Burns Like Fire (Dangerous Creatures #1)

by Mandy Rosko

  He could see it in her eyes the second she understood him. Her face became even redder, but she was still so damned gorgeous. “I...I want you to go down on me. Suck on my clit,” she said, just in case the first way she said it wouldn’t be good enough.

  It was definitely good enough. “Your wish is my command,” Jack replied, dipping his head and pressing his mouth to her wet cunt.

  Cindy arched her spine and grabbed onto Jack’s hair as she groaned, and the second he slipped his tongue inside, licking her deep and tasting her finally, he could feel her inner muscles clamping down on him in a tight and pulsing grip as she came hard.

  He didn’t stop sucking or licking her. He let her ride his face, ride him until she was slumped down and blinking blearily, red hair spread all over the place.

  Jack was suffering from what had to be the worst case of blue balls that he’d ever had in his entire life, but he was also smiling wide as he slid up her body.

  “Sorry,” she said, as if she'd disappointed him or something. “I was hoping to go a little longer before that happened.”

  Jack leaned in and kissed her, and he was pleased when she immediately opened her mouth for his tongue, tasting herself on his mouth. He wanted to make sure she savored how damned good she was.

  He didn’t pull back until he was satisfied she’d gotten enough. “We’re nowhere near done yet,” he said.

  Cindy grinned at him, but then her grin melted away. The light in her eyes went out, and her grip on him was so tight that he wouldn't have been shocked to look down and see that her knuckles had turned bone white. "I'm a pyro," she said, and then, as if she'd felt the need to prove it, she held up her hand and willed a small, but strong wisp of fire to appear in her palm.

  Jack stared at her, then at the flame, and back at her. His heart literally stopped for a few seconds, a painful sensation, and he had no fucking idea what he was supposed to do.

  He didn't say anything right away. He couldn't think of what to say. The flame in Cindy's hand went out as she immediately started to cry.

  *****

  Jack sighed and pressed his forehead against the cold tile wall of the shower. His hand gripped his cock in a tight fist as the last of his orgasm shuddered out of him.

  He didn't stop the motion of his hand. He worked his erection until every drop of cum, every ounce of pleasure, was released from his body. Only then did the muscles in his shoulders and back, the ones he hadn't even realized were tensing up, relax.

  Then the regret sank in.

  Jerking off to that memory had been kind of unexpected. It said a lot about him, that he could still get off on the memory of the woman who'd tricked him, but he couldn't help himself.

  The second his body had been under the hot spray, her face was all he could think about, followed by memory of how her skin had felt as he'd fought her in the car. Much more pleasant memories came after that, like their first time having sex together. It was bad enough that Jack could masturbate to a woman who'd killed his family, but at least he wasn't the sort of pervert who would do it to the thought of an unconscious woman who had just been fighting to get away from him.

  Jack quickly washed away his cum from the shower wall, and then he started soap himself off, pretending as if nothing had happened at all. She didn't have to know about it. No one did. So it wasn't like it mattered anyway.

  Chapter Five

  Cindy listened to the water run through the pipes in the house. Jack must be in the shower, which was the only reason she was picturing him naked.

  But then she thought about the last time they'd had sex, and how calm and serene his face had been when he'd kissed her.

  Why the hell was she thinking about that? It didn't help that it aroused her either. Her blood flowed hot, down to lower places that caused all sorts of problems, especially considering she was in chains.

  Maybe it meant she secretly had an S&M fetish of some kind. Maybe it meant she was the kind of girl who got turned on when she was chained up. But now was definitely not the time to be exploring her sexuality

  Was it longing? That was most likely it. She was longing for a time back when she had everything her heart desired, and life didn’t seem quite as grim as what those other paranormals had painted for her. Especially when Jack had hugged and kissed her after her confession—and embarrassing bout of crying—telling her everything would be okay, and that he would keep her secret.

  She and Jack did end up going all the way that day. After she'd managed to stop crying and the mood returned to what it had been before she'd rudely interrupted it.

  They’d lain together and talked about all the things they were going to do, and then Jack made slow love to her again, and Cindy thought she would die from happiness.

  Cindy was trying to summon her fire now while Jack was busy upstairs. He'd probably already called the collectors to bring her in.

  No fire came. No hopeful little spark. Her skin didn't even glow or get warmer. She might as well have been normal.

  She'd heard of some vampires and werewolves putting spelled cuffs on themselves in order to go out in the daylight, or stop a transformation during the full moon, but the difference was they kept the keys with them at all times. Some had the cuffs fashioned into bracelets. Cindy was stuck.

  As much as she hated her powers sometimes, she felt naked without them. It was enough to make her struggle against the shackles around her wrists. She tried to fold in her thumb as much as possible to squeeze the damned thing off. When that didn’t work, only causing her to bleed a little, she tried to summon a flame again.

  The chains worked great though, and she still couldn't summon any fire. Even though she had much better control of her powers now than when she was young, nothing came. Maybe if she had some of these shackles made into bracelets growing up she might not have been kicked out of her parents house on her ninth birthday.

  She had to keep thinking. There had to be another way to get out of here. She was in chains inside a concrete room. Her powers were gone, and the metal ring holding her chains to the concrete was pretty secure. Not even the slightest wiggle.

  Jack had planned for everything.

  It took Cindy another few minutes to realize that there wasn't even an air duct in the room with her. Oh God. Her heart pounded as she thought about her oxygen depleting. She yanked on her chains some more, pulled at the metal ring that was drilled into the wall, but still couldn't break free, and her wrists bled some more. The pain was better than thinking about suffocating.

  Jack wouldn't let her die in here, would he?

  Cindy began to hyperventilate. She balled herself up as small as she could as the air in her lungs literally felt like it was being stolen from her.

  The door to her prison slammed open. Jack walked in.

  Cindy stared up at him. She watched him, and noted how he didn't shut the door behind him. She could breathe again. She sighed and slumped against the wall.

  Jack had a tray in his hand with food on it, and that was about when she realized how hungry she was. How long had it been since he'd taken her? She didn't even know how long she'd been inside of that horrible box.

  "Please," she said, wincing as she remembered his no speaking rule. Too late now. "How long have I been here?"

  Jack didn't just have a tray of food with him; he was also carrying a small folding stool under one arm. He walked across the small room, right to the other side where she wouldn't be able to reach him. "It's almost noon," he replied, and sat down before arranging the tray on his knees.

  He certainly looked better than the last time she'd seen him. The colour had returned to his cheeks – though he still hadn't shaved – and he was wearing clean clothes. Jeans with a long sleeved dark shirt. His hair looked slightly damp. He'd showered.

  "Noon," Cindy said, turning over those words in her head. Nearly fourteen hours, and she'd had nothing to eat since before six yesterday, nearly twenty-four hours ago.

  She stared at the tray on his l
egs. He had a sandwich on it, something thick with turkey and bacon, what looked like a small plastic container of potato salad that came from the grocery store, and a bottle of water.

  The sandwich was cut into fours, and Jack took one of them and bit into it. "Hungry?" he asked.

  Of course she was. Cindy nodded.

  Jack took another bite. "The collectors won't be here for another two or three days. Something bigger came up," he said. "If you want to eat while you're here then you're going to earn your food."

  Cindy swallowed hard. Her mind was racing about the few ways she could earn a meal with a man who hated her guts. "Earn it how?"

  Jack shrugged. He was putting a look on his face that suggested how little he cared about this whole thing, but he was never very good about hiding things from her. Whatever he was thinking about, it was bothering him.

  "You can start by telling me where you were going last night."

  For what had to be the tenth time in just so many hours, Cindy's heart stopped. She wasn't telling him about Jamie. No way in hell.

  "I was just going out by myself," she said. "Dancing, you know?"

  "Hoping to meet someone?"

  "Maybe."

  "Liar." Jack glared at her, and he finished off the triangle of sandwich he was eating. "Fine, I'll figure it out eventually anyway."

  "Jack—"

  "Be quiet," he snapped, and his glare intensified. She almost thought he could burn through her with a look like that, and he wasn't the one with fire powers.

  Cindy knew what he was thinking about. It wasn't the fact that she wasn't answering him that was really bothering him. "I didn't kill your family, Jack."

  "Bull-fucking-shit," he barked, and Cindy had never seen so much hatred in those blue eyes.

  "I didn't! I swear I didn't!"

  Jack hurled his water bottle at her before Cindy could say another word. She ducked her head, and luckily the bottle missed. It was just one of the thin and cheap plastic things, but it was full of water, and with the force that Jack had thrown it, if it had gotten her head, then it would have hurt like crazy.

  Cindy barely dared to lift her head away from the protection of her arms to look at him. Her cheek throbbed, a reminder that Jack had already struck her once. She was sure he would do it again.

  "Fuck," Jack cursed, then shot to his feet, knocking over the rest of the sandwich, and the tray clattered to the ground.

  He rubbed his hands over his face and paced in a full circle around the room before stopping in front of her.

  "My house was burned to the ground, Cindy. Burned to the ground! With me and my family inside of it, right after I told you..." He trailed off, looked away from her, and then bit his lips before speaking again in that dangerous tone. "Don't tell me it wasn't you."

  He wasn't going to believe her. Jack's fists were clenched tight, and his body trembled. He was holding back by a thread.

  She kept her mouth closed and just watched him, waiting.

  The shaking in his shoulders eventually stopped, and his body relaxed ever so slightly. Jack blew out a long breath. He ran his fingers through his blond hair, causing the short strands to stick up in several places. He bent over and started to pick up the ruined sandwich off the floor, but he nudged the container of potato salad toward her. "I'll be back later," he said, and then he left her again.

  Cindy stayed where she was. She didn't move and just hugged her knees to her chest.

  She stared at the little cup of potato salad, and the bottle of water that hadn't rolled too far away. Cindy didn't want to eat anything that had been kicked toward her, or drink something that had been thrown at her.

  Her growling stomach and dry throat eventually won over her crumbling willpower, and she reached for the water and the salad.

  She consoled herself with the thought that both the water bottle and the cup of potato salad were still sealed, so it wasn't like she would be eating or drinking something dirty.

  The only downside was that she had to pull the potato salad out of the container with her fingers, because Jack had been too angry to think of leaving her a fork.

  Maybe he didn't trust her enough to have one.

  At least he left the door open so she didn't have too worry about suffocating.

  She was going to get out of here. She hadn't done anything wrong, and she wasn't going to let Jack hurt her for something she didn't do. She had to think and plan. Luckily it seemed she was going to have more time for that… as long as Jack hadn't been lying to her about the collectors.

  Chapter Six

  Jack stomped around his house, slamming doors, and tried to find something to do that wouldn't remind him of the woman downstairs. He was too damned angry and needed a way to vent.

  All this time. After two years and his dead family, she was going to try to pretend she had nothing to do with what happened?

  She couldn't even respect him enough to admit to what she'd done, and already he'd lost his composure twice by attacking her. He never lost it around a target. Sloppy shit like that was the exact thing that made a lot of hunters lose their licenses. Or their lives.

  Jack's phone vibrated in his pocket. The sound irritated him, everything irritated him, and he yanked the thing out. "What?" he snapped.

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. "I guess you got it done?"

  Jessica. Shit.

  "Sorry," Jack said, wiping his face with his hand before pressing his forehead against the nearest wall. "Yeah, I got her. I'm just stressed."

  "You sound stressed," Ethan said, and from the sound of his voice, the prick was smiling about it. Jessica was on speaker. Great.

  "Fuck off. I'm not in the mood," Jack said.

  "Why are we best friends?" Ethan asked.

  "Shithead," Jack said.

  "It had to be done, Jack," Jessica said, though not unkindly. "She's unregistered, and after what she did to you—"

  "She's still here," Jack said quickly.

  There was another pause. That was never a good thing with the two of them.

  "What happened?" Ethan asked.

  "I called it in, but there was a bigger job that required all hands on deck. The collectors won't be here for another two days. Three if we’re being honest."

  "Will you be all right with her in the house? You're not exactly equipped for overnight stays," Jessica said.

  "Just chain her to the floor and you should be fine," Ethan said. "Or leave her in the box."

  "That's not humane," Jessica said.

  "So? After what she did to him it's not exactly the worst thing that could happen to her."

  Jack pushed himself off the wall. He started wandering the halls of his house, not really paying attention to where he was going. "She's afraid of enclosed spaces," he said.

  "So?" Ethan asked. "She wasn't afraid of lighting you on fire."

  Ethan was his best friend, and Jessica was Jack's ex, and it was because of this that they were the only two people on earth Jack had told about Cindy's involvement in the fire. They usually erred on the lenient side when it came to the paranormals they found, but Ethan had no sympathy for Cindy. Jessica acted a little more reserved whenever she was mentioned. Probably because it was awkward to hear about a former lover's ex in conversation. No matter what that conversation was about.

  "That doesn't mean he wants to lower himself to her level," Jessica said.

  Jack clenched his fist, his nails biting into the palm he'd slapped Cindy with. He wasn't about to mention that to Jessica.

  "It's his choice what he does with her," Ethan said.

  "I'm just saying he's not equipped to handle housing a dangerous paranormal for so long," Jessica replied.

  No, Jack wasn't. Especially not with her. Cindy had been in his house for only a few hours and he'd already jerked off. "I should be fine. She's already chained up so it's not like she can go anywhere."

  "You said she was a pyro," Jessica said. From the sound of her voice, she was getting pis
sed. Most likely at her brother.

  Like Jack could ever forget that Cindy was a fire starter.

  "The chains are spelled," Jack said, trying to reassure her. "And she's in a cement room. She's not burning her way out of that."

  There was another brief silence. Jack waited for her response.

  "You know, you're the only ex boyfriend I've got that I call up worried about."

  Ethan made a choked sound. Like he'd been taking a drink of something and his sister's words made it go down the wrong tube.

  Jack smiled at both Jessica's worry and her brother's discomfort. "Which makes me pretty lucky, right?"

  He didn't get the response he wanted from his attempt at flirting, which was probably for the best. Things didn't work out the first time because he was still hung up on the woman downstairs.

  Jessica was good enough to not mention that Jack was being an idiot. Ethan was still coughing. A dull thumping noise sounded like he was pounding on his chest.

  "I'll call you later to ask about her," Jessica said. "If you need any help, I'll come over."

  Jack knew she would. At the drop of a hat, she and Ethan would both be here if he told them he needed help. Jessica wouldn't be coming over because she thought she could get him into bed either. She was a better friend than that. It had been hard enough for Ethan to accept that his sister had been dating his friend, and it had been a real test of that friendship when they'd broken up, too.

  Jack didn't even think he could have sex with her. If Jessica came over by herself wearing a babydoll and a smile, Jack didn't think he could have sex with her. Not because he didn't want to hurt her, or put his friendship with Ethan through the grinder again.

  Seeing Cindy had done this to him. Having her in the house was a problem.

  That was the most unfair thing in the universe, too, because he could really use a good fuck right about now.

  "Jack? Are you listening?"

  He came out of his thoughts like someone had splashed water on his face. "Yeah. Yeah I heard you."

  He seriously doubted Jessica believed him, but she was good about it and let it pass.