by Anna Argent
He couldn’t let her do violence. That would draw the police and the kind of notice he was ordered to avoid. If she was who he thought—who he hoped—it was his job to keep her safe long enough to send her home.
His traitorous mind flirted briefly with the idea of taking a small detour with her—one that would give him a chance to see just how lovely she was under that horrible apron. A few hours spent loving a willing woman would have gone a long way toward easing his homesickness.
Before she’d reached her intended target—Beau—Radek stepped in front of her, blocking her path. He grabbed the hand wielding the cleaver to hide the blade between their bodies. The fewer people who saw her violent intent, the better.
“Get out of my way, Mr. Hottie.”
Mr. Hottie? He was pretty good with English and all its slang, and as far as he could decipher, that meant she thought he was attractive.
If she thought he was even half as sexy as he found her, there was a good chance that before the night was over, he’d have her naked and crying out his name while she came.
That idea was so distracting—so appealing—he almost forgot his job. “My name is Radek, and I can’t let you do this.”
“You don’t know me. You don’t know him or what he’s done. It’s none of your business, so just butt out.” Her fury was potent enough to spill out across his face in a wave of heat.
He tightened his grip to let her know he was calling the shots. “I’m making it my business. Whatever his crime, do you really want to go to prison for revenge?”
“I don’t care about that. He hurt my sister. He has to pay.”
“You would care,” Radek said. “As soon as you were locked in a cage, you’d regret everything.” He almost told her that his was the voice of experience talking, but he thought it better not to tell her she was being given advice from a prisoner. He couldn’t do anything to jeopardize whatever trust he could build with her.
The older woman sitting a few feet away finally noticed what was going on. “Ava, dear? Is this man bothering you? Harold, get on that there cell phone and call the sheriff.”
“Left it at home,” Harold said, far too loudly, to adjust for his lack of hearing. “Damn thing’s always out of batteries. Can’t hear a damn word.”
“We don’t need any police,” Ava said. “Beau and I just need to have a few words.”
“With a meat cleaver?” Radek whispered.
She looked up at him, fuming. Her eyes were a pale sea green with rays of dark blue at the center. He couldn’t remember ever having seen anything quite as pretty as she was right now, snarling and fighting against his hold.
The urge to pin her to a bed and fuck her hard washed through him, nearly scalding his insides with its potent force.
What was it about this woman that threatened his control? He’d encountered lots of beautiful woman—both human and Loriahan—in his travels, and none of them had affected him the way Ava did. She turned off his logic and made his instincts go wild. All he wanted was to let his animal side roam free and claim her as his own.
“Are you going to let me go?” she asked. “Or do I have to make you?”
Radek was wearing a shirt, so he couldn’t easily feel the heat signature of anyone behind him, but even with his shirt on, he could tell someone was approaching. Ava’s eyes narrowed and she bared her teeth at whoever was heading this way.
She growled and ripped out of Radek’s hold. “Beau, you motherfucking ass-wipe. I’m going to chop off your dick and feed it to you for what you did to Emily.”
Beau was a handsome, clean cut young man with a confident swagger and a buddy standing behind each shoulder. His blond hair was cut close to his scalp, barely showing a mark where his hat had been. He stood loose and relaxed, like he was ready for a fight. Eager, even.
He gave Radek one quick once-over, then put his attention squarely on Ava. “Nice to see you too, Ava. How’s Emily?” His smile was smug. Knowing.
Ava lunged forward, cleaver raised, but Radek grabbed her around the waist and held her back. “You don’t get to speak her name. Ever. Not after what you did.”
“It was consensual,” Beau said, casually dismissing the whole thing as a non-event.
“And her bruises? Were those consensual too?”
“She’s fair skinned and bruises easily. I barely touched her. If you don’t believe me, just ask her. The sheriff already did, and that’s exactly what she told him.”
“I don’t care what she told your dad. She lied because she’s afraid of you. And him. But I’m not.”
Beau glanced at the cleaver, which was not hidden as well as Radek had hoped. “Assault with a deadly weapon is a serious crime, Ava. I’d hate to see what would happen to Emily if her fierce big sister wasn’t nearby to protect her.”
The two men flanking Beau chuckled.
Radek hadn’t gathered a whole lot of details about what had happened to Ava’s sister, but he gleaned enough from their conversation to know what he needed to.
Beau had hurt Emily. Perhaps, even raped her. And he was going to get away with it because his father was the head lawman.
Radek couldn’t let Beau’s crime go unpunished. He wasn’t supposed to interfere in the lives of humans, but some assholes needed to be interfered with. Hard.
Before Ava could do something she’d regret, he disarmed her with a quick jerk, ripping the cleaver from her hand. While she was still gasping in outrage, he sank the blade into the nearest table so deep, it was going to take two human men to retrieve it.
“Enough!” he bellowed. Everyone in the room went still at the power of his voice.
Radek pointed at the three men. “You. Out. Now. The restaurant is officially closed.”
Beau put his hands on his hips. “You have no right to tell us what to do.”
“I can deal with this trash without your help.” Ava grabbed Radek’s arm in an effort to turn him around to face her ire, but he didn’t so much as sway.
Beau flicked his wrist, silently ordering his buddies to move forward.
The old couple across the room stood up to leave. “We’ll be reporting this to the authorities,” the woman said, while the man threw some cash on the table to cover their bill.
“Leave it alone, dear,” her husband nearly shouted. “The world is going to hell and there’s not a thing we can do about it. Hooligans. All of them.”
He grabbed his wife’s arm and ushered her out while she fumed about the downfall of society.
Beau’s buddies were close now. Radek had been tracking them while he watched the couple leave. Behind him, he could still feel Ava’s body heat hitting the narrow band of bare skin at the base of his skull. That heat was fading as she walked away, presumably to get another weapon.
Having a reason to put his hands on her again didn’t bother him nearly as much as it should have.
“You don’t want to do this,” he warned the men. “It’s not going to end well for you.”
“Says the man who’s all by himself,” Beau said. “You may be big, but there are more of us.”
“My argument isn’t with you two,” he told the men inching closer. There was uncertainty in their eyes, and more than a little hesitation in their movements. “I really don’t want to hurt you.” Radek flashed a glance at Beau. “You, I want to hurt. A lot.”
“You’re going to have to go through us,” said the man on the left. He had white-blond hair and a handsome face.
Too bad Radek was going to have to damage it.
As soon as it was clear there was no other course of action—that these followers were going to go through with their leader’s orders—Radek acted. No point in delaying the inevitable.
He threw a hard, fast punch right into the bridge of the white-blond man’s nose. The snap of breaking bone was audible. The guy screamed, cupped his face and rolled aside as blood poured out from between his fingers.
The man on the right took pause as he saw his buddy fall, then stoppe
d.
So did Radek. “Do I have to hurt you too?”
He gave Beau an apologetic look. “Sorry, man. I got a kid at home now. I’m outta here.” He left.
Now that Beau was alone with only a moaning, bleeding buddy, some of his swagger fell away. He was still a cocky fucker, but not nearly as puffed up as he had been when he’d had two men shielding him.
Ava’s heat splashed across the nape of his neck, warning him that she’d returned. He glanced her way, but instead of another knife in her hand, she wielded a shotgun.
Radek couldn’t tell if she aimed it at him or Beau, but it didn’t really matter. At this range, they were both targets of the same blast.
“Get out,” she ordered. “All of you.”
He couldn’t leave her alone—not when Beau looked like he was still searching for a fight. What if he came back in after Radek left? If Ava was who he hoped, he couldn’t leave her in danger.
Through the window to the kitchen, he could see the cook’s back as he worked over the grill. He bounced along to some kind of music being piped in through his earbuds. Apparently, he hadn’t heard a word of the confrontation.
“What about my meal?” Radek asked Ava. “I haven’t eaten all day, and I’m starving.”
“Too bad. If you wanted to eat, you shouldn’t have taken my knife away.”
“I couldn’t let you kill him,” Radek said.
“I wasn’t going to kill him, just hurt him a little.”
Beau scoffed. “You like to think you could get one over on me. I bet you’re just as weak as your sister—she barely fought me at all.”
Ava’s finger moved to the trigger. Radek stepped aside, because he really didn’t want to be in the line of fire when she pulled it.
“Now I want to kill him,” she said to Radek. “See the difference?”
The man with the broken nose had recovered enough to stand upright. He was dialing his phone.
“We’re going to have company soon,” Radek told her. “And from what I heard, Beau’s dad isn’t going to lend a very sympathetic ear. Maybe you should kill Beau another day. You know, when you won’t be guaranteed to get caught and imprisoned.”
Beau laughed. “Bitch can’t do a thing to me and she knows it.”
Radek didn’t take his eyes off of Ava as he moved closer, but that kind of comment could not go without response. “I wouldn’t be talking like that to the furious woman pointing a loaded shotgun at you.”
Ava tightened her grip on the weapon. “Both of you just shut up!”
Radek continued on his path, getting closer to her while doing his best to stay out of the line of fire. “I think you should leave, Beau. She hasn’t pulled the trigger yet. There’s still time.”
“I came for supper. I’m staying until I get some.”
Stupid, stupid man. Couldn’t he see how serious Ava was? How furious?
Radek could feel it spilling out of her in waves of heat. Her heart was pounding hard, and her adrenaline was spiked.
This was the way blind rage killed. This was how people got shot.
He had to find some way to stop her. “Play this out, Ava. Tell me how it goes. You pull that trigger. Beau gets splattered all over the wall. Then what?”
“My sister is safe. He won’t ever hurt her or anyone else again.”
“What will you do with his body?”
She hesitated. “Doesn’t matter. Put him down the disposal with the rest of the garbage.”
”What will you say to the police? More important, what will you say to your sister?”
“I don’t know.” Ava closed her eyes for a second, but that was all the opening Radek needed.
He charged, taking control of the shotgun and pointing it high. He didn’t know how he managed to lift it out of reach before she pulled the trigger, but with the space of a split second, the gun was in his control and out of hers.
“You bastard,” she growled. “You have no right.”
He gave her what he hoped was a sympathetic expression. “I promised to protect you, even from yourself. I can’t let you go to prison.”
Before she had time to respond, Radek leveled the weapon at Beau, keeping his voice was calm and quiet. “I have no reason to kill you. No motive. They’ll never connect me to your murder. I don’t live here. No one even knows my name. If I were to pull this trigger right now, I’d never get caught. I suggest you leave before I decide to test my theory.”
Beau’s buddy scrambled for the door, dripping blood as he went. After a heartbeat of hesitation, Beau followed his lead.
Ava was shaking so hard, Radek could see it in his peripheral vision.
“You should have let me kill him.”
Radek turned to her. “I saved your life. One day you’ll see that.”
“All you did was let him go to hurt some other innocent girl. Maybe even hurt Emily again.”
“Do you really want it to be your job to bring him to justice?”
“No one else will. What choice do I have?”
While Radek was intimately familiar with the justice system on his world, he didn’t understand the intricacies of the legal system here. But what little he did know told him that Ava taking matters into her own hands was as much of a crime as what Beau had done.
He emptied the shells out of the shotgun and set it down. “I’ll do it. I’ll punish him.”
“What? You don’t even know me. Why would you care?”
“Wrong is wrong.”
She stared at him a minute, looking at him like he was telling some kind of joke. “You’ve got to be kidding. This isn’t your problem.”
“You believe that if Beau doesn’t learn his lesson, he’ll keep hurting young girls, right?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want that any more than you do. So I’ll take care of it. What punishment do you think is suitable? Do I kill him for you? I could do it tonight. In his sleep. Of course I’ll have to kill the other man too. And the old couple. No witnesses.”
Her pale eyes widened with distress. “No. You can’t hurt them. Only Beau.”
“I won’t go to prison for you. So you’ll have to decide what you really want.”
Her fury had faded enough that she was starting to think more clearly. He could see it in her face, hear it in her voice.
“The Landers are a nice couple. And Beau’s buddies weren’t involved in what happened to Emily. I don’t want them killed.”
“So what, then? You mentioned something about cutting off his dick. I could bring it to you. Maybe show it to your sister so that she knows she’s safe.”
Ava winced. “Um, no. I don’t think she’d like to see that.”
“But you would?”
“Not particularly.”
“I’ll just throw it away, then. Of course, being unmanned might piss him off enough that he comes after her…. Maybe I should just kill him.”
Ava closed her eyes and covered them with her hands. “Just stop, okay? You’ve made your point.”
“And that is what?”
“That anything I do will only make things worse for Emily. I can’t always be there to protect her, and Beau knows me well enough to realize that hurting her is the worst thing he could do to me.”
“So you’re just going to let him get away with it?”
“No. But I’ll find someone else to call and demand justice—someone who isn’t his father.”
Radek shrugged, pleased that his ploy worked. “Suit yourself.”
The oblivious cook turned around and slid plates of food into the window. “Order up.”
She looked at the food, then at Radek. “You’re taking that to go.”
“I’d rather eat it here.”
“That’s just too bad. We’re closing up early. Someone spilled blood all over the place and it’s going to take me a while to clean it up.”
“Is that your way of thanking me?” he asked.
She went to the window and began putting his dinner i
nto a white box. “If you want to take it that way, sure. Whatever floats your boat.”
He processed the phrase and tucked it away for future reference.
“Staying here would make my boat float.” Not only was it his job to discover if she was one of the people he was charged to find, protect and send home, he also felt the need to stay close by. Just in case Beau decided to come back with reinforcements.
“Sorry. That’s not an option.” She turned and held out the sack containing his steak.
Rather than upset her further, he took the meal like a good boy and pulled cash from his wallet. “I’ll be outside if you change your mind.”
She gave him an unwavering stare. “I won’t. Safe travels.”
It was a clear dismissal—one he would take as far as the parking lot. Until he knew her true identity—until he knew if she was human or Loriahan—he wasn’t going to let her get out of reach.
*****
Ava vented her frustration on the worn carpet, scrubbing it until the blood was nothing more than an infuriating memory. By the time she was done closing up the restaurant, it was well after midnight.
The whole time she worked, her mind never strayed far from the stranger who’d interfered in her life.
Radek. That’s what he’d called himself. What kind of name was that anyway?
He did sound a bit foreign, so maybe it was some sort of ethnic name she’d never heard before. And those dark good looks… definitely exotic. She couldn’t really put her finger on any one ethnicity, but whatever his heritage, he wore it well.
She locked up and wrapped her coat around her to ward off the cold. Spring would be here soon, but not tonight.
She flung her yoga bag over her shoulder with her self-defense bat in it, and headed for the sidewalk. Walking the few blocks home always calmed her down and cleared her head so she could sleep after a long shift.
Ava hadn’t even made it three yards before she saw him.
Radek.
He was bare-chested, straddling a big black motorcycle next to a big black truck. His jeans were pulled tight across his thighs, showing off thick, hard muscles. Wide bands of matte leather encircled both wrists, a third of the way up to his elbows. Now that he was shirtless, those bands looked nothing at all like bondage gear. Instead, they seemed to be… armor?
