by Karin Tabke
His eyes narrowed to slits before widening. “How did you know about the contract on Tuturo?”
Jax smiled and trailed her fingers across his chest as the dance continued, but he grabbed her wrist, his fingers punishing. Showing no pain, Jax smiled up into his cautious eyes and shrugged, as if he’d been asking her for a pie recipe. “I have friends.”
“Friends, huh?” He reached out with his free hand and traced a finger along her jawline. The initial chill followed by the warmth of his touch did strange things to her. Unhurried, he ran his fingertip to her chin, then slowly along her full bottom lip. “Tell me who your friends are.”
Jax slowly shook her head, retrieving her wrist from his grasp. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
He slid a long muscular arm around her waist and pulled her hard against him, bringing an abrupt halt to their waltz. It suddenly occurred to Jax that she was no longer in control.
His harsh hiss of breath when her hips pressed to his hard thighs caught high in her own throat. He was warm. No. Hot. But cool. Like marble. Smooth and hard all at once. His power swirled around her, thick, heavy, hazardous. Seductive and terrifying in its intensity, she felt his imprint on every inch of her body.
It was too much, too soon.
She made to turn and pull away, but he stayed her. His hands vises around her. She squeezed her eyes shut and fought the urge to give her team the signal for intervention. She could do this, she told herself. What was the worst thing that could happen? He’d get a few good shots in before the cavalry arrived? That she could handle. She opened her eyes and allowed her muscles to loosen.
“No, no,” he breathed and lowered his lips to her cheek, “you, my bloodthirsty little minx, are going to kiss me, then tell me who your contact is.”
Jax jerked her head back and opened her mouth to tell him to go to hell, but she didn’t get the chance. His lips, hard, demanding, and warm, stifled her. His arm locked around her waist. She tried to bring her knee up, but he pressed his big body more tightly to hers, making any advance impossible. She felt each indelible inch of him against her body. She fisted her hands, intent on one-two jabbing him under the chin. He released her and caught both of her hands in one big one, yanking her straight up against him.
Immobilized as she was, she attacked with a different weapon. Her teeth. She bit him. Hard. On the lip. He flinched, then groaned. His blood, warm and thick, blended with her saliva. The thick, coppery taste of it didn’t gross her out. Just the opposite. It felt like what the initial rush of cocaine must feel like. Exhilarating. Wildly freeing. She hated responding to him.
She sucked his bottom lip. He made a sound half between a groan of pain and moan of pleasure and retaliated by biting her back. He bit her! So hard he broke her skin. And despite the shock of his action, her body snapped, her eyelids suddenly felt heavy, her body thrummed. He moaned as he laved her bottom lip with his tongue. His chest expanded as if he’d taken a deep breath and his body hardened more against hers. She licked him back and felt the prick of his teeth against her tongue. He made a sound so basic and so primal that Jax’s body spontaneously responded with a warm flood of moistness between her thighs. Violently, she wrenched her head back.
“Jesus!” she gasped. What was happening to her?
He pushed her away and turned from her. His wide shoulders moved up and down as he tried to catch his runaway breath. She was glad she wasn’t the only one affected by what had just happened.
“Who the hell are you?” Jax demanded, striding toward him.
Without turning around, he thrust his arm toward her, his long fingers splayed, his palm halting her.
“Don’t,” he softly threatened.
“Don’t what?” she demanded.
“Don’t play games with me.” He turned around then, and Jax nearly passed out. Holy mother of God. He looked as if he was about to tear her apart limb by limb.
Never had she been so terrified or sexually stimulated as she was at that moment. He stood before her, dark, hungry and so dangerous that she had to tell herself to breathe. Violence palpated from him. Like a panther at his kill, her blood glistening on his lips, eyes firece, muscles tightened. If released, he would do terrible things.
As she stared, his full lips parted, revealing strong white teeth, the incisors just slightly longer than normal. His crystal blue eyes mesmerized, his aura pulling her in. She felt like she had no control over her body.
He took a menacing step toward her. “You know who I am. And knowing who I am, you also know I don’t play nice. If you get any closer, I will destroy you.”
“Like you destroyed Amy Stover?” Jax blurted. He frowned. He knew exactly who she was referring to. Jax choked back her contempt. “No witness to you tossing Blalock off that tenth-story balcony, was she?”
His eyes flashed dangerously. “That girl was dead before I entered the apartment.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“You don’t know what I am or what I stand for. I don’t kill children.” He turned toward the door.
Jax touched her swollen lip, then licked their mingled blood. A sharp jolt of electricity speared straight to her womb. “What are you?” she whispered.
Cross turned. “I’m your worst nightmare. Stay away from me.”
Jax took a tentative step toward him. “Or what?”
Cross wiped a drop of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. For a long moment he stared at the crimson smudge on his skin before looking at her. The intensity of his gaze stopped her cold. “Or die.” He turned on his heel, and just as he touched the doorknob, she saw Dante and Shane striding toward the threshold on the other side.
Cross laughed and opened the door. Just as she thought the three men would collide, Dante and Shane walked into the café. As if Cross had never been there!
“What the hell?” Jax said, rushing at them. “Did you see him?”
“Yes!” they said in unison. Jax jerked open the door and ran out onto the busy street. She looked up and down the sidewalk. Though there were several pedestrians, Cross’s broad shoulders were nowhere to be seen.
Dante and Shane came up behind her. “We saw him through the glass. He was there!”
Jax stood stupefied. “He disappeared into thin air.”
“How do we search for a ghost?” Shane asked.
Jax stood silent for a long minute, unable to comprehend what had just happened, and not wanting to believe what she thought she’d seen. One thing was for sure. He’d be back. She slid her hand into the long, shallow pocket of her leather skirt and pulled out a wad of one-hundred-dollar bills.
“He’s going to want his money back.”
* * *
Marcus. Come to me, now.
The order ricocheted inside his head, angry and ominous, just as it had since he’d left his car to confront the woman. As blind rage and bloodlust fought a colossal battle inside him, Marcus continued to ignore Lazarus. Even worse, he hesitated and glanced behind him, tempted to finish what he and the woman had started.
Cursing, he strode away.
He’d chosen retreat because he’d been afraid of losing control.
It didn’t set easily with him, but he had greater matters to attend to. That meant keeping his sights on the big picture and forgetting what was trivial.
Forget that little minx had bested him!
Forget that she had his money and that she had made him look like an amateur when it had come to taking Tuturo out.
Forget his own foolishness for leaving his car and walking into her little trap just as she’d planned. And it had been foolishness. He’d ignored Lazarus’s call in a vain attempt to get answers.
Who was she?
Why did she make his blood boil?
What the hell did she want with him?
’Cause he sure as hell knew what he wanted from her.
He touched his lip even as his dick throbbed. Jesus Christ, her blood was more addictive than heroin. Wors
e, when she’d bitten him, he’d crossed a self-imposed line. He had sex because it made him feel human, but he’d never exchanged blood with a human and allowed them to live. Until her.
He had tasted her, wanted her and let her go. But God help him, he wanted more.
That had settled it for him.
She could have his money. She could keep her contacts. No way was he going back to that pond. She’d bring him to his knees. He knew it as instinctively as he knew he was going to kill that night. He continued his mad stride down Michigan Avenue knowing that if he didn’t feed his hunger soon, he’d lose all control. And when he lost control nothing good ever came of it. He turned down an alley. As he rounded the corner, he slammed shoulders with a local hood.
“Motherfucker!” the piece of trash yelled and pulled a pistol from his duster. Just as he leveled it at Marcus’s chest, Marcus snapped. He grabbed the thug by the throat and shook him so violently bones snapped. The pistol clattered to the ground. Marcus raised his arm over his shoulders, lifting the criminal off the ground. Violently, he slammed the thug against the brick wall of the building. Rage, spurred by passion for a woman he could not have, viciously ate at him.
Ignoring the thug’s screams for mercy, Marcus let the beast inside of him take over. He sunk his teeth into the pulsing jugular of the man who’d had the misfortune of tangling with Marcus Cross. It would be his last tango.
Minutes later, he dropped the carcass to the ground, swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, licked the last vestiges of blood from his lips, and stepped over the dead man. He was sated, for the moment.
As the night turned to black, Marcus prowled the treacherous streets of south Chicago. No one dared cross his path. Tonight he was death to anyone who dared to look him in the eye.
And still, the vision, the scent, the taste of the woman permeated every part of him, reminding him of the promise he’d made her. Despite his best intentions, he knew they weren’t through with each other.
Not by a long shot. Not for long.
Twelve
“Godfather, we have a problem,” Jax said when his face materialized on the computer screen. Behind her, Dante, Shane and Gage shifted, and one of them bumped into her. She threw an annoyed glance over her shoulder, but it was more out of habit than anything else. Nonetheless, they backed off.
She and her team had beat it back to their hotel room to figure out whether what they’d thought had happened had actually happened. They’d confirmed that they all thought the same thing but none of them was willing to verbalize what Marcus Cross was.
Perhaps Godfather could help them out here.
“Go ahead, Cassidy,” he said. She knew by the sharp, tight lines on his face that he was not happy. She swallowed hard.
“It seems Cross is more than we believed.”
When she didn’t continue, Godfather frowned. “And by that you mean what exactly?”
Jax swallowed again and looked to Gage, Dante and Shane for help. Each of them looked away. They weren’t going to voice the absurd. They were all too happy to make her look the fool. Fine.
“He’s not human, sir.” There, she’d said it.
The silence was so deafening that Jax struggled to breathe. Godfather stared at her as if she had just asked him to cut off his right nut.
“I mean, he’s human, of course he’s human! But some kind of superhuman.”
“Cassidy,” Godfather said in a warning tone. “Keep it real.”
Jax smoothed her hands along her leather skirt and took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. Every instinct she possessed told her there was something very different about Cross. Something that she refused to admit scared her in that she knew he possessed power she had no clue of, but was keenly aware that it lurked dark and deadly just beneath the surface. “After the initial contact on the street, he disappeared. Like a vapor into thin air. Then just as we’re about to give up and regroup, he turns up all dark and sinister right behind me in the café. Creeped me the hell out.”
“It was nighttime; with all the commotion, he could have slipped in,” Godfather countered.
“He didn’t,” Dante staunchly said. “After the initial impact of the collision, he exited the car with the sole intent of following Cassidy into the café. He never entered through the front door or the back door. He just materialized inside.”
“So he got past you and found another way in,” Godfather insisted.
Gage moved to stand behind Dante and Jax. He leaned over her back and added his support. “I was at the back door—only way in or out except the front door, sir. He never came or went.”
“Sir,” Shane started, “when Cross was done with Cassidy and headed for the front door of the café we were on our way in. I saw him coming at us through the glass of the door. When I opened the door, fully expecting to collide into him, he was gone.”
“And he didn’t come back past me,” Jax injected.
“Okay, let’s for the sake of argument say he found a way past you. I hardly think that is reason—”
“He bit me, sir!” Jax pointed to her ravaged lip. “He sucked my blood and then he picked me up by one hand and held me a foot off the floor for almost five minutes! Who does that?”
Godfather’s face darkened as blood infused his face. He did not blink. “So he likes rough play and works out,” Godfather finally commented.
Jax rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes and rubbed hard. Dante was so close to her she could feel the rumble in his chest. She put her hand on his and looked directly into the screen.
“Sir, with all due respect, Marcus Cross is different. He’s superhuman strong, can disappear into thin air and likes blood.” Godfather began to speak, but Jax held up her hand. “You weren’t there. I was. He’s different. He’s on a whole other playing field. Which makes him a lot more dangerous than we were led to believe.” She sat back. “And that’s a lot. Cuz he was pretty badass already without being a fucking superhuman on steroids or whatever crazy ass dope the army has him hooked on!”
Godfather steepled his fingers and pursed his lips. As he contemplated her words, Jax realized he was trying to find a way out of her absurd conclusion. When he couldn’t, he asked, “So what now?”
Now they needed more intel. On The Solution. On Lazarus. And on Cross. They also needed to know exactly who Rowland had been talking to.
“Sir, everything went according to plan. He was easy. Too easy in fact to jack up. I’m wondering now who was set up, us or him?”
The implication of her words weighed heavily in the air. She waited, but when Godfather finally spoke, the words weren’t what she’d expected.
“I’m pulling the four of you off this mission,” Godfather slowly said.
Jax blanched, the force of his statement startling her like a slap to the face. How could he do this to her, to all of them now when they had made progress? “The hell you are!” Jax erupted.
“I take full responsibility for this, Cassidy. Perhaps I pushed you too far too fast,” Godfather started to explained.
“That’s a bullshit excuse if I ever heard one, and you know it! I got to him whatever he is. If you pull us, me specifically, you’ll never see him again.”
“We have other ways of infiltrating The Solution.”
“What if they’re all like Cross? The colonel looks like a poster child for a freak show!”
Godfather shook his head, then looked pointedly at her. “What if what you say is true? What if they are all hyped up army experiments? How the hell are we supposed to fight them?”
“With fire, sir. Look, Cross might be some kind of science experiment, but he’s still a man. And he wants me.” She held up the wad of hundred-dollar bills she’d stolen from him. “And he wants his money back. I’m the key to drawing him out. Let me do my job.”
“What if he makes you what he is? Whatever that is. Would you risk your life to become his science experiment?”
Jax shivered at the thought but sat bac
k and considered it. “I guess then L.O.S.T. will have a superoperative,” she flippantly said. The thought of being like Cross terrified and sickened her.
“I’m not willing to jeopardize your life, Cassidy. We’ll find another way.”
Jax stood. “No. The clock is ticking. I’m the only one to get close enough to him, and I’m also the only one who has a chance of getting to Lazarus.”
“Too risky.”
“She’s right, sir,” Dante said, stepping into camera view. Grudgingly, Gage and Shane nodded in agreement. “Cassidy has her hooks in him. Let her reel him in. We’ll be close in case she needs help.”
“What if you can’t help her?” Godfather tersely bit off.
“Then I die and you send in the next round,” Jax said. And she meant it. “Too much is at stake here to pick up our toys and go home. I’m in. All the way.”
“I’m in,” Shane said.
“I’m in,” Dante dittoed.
Jax looked up to Gage who eyed her with more than professional concern. “I’m in,” he softly said.
The next evening, Marcus casually strolled into Lazarus’s richly appointed Lake Avenue penthouse. It swam with the seductive aroma of blood, fine tobacco and the scents of recent visitors. Marcus stopped halfway into the room. He raised his nose and sniffed the air. A distinct scent, one he felt some sense of familiarity with but could not recall to whom it belonged, toyed with his senses.
“Is there something wrong, Marcus?” Lazarus casually asked.
Marcus shook his head dismissing the scent. It could belong to someone he’d passed on the street. “Looks like there are new players in town,” he said to his commanding officer, who was also his maker. Not only was Lazarus Marcus’s maker but the colonel was also the undisputed leader of Ny Verden, or New World coven, the most powerful vampire coven on Earth. As a member of the governing Grand Counsel, Lazarus answered only to Rurik, his creator and father of all vampires.
Joseph Lazarus nodded and handed Marcus a cigar. Marcus took it, put it to his nose and inhaled deeply. The scent of the fragrant Cubana reminded him that while he might have lost his mortal life in the hills of Afghanistan, he still desired the creature comforts of a man. Heat flared in his loins as his thoughts laser focused on the dark-haired beauty who had pushed him to the brink of his iron self-control.
