as if he was thinking the same dangerous things.
Then Jamie was leaning forward, as if pulled by that same invisible force.
Oh fuck, why not have one more kiss?
The sudden knock at the door made them both jump. Ethan hissed from the pain as his stupid fucking heart launched itself into his nose. He instinctively reached for his tranquilizer guns that weren't there. Right, as if he could protect Jamie in the state he was in now.
Jamie’s eyes were as wide as a scared rabbit about to be put into the cooking pot. “Who is it?” he called.
Ethan could’ve hit him for making such a dumb mistake.
He shouldn’t be giving away their position!
“Pizza delivery,” called the voice on the other side of the door, a voice that sounded too young to belong to any hunter.
Ethan finally sighed, relaxing as Jamie got up to answer the door.
Fuck. They’d nearly kissed each other. This wasn’t going to end well.
Chapter Five
While they ate, Ethan did all sorts of things that Jamie was too much in a panic mode to think of when he'd first brought Ethan into this place.
For one thing, he'd asked for the radio on the dresser, and he started playing around with it until he got to one of the city's more popular talk shows. They were still close enough to Lincoln Peak that they were able to get reception.
Fred Talk. Jamie hated this guy and his stupid show. He was some ultra conservative nut who really hated paranormals. Like super-hated them, as if he’d been personally part of the civil war between paranormals and humans nearly a hundred years ago.
"If the hunters and collectors are looking for either of us, this guy should know it," Ethan said, picking up a slice of pizza from the open box next to him.
Jamie had helped prop him up on all the pillows earli
er so that he could at least eat while sitting up. Ethan had claimed to not need the help, but he didn't protest it either. Jamie got the feeling that Ethan just liked having Jamie's hands on him, and yeah, that might've been true for Jamie, too.
This was going to be the last day he ever touched or saw Ethan again, and he couldn't help himself for wanting to get as much in as he possibly could. Fuck, he’d nearly kissed the man earlier, and he was torn between wishing he had, talking himself into trying it again, and being grateful that things hadn’t gotten that far.
He was going to go out of his mind.
To take his mind off of how much he wanted to touch Ethan’s skin, he focused on just keeping the other man comfortable. Or it could’ve been overcompensating, trying to keep Ethan from realizing what it was Jamie really wanted to do to him.
Ethan’s comfort was suddenly Jamie’s number one priority. There hadn't been many good pillows on the bed to put behind Ethan, so Jamie had even used the cushions from the little chairs. Currently, Jamie's knees were almost touching his chest as he sat in his chair without the pillow and cushion on it. He felt like a little kid like this.
It was almost comical enough to make him forget about how depressing it was to have to sit here, off of the bed, seemingly so far away from Ethan, even though the gap between them was less than two feet.
And all the while, Ethan didn’t seem to even notice him. The man stared down at the radio in his lap, a frown on his face as he listened to Fred run his stupid mouth, his pizza slice on a little paper plate beside him.
The man was a heartless rock, and Jamie was sick and twisted in the head for wanting Ethan to notice him and stop paying attention to that asshole on the radio.
Jamie sighed into his knees.
The man just radiated that “I don’t give a shit” lone wolf aura that made him look so sexy. The bandages, and his messy chestnut hair also gave him the rugged, action movie hero appeal that Jamie had always fantasized about with his hand around his cock.
Was he doing it on purpose? It had to be on purpose, right? No one was just that attractive, and gave off vibes like that without trying, right?