Not fuckin’ likely.
Her thick mass of shiny brown hair fell forward and obscured his view of her face as she looked down and started pawing through her handbag. He assumed she was looking for her keys or her phone.
Big mistake, he immediately thought. Being distracted, looking down, not paying attention to her surroundings…she was leaving herself wide open to attack. Anyone could grab her, steal her purse, knock her down, or worse.
He felt his blood starting to boil the longer he watched her. It was dark, they were in a shitty part of town, and she was walking to her car, by herself, without even having her keys or phone in hand? Was his angel reckless, oblivious, or just plain stupid?
But his blood stopped boiling—stopped moving altogether, really—as he caught sight of movement behind her. His dhampyre status didn’t do shit to help him get a regular job, but it did give him much better than average eyesight, even at night. And that extra special dhampyre eyesight of his was now telling him that there was a man creeping up on his angel. A large one, too. No…wait. It wasn’t one man. It was two.
And she had no idea, because she was busy digging through her handbag, looking for God knows what.
Stay out of trouble, his probation officer had told him. Don’t be anywhere where crimes are being committed. If the cops have to question you about anything while you’re on probation, they’ll dump your ass back in Midvale faster than you can fucking blink.
And Midvale wasn’t someplace anyone wanted to be. Home to the worst supernatural criminals in the country, Quinn was pretty sure he wouldn’t survive if he got tossed back in now. He hadn’t exactly made friends while he was inside.
Which he thought rather odd. He was fuckin’ delightful, in his own humble opinion.
But as the two men closed in on his angel, he knew he didn’t have a choice. There was no way he could sit idly by and let anything happen to her. Even if it meant rotting in Midvale for the rest of his life, however short that might be. After all, he didn’t know her, but he knew himself. And he’d be willing to bet good money that her life was worth a hell of a lot more than his.
He shook his head at the dark direction of his own thoughts. “Jesus, that’s maudlin,” he muttered, tossing a few bills down on the table to cover his drinks before climbing to his feet. He only swayed a little bit, and he was oddly proud of that.
Maybe superior eyesight wasn’t the only gift his dhampyre status had afforded him. He’d always assumed his Irish heritage was to be credited for his damn-near supernatural ability to hold his liquor, but maybe his hollow leg was a gift from Sentry’s genetic engineering department. Huh. Who knew?
Perhaps, like the little gal with the big eyes at the employment agency had told him, he actually was some kind of…superhero. Could she have been right?
Time to go save the damsel in distress and find out, he supposed.
Chapter Three
If you think someone’s going to grab you, pretend like you don’t notice them. Look down, look in your purse, look in the opposite direction…whatever. They’ll think you aren’t ready, and that’s when they’ll attack. But you will be ready. And if you’re ready for them, you can take them out before they even know what hit them. They won’t be expecting it, and that’s why you’ll win.
Riddick’s words ran through Marina’s brain on a constant loop every time she walked to her car at night. The station was in a low-rent, high-crime part of town, and Lowell, the security guard, was about a hundred years old and had rheumatoid arthritis so bad he couldn’t aim and shoot a gun if his life depended on it, which was why Marina had hit Riddick up for self-defense training. She’d always hoped she wouldn’t need it.
But tonight, it looked like she was going to put Riddick’s teachings to the test.
There were two of them. They’d been skulking around in the shadows behind her ever since she walked out of the building. The larger of the two was gaining on her, even though her steps had been swift.
Marina could barely hear anything over the erratic pounding of her heart as she wrapped her fingers around the Taser at the bottom of her purse. She’d scoffed when Harper had given it to her as a birthday gift. Now she was exceptionally thankful her sister hadn’t gone the traditional route and given her fluffy socks or a gift card for the local bookstore.
Marina forced herself to take a few deep breaths through her nose and continued walking to the car, swiftly, but steadily. Running at this point wouldn’t do any good.
Better to stand and fight on your terms than to run away and get tackled from behind by someone bigger and stronger, Riddick had said.
The back of her neck prickled as she heard a shuffling sound directly behind her. It took everything she had not to whirl around and lash out blindly.
She didn’t have to wait long for her attacker to make his move. Her entire body went rigid as an arm clamped around her from behind. Marina opened her mouth to scream (“fire,” not “help,” because everyone knew that when someone yelled “help,” help rarely ever came. But yell “fire,” and people paid attention. Just a sad but true commentary on humanity these days), but snapped it shut when the man jammed the barrel of a gun into her side.
“Scream and I’ll pull the trigger,” he said against her ear, his voice as unyielding as his grip on her. “It won’t kill you, but it’ll hurt like a bitch.”
OK, Riddick, time to see what kind of teacher you really are.
Marina let her entire body go limp. Her attacker’s muscles tensed in an effort to hold onto her dead weight, but trying to hold her up with one arm was too much for him, and she found herself dumped on her ass on the ground at his feet.
She forced herself to keep up the charade that she’d fainted and laid perfectly still at his feet, her hand still clutched around the Taser inside her bag.
“Stupid bitch. Let’s get her to the van. Grab her feet, I’ll take her arms,” the guy muttered to his partner.
Or did these guys prefer the term co-attacker over partner? Marina wasn’t sure. Maybe…
If she could’ve slapped herself at that point, she would’ve. What these assholes called each other was hardly the point. Especially when they were planning to pick her up, carry her away, and do God- knows-what to her.
The other man moved away from the building and reached for her. Marina waited until he bent down, then she aimed a kick at the bastard’s face. She gave the kick everything she had, and the resulting crunch of bone and cartilage under her boot heel was way more satisfying than it probably should have been.
“Motherfucker!” the guy shouted as he clutched his bloody mess of a broken nose.
The other guy drew his foot back to kick her, but she moved faster, whipping the Taser out of her purse, pressing it to his shin, and pulling the trigger. He went down hard, flat on his back, gasping and twitching.
Best. Present. Ever. Thanks, Harper!
Marina dropped the Taser and leapt to her feet, then broke out into a run across the parking lot like her life depended on it. She was pretty sure she hadn’t moved that fast since her days on the high school track team.
And still it wasn’t fast enough.
She yelped as a hand clamped around her ankle and dragged her to the ground. She hit the concrete hard and pain ricocheted through her bones. Before she could scramble to her feet again, the solid, heavy weight of a male body landed on her back, pressing her into the ground so hard she couldn’t breathe.
“I can’t kill you yet,” he hissed in her ear, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun before I turn you over to the boss.”
Marina squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for whatever attack was coming next, but it never came.
A vicious growl ripped through the night air, and the weight on her back suddenly disappeared. She sucked in a deep breath and rolled over just in time to see a third man standing with his back to her as he faced down her two attackers, both of whom were now on their feet with blood in their eyes.
“
You’re dead, motherfucker!” shouted the guy she’d Tased.
Her rescuer snorted. “If I can’t even take out a couple of little pissants like you, I deserve to die.”
Marina blinked. He sounded drunk. Like, really drunk. Slurred speech, weaving on his feet a little…good Lord. Wasn’t it just her luck that help had come in the form of a drunk who’d probably only staggered out of the bar across the street to take a piss on the side of the building?
She reached into her purse and hit the 911 panic button on her phone before starting to slowly crab- walk towards her car. If she was lucky, she could escape and help would show up before the attackers hurt her drunk savior.
But she quickly realized that any concern she had for her savior was misplaced. She very quickly realized it, because when the two attackers rushed him, he stood his ground, and when they were within arm’s reach, he cupped each of their heads in his massive hands and rammed their skulls together. They hit the ground—unconscious, possibly brain-damaged or dead—a split second later.
Marina stopped moving to her car and gaped at the scene. It’d been like something out of The Three Stooges! He’d beaten both of them with laughable, cartoonish ease. How had a drunk managed to do that?
He turned and took a few steps toward her, and Marina instantly knew why he’d been able to defeat two men so easily.
It was because he wasn’t a man. Not a typical human one, anyway.
Even drunk he moved like a predator—like a hungry lion stalking a baby gazelle at the watering hole. She’d been around enough dhampyres to know one when she saw him.
And this guy moved just like Riddick.
One more step had him directly over her. The light from the one flickering bulb that remained unbroken in the overhead street lamp backlit him, bathing him in an unearthly glow. That’s when she got her first good look at his face.
Holy hell. Had she hit her head when she fell? She must be concussed, or something. There was no other explanation for what she was seeing.
He. Was. Stunning.
Marina had seen a lot of hot guys in her life. Riddick, Nikolai, Lucas, Harper’s friend Hunter…they were all almost unbearably hot. (Or, supernaturally hot, she supposed, since they weren’t exactly human) But this guy? He was in a league all his own.
Marina, being a make-up artist, had a better understanding of what constituted good bone structure than most people, and she knew that if there was ever a poster child for flawless bone structure, it was this guy. Straight, Roman nose, slightly squared-off chin, cheekbones that could cut glass, an entirely bite-able, lush lower lip…yeah, fashion models would sell their souls to the devil in exchange for this guy’s face.
And it was all topped off with a gorgeous, thick head full of mussed hair (short on the sides and slightly longer on top) the color of dark chocolate. Not the cheap stuff, either. More like the expensive Swiss chocolates the station gave out to their vendors and clients as Christmas gifts.
It was too dark to tell exactly what color his eyes were, but it looked like they were light. Blue? Green? She couldn’t be sure, but for some reason, she really, really wanted to know.
He leaned down and offered her his hand. “You alright, love?”
And he was Irish. She hadn’t noticed that before. But that accent in combination with that face and body should be illegal. She might as well fall on her back with her legs up in the air right now, because this guy was her sexual kryptonite. If he wanted her, there would be no saying no. Willpower? Pfffttt. Not a chance.
His brow furrowed when she did nothing more than stare up at him, stunned. “Did you hit your head?” he asked.
Nope. I’m just an idiot who can’t speak to cute boys because my emotional growth apparently stopped when I was about thirteen. Thanks for asking!
Marina gave herself a mental pinch. Pull yourself together, woman! You just survived an attempted kidnapping. Surely you can survive talking to the stupid-hot, drunken Irish dhampyre who saved you.
Taking a deep breath, she reached up and grabbed his hand. Jesus, his hand is the size of my head!
His fingers closed around hers and before she knew what the hell was happening, she went flying through the air and smacked face-first into a brick wall. “Ooomph!”
“Shit,” he muttered, gripping her upper arms and setting her away from him with a gentleness that defied his size (and drunkenness). “I’m sorry. You’re just a wee bit of fluff. I pulled too hard.”
Marina reached up and rubbed the bridge of her nose, which had apparently not bumped into a brick wall, but rather into the rock-hard chest of her savior. “I-it’s fine. I’m fine. Thank you.”
He moved closer and cupped a hand around her jaw, tipping her head up towards the street light to get a better look. “Your nose doesn’t look broken,” he murmured. “And your eyes are clear. If I had to guess, I’d say you didn’t have a concussion. Thank God. That could’ve been a lot worse, yeah?”
Her gaze fell of its own volition to that bite-able lower lip of his before lifting. His eyes were pale green with little gold flecks, she realized. And as she continued to stare up at him, those amazing eyes darkened with what could only be described as heat and lust.
Wow.
This was insta-lust. Immediate, damn-near overpowering, gut-wrenching attraction. It was something she’d read about (she was a bit of a romance novel junkie) but had never experienced herself. Whenever she’d come across it in a book, she’d scoffed and thought how unrealistic the whole notion was.
But now…
And that’s when her logical brain wrestled control away from her body and reminded her that she’d just been attacked, and that this man—this dhampyre— was a total stranger. A drunk total stranger, at that. She had no business lusting after him.
No matter how bite-able his lower lip was.
Marina took a step back out of his reach and dusted off the seat of her black dress pants. Hopefully they’d clean up okay, because they were the only pair she had at the moment. Her entire clothing allowance for the next six months had been spent on her dress for the charity gala.
She glanced behind her savior at the still unconscious bodies of her attackers. “Are they…”
He snorted. “Dead? I wish.” Then he frowned. “Wait…they’re vampires. So, I guess, yes, technically, they are dead. Just not the permanent kind.”
And this night just kept getting crazier and crazier! Why in the hell would a couple of vampires attack her?
“Do you recognize them?”
Marina gave them a good once-over, but ultimately shook her head. “No. I’ve never seen them before.”
He frowned. “Did they say anything to you? Give you any clue as to what they wanted?”
Her mind reeled. “They said something about not being able to kill me yet. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t ‘have fun’ with me before they took me to their boss.”
Her savior muttered a dark curse under his breath before turning and giving each of her attackers a swift kick in the gut.
After what she’d been through, the display of violence should have scared her. It probably would’ve scared her under normal circumstances. But there wasn’t anything normal about what she was feeling for this man—this dhampyre—because even though she didn’t even know his name, she somehow knew he wouldn’t hurt her. Knew it with a certainty that made absolutely no logical sense.
It was exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time.
“Who are you?” she asked a little breathlessly.
It took him a minute to turn around and answer her—long enough that she started to wonder if she needed to repeat the question. But eventually, with more than a little apprehension in his eyes, he said, “I’m Quinn. Quinn Connell.”
He said his name like she should recognize it… and not in a good way. “Thank you, Quinn. I’m Marina.”
“Marina,” he repeated with a smile. “That figures. Is there anything about you that isn’t ungodly beautiful?”
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She would’ve thought it was a cheesy pick-up line if it hadn’t sounded like he was talking to himself rather than to her when he uttered it. And she was pretty sure no one in her life had ever called her ungodly beautiful. With the right amount of contouring and good lighting she could pull off pretty or striking. But ungodly beautiful? Never.
The sound of sirens in the distance swallowed whatever reply she could’ve made. Not that she would’ve. What could she have said when nothing more than a few words from him had turned her knees to mush and practically had her falling at his feet?
He sighed and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I suppose you managed to call the police while you were on the ground?”
He didn’t sound the least bit pleased about it, either. “Yes.”
Another sigh. “Well, I need to be going, then.”
Because he didn’t want the police to find him at a crime scene, she realized. He didn’t say that, but it was pretty clear from his guilty tone and sad eyes.
And it would seem her spectacularly bad taste in men was still intact. Awesome.
His eyes met hers once again and he said, “You can, of course, say whatever you want to the police. But…I would appreciate it if my name could be left out of any official reports, yeah?”
She glanced back at the two unconscious vampires before narrowing her eyes on him. “I won’t say anything to the police if you answer a question for me. And don’t lie, because I’ll know.”
“I wouldn’t lie,” he said, sounding offended.
He sounded sincere, too, which Marina thought was quite an accomplishment for a drunk dhampyre who’d just admitted to being in some kind of trouble with the law. But he had saved her life, so he couldn’t be all bad, could he?
And besides, she’d know if he was lying. She might not have any true supernatural talents like her mother and sister, but she could sniff out a liar like nobody’s business.
Semi-Obsessed Page 2