A Shock to Your System (Dangerous Creatures #2)

by Mandy Rosko

  Then Ethan did something he rarely did. He submitted, and Jamie slid his tongue into that warm, wet space and came hard.

  He moaned into Ethan's mouth, and he couldn't stop moving, couldn't stop. Period. Not going to happen. Nope. Nadda. Never. Everything became tight and the spasms in his body shook him. He spilled his seed onto Ethan's chest, forgetting all about the bandages because by then it was too late and Jamie was too far gone to care.

  Ethan grabbed onto Jamie's hips again, thrusting up into him and groaning as his own body became tight and twitched. He was thrusting up into Jamie's body, and then he let out one last shout before he finally came.

  Jamie wished Ethan hadn't been wearing the condom just then, because he wanted to feel what it was like to have the man really and fully inside of him. He wanted to feel him skin to skin, and he wanted to feel what it was like to have his warmth flooding him.

  Their bodies settled, and moans made way for panting and smiling sighs. More soft kisses followed between their aftershocks.

  Ethan held onto Jamie's head, petting his hair and running fingers across his skin.

  His eyes were so damned soft. Jamie became uncomfortable under that stare, but only because he wanted it to mean something that it couldn’t. “What are you looking at?”

  “You,” Ethan said, kind of lamely, but then he continued. “There was blue lightning in your eyes and hair.”

  “Really?”

  Ethan nodded. “On your body, too. It danced over my palms when I touched you.”

  “Did it shock you?” Jamie asked, immediately worried.

  Ethan shook his head. “No. Though the hair on my arms is standing up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do that.”

  “I’m usually better at holding it back with sex. I had all my teen years practicing to make sure I didn’t do it when getting off.”

  Which meant that the orgasm Ethan had given him had been beyond spectacular. And it was. He didn’t need shocks of blue lightning to tell him that.

  Ethan burst out laughing at his words, and Jamie was so touched by that, that he nearly started laughing right along with him.

  Then Jamie froze up as he looked down at the mess he'd made on Ethan's chest. "Fuck!"

  He tried to move away, but Ethan was faster than Jamie was, grabbing him and stopping him from moving. "Hey, hey, where are you going?"

  "To get a cloth so that mess doesn't seep through your bandages or something," Jamie said.

  Ethan looked at him for a few second, as if deciding whether or not he was telling the truth. He finally smiled and let Jamie go. He grinned and went into the bathroom.

  The familiar burning sensation he got recently after sex followed him inside.

  Jamie shut and locked the door. He didn’t know why, maybe force of habit. He always was the emotional type, and he was feeling pretty damned emotional right then.

  He grabbed a clean washcloth from the pile on the counter, and it was shockingly white, considering how the rest of this place looked. Jamie wet it just enough under the water to dampen it, and then he looked up at himself in the mirror.

  His cheeks were slightly flushed from the sex, and his heart was beating fast. It pummeled against the inside of his ribs like the damned thing was trying to smash through them. He felt sad…but good. He was going to be depressed as all hell once tomorrow came; he didn't know how he was going to function when it came time for him to go his own way and travel north where the laws against paranormals weren’t as strict, without Ethan.

  For now, he was feeling a least a little like his old self. Tomorrow would happen, well, tomorrow. He could put off this shitty feeling until then.

  If this was going to be his and Ethan's last night together, then they were going to make the most of it. They still had two more condoms left, at least.

  A crash sounded in the other room, and after a lifetime of looking over his shoulder, Jamie was immediately on edge.

  "Ethan?" Jamie called

  Shouts sounded, and then more crashing. The door handle to the bathroom rattled.

  "I'm going to break it in!" a voice shouted from the other side. A voice Jamie definitely did not recognize, but didn’t need to, to know who was there.

  They'd been found by the hunters.

  Chapter Eight

  Jamie had two seconds to figure out what he was going to use as a weapon before the door was broken down and turned into splinters. The hunter on the other side already smashed against it once, probably with his body, and either the guy was super weak, or a miracle had happened, because the flimsy door had held.

  Jamie went for the towel rack. It wasn't steel but it would do, and after a hard yank that pulled out some of the drywall, he had something he could use.

  The hunter finally broke through the door with a loud crack and smash, just as Jamie procured his weapon. The guy was, in fact, pretty small. The hunter looked to be around Jamie's age, early twenties or so, but he was at least two inches shorter, and didn't have the muscle on him that Ethan did.

  The height difference made it incredibly simple to just swing his metal towel rack like a baseball bat. Even in the cramped space of the tiny motel bathroom, he hit his target right in the face, but the damned kid was trying to get back up, and he was reaching for something holstered to his back. A gun. That was totally a gun: a real gun, and not the kind that carried tranquilizers.

  He swung again. He caught the man in the hand, who screamed in pain as the gun flew from his grip. Jamie didn’t stop swinging, even if he was insanely grossed out by the sight of the blood that splattered in red drops from the guy's face as his nose was rearranged and his lip split. A white piece of something also went flying. A tooth. That was definitely a tooth, and now he felt like a dick because he was knocking the guy’s teeth out. But it was either him, or Jamie and Ethan. Jamie didn't want to get thrown into a lab with needles and weird smells, or for Ethan to get tossed into a small grey prison cell.

  He was out of breath by the time the hunter stopped moving. Jamie was too much of a wuss to check to see if he was dead or not. He hoped not, but Ethan was more important.

  Jamie rushed out of the bathroom when his opponent was no longer moving. He didn’t want to think about what that might mean. He was in such a hurry to get out of there, to be away from the unmoving hunter that he was completely naked when he left. He hadn’t even realized it. He was also holding onto his weapon like it was a sword.

  A crappy, not as effective, blunt sword.

  On the carpeted motel floor just in front of the bed was one unmoving hunter, but he was also face down and there was no blood that Jamie could see on him. So he could assume the man was alive. Maybe. It was the last hunter in the room that had Jamie concerned. The man was wrestling around with Ethan, and he was about the same size as Ethan, so he was giving Ethan a good run for his money as the two struggled with each other.

  He was the only other hunter left standing. Unless there were more outside, that was three in total.

  They bared their teeth to each other like they were snarling, rabid wolves, grabbing for each other’s throats as they threw each other around the room.

  Blood seeped through the bandages wrapped around Ethan’s chest and thighs, but it seemed he didn't even notice. Ethan must have been in the zone, because he only had enraged eyes for the hunter. He looked like he wanted to tear the head off of his enemy.

  That made it completely inappropriate for Jamie to think it was hot.

  Cut it out! Not the time! Jamie snapped himself out of it. This was serious and he couldn't stand by and watch. Resolved to do something, he took two steps forward to smash his towel rod into the back of the hunter's head, just like he'd done with the little one in the bathroom.

  Then the two men spun around as they wildly fought, and Jamie just barely managed to stop himself from bashing in Ethan's skull and cracking it open when he went to swing a second time, stopping himself just before he hit the wrong guy.

  Fuck! What the hel
l was he supposed to do? He couldn't swing at the man and risk hitting Ethan, and the hunter wasn’t going down!

  The hunter Ethan fought with started playing dirty. He took the risk of getting his hands and arms away from Ethan's throat in order to punch at his bleeding wounds.

  Ethan howled, but somehow he managed to hold on. He seemed to be tightening his grip on the other man in response to any pain instead of letting go.

  "Run you idiot!" Ethan yelled, his face nearly as red as the blood on his bandages. Because he was still staring right at the hunter, it took Jamie a half a second to realize that Ethan was speaking to him.

  Whoopsie.

  He probably should run, it would make sense and be safer for him, but he couldn't. Jamie's feet were locked to the floor as though he had shackles on his ankles that were bolted to the shitty carpet. He wouldn't budge—couldn’t—even when he told himself to. Ethan would be on his own, and the hunter was starting to get the upper hand.

  Then, wait a minute? What the hell was he doing? Enough time had passed that Jamie had more than enough juice inside of him to stun the guy. Duh.

  Clenching his fists, Jamie rushed over to the hunter, reached up and yanked on his hair. He gripped it tight enough that he could pull out chunks, and probably would have if the hunter hadn’t arched backwards, a scream sounding from his open mouth. He wouldn’t be able to hold on for more than a few seconds.

  "Ethan, let go!" Jamie yelled.

  Ethan immediately flung himself in the opposite direction. The second he was clear, Jamie let the electricity flow right in the nick of time, because the hunter had just spun around with the spelled shackles in his hands.

  He didn't get the chance to put them on Jamie's wrists as he shrieked and jumped five feet into the air, but Jamie managed to keep his hands on the man.

  Jamie had only ever electrocuted a few people in his lifetime. None of them were dead, and he didn't intend on killing anyone, but the smell was always the same. So were the stunned shrieks that his victims released before no noise came out at all, and their mouths stayed open—wanting to scream, but unable to.

  The scent of burning hair was almost overpowering. He couldn’t handle it. The hunter dropped to the floor when Jamie released him, and then his hair started to smoke. Some of that hair was still in Jamie’s fingers.

  Gross. Gross. Gross. He was going to puke.

  Jamie watched closely, inching forward, making sure the guy was alive. After a few breathless seconds, the man sucked in a deep breath and coughed, though his eyes remained closed and his hair still stuck up.

  "What the fuck?" Jamie turned his head and looked at Ethan. The man was staring down at the hunter with his nose curled and a hard frown on his mouth. When Ethan brought his arm up cover his nose, Jamie realized his disgust stemmed from the burning smell.

  This whole thing probably wasn't going to help him win points with the man, but then again, they were supposed to be separating soon, so it shouldn't matter.

  It shouldn't.

  "How did they find us?" Jamie asked, considering Ethan always knew so much more about the way the hunters and collectors worked.

  "Don't know, it's too early for them to have found my truck, but stranger things've happened. Most likely someone recognized you and called you in."

  "How would they recognize me?" Jamie asked.

  Ethan was already moving. How was he doing that? Didn’t his wounds hurt? Ethan didn’t seem to notice as he went to the door of their motel room, which was slightly crooked on its hinges from where it had been bashed in, and then he checked outside quickly before shutting and locking the door. "You wouldn't have just been on the radio, you know. Your picture would’ve been sent to every hunter’s phone. To be honest, I'm just shocked there weren’t more of them."

  "More?" Jamie demanded, and he looked down at the two guys on the floor, then glanced over at the bathroom. "I thought three was plenty."

  "They thought I was a hostage, or dead. That usually requires more people to be on the job," Ethan said, and he started snatching up his clothes and putting them on.

  It made sense they would think he was a hostage. He kind of had been, if Jamie really wanted him to be, for a few minutes. Maybe that was how he’d taken one guy out so fast before fighting with the other. They might’ve seen him and assumed this was partly a rescue, and Ethan got the jump on them.

  He shivered.

  "Wait, I want to change your bandages," Jamie insisted, but Ethan shrugged him off. "Don't worry about it. We need to get out of here first. Take your first aid kid, though."

  Jamie hated being put off. Ethan needed to have his wounds checked, but he was already dressing.

  “I guess arguing with you will only slow things down?”

  “Yes,” Ethan said.

  Jamie packed up his few meager belongings. He watched in fascination as Ethan quickly and professionally put all three hunters into their own spelled cuffs. Because they didn't have any powers, the spells that were carved into the metal wouldn't work, but the shackles themselves still made for amazing handcuffs. They wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  Ethan not only shackled the lot of them, but he also ripped the white pillowcases into strips and used them to gag the hunters as well. Jamie wouldn’t have thought to do something like that, and Ethan’s efficiency was both impressive and worrisome.

  He kept expecting the man to pull out another pair of shackles and turn them onto him. And not in the fun time way he’d been teasing about when they were in bed.

  Ethan didn’t turn on Jamie. He frowned as he worked, a frown of concentration and deep thought as he quickly and neatly removed all of their weapons, knives, phones, anything and everything that might help them to escape.

  "We're just going to leave them like that?" Jamie asked. He wasn't too comfortable with that, and now he wasn't altogether sure if he should be afraid of Ethan.

  "They're hunters. They're trained to get themselves out of those cuffs when they need to. It'll buy us a couple of minutes more after they wake up."

  "O-okay," Jamie said. He watched Ethan strap himself up with all of the weapons from the three hunters. He took their holsters, their guns, knives, all of it. And there actually was an extra pair of shackles—of course.

  He just looked so…official. He looked just as he did when Jamie first realized he was a hunter. His legs itched to run now, both away from Ethan, and toward him.

  There was something sexy about Ethan in all that now that Jamie wasn’t one hundred percent terrified the man would turn him in. Ethan strapped up in weapons and leather, a serious expression on his face, was a badass and sexy Ethan.

  “What the?” Jamie jumped back and away from Ethan when the man put his hand on his shoulder. Jamie hadn't been paying attention and didn't even notice when Ethan walked up to him.

  If Ethan thought Jamie's reaction to be strange, he didn't mention it. "We need to get going."

  "R-right," Jamie said, grabbing his stuff.

  They went to the door. “You said the kid at the front counter didn't see you bring me in, right?" Ethan asked.

  "No," Jamie said, shaking his head. "Though I don't know why that matters now since these guys definitely—Hey!"

  Jamie stopped talking and started struggling when Ethan pushed him, grabbed his wrists and yanked them behind his back. Jamie was in a pair of spelled cuffs before he could even summon enough electricity to give Ethan static shock.

  "What the hell are you doing?" he yelled, panicked, betrayed and totally pissed off, but mostly in a panic. "Get me the fuck out of these things! Right—Mmph!"

  Jamie was cut off when Ethan abruptly put his large hand over his mouth. He didn’t stop struggling, even though it did him no good. Ethan was by far stronger than Jamie was, even after a fight that left him bleeding.

  Without meaning to, a choked noise left him beneath Ethan’s hand, and he stared up at the man, partly glaring and partly begging with his eyes.

  Don’t do this. Please don
’t do this.

  “Stop, stop, stop," Ethan said, his voice way too calm for Jamie's liking after being tricked into a set of spelled cuffs. "I need you to keep quiet. They have leather bags, and I'm going to put one of them over your head. Not for long," Ethan promised when Jamie tried to lunge away from him again. "It's so the kid downstairs can see one of the hunters taking away the big bad paranormal, got it? I've got their IDs, I'll get into the van and we’ll drive out of here, and it'll be at least fifteen minutes before the kid thinks to come up here and look for the others. We can go north together, but you have to trust me on this, all right?"

  Jamie's heart pounded so damned fast he could barely think straight. He could hardly breathe either, but what choice did he have? Ethan could be lying through his teeth as a way of making good with the hunters again. That fight, and watching Jamie take out one of those men with electricity might've just scared him into wanting to get back to his former employer and fast.

  Part of Jamie didn't think that. He still believed Ethan, but the other part of him screamed that it would be stupid to willingly let himself get bagged up and tossed into a hunter van. The other part of him was just terrified of having one of those bags over his head. The shackles alone were making his heart thump like crazy, and he was starting to sweat.

  Jamie nodded. He wanted to trust Ethan, so he was going to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. Ethan removed his hand from his mouth. Jamie muttered, “Just to let you know, if you're tricking me, I will never forgive you."

  Ethan sighed. "Not a trick, but I get why you'd say that," he said, and Jamie started to tremble as he watched Ethan pull out one of the black leather bags he'd taken from the three hunters.

  “I put the cuffs on you without your permission because I knew you would never let me do this—“

  “You’re damned right.”

  “But it’s the only way,” Ethan said. “Try not to be scared. This is only for a few minutes."

  "Have you ever had your head in one of those?" Jamie asked.

  Ethan shook his head, looking down at the bag in his hands. "No. I haven't."