But I was afraid. Really afraid. This guy was claiming that he was going to blow my head off, and that did not excite me. Being dead was not high on my list of turn-ons.
Once we were out of the office, he let go of me, pushing me forward.
I stumbled ahead of him.
He yanked me to my feet. “Run,” he said.
I didn’t. I didn’t move my legs. I wasn’t going to do what he said. He was going to kill me.
He wrapped an arm around my waist and picked me up. “I’m not going to kill you. I promise. Now, run.” He set me back down on the ground.
This time, I did run.
I don’t know why.
Possibly it was because I was all hot and bothered—scared and aroused at the same time—and my brain was clearly kicked into some kind of fight-or-flight-primitive scenario. Since fighting wasn’t an option—he was made of marble, remember—flight was all I had.
I ran.
He steered me out of another door in the prince’s bedroom and into a hallway. He seemed to know where he was going.
There was an elevator ahead.
He yanked me to a stop, shot a glance over his shoulder, and hit the down button.
I gasped, my heart racing, my breath coming in short bursts.
He rocked on his feet and gave me a sheepish smile. “Sorry about this.”
Seriously? I gaped at him.
The elevator opened.
He gestured with the gun. “Ladies first.”
“Fuck you,” I said. It was stupid to say that to a guy with a gun, of course, but as I mentioned, my brain wasn’t really functioning. All the blood in my body seemed to be heading between my legs. I was drenched down there.
Totally weird.
He pushed me into the elevator, just as the door to the prince’s bedroom opened up and the guards who’d failed to save us before burst out.
The elevator door closed behind us.
The man pushed the button for the ground floor. He looked me over. “Seriously, I know I said I would kill you, but I was just trying to get away. This is all just bad luck for both of us.” He smiled again.
I licked my lips. He had a nice smile. Also, now that we were close, I could see that he had long, long eyelashes. Too long for a boy. They ringed his eyes and softened his masculine face, making him look almost… pretty.
God. Why was I noticing shit like that? I swallowed. “You’re only saying that to lull me into a false sense of security.”
“No, I’m not.” He looked offended. Then he shrugged. He grinned again. “But it’s smart of you to say that. If you were really in danger as a hostage, I bet you’d live through it regardless. Never let your guard down.”
What? He was complimenting me? I was thoroughly confused.
The elevator door opened.
He snatched me back against him again, gun at my temple.
I whimpered. I couldn’t help it.
But there was no one there.
“Walk,” he said in my ear.
I walked. He had told me he wasn’t going to kill me, so maybe I should have simply refused to obey, called his bluff.
But with the cold metal of the barrel of a gun against my skin, I simply couldn’t afford to take that kind of a risk.
We went about ten feet to a door that opened out into the spring air. Outside, the sky was blue, dotted with tiny, fluffy clouds. There were birds chirping at the top of their lungs. There was a strip of well-manicured grass ahead of us, then the sidewalk, then a street. Across the road was a parking lot.
No one was out here, at least none of the guards were.
“Okay,” I said. “You got away. Now let me go.”
He moved the gun from my head to the small of my back.
I shivered. There was something intimate about that, something terrifying.
He looked around. “I don’t think so. They could be watching. You’re going to have to come with me. Sorry about that.”
“Come with you?” What? No, no, no, I was not going somewhere with this man who I was inappropriately attracted to. Definitely not.
“Not forever. Just until I can get out of here. Get clear. I’ll need some insurance, and you’ll do nicely.” He poked me with the gun. “We’re going across the street.”
I moved, hurrying ahead of the gun.
We crossed the strip of grass, the sidewalk, the crosswalk that went across the street, and then he pushed me inside the driver’s side of a black Ford Mustang.
“Crawl over to the other seat,” he told me.
I crawled. I guess he thought that if he let me get in the passenger side, that I would just jump out and run. Well, he had another thing coming, because I was just going to throw open that door the minute that I got—
He locked the doors, settling into the driver’s seat. “Sorry,” he said, and he really did sound contrite.
I glared at him.
“Look, this will all be over in a few hours,” he said. “I promise. You’ll have a fun story to tell your friends. Your boyfriend.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I muttered, unsure why I was telling him that.
“Oh, too bad,” he said, but actually sounded pretty happy about that.
My lips parted, and I watched him turn the key in the ignition. “Are you flirting with me?” I said.
He laughed. “Flirting?” He raised his eyebrows at me. “Buckle up.” He backed the car up, one hand on the steering wheel, one hand pulling his own seatbelt over his body.
I was flung forward by the force of the car’s movement. I seized my seatbelt and pulled it on.
The car hurtled forward. I grasped the door handle for dear life.
He careened out of the parking lot and onto the street. Within minutes, the prince’s home was too far away to see. “Are you flirting with me?” he said
I snapped my head back forward to look at him. I sputtered. “I would never.”
He nodded, still smiling. The car was a five speed. He switched gears. “Well, me either.”
I sat back in the seat and stared straight ahead.
We took I-270 and drove out past Shady Grove, right to the edge of where the metro stations stopped. Then he took an exit, pulled into a parking lots in a strip mall that contained a Target, a Walgreens, and an H&R Block, and stopped the car.
He began unbuttoning the buttons on the security guard shirt he was wearing. “I know this is inconvenient, but you’ve got a cell phone, right? Someone can come pick you up?”
I was gaping at his bare chest as he revealed it. His skin was tawny. His stomach was flat and hard.
“Even if not,” he said, “you can probably walk to the metro from here.” He tugged the shirt off, tossed it in the back seat, and pulled out a t-shirt from back there.
I swallowed.
He grinned at me, holding the t-shirt. “Like what you see, then?”
I looked away.
He pulled the shirt over his head. “You could stay if you wanted.” He leaned across the car so that our faces were nearly touching. “You could show me what’s under your shirt too.”
My breath quickened again, and there was a throb from my clit, which couldn’t seem to calm down. I needed to get out of the car, but I hesitated.
I don’t know why I hesitated. In books, when women did stupid things because they found some hot guy really attractive, I hated it. It was the reason I read shifter books. It made more sense when some mystical alpha-bond-thing made you do it.
But I wasn’t doing anything. I pulled back from him, shaking my head.
“No?” He grinned. “Right, well, then get out of the car if you don’t mind? I’ve got places to be.”
Okay. He was letting me go. I should be relieved and ecstatic to be free of him.
Why wasn’t I?
I opened the door, and looked around for my purse out of instinct. But I didn’t have my purse. It was back in Starling’s bedroom at Prince Larbi’s house, where I’d left it. “Damn it,” I mutter
ed.
“What?”
I shook my head, getting out of the car. “Nothing. I just don’t have a cell phone after all.”
He winced. “Oh. Too bad.” He looked truly sympathetic.
I wanted to hit him.
“Listen, I know I already said it, but I am sorry. Truly sorry.”
I slammed the door to the car in his face.
Screw his apologies. It was all his fault that I was stuck out here.
I turned and starting walking toward the Target. I’d have to ask to use a phone. Of course, I didn’t know anyone’s phone number by heart. They were all saved in my damned cell phone.
And I didn’t have any money for the metro, even if I could walk there.
That bastard might not have killed me, but that didn’t mean he’d done me any favors either.
CHAPTER THREE
Cade
I watched her walk away, admiring the way her tight jeans clung to her ass. Damn, she was gorgeous all right. And it was funny, because I could swear that she hadn’t hated me as much as she probably should have. Couldn’t figure that. She knew what I was. Had witnessed it. Seen the dead body and everything.
Maybe she was twisted in the head or something. Maybe she got off on corpses. She looked normal, but you never really could tell about people. Lots of people had really disturbing sexual fantasies.
Still, disturbing or not, I thought I’d be willing to go pretty far out of my own comfort zone to tap that.
“Not going to happen, Cade,” I said to myself, starting the car and pulling out of the parking lot.
I pulled out on the street, leaving the place behind when I realized that she probably didn’t have any money. She said she didn’t have a cell phone, so she probably couldn’t call anyone. And without money, she couldn’t take the metro. I was leaving her at the mercy of strangers. In the suburbs.
Damn it.
I turned the car around and pulled back into the parking lot.
It took a minute to locate her, but I finally saw her stepping up onto the sidewalk in front of the Target. I drove my car over and pulled up next to her, rolling down the window. “Hey, there.”
She turned to look at me. “What? Did you decide you wanted to kill me after all?”
“No!” I was wounded. “I told you I wouldn’t, love.”
She cocked her head. “What the fuck? Are you British? Were you British before?”
I cringed. Fuck. I had decided to give her a ride and somehow sent a message to my brain to relax and be nice to her, and that had gotten interpreted as letting down my guard entirely. Well, there was nothing for it now. “I usually try not to attract attention to myself when I’m on the job. Anything that would make me stand out, like a foreign accent…”
“So, you are British?”
“My mother was,” I said. “And people tend to learn to speak from their mothers, so…” Not worth explaining that my mother had died when I was only five years old and that I’d grown up with my aunt in Wales until I was ten, when my father had remarried and decided that he was capable of raising me again, so I’d been shipped back to Connecticut. “Look, you want a ride?”
“What?” She stared at me as if I had lost my mind.
I rubbed my chin. I probably had lost my mind, if it came down to it. “I feel bad about ruining your day. I figure I could drive you back home. Not back to the prince’s house, you understand. I can’t go back there. But assuming you live somewhere around here…?”
She sighed. “I live in town.”
“Where in town?”
She told me.
I eyed her. “Really? That neighborhood?”
“What?” she said. “I can handle myself.”
I supposed that she did seem fairly brave. “Well, I can too. I don’t mind driving you there. What do you say?”
She looked back at the Target for a second. Then she turned back to me. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Because you need a ride.”
“Yes, but why are you being nice to me? You were going to kill me earlier.”
“I was never going to kill you. I only said that I was.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that? If I get back in your car, you’ll just take me someplace and kill me and dump my body in the river or something.”
“I really wouldn’t,” I said. “I don’t have any reason to kill you.”
“And you had a reason to kill Larbi? You and him have some kind of disagreement?”
“No. Listen, I’m not admitting to anything here, but I may have received payment for some of my activities earlier in the day. I definitely haven’t got any business pertaining to you.”
She studied her fingers.
I waited.
She looked up at me.
I smiled. “Think of it as an apology. For screwing up your day.”
She sighed. She yanked open the door to the car and got inside. “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”
And I wasn’t entirely sure why I was offering her the ride in the first place.
* * *
Shell
But when we got back to my apartment, there were five police cars parked in the parking lot, so he kept driving.
“I’ll take you a block down,” he said. “You’ll have to walk from there.”
“They’re there a lot,” I said. “It might not have anything to do with you.”
“Better safe than sorry,” he said, pulling the car over by the curb.
I turned to look at him. The drive back had been uneventful, and we hadn’t really spoken. He’d fiddled with the radio the entire time, and the music had been too loud for conversation.
He gave me a lopsided smile. “Well, sorry again.”
In spite of myself, I smiled back. He was just too damned attractive. And weirdly, he seemed… nice. That probably meant he was a psychopath, though, right? I mean, what other kind of person could kill someone and act like it was nothing? The thought gave me chills, and I stopped smiling.
“What’s your name, incidentally?” he asked.
“Shell,” I said.
“Like Shelly?”
“Like Shell,” I said. “My parents had this idea that they wanted their children to have unique names. They thought they were doing us a favor, since their names are Christopher and Mary. But they had no idea what it would be like.” I grimaced. And here I was sharing personal information with him. Something about him made me feel comfortable. That was probably part of his psychopath charm, I guessed.
He considered and then flashed me another smile. “I like it. It’s pretty.” There was a sort of sparkle in his eyes, as if we were sharing a private joke.
I didn’t understand what it was about this guy that made me feel so drawn to him. But I guessed it hardly mattered, because I was a block from my house now. I was going to get out of the car and walk back to my place, and I was never going to see him again. I felt a little disappointed by that thought.
Right then, I should have been reaching for the door handle, taking off my seatbelt, getting out of the car. But I didn’t do any of those things. I just eyed him, taking in his broad shoulders and his powerful arms.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“They call me Ripper,” he said, still grinning.
“That’s not a name.”
He shrugged. “Maybe not, love. It’s all you’re going to get, though.”
“Why do they call you that?”
He scratched his neck. “I guess it’s meant to be like Jack the Ripper.”
I drew back.
He laughed. “Well, I’m not anything like him. I don’t kill prostitutes or anything. I almost never kill women at all.”
“Almost never?” I squeaked. What the hell did that mean?
“Well, sometimes there is a woman that needs killing. I don’t approve of a wholesale whitewash over an entire gender. There are bad women, just like there are bad men. Saying otherwise is sexist. It doesn’t give women
credit. Paints them out as innocent, childlike creatures. I mean, what is this? The 1800s?”
I puzzled over that for several seconds. I supposed I could see his point. “So, you only kill bad people?”
He smoothed his eyebrow with one finger. “Bad probably isn’t the word for it. I mean, I guess since I kill people, I’m probably bad.”
I blinked. Now, I was just confused.
He wasn’t looking at me anymore. “You should probably go.” He leaned over and undid my seatbelt.
Now we were close.
My breath caught in my throat.
His face was inches from mine. “Not that I’m admitting to anything, mind,” he said in a soft voice.
I tried to make noise, but all that came out was a gurgling sound.
His tongue darted out and ran over the edge of his bottom lip. His lips were very full, I realized. He had long lashes and thick lips, and yet he simply oozed masculinity.
I had this urge to reach out and run my forefinger over his lips, trace them. I bit down on my own bottom lip.
His eyes searched mine, questioning me.
I drew in an audible breath. He was going to kiss me. We were close, and he was looking at me in that way that men did before they…
And I was going to let him. I was going to let the stone-cold psychopath kiss me. I was going to press my body up against his firm chest and run my hands over his shoulders, and—
He opened the door, pulling away from me.
The cool air whooshed inside the car.
I shook myself, feeling deflated.
He settled back into the driver’s seat, looking at the ceiling. “It was nice meeting you, Shell. Have a good life.”
I lurched forward. “Thanks for the ride,” I mumbled, and I got out of the car, feeling clumsy, as if my legs didn’t properly function. Once on solid ground, I leaned against the open door, steadying myself. I peered in the car at him.
He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was staring straight ahead, and he was composed, not smiling anymore.
I shut the door. I backed away.
The car roared to life and pulled away from me, back onto the street. I watched until it was out of sight.
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