by Tes Hilaire
She lifted her gaze to his. The hint of uncertainty in his eyes startled her. Or was that fear? But if so, then what was he afraid of? What she offered or the beast within?
Use it. Use his fear.
She lifted her chin, glaring at him as she pulled at her arm. “There’s no beast here other than the one manhandling me.”
It worked. He released her arm as if it were a fire poker. Eyes haunted. He cursed and stood. She watched in fascination as he paced her small apartment, his bloodstained hand rubbing at the back of his neck, his attention completely focused on whatever inner demon he was conversing with.
Holding her breath she shifted onto her hands and knees, quietly easing towards the table by her hideaway bed. If she could just get to her drawer…
He spun, his eyes settling on her as his mouth pulled into a frown. Crap. She lunged for the table, yanking the drawer open.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, his heavy footfalls announcing the dwindling distance between them.
Her hand tightened around the gun. She yanked it out, pulling the trigger as she spun…only it didn’t fire. Damn safety! She fumbled with the little lever only it was too late. He was already there. His face contorted in rage as his hand ensnared her wrist, his bruising grip grinding the bones until she was forced to drop the gun.
“Let me go!” she screamed, kicking and twisting in his hold even as her gaze fixed longingly on the gun on the floor nearby.
“Hell no.” He kicked the gun aside, wrenching her arm up behind her back, and pushing her down. She met the floor with an “oomph” and didn’t have a chance to recover before his knee came down on her spine, driving the rest of the air from her lungs as he smashed her head into the scuffed hardwood.
“Shit…Fuck!” he roared, the power of his frustration smashing across her senses. “Why did you have to do that?”
Through blurred vision she stared longingly at the gun that now uselessly lay a dozen feet away. This was it. He’d kill her now. And she’d never be able to save Mia.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” His knee jabbed deeper into her back, his hand lifting from the back of her head. Something metallic clamped around the wrist he had twisted awkwardly behind her back. She stiffened.
“What are those?” she asked, panic skittering up her spine as memories prickled at her. Both succubus and incubus liked games. And dominance ones were always a favorite—as long as you were the one in charge. Only, being a half, she’d never been the one in charge.
“Handcuffs. Surely you recognize them.”
“No.” She jerked at her arm, the metal, warm from his body heat, digging into her wrist. “I mean, what are you doing with them?”
“Thought that was obvious.” He leaned down until his face was inches from hers, the hot fan of his breath stroking her skin like a heated caress. “I’m putting these on you. Then I’m going to take a quick shower. After that we’re going to obtain a vehicle and go for a little drive.”
She scoffed. “Let me guess, that little drive will be to a nice remote and deserted location. And I get to stay there. Forever, right? Unless someone digs up my unmarked, shallow grave.”
“No.” He lifted off of her, using his greater strength to yank her up to her feet. “We’re going to go to a little place I know. It’s not exactly remote, but most important it is private, as in lacking of nosey neighbors that are apt to call the cops if you become…uncooperative.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s making me want to go with you.”
“I don’t see that you have much of a choice,” he said, cinching the second handcuff around his own wrist.
Her shoulders sagged. Unfortunately, neither did she, at least not until she could figure out a way to get her gun back.
***
Taking a shower while handcuffed to a woman worthy of her own playboy spread should have been a fantasy come true. What it really was, was a pain in his ass. It wasn’t that she’d been uncooperative. It was how she’d sat on the lip of the tub, her hot hazel eyes glaring her defiance the entire time. And when he’d done a quick, but necessary, scrub of his manly parts that, with her watching, resulted in the expected “rising to the occasion” she’d yawned, obviously unmoved by his gloriously naked self. It was enough to take a chip out of any man’s pride.
“Don’t suppose you have access to a car,” he said as he pulled on a Black Sabbath t-shirt that may have been oversized on her, but pulled uncomfortably snug across his biceps and torso.
She scoffed from her seat on the floor, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, let me just call my chauffer.”
Oh yeah, she was a funny one. Keeping his gaze on her, he stuffed his feet into his boots, pulling his jeans down over them. Thankfully they were dark denim and didn’t show the bloodstains too much, but there had been positively nothing in her dresser that had a chance of fitting him beyond the X-large sleep shirt.
Next he grabbed up the gun she’d tried to peg him with, shoving it into his waistband, then bent to unlock the handcuff from her left wrist, unwinding the chain from the leg of the dresser where he’d locked her up while he dressed.
She curled her lip. “You really think I need these? You’ve already got my gun.”
“True.” He unlocked her other wrist and stuffed the handcuffs into his back pocket as he stood. “And I know how to disarm the safety, too.”
That won him another glare, and though he probably shouldn’t have, he gave in to the urge to chuckle. No glare this time. Her lips parted, her brow furrowed as she looked at him warily. As if this side of him was so much more worrisome than the bloodstained madman who’d tracked her from the alley to her apartment.
The thought sobered him right up and he grabbed her arm to pull her up. “Come on, let’s go.”
He ushered her out the door and down the deteriorating stairway of her apartment complex. Why in the world this place hadn’t been condemned with its neighbors he couldn’t fathom. But whatever.
Obtaining a car was harder than he expected. Not for lack of options, but because those options had already been stripped of anything that made them roadworthy. They had to go a half-dozen blocks before he finally found something that was drivable and wasn’t either tricked out and/or sporting every after-market security measure available.
He shoved her in, taking the time to handcuff her to the door handle before moving to the driver’s side—it would be just his luck she’d try and do something stupid like take a dive out the passenger door.
Making short work of the hotwiring process, he shifted the car into gear and began to drive. She must have been exhausted because she almost immediately fell asleep. Not that it was a restful sleep. A name repeated often. The same one she’d said when he’d first snuck into her apartment through the window.
Guilt twisted his stomach. His first assumption when he’d seen her in her corseted getup had been prostitute. The fact that she’d been strolling the streets at the wee hours of the morning, added to the condition of her apartment building, had further led him to believe his supposition true. But the neatness of her actual apartment, and the more he was with her, the more he began to wonder.
She didn’t act like a drug addict, which in his experience was a pretty common hazard of the profession. And though money was obviously a real issue, she didn’t seem desperate either. Nor did she have the lack of confidence and self-worth that he expected to find once a prostitute’s bravado had been peeled away. The only thing that seemed to suggest any chink in this chick’s armor was this person named Mia. She been obviously worried about her, and if he had to hazard a guess, he’d bet that Mia was also the reason she’d been out in that alley tonight. Probably looking for her.
Wrong place, wrong time. She obviously had her own problems to deal with, but now she was stuck in his personal hell, too.
“Way to fucking go, dipwad,” he muttered. His grip tightened around the wheel as he steered them onto the Bronx River Parkway and headed north. Forty-five minutes later the car was bu
mping along over the cobblestone pavers as they zipped up the long drive towards his adoptive parent’s mansion. No, not their mansion anymore. It was his now, free and clear. Assuming he could pay the taxes, which, even with the sizable windfall he’d inherited was questionable.
He put the car in park, glaring at the monstrosity that he’d lived in from the tender age of five until he’d been shipped out at sixteen. As always the memories, both happy and tinged with resentment, threatened to overwhelm him, but he shoved those aside for more important and more immediate matters…like the woman sleeping in his passenger seat.
“Hey,” he called, eliciting a flicker of movement behind her closed eyelids. “Wake up, sleeping beauty,” he said a bit louder.
Those beautiful wide eyes opened the rest of the way. Not quite brown or blue or green, they were an interesting mix of all. She blinked, lifting her hands to rub them, then frowned confusedly when her right arm was jerked short of its goal by the handcuffs.
Damn it. Why did she have to come into that alley right then? He was a cop, for Christ sake. He upheld the law. Took down the bad guys. He wasn’t a kidnapper. Nor was he the type of man who got off on manhandling women.
Killing though. You obviously get off on that. His stomach rolled. He took a deep breath, pushing away the scattered memories so he could get his limbs under him enough to exit the car.
“We’re here,” he growled, slamming his door shut as he made his way around to her side. He opened her door, unfastening the cuffs from the car and pulled her up out of her seat. She still must have been half asleep. Her hand reflexively extended to grab onto his shoulder as she stumbled against him. Fire licked from the point of contact, reminding him of the zap of attraction that had occurred back in her apartment when she’d touched him. Damn this woman was dangerous. And not just because her presence in that alley made it possible for her to destroy his career.
“What is this place?” she asked, her mouth parted in awe as she stared at the brick mansion that had been his parents’ pride and joy.
“Home sweet home. Do you like it, beauty?”
Her gaze flashed to his. He watched, both fascinated and perturbed as she drew in a breath, pulling her armor back around her. She shrugged, dropping her hands as she looked around. “It’s lovely, as are the grounds. Though I would think burying my body on your own land would be inadvisable.”
He sighed, torn between wanting to tell her he wasn’t going to “off” her and the knowledge that if he couldn’t ensure her cooperation, he might just have to figure out a way to do just that. Would he? Could he? He had no fucking idea. But he also knew he would never go to jail. Not with the number of criminals he’d helped send there.
Speaking of which, he better get his brain in gear and start covering his ass. Not that he had a clue how to do that.
The lead he’d been following had been a new one. One he hadn’t even had time to write a report on yet. So as of now, there was no connection between him and the dead men in the alley other than the woman standing next to him. That could change at any moment. He had no idea what sort of evidence he might have left behind. Blood? Skin? Hair? He hadn’t come away with any injuries, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t left some trace behind. Sure there was a chance that nothing would be found to connect him, but if something was and he hadn’t already come up with a good story for being there—besides massacring six men, of course—then it wouldn’t matter whether he could get his star witness to stay quiet.
He rubbed the back of his neck. It was no wonder the tension hadn’t left since he’d come to his senses back in that alley. He was so far up shit creek it didn’t matter whether he had a paddle or not.
“Well? We going in or not?”
He arched his brow. “I wouldn’t think you’d be in a rush.”
She shrugged. “It’s the middle of the night, in the middle of March, in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. I’m cold and that heap of junk isn’t going to get me anywhere without a key and I doubt you’d be so kind as to hotwire it again for me?”
He shook his head, fighting the urge to grin. All that attitude stuffed into, what? All five-foot-four of her if he took her out of the boots?
She sighed a long-suffering sigh. “That leaves me with only one option.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Why, to seduce you.” She smiled, tracing the swell of her breasts above her corset. And damn if his dick didn’t immediately respond to the suggestion, blood pumping away from the part of his body that really needed it right now and making itself at home with his brain’s less bright cousin to the south.
Dangerous. Definitely dangerous.
He laid his hand on the butt of the gun in his jeans and jerked his chin toward the granite stairs. “Ladies first.”
No way was he touching her to direct her up them. Not when he was itching to do just that. She raised her brow, but complied by going in front. Which, he realized, wasn’t much better than taking her arm would have been. Her ass was amazing. Round and firm but not at all oversized, and the way it swayed when she moved? He should just plan his funeral now because it was going to be the last hurrah he had on the way to hell.
You kidnapped her, asshole. You have no business thinking about how amazing being seduced by her would be.
They came to the massive door. He reached around her to unlock it and pushed it open. The alarm immediately started squawking so he brushed past her and keyed in the code, then moved straight into the living room. So what if she ran? He was beginning to seriously believe he would be better off taking his chances with her silence than remaining in close proximity with her.
Even as he thought it, his muscles clenched, unease slicking his skin. He cut his gaze towards the French doors to make sure she had followed. She stood just past the threshold, her wide eyes scanning the room. Guess she’d been serious when she said she’d rather risk his proximity than the great outdoors.
He followed her wandering gaze, taking the room in from her viewpoint. The room was huge and almost tomblike due to its non-lived in ambiance. The furniture was draped in dust covers and the air held a definitive chill from his refusal to turn the heat up past fifty-five. He pulled off the covers from the love seat and chairs around the smaller of the two fireplaces in the room and opened the panel in order to light the pilot light and start the fire. It came on with a whoosh and a flush of flames before settling down into something warm and homey.
He stood, brushing off his jeans, and turned to her. “Want a drink?”
She blinked, her only outward sign of surprise. “Oh sure. Why the hell not?”
He crossed the room to the built-in sideboard, opening the glass doors and removing two tumblers and his dad’s precious fifty-year-old Dalmore. Pouring two generous servings of the scotch, he crossed back to where she’d settled onto the couch, her legs, bootless now, tucked up under her, and held out a glass.
She took the drink, breathing in the aromas. “Hmm…this smells expensive. Are we celebrating or are you spoiling me with my last drink?”
He winged his brow up, tipping his glass against hers. “Good question. Though I thought we were drinking to my pending seduction.”
He said this to mock her, figuring she’d never been serious about the offer—or should he call it a threat?—and had only said it order to distract him. She paled, but took a sip of her drink without disagreeing. He frowned, but followed suit and had to choke back the liquid as his throat constricted, threatening to gag it up along with whatever else might still remain in his stomach.
Fuck, what exactly had he done in that alley?
He set the drink down on the mantle and paced; his frustration at his inability to remember driving him to try and wear a swath in his mother’s prize Persian rug. His “prisoner” settled further into the couch, sipping periodically as she pointedly ignored him. For some reason that pissed him off even more. He stopped before her, planting his hands on his hips as he glared down at her.
She took another sip of her drink, raising her eyebrows in haughty disbelief.
Yeah, okay, situations reversed, he probably wouldn’t give up that info either.
“All right then, beauty. You want to tell me what you were doing in that alley?”
“Does it matter?” she countered.
He supposed not. Even if her purpose for being there was as nefarious as he’d originally believed, it was nothing compared to the massacre he’d accomplished. Christ, all that blood, the dismembered bodies. He knew, deep in his gut, that no human could have done what he’d managed to do. Which meant that his deepest fear had been right: There was a part of him that wasn’t human.
The urge to ask her what she’d seen was overpowering. Did he sprout claws and fangs? A horn and a forked tail? The idea itself was laughable. Yet to finally know the face of the beast within would almost be liberating. With knowledge maybe he could fight it. Or at least learn the signs that would foretell his loss of control. Twice. Only twice had he completely lost it to the point where he didn’t remember what he’d done. There’d been dozens of other times when he’d felt the beast snapping at the leash. Hundreds more when it had growled its demands or simply perked up its ears with interest.
In general its instincts were good, even saving his life more than once, but then there had been those other times. The times he’d known that to give it free reign would be to the detriment of losing his humanity. Yet never before last night had he passed the point of no return.
I killed tonight. Six men. With my bare hands alone. It didn’t matter that they were criminals or that his actions had been driven by self-defense. What mattered was that he’d lost control of the beast…and he’d done so in front of a witness.
He considered his witness now. Curled up on the couch, with the firelight lending softness to her pin-up curves and model cheekbones, there was something almost vulnerable about her. Her periodic sips of scotch began to seem more a steadying measure, her practiced indifference to his presence a defense mechanism. Her body was tense, ready to spring at any moment. And when she drank it seemed to take her more than a little effort to actually swallow the liquid down. She wouldn’t admit it for the world, but, if he had to guess, she was scared to death. The question was whether her fear was for herself or someone else?