Heat didn’t rock her to her very core. Last night had.
She’d known it was a mistake. How could it be anything else? He was a Hunter, here for one purpose, and when he was finished, he’d be gone. But, still, hearing him voice it hurt. The sharp, twisting pain knifed through her.
It hurt. But she’d be damned if she let him see that.
“Well, gee. I’m so glad you decided that now.” Jess reached out and snatched the keycard from his hand. As she strode down the landing, she called out, “Me and my skinny ass will be in the room. Without you. You want a room, get your own.”
After locking herself in the room, she turned on the lights and stared at the small, dingy space. She started towards the bed, but halfway there, she turned away. She finally curled up on the floor with her back pressed to the door. Arms wrapped around herself, she closed her eyes and worked very, very hard to think about absolutely nothing.
VAX watched as the door slammed shut behind Jess. He almost barged in on her. So what if she wanted to be left alone? He’d told her how it was going to be, and he…
He turned away from the door and shoved a hand through his hair. He had been acting like a bastard since that morning.
He could have taken the coward’s way out and claimed it had to do with all her questions—she had unwittingly been digging into very old wounds, and it had hurt like hell.
But it went deeper than that. Her questions just reminded him of a promise he had made to himself ages ago. They had only known each other a few days, but even in that short span of time, Jess had worked her way under his skin, and he couldn’t let that continue. Vax wasn’t going to let her mean anything to him. It seemed as though almost everybody who mattered to him died. He lifted his hands to his face, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes.
She was pissed off, and she had a damn good reason. Instead of treating her like a lover, he’d treated her like a stranger. It was safer for her in the long run. He knew that. But it was a damned shitty way to treat anybody, much less the first woman in decades who’d made him feel anything.
Silently, he walked over to the door. He laid a hand against it and opened his mouth to call out her name. He didn’t, though.
He just waited there for the longest time. He lowered his shields, trying to pick up something from her, but there was nothing. She had locked herself down good and tight.
Sorry, Jess. He mouthed it silently and then turned around, heading back to the car. They both needed clean clothes and food. He’d get those and later he’d try talking to her again, see if he couldn’t get things back on an even keel.
LESS than two hours later, he stood at the door and only wished it could be that easy. Jess’s response to his knock had been Go away. He told her that he had some clothes for her and she ignored him. Food? The suggestion she gave him for that might not be anatomically impossible, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be pleasant.
He was tempted to go to one of the vending machines for coffee and try to use some of that to coax her into opening the door. Instead, he went back to the office and paid for the room next to hers. He’d let her cool down a little more. Use that time to convince himself that distance was a good thing.
If she left the room, he’d hear her, and then—then…“Then what?” he muttered to himself as he unlocked the door to his own room and stared inside. It was dank, dismal, and not particularly clean, but he didn’t leave. Instead, he stepped inside and closed the door.
There was no and then. He needed to distance himself from her, and she sure as hell didn’t need to spend any more time around him than necessary. She didn’t realize it, but he was doing her a favor by pushing her away.
And if he kept telling himself that, maybe, come morning, he’d believe it. Maybe it wouldn’t feel like he had just totally screwed up something important.
AND then again, maybe not.
Vax woke up to the sound of a diesel engine roaring to life out in the truck parking lot behind the hotel. They had checked in a little past two p.m., and it hadn’t been quite five when he’d had locked himself in the room next to Jess’s. It was too close to nightfall for them to get much accomplished that night, and he didn’t want to do it when Jess was still so pissed anyway.
If this was going to work, they both had to put what happened yesterday behind them. Otherwise, one or both of them were going to be distracted and that only led to bad, bad things in Vax’s line of work.
So he had spent the whole damn night in the room, dozing off and on. Each time Jess moved around next door, he’d heard her. She’d left the room twice and he had opened his own door just enough to watch her walk down the hall to the vending area.
The second time, she’d seem him watching her. He’d opened the door a little wider and almost went out to her. But she had averted her eyes and hurried into her room, making it pretty damn clear she didn’t want to talk to him.
Hopefully, she wasn’t still so pissed off at him, but even if she was, they were going to have to deal with it. Although he had a feeling a night in this dump hadn’t done anything to improve her mood. It sure hadn’t done much for his, and he had reasons for coming here.
He lay on the still-made bed, arms crossed over his chest as he stared up at the ceiling. It was cracked, yellowed, and water-stained. The sad thing was, it was the nicest part of the entire damn room. The floors were soiled with food, drinks, and various body fluids. The smell was enough to make him sick even if he hadn’t had a sensitive nose.
He climbed from the bed with a desperate urge to shower, but he already knew the shower was too disgusting to use. “Shit.” He turned back and stared into the room. He decided he needed a swift kick in the ass.
He had a viable reason for picking a sleazebag hotel. He had paid cash for the rooms. Places like this would overlook little things like ID if you handed them a little extra cash. He had no idea if Masters and Fitzpatrick were looking for Jess, but it seemed likely. He wasn’t going to risk it, and that meant staying out of the nicer hotel chains.
But he could have found something a little better than this. It was nothing short of a miracle that sirens hadn’t woken him up at least once.
A faint sound from the room next door made him stand still. It wasn’t Jess. She had the room on the other side. He could hear people moving around, though, heard somebody swear when an alarm clock went off and a couple more people bitching because the alarm woke them up as well.
If people were moving around, it was time for them to get out of here.
Vax had thought he couldn’t feel much worse, but when Jess opened the door and he saw the bruised-looking circles under her eyes, he knew he’d been wrong. Guilt swam through his stomach.
She had splashed water on her face, probably in an effort to wake up. Her hair was slightly damp. She hadn’t used the shower. He would have heard it if she had, and he suspected she’d had the same reaction to the bathroom as he had.
I’m sorry. He practiced the line silently and figured it was just a little too lame to let it go at that. Sorry I’m a bastard and that I made you sleep in a hotel not fit for the living. That was a little better, but before he could offer his apology, Jess pushed past him without a word.
He caught up with her as she started to descend the stairs. She didn’t look at him once as she said, “I need a clean bathroom. Now. Give me my damn keys.”
He did so silently, holding them in his palm. She snatched them without touching his hand, but when she would have turned away, Vax reached out. He didn’t grab her, just touched his fingers lightly to her cheek. Her skin had a translucent look to it, she was so pale. The area under her eyes looked nearly black. He had a feeling she hadn’t slept at all. “I’m sorry.”
Her brows went up. “Really. For what? For staying a hotel too disgusting for words? I wouldn’t let a corpse sleep here. Or for being a rotten bastard?”
Her words echoed his own thoughts so closely, it was unnerving. Vax murmured, “Both.”
Jess studied him. She was just a little gratified to see that he didn’t look as though he’d slept any better than she had. But then again, Jess hadn’t slept, period. So even five minutes would have been better than what she had managed. “Does that mean you’re going to act a little less like a bastard today?”
He looked away. When he kicked at the broken asphalt with a booted foot, she felt the corners of her mouth quiver in a smile. There was something pathetically cute about seeing a grown man looking so sheepish. “A little’s about all I can promise.”
“Fine.” She shrugged and turned away. She considered seeing whether she could make him really grovel. That would be a sight, if she could manage it. But she didn’t see him doing the grovel bit so easily.
“That’s it?”
She glanced back at him and said, “That’s what?”
“You lock yourself in there for, what…” He glanced towards the horizon, as though he were gauging the time. “Nearly sixteen hours, and that’s all the hell you’re going to give me?”
She’d looked at the clock on her way out and knew it was closer to seventeen hours, but who was counting? She glanced down at her clothes and plucked the shirt away from herself with a grimace. “I’m too hungry for hell. I don’t want to mess with giving hell. I want a shower, clean clothes, coffee, and food. Then I might feel like giving you hell.”
In response, he pushed a bag at her. Jess looked inside and, despite herself, she felt her heart melt just a little. She’d told herself she needed to follow his example and back off a little, but she didn’t know if she could manage it.
The bag held clean clothes. Clean, new clothes that hadn’t been washed yet, but she didn’t give a damn. When she looked up at Vax, he jerked his head towards the room and said, “Go ahead and change.”
“Ooooohhh no. There’s a truck stop off the interstate, ten miles north of here. I want a shower before I put anything clean on.” Clean clothes, a shower…Oh yeah, that was going to be heaven.
Plus, the truck stop had an adjacent Panera Bread. That meant coffee and a nice, fresh bagel.
BY the time she finished in the shower, Vax was already sitting down and it looked like he’d demolished his breakfast already. After paying for coffee, a bagel, and an apple, she joined him at the table.
He didn’t say anything, and she spent the next fifteen minutes filling her belly and fueling herself with two cups of coffee. By the time she’d finished, she felt human again.
She just might be able to make it through the day without killing the witch at her side.
Of course he also wasn’t giving her those dark, sexy smiles that made her heart start doing a funny little cha-cha, either.
Vax sat across from her. In front of him there was a demolished soufflé, a half-eaten cheese bagel, an apple core, and a tall glass that had held milk. The man could put away food like nothing she’d ever seen. Curiousity got the better of her, and she asked, “You always eat like that?”
Vax looked away from an open copy of the Star. “Generally, no. I tend to eat more than that. Just not very hungry today.”
All that, and he wasn’t very hungry. “Exactly what do you define as hungry?”
He smiled. “Usually I’d want some pancakes, some bacon or sausage.” He eyed her bagel. “Definitely something more substantial than a chewy piece of bread. And speaking of that chewy piece of bread, since you’re done with it, we need to go.”
Jess drained the rest of the coffee and stood up. “Let me get a refill.” She also bought a bottle of water. On the way out, she swung by the restroom. She met Vax out in the car and wasn’t surprised to see him sitting in the driver’s seat again. “I guess I don’t need to ask how you managed to get inside, do I?”
He just shrugged. “You’re going to be too distracted to drive.” If he hadn’t had that no-nonsense, I mean business look on his face, Jess would have assumed he was talking about something a little more fun. But he did have that look.
ANDdistracted was an understatement. Jess could feel the sweat rolling down her face and she wanted desperately to move, wanted a drink, wanted to stop. But Vax’s low, hypnotic voice wouldn’t let her. Every time she tried to pull back inside herself, his voice was there.
She hadn’t ever put much stock in the powers of meditation, but then again, she hadn’t ever witnessed them. Much less experienced them. It had taken less than four minutes for Vax to lull her into a deep meditative state. His voice guided her. She hadn’t ever felt so attuned before. She could hear her heart beating. She could feel each and every breath moving in and out of her lungs.
But she sucked at the psychic bit. Totally sucked. Vax insisted that even a brief contact with Dena should be enough. Something wrong happened to her. Happened to others. What happened to her goes against the laws of nature. Psychic skill doesn’t work against nature. It works with it. If you focus, you’ll be able to sense the wrong. You can feel it. You can find it.
His words kept circling around in her head, and Jess blew out a harsh breath. The hell I can.
His hand tightened on her neck. “You’re not focusing, Jess. Breathe in. Slow. Breathe out. Slow. In. Out.”
“I’m not in labor,” she snapped, trying to shrug his hand away. “I don’t need a Lamaze coach.” Vax suppressed a laugh. Jess slid him a dark look. “You think that’s funny.”
A smirk canted up the corners of his lips, and he shook his head. “No.”
Jess took a deep breath. “Look, can we take a break? I’m hotter than hell, and I can’t seem to breathe very well. Geez, who would have thought that meditating was so damned hard?”
Vax pulled his hand away and shrugged. “You’re not focusing hard enough.” He glanced in the rearview mirror and changed lanes.
“It’s not that easy, pal. I keep hearing car horns, sirens.” You.
She could hear him, smell him. How was she supposed to be able to concentrate when she couldn’t quit thinking of him? She blew out a breath and propped her elbow on the car door. “It’s just not that easy.”
“I know.”
He stopped the car and Jess looked around. They were in the parking lot of Circle Centre Mall. Under normal circumstances, she would have made a sarcastic remark about how the timing was all wrong for shopping. But she’d been wearing the same clothes for two days, and she was damn tired of it. “Oh, man. Clothes. I want. Gimme.”
She closed her hand around the handle, but before she could open the door, the locks went down. She scowled at Vax.
“I bought you clothes.”
Jess glanced down at the form-fitting black T-shirt and jeans. They were stiff and had that new-clothes smell, but she wasn’t complaining. However, that bag hadn’t included underwear. She needed a bra and she needed some panties. Right now, she was going without panties, which wasn’t particularly comfortable with new jeans. The shirt was too form-fitting to not wear a bra, but if she had to wear her current one too much longer, she was going to burn the damn thing.
Patiently, she said, “You bought me jeans and a shirt. I need underwear. A bra.”
His eyes dropped, lingered on her chest for a minute. Her body responded accordingly—her mouth went dry, her nipples peaked, and deep inside, she started to ache.
When he spoke, his voice was just a little hoarse. “We aren’t here to shop. Once you get your focus, it’s easy. And I can help you find your focus—if you trust me.”
Jess looked longingly towards the stores. “Ten minutes? Please?”
Vax gave her that infamous narrow-eyed look. The one where his eyes resembled cold steel. “You signed on for this, Jess. We’ve got a job to do. It doesn’t include shopping.”
“Does it include us running around wearing the same bra for days on end and no underwear?”
At that, his eyes blazed. His gaze dropped, lower this time, and Jess flushed as she realized just where he was staring. Suddenly, the air in the car seemed to boil with the heat coming off him. He turned away and hit the button to
unlock her door.
Jess hesitated and he slanted a look at her. “Get out now—or you might not be wearing pants in a minute.”
VAX had to give her credit.
She didn’t just make it fast.
As she came striding out of the mall, he kept thinking about the fact that she’d been sitting next to him for the past couple hours, naked under the jeans.
His cock throbbed, and he glanced towards his lap. “Down, boy,” he muttered. But his penis obviously had a mind of its own—just thinking of how she had looked after he’d made her scream out his name was enough. Now his body was determined to experience it again.
Uncomfortable, Vax shifted in the seat.
He’d guessed at her size when he’d bought her clothes, and he’d guessed just a little too well. The jeans outlined her long, slender legs like a second skin, and the shirt wasn’t much better. It clung to her body, outlining each and every subtle curve. It ended about an inch above her blue jeans, and the bare skin between was smooth and pale. Vax knew just how soft and sweet her skin was. He could remember pressing his mouth to the shallow indentation of her navel, kissing lower and lower…. He decided he hadn’t spent enough time on that, though. Another three or four hours might take the edge off. For now.
Jess climbed inside the car and tossed a green and white bag onto the floor along with a pink striped one. He recognized the pink one and had to suppress a groan as he thought about Jess and lingerie. The scent of her filled his head, though, making it damn hard to not think about her, lingerie or otherwise.
“You okay?”
A glance at the green and white bag explained why she smelled so good. She’d taken a couple of minutes to hit a bath shop. “You really know how to make good use of your time. Got any money left?”
Jess gave him a cheeky smile. “Hell, yes. End-of-the-season clearance.” She pushed her hands through her hair and leaned back against the seat with a smile. “I feel a hundred times better. All right. Let’s do this.”
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