Authors: Shannon McKenna
“I’m in a cab,” Nina recounted. “We got away, and we . . . no, I don’t know where. It’s complicated . . . no, I can’t tell you his name at the moment. But I’m fine. He saved me, Shira. Really.
I’m not being constrained, or anything, believe me. I’m fine.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. He grabbed the phone from her. “Shira?”
“Who the hell are you?” The woman’s voice was shrill.
“I’m helping Nina go into hiding. You should hide, too. They know your name, where you live. Get out of town. Go someplace random.”
“Look here, mister. You tell me who you are this minute,”
Shira ordered. “I’ve got your number, and I’m giving it to the cops!”
“If you care about your friend, you won’t do that.” He broke the connection, turned off the phone. He pried it open, pulled a new SIM card out of his wallet, and changed it out.
Ka-ching.
He started mentally totalling up how much this fiasco had cost him financially. How much worse it was liable to get before he could extricate himself. Ouch.
“What, are you a new person now?” she asked. “Just like that?”
He braced himself for more attitude. “Pretty much.”
She harrumphed. “Well. In any case. Thank you. Just so it gets said, before I start screaming at you again.”
He was startled. “Huh?”
“I’m just saying it now,” she repeated. “You seem to bring out the worst in me, Aaro. But I appreciate being alive. So, uh . . .
thanks.”
His face was trying to grin again. He put a stop to it. He had no business encouraging her. That just led to misunderstandings.
“Don’t thank me,” he said brusquely. “I’m doing this for Bruno.
I owe him—”
“Yes, you told me. This big favor you owe him. I totally get that.”
“Don’t thank me. It’s nothing personal. I’ll hook you up with your bodyguard detail, and disappear. And you can forget I ever existed.”
She gave him that are-you-for-real stare. “Your rudeness goes above and beyond the call of duty, Aaro. A normal person would have to make a huge, deliberate effort to be as needlessly rude as you are.”
“Guess I’m not normal,” he said. “I’m not even breaking a sweat.”
“You just can’t stand it when I try to be nice to you?”
“Don’t try,” he told her. “It’s a waste of energy.”
“That’s excellent advice,” she said, tight-lipped.
“I’m just a font of good advice today,” he said. “That one’s right up there with my other big winners. Like, ‘Get your head down before it gets blown off.’ And ‘Put your clothes on.’ ”
Nina blushed. “Asshole,” she muttered.
Ah. That was more like it. He relaxed a little. On familiar ground.
She fumed silently for a few minutes before her next swipe at him. “So besides routinely pissing me off, do you have a plan?”
“Not really,” he said. “More like a grocery list. New vehicle.
Phone call to Bruno, to set up a rendezvous point. Someplace to hear that file. Hotel room.” His eyes flicked over her. “And a new look for you.”
That put her right back on edge. “What’s wrong with my look?”
“They’ve seen you,” he said. “They got a good, long look.
Tent frock, bad glasses, long hair.” He lifted his hands when she glared. “Don’t get huffy. This is about you not getting dead.
Nothing personal.”
“Shut up,” she snapped. “Or do you think that your bad attitude will create a magic shield that bullets can’t penetrate?”
He thought of it wistfully. “Wouldn’t that be convenient.”
“So people shoot at you a lot, then?”
“More often than I’d like,” he admitted.
“Have you considered trying behavioral modification to address that problem?” she asked, a little too sweetly.
He shrugged. “It’s more time effective to just shoot back.”
Nina kept her hot face turned away. He was goading her.
Shame on her for getting sucked into it. She didn’t recognize the person who currently possessed her body. Scolding, screaming rants; what was up with that? Was she infected with a super-contagious rudeness virus?
She went to insane lengths to avoid confrontations. Violence, physical or verbal, shortened her breath and messed with her di-gestion. Sometimes she had to turn off the TV or walk out of movies if the screen characters were fighting. It was classic Stan fallout, of course, so she should be able to deal with it, right? But alas, it was never that easy. Just one damn mountain to climb after another. A girl got tired.
Unfortunately, all of life’s endeavors that were worth the effort required the basic guts to face down opposition. Especially if one was advocating for victims of violence and abuse. No matter what one did, there would always be someone pissed off at her for doing it, or who thought that it had been done wrong, or whatever. It was a natural law, like thermodynamics. If you did anything beyond eating your breakfast cereal, you were sure to catch some shit for it. It all boiled down to getting a frigging spine. She tried, every day. With limited success, but hey, the effect of constant water on a stone, right?
Look at her now. Mobsters started shooting at her, and she morphed into a screaming virago, haranguing a tough guy twice her size who was carrying four—no, was it five guns, now?
Was it Helga’s drug? The thought chilled her.
She thought, suddenly, of that awful subway ride through New York, other peoples’ thoughts and feelings tromping through her head. It had been so terrifying at the time, but the concept of terrifying was a lot more relative than she had ever imagined.
Getting shot up by mobsters put other scary things into perspec-tive very quickly.
So did hanging out with Aaro. He made her feel, well . . .
elec-trified
would be the most delicate way of putting it. Her hair was practically on end. She felt bad for lying to him. Or, well, not exactly lying. She’d just withheld a few details. Zombie ghouls, mind reading. She just wasn’t ready to watch that smolder of awareness go chilly and distant, then turn to distaste. Counting the minutes ’til he could get rid of the crazy girl. Pass her off to the guys in the white coats. Talk about a turnoff.
Did that mean that she was considering turning him
on?
That fleeting thought knocked a door open in her head, and the blistering fantasy she’d had outside the closet door came roaring back.
Did he want her, too?
It occurred to her that she should know.
Why hadn’t Aaro’s thoughts invaded her brain, like everybody else’s?
She tried to drop the gray, fuzzy shield that had already become automatic. It was hard to let it down. She felt naked without it. She waited, for his thoughts to flow in and illuminate her.
Nothing. Absolutely zippo. She tried again. Harder.
“What?” he said, his voice testy. “What’s with the look?”
She couldn’t think of a lie fast enough, so the truth flopped right out of her. “I was trying to read your mind.”
The glance he gave her from under his hooded eyes made her notice how insanely long his eyelashes were. “What did you read?”
“Absolutely nothing,” she said.
“You don’t need to read my mind to know what I’m thinking.
There are other indicators.” He paused. “Big ones.”
She stared fixedly as the apartment buildings, storefronts, and schools crawled by. Bastard. Messing with her head. Heat and sweat, rising in her body. She must look like a tomato. And now they were mired in a snarl of rush-hour traffic. No end in sight.
“We’re going to be here for hours,” she muttered.
“Get down.” He gripped her leg below the knee, pulling it so that her bottom slid forward over the slippery leather seat. His touch set off tingling sparkles over her skin, through layers of rayon and linen.
“Stop that.” She batted his hand away.
Aaro slid down to join her, but the position forced him to fold one leg up against the back of the driver’s seat, and angle the other one sideways, in her direction. His knee gently prodded hers. Contact, again. More tingles, more ripples. “I said, stop it,”
she snapped.
“Can’t help it,” he murmured. “I’m just. . . . really long.”
“Would you cool it with the penis references, Aaro?” she snapped.
“You said it, not me.” He looked away, but she could tell from the eye crinkles over his cheekbone that he was grinning.
Heat rose into her face. His slow-spreading grin maddened her. “What?” she almost yelled. “What’s the smirk about?”
“Don’t freak out,” he said. “It’s normal. What you’re feeling.”
“What do you know about my feelings?”
He gave her an offhand shrug. “Happens to me, too,” he said.
“It’s normal. Post-combat stress reaction. Don’t sweat it.”
Oh, for God’s sake, was he suggesting . . . Her eyes flicked down to peek at his muscular thigh, to see if he—
Yes. He was. And she’d fallen right into his trap. He was laughing, under his breath, a deep, quiet rumble. Smug, self-satisfied
bastard.
“Mind in the gutter? Don’t be embarrassed. You’re not alone.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, but it was impossible to block him out. He was overwhelming in the small space. Feelings pulsed through her, breath-stealing, heavy. The pull, the hot yearning. What the hell?
“You’re dreaming,” she whispered, swallowing hard.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I still smell your hair. My hands remember everything. The curve of your back. The feel of your skin.
Your hair, over my arm. You know those dimples over your tailbone?”
“I do not want to know anything you might say about them.”
He ignored that. “I want to lick them,” he whispered dreamily. “I want to memorize that creamy, perfect dent shape. With my tongue.”
His words awakened sensory receptors in each of the places he had mentioned. Tendrils of heat curled out of them, tightening her nipples, clenching her toes. “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”
“Neither do I,” he admitted. “I don’t usually talk this much.
Talking gets me into trouble.”
“That I can well believe,” she said fervently.
His grin carved grooves into his lean cheek. “But not this kind of trouble,” he said. “This kind is special.”
“Special how?” It popped out before she could squelch it. She had only herself to blame, for egging him on. Stupid woman.
“Specially insane,” he said. “Coming on to a woman like you.”
Outraged vanity jolted her bolt upright. “A woman like me?
What’s that supposed to mean?”
His hand clamped on her knee and yanked her back down.
“Keep your head low,” he said. “You know what I mean. A woman like you, with all the baggage and the expectations.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Then you’re playing dumb,” he said. “I mean, the kind of woman who’d get all uptight when I cut out in the morning before she wakes up. And then don’t call.”
She snorted. “Why am I not surprised.”
“I like to keep things casual,” he said. “I’m not looking for attachments. I’m always up front about that. Always.”
It bugged her, that he’d pegged her as clingy, needy. More trouble than she was worth. “What makes you think I’m so hungry for attachment?”
“All women want attachment. Unless they’re damaged.”
“So do men.” She wasn’t even sure exactly what they were arguing about, but she couldn’t shut herself up. “Unless they’re damaged, too.”
“Right,” he said. “There you have it.”
“So you’re telling me you’re damaged goods?”
“Duh,” he said.
A heavy silence followed his blunt assertion. She looked away, angry and restless and bothered. “Wow, Aaro. How very seductive.”
His shoulders lifted. “Just telling it how it is.”
“OK,” she said, shaky and angry. “Message received, loud and clear. I appreciate the warning, but it’s unnecessary. I want nothing at all from you. And I’m damaged goods, too, for the record.
So drop it right now, before we both say things we’ll regret.”
“I knew you were. Damaged goods, I mean. I see it from your look. You dress to disappear, and you pull it off, even with a body like yours. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. Just a hell of a thing.”
She was alarmed. She’d tried to kill this conversation, and instead, it was spiraling out of control. “That’s not what I meant,”
she said. “And I didn’t ask for a critique of my fashion sense.”
“We all get stuff we don’t ask for. Want to know the weird part, though?” His narrowed eyes were fixed on her, hot with fascination. “My dick is still as hard as cement.”
She jerked back against the door. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
She hated how she sounded. Tight, tense, prissy. One of those silly, not-worth-the-trouble women, full of baggage and expectations.
“I’m not usually this bad,” he said. “I mostly keep my trap shut. But I guess, once you’ve killed two guys, dragged a stark-naked girl out of a bullet-ridden closet and then gone through a drive-by shooting with her, you feel entitled to skip the small talk.”
That sneaky bastard. Taking up all the oxygen molecules. It wasn’t fair. His long, lean, graceful body was sprawled on the seat in apparent relaxation, but he wasn’t relaxed. He buzzed with intensity. Ready for action, like a panther poised to spring. It unnerved her. The heaviness of the air.
“Who would know, to look at you?” he almost whispered.
“Know what?” she squeaked back.
“How soft your skin is,” he said.
Her face got hot. Her breath snagged. And stuck.
“The way your hair swirls down into those wisps that brush the top of your ass. The hollow, here.” He touched her collarbone, hidden under the buttoned blouse. She jerked back as if his finger were a red hot brand.
“And that thing you do with your lip,” he went on. “You suck it in, squeeze out all the pink color and that round, pouty shape.
Does it embarrass you, to have lips that make guys think about sex?”
“Stop,” she warned.
Please.
Before she fainted.
“And those tits.” He shook his head in wonderment. “Women would pay huge money for world-class tits like that. That perfect pear shape, those pointy brown nipples,
mmm
.” He made a caressing, molding gesture with his hands. “But you hide them under a tent. It’s a secret. Right? Nobody can know. Or the sky will fall down.”