Wicked is the night

by Catherine Mulvany

  She shook her head.

  So he swigged the last of the beer, then pitched the empty over the guardrail.

  With a sinking heart, Nevada listened to it clattering its way down the slope. Definitely not the escape route for her. “Look, I—” she started.

  The drunk grabbed her.

  “Let go of me!” She twisted and squirmed.

  He grinned. “A hottie and a spitfire. Damned if this isn’t my lucky night!”

  His leering face moved closer and closer. The stale brewery stench of his breath filled her nostrils. Then his mouth closed over hers.

  Fueled by revulsion and sheer panic, Nevada twisted loose, aimed a quick kick at his shin, then took off running.

  “Smooth move, Liam,” she heard one of the others say, the comment followed by a lot of raucous laughter.

  No help there. The passengers were just drunk enough to be dangerous, and apparently the driver, Travis, didn’t have either the balls or the decency to stand up to them. She heard a car door slam behind her. The engine started up with a growl.

  Damn it, she couldn’t outrun a car, but if she could just make it to the end of the guardrail, she might be able to slither down the slope at a point where it wasn’t so steep.

  She didn’t have to look behind her to know the car was gaining on her. Not that the driver was moving fast. Quite the contrary. He seemed to be pacing her, prolonging the chase. They probably expected her to run out of steam. If so, they underestimated the strength of an adrenaline rush.

  She was pretty sure she had a shot if she could just make it to the end of the guardrail. Five yards away now. Four. Three. But two yards shy of her goal, disaster struck. She got tangled up in a long strip of shredded truck tire, lost her balance, and landed with a jarring thud on her hands and knees.

  Before she could get her feet back under her, three of them were on her. They jerked off her backpack and flipped her over. She hit the ground with a whump that drove all the air from her lungs.

  “Come on, babe, don’t be shy. How ’bout a kiss?” one of them said.

  “Stop!” she shouted. “Help! Travis! Somebody!”

  “Hold her still, damn it!” the blocky one shouted.

  Nevada’s struggles reached the frenzied level. She kicked and hit and bit at anything that came within range.

  One of her attackers let out a howl as her foot connected with something tender.

  “Son of a bitch!” someone else screeched as she got a good handful of hair.

  “Hold her still, for crying out loud!”

  “Car coming!” Travis yelled.

  Then suddenly, a second set of headlights lit up the scene.

  Nevada blinked in the glare. “Help!” she screamed, her cry echoing off the mountainside.

  “Oh, shit,” someone said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Shoes pounded the pavement, doors slammed, an engine revved, tires squealed. And then they were gone.

  Shaky now that her adrenaline was wearing thin, Nevada levered herself to a sitting position. She’d just finished jerking her sweatshirt down and was reaching for her backpack—her damaged backpack, she noted, one of the shoulder straps ripped completely loose—when the crunch of footsteps on gravel alerted her that someone was coming. Presumably the driver of the second car. Hastily, she shoved herself to her feet.

  “Nevada?” Trick sounded as shocked as she felt. Or at least as shocked as she would‹ed r f have felt if she could have felt anything at all. “Nevada?” he said again, his voice raspy, a little uneven.

  And then she was folded close to his chest, wrapped in his arms. He felt so good, so safe. She started to shake as reaction set in.

  “You’re freezing,” he said.

  Was she? She hadn’t noticed.

  “Come on. You need to get into the Wrangler. I’ll turn the heater on high, so you can thaw out.”

  “Not yet,” she whispered. “Just hold me for a little while longer. Please.”

  So he held her tight right there on the side of the road, and she wasn’t sure, not absolutely, but she thought maybe his lips brushed the top of her head.

  ELEVEN

  Trick kept shooting concerned glances in Nevada’s direction, as if worried she was about to freak out. The truth was, she was miles beyond the freak-out threshold and fast approaching the zombie zone. But at least she wasn’t shuddering nonstop anymore. Hands buried in the pockets of her sweatshirt as much to hide their trembling as for warmth, she huddled in the passenger seat and stared at the road ahead, mesmerized into a fragile facsimile of calm by the comforting repetition of the dashed center line.

  What if Trick hadn’t come along when he did?

  The trembling in her hands immediately spread throughout her body.

  No, she told herself. Don’t think about the what ifs. Think about the what nexts. The problem was, she wasn’t sure at this point what she should do next, though she knew at least one thing she shouldn’t do—return to Midas Lake. Now that Sarge was aware she’d been staying there all this time, he’d be back. Trick and Faraday might have frightened him off for a little while, but no way would he stay away. The first chance he got, he’d return, probably with reinforcements.

  “Are you insane?” Trick asked suddenly.

  She turned sideways to frown at him. “I don’t think so, but I was institutionalized and I do sometimes see things other people don’t, so who knows? Why do you ask?”

  “You’re safe now,” he said.

  “Yes, but—”

  “No thanks to your own rash actions.”

  “You think I encouraged those drunken punks?”

  “Just being there that way—alone—was all the encouragement they needed. Why did you run away in the first place? What were you thinking?”

  “I explained that in my note.”

  He stared at her. “What note?”

  “I left a note…on the…”Ž%" She faltered to a halt, having spotted the napkin lying near her left foot. When Trick had opened the door to get inside, the napkin must have fluttered off onto the floor. So much for good intentions. “Never mind,” she said.

  “But I do mind,” Trick said. “What if Sarge had been the one to stop for you?”

  “When I first saw the Crown Victoria, I thought it was Sarge.”

  “So did I.” He reached across to grasp her hand. “I was scared, Nevada.”

  “Me, too,” she said. And then, damn it, she just dissolved, shaking and crying, incoherent and out of control.

  Trick eased the Jeep to the side of the road, shifted into park, unfastened his shoulder harness, and pulled her as close as he could with the gearshift in the way. “Don’t,” he said.

  As if she had a choice. As if…

  His touch—both soothing and arousing—calmed and disturbed her at the same time. Tears slid faster and faster down her cheeks. She was shaking all over now, an 8.7 on the Richter scale.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re safe now.”

  “Th-those boys…They wouldn’t have killed me. They might not even have raped me, but…”

  “After Sarge’s attack earlier—”

  “It was too much, too similar. I…don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”

  “Don’t think about it,” he said.

  As if she could empty her mind that easily. “He’s not going to give up,” she said. “Sarge, I mean. He’ll get to me eventually, no matter who’s standing in his way. That’s why I can’t go back to Midas Lake.”

  “But—” he started to argue.

  “No,” she said. “Staying there now would put both you and Marcello in danger.”

  He framed her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. “You can’t go off on your own. It’s not safe.”

  “Safe?” She gave a sharp, semihysterical bark of laughter. “Safe? Don’t you get it? Nowhere’s safe for me, not as long as he’s out there. He’s not going to stop. He’s going to keep coming and
coming until…” She pulled herself free of him, staring resolutely out the windshield into the darkness. “I want you to take me to the nearest town and put me on a bus.”

  “No bus stops before Midas Lake,” he said.

  And she couldn’t go back to Midas Lake. Too risky. “Then turn around and take me all the way to Sacramento if you have to, but find me a bus stop.”

  “Sarge isn’t the one you have to worry about,” Trick said.

  “No?” She turned to him in surprise.

  “No.” He frowned. “It’s whoever hired those two monsters to come after you. He, the mystery man, is the one you need to worry about.”

  “But I don’t know who he is.” Once again she trembled on the verge of hysteria.

  “Then we need to find out,” he said firmly.

  “We?” Her voice broke midsyllable. She couldn’t help it. “The last person who tried to help me ended up dead.”

  “Yelena, you mean? Your surrogate mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t be as easy to kill. I know what to expect and how to defend myself.”

  Sudden anger supplanted her fear. “How? With a crossbow?” she demanded, her words heavy with sarcasm.

  “If need be, though I’m sure a stake would work as well. Or fire. Or even just sunlight.”

  “You’re the one who’s insane,” she said.

  “Right,” he agreed. “Insanely worried about you. We need to find out who you are and why someone thought it necessary to steal your memories of the past.”

  Her identity, her life.

  “That’s the person you should fear,” Trick was saying. “That’s the person with the most to lose. Obviously, you know something—”

  “Knew something,” she said.

  “Knew something,” he repeated. “Something dangerous.”

  When Trick pulled to a stop in the parking lot of a Best Western, Nevada woke with a start. She’d fallen asleep about forty miles back, her head mashed against the door, and had the creases in her right cheek to prove it. “Why are we stopping?”

  Trick gave her a weary smile. “Because I need some rest. I can’t afford to fall asleep at the wheel.”

  “I could take a turn driving.”

  “Could you?” he asked. “Do you drive?”

  Nevada frowned. “I’m not sure.”

  “We both need sleep, and I, for one, could use a shower.” He could use a change of clothing, too, but he wouldn’t get one, not until the stores opened in the morning.

  “But if we stop,” she said, “we’re giving Sarge a chance to catch up.”

  “He doesn’t know we’re together,” he objected.

  “Marcello knows. You called him, right?”

  He had, and he was sure his face confirmed it.

  “So what’s to stop Sarge from returning to the mansion long enough to torture the truth out of Marcello?” Nevada spoke urgently, her eyes “ntlrgewide and dark with concern.

  Trick covered one of her hands with his and realized she was trembling again. “Marcello’s not in the mansion. He’s staying at the lodge for the time being.”

  “That’s still too close.” Nevada’s lower lip trembled. “Sarge is bound to find him.”

  “No,” Trick said. “He’s not even registered. He’s staying in Britt’s suite.”

  “With Britt?” Her eyes widened.

  He smiled. “Presumably. Now, let’s check in before I pass out.”

  Nevada’s shouts woke Trick from a sound sleep. He fumbled for the switch on the lamp that sat on the table between the two queen beds. On the third try, he finally managed to connect. He wouldn’t have been surprised to have found Nevada in a fight for her life with her vampire stalker. Instead, she was still asleep, apparently locked in a nightmare as she battled to free herself from her tangled sheet.

  He threw back his own covers, slid out of bed, then sat on the edge of her mattress. “Hey! Wake up.” He shook her gently. “Wake up. It’s just a dream.”

  Something penetrated, either his touch or his voice. As abruptly as if someone had turned off a switch, her thrashing ended. She opened her eyes, blinking once or twice. “Where are we?”

  “In a motel in Sacramento.”

  “Sarge,” she said. “The car full of drunken teenagers.”

  “You remember.”

  “All too well. They were holding me down. In my dream, they were holding me down. I couldn’t get away. I couldn’t move.” Her voice rose.

  “They’re gone,” he said. “You’re safe. You just got yourself twisted up in the bedding, that’s all.”

  She rose up on one elbow, surveying the tangled sheet. “What happened to my blanket?”

  “I think at some point during the struggle, you must have used some fancy karate move to flip it off the end of the bed. Apparently broke its spirit in the process, too. It’s just lying there limp as a rag.”

  Unfortunately, being in close proximity to Nevada was having quite the opposite effect on a certain portion of his anatomy, an effect that was going to be really hard to camouflage once he stood up.

  Nevada frowned, then grabbed his arm and cinched down hard. “The Jeep. What if he—they—trace us by tracing the Jeep?”

  He laid his hand over hers. “Why would they? They don’t even know we’re together.”

  “But it’s a logical assumption,” she argued.

  “You’re right. It is.” He gave her hand a comforting squeeze, then gently detached it from his arm. “We’ll switch cars, but not until tomorrow. For now, you need to rest.”

  She fr“dths aowned again. “I’m not sleepy.”

  “Well, I am,” he lied.

  She brushed her fingertips across his chest. “Hold me,” she whispered. “Please.”

  He pushed her hand aside almost roughly, and when he spoke, his voice sounded raspy. “If I hold you, I can’t guarantee I’ll stop at just holding.”

  Nevada’s gaze never faltered. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  She didn’t understand what she was suggesting. Hell, she was still half asleep. “Nevada, I—”

  “Shh.” She pressed a fingertip to his lips.

  Or maybe he was the one who was asleep. Maybe this was all a dream. A titillating, X–rated—

  “Hold me.” Nevada draped her arms around his neck. “Kiss me. Love me.”

  She felt real enough, warm and soft, a living, breathing temptation. Cherries and oranges. The faint scents teased his nostrils. Probably just her shampoo. Or maybe her lip balm. But damn…“You smell delicious.”

  She nibbled at his lower lip. “And you taste delicious.”

  He pulled back, frowning. “This is crazy.”

  “Probably.” Her smile was both sweet and seductive.

  God help him, he wanted her. Fiercely. Desperately.

  Nevada drew one of his hands to her lips and pressed a kiss to his palm. “I need this right now,” she whispered. “I need you.”

  God, who could resist? Not him, for damned sure.

  She smoothed out her top sheet, then tossed it back and moved over to make room on the bed. Nevada might have the face of an angel, but there was nothing innocent about the lush curves that rose above the top edge of her bra or the tight nipples straining against the silky white fabric.

  Wordlessly, he slid in beside her, then let his hands drift over her curves, squeezing here, rubbing there, learning the texture of her skin.

  Her eyes widened and her cheeks flushed. He wondered for a second if she’d changed her mind, but then she said, “Aren’t you going to get the light?” her voice a little shaky, and he realized she was just embarrassed.

  He trailed the pad of his thumb down her neck.

  Her pulse raced. Her breathing quickened. “I—”

  “You’re beautiful,” he told her, leaning forward to nuzzle the unbandaged portion of her throat. “Too beautiful to hide in the dark.”

  “Beautiful? You think so?” She pulled back, and
he saw that a fresh wave of color had tinted her cheeks a delicious pink. “But my hair’s all messy and my—”

  He pressed a finger to her lips. “Beautiful,” he repeated. Then he used that same finger to trace the soft skin along the top edge of“thewid her bra. “And sexy.” He leaned over her, pressing a kiss to her abdomen halfway between her navel and the narrow elastic band on her panties. “And very, very desirable.”

  She was shivering again, but not, he suspected, with cold this time. “Oh, God.”

  “If I start to go too fast, say something, and I’ll slow it down,” he told her. “It’s been a long, dry period for me.”

  “Me, too.” Her voice emerged shaky and breathless. “In fact, I literally don’t remember the last time it rained.”

  “But you have had sex before?”

  “I must have.” She gasped as he slid one hand between her thighs. “According to my medical records, I’m not a virgin.”

  “Only you don’t remember having sex with anyone, do you?” he persisted as he stroked her. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  She gave a muffled groan. “No.”

  “So it’ll be like I’m the first.”

  “Yes.” Though she was breathing hard, obviously aroused, a smile once again played at the corners of her mouth. “But no pressure.”

  Trick’s eyebrows rose. His mouth curved in a devilish smile. “No pressure?” he repeated softly.

  Nevada’s nipples hardened in response.

  Trick noticed. She knew he did. As his narrowed gaze raked her body, she experienced an actual physical sensation, a tingling shiver of anticipation.

  He made a sound, half growl, half groan. Then he shifted lower, suckling one nipple right through her bra while the hand between her thighs teased her unmercifully.

  Her tension escalated into the unbearable zone. She squirmed and shuddered, not sure whether she wanted him to stop the torture or to continue it forever. She burned. She ached. She needed. She…

  A sudden burst of ecstasy took her by surprise. She gasped, then surrendering herself to sensation, rode the seemingly endless crest of pleasure. On and on. Peak after undulating peak. Every time she thought it was over, Trick would use his clever mouth and talented fingers to tease her right back to the summit.