No. He couldn’t stop. Because he hadn’t had enough yet. Not enough of the pulse beating wildly at her throat, of the scent of her outrage and what she probably didn’t even realize yet was arousal. Maybe he couldn’t turn, but he could turn her on. Anything to turn her away from the truth of him. “What about a supe? Ever done one of us? Had someone slide their fangs into your throat while they dick into you? Grabbed on to a wolf’s ruff when he’s nosing between your legs? Does that idea get you hot or disgust you? I can’t tell.”
“Does it get you hot or disgust you?” She turned the question around on him, startling him out of the nasty little daydreams and making him register that she was leaning so close they were almost forehead to forehead. So close that he could smell the floral notes in her shampoo. “Why would you think to ask me these things if they weren’t on your mind?” she wondered. “Maybe we should talk about that? Do you have some sort of residual guilt about being a supernatural? Is that why you killed those men? Because you hate yourself?”
Christ. She was good. And too good for him. But Joe didn’t want to talk about his “residual guilt.” Or any guilt at all. What did it matter how he felt? They were all still dead. Kenny. All the people he took out overseas. Those fuckers in the club. None of that was going to change if he gave Neha a sob story. And did he hate himself? The fuck did that even mean? “What would you know about hating yourself? Pretty little PhD with your fancy legal degree? You don’t know what it’s like to be me, Doc. And you definitely don’t know what it’s like to be a supe. You can try and shrink your way into my head, but you’ll never understand it.”
“Are you seriously implying I’m classist and racist?” Her palm slapped down on the table. “You don’t know anything about me, Joe,” she told him in no uncertain terms. “My immigrant father drove a New York City cab for thirty years. He never had his own medallion. My mom worked two jobs and raised three kids. My collars are only white because I learned how to bleach them. I have snake shifters and yakshas in my extended family—and in many Indian cultures, they hold those beings sacred. More well-respected than you’ll ever be. So, I’ll say it again: that’s enough!”
Whoa. Color him totally surprised. He’d had her pegged as some Upper East Side trust-fund diva. Not an outer-borough brat like him. “Sorry!” He lifted his bound hands in a gesture of surrender, glad they weren’t bolted down for once. “I was just…curious.” It was true, albeit not completely honest. He knew better than to admit he’d just wanted to mess with her a little, or that he wanted to distract her from getting too close to all the shit he kept locked down.
And the half-assed excuse didn’t unruffle her feathers. “You shouldn’t be curious about me, Joe,” she said in a severe tone that would make a nun proud. Or whatever the Indian equivalent of a nun was.
He shrugged. Tried to find a way to respond that wasn’t going to set her off again…though, hell, she was fucking gorgeous when she was mad. “But I am curious, and I can’t do a thing about it except ask you all the questions I’ve got,” he explained. “Sorry, Doc. Blame all the time in jail if you want. It’s not like the social scene here’s anything special. A man’s mind gets a little one-track, you know? It can’t be all Great British Bake-Off. I’ve got needs.” He still didn’t know what a Victoria sponge was, but everything his imagination came up with was X-rated.
“I’m trying to help your defense, not improve your love life.” Neha’s voice went even lower than its natural sex-hotline level. She wasn’t impressed with his Netflix callback. “Right now, it sounds to me like you’ve got shit chances at both.”
Maybe it sounded that way to her. It didn’t look that way to him. Not when her body was still canted toward him. Not when she hadn’t broken eye contact since she’d come in. There was a faint tinge of pink across her cheekbones. And there was the tiniest little catch in her voice when she warned him, “Joe…Joe, stop it.”
“Stop what?” He leaned in as close as the table between them would allow. And he didn’t have to go all that far, because she’d already met him halfway. “What am I doing, baby?”
The breath she took was shaky. The words she said were even shakier. “You’re calling me ‘baby,’ for one. This is so inappropriate,” she reminded him. “And, as I told you before, changing the subject won’t work on me.”
“Then maybe this will.” Baby. Honey. Sweetheart. Sugar. Fuckin’ beautiful. He hadn’t even started with the names. He could come up with a dozen more with his dick buried balls-deep inside her. Joe memorized the tilt of her nose. Sent the tiny mole at the corner of her lips to his mental spank bank. And then he did what any desperate, deranged asshole in this situation would do: he kissed her.
It lasted all of two seconds before the guard started yelling for them to break it up and stormed over, waving his Taser, to yank Joe back and nearly off his feet. But what a goddamn glorious two seconds. Soft mouth under his. Lips parting in shock. A taste of her skin. He knew a real kiss would taste even better. And kissing her everywhere would taste the best.
She knew it, too. He could tell from the sharp bark of her voice as she assured the guard that she was fine and could handle her client. He could see it in how she got all gathered and composed, radiating prissiness and disapproval, but fumbled when she tried to collect her notes. Oh shit, yes. She could glare all she wanted, but she couldn’t cuss him out for this without including herself in the rant. He wasn’t the only one who sensed her arousal. She wanted him, too. The electric current that zipped through him then was a billion volts more than any Taser. He’d been wrong about her. About what kind of woman she was. She took no prisoners in court, but she’d take him anywhere else. Maybe she’d even take him inside her. Joe almost groaned with relief. Maybe she wouldn’t be his last meal. Maybe she’d be the first decent one he’d had in years.
* * *
She was a bleeding heart. She was going off the deep end. She was becoming a furry—not that there was anything wrong with that. She knew a few really nice furries. No, it was more like she was becoming one of those women who turned prison pen pal to guys like Bundy and Richard Ramirez. There were a dozen explanations going through Neha’s head when she left lockup and returned to the real world, but there was only one image. Joe Peluso, right before he kissed her. That brutish face, still a little bruised and cut. And his eyes. Looking too far. Seeing too much. She’d dealt with plenty of sexual overtures, but she’d never, ever had anyone look at her that way. Like she was the beginning, middle, and end.
He wanted her. No, more than that, he craved her. She’d never been the subject of this kind of desire. The men she’d dated… She’d had to work them to arousal, convince them to do the same for her. Usually in exchange for a blow job. They’d never been turned on just by being near her. She’d never been out of her head just being around one of them. It was overwhelming…and it was exactly whelming enough. Like a drug in her veins. She’d had one hit and she was spoiled. I want, I need to be wanted like that.
It was unprofessional. A complete breach of ethics. She needed to tell Dustin and Nate ASAP and recuse herself from any involvement with Joe’s case. But she didn’t reach for her cell when she hit the sidewalk on Atlantic Avenue. Instead, she slumped against a lamppost, her fingers going up to her lips. It was ridiculous that she could still feel him. It had been over before it even began. But she traced the kiss anyway. Gentle. A surprise. But not a demand. What was that Katy Perry song? I kissed a prisoner, and I liked it…no, worse…I kissed a werewolf, and I liked it. Oh god, she was a fucking head case.
It took Neha the entire walk back to the office to get ahold of herself…and once she was there, safely ensconced in the Brooklyn Heights brownstone that Dickenson, Gould, and Smythe had called home for more than a decade, she’d somehow already convinced herself to not say a word about the line that Joe had crossed. The line that she let him cross because she was already way too invested in him.
&
nbsp; And because she’d learned he was smart—that his brooding silences hid a sharp mind that missed nothing. And he was funny. Sure, his humor generally skewed toward lewd, but he made her laugh with those pervy quips more often than not. And all the dry facts she’d absorbed when DGS first took his case were personal now. They had context. She understood why he was a loner. His mother had an aneurysm when he was two and never recovered. His father crashed into a guardrail seven years later in a fatal DUI. He’d been shuffled back and forth between foster homes and the care of an elderly grandmother, crunched through the system for years. Only finding stability when family friends in Maspeth took him in until he was old enough to enlist in the Marines. Papa and Ma drove her up a wall sometimes, but she couldn’t imagine not having them in her life. Or her older brothers, who’d taught her how to be tough and scared away entirely too many potential high-school boyfriends. She knew instinctively that Joe would be that kind of brother, given the chance. But kids like him didn’t get chances. Most grown men like him didn’t either. And somehow, in what was probably the most imprudent decision she’d made in a long time, she wanted to give him one.
She wanted to save him. Like those gullible, idealistic heroines in movies. “Don’t get too involved,” Nate had warned her. “I know the guy’s got charisma, but we need to use that against the prosecution, not weaponize it against ourselves.” But it was too late to point Joe Peluso elsewhere. He’d zeroed in on her. And she was a willing target.
No. Stop it. Neha looked around her cubicle, using basic grounding tricks to snap herself out of her head. Four things she could see—the Lord of the Rings action figures on her desk. Three things she could hear—two of the paralegals discussing their superior, the hum of the copier, the crackle of the aging light fixtures. Two things she could smell—someone’s Italian lunch and the nail polish her fellow associate, Tania, was applying in the next cube over. And one basic bit of truth: this wasn’t a noble campaign for Joe’s rights; it wasn’t some touchy-feely Lifetime movie. It was lust.
A raging case of it, blotting out everything rational. She’d had a copper IUD for a while to prevent pregnancy and regulate her cycle, but she remembered what it was like to get completely rattled by her hormones—the ticking biological clock. Being in heat. In season. That irrational week of her period where all she wanted to do was stroke a puppy, hold a baby, and get laid. Somehow, Joe Peluso had turned into the puppy, the baby, and the jones for sex wrapped into one. Everything she craved. Nothing she could actually have. The beast in him calling to the wild animal in her.
She had to get over it. Mind over matter, and all of that. But she didn’t dare talk to any of her friends about him. She’d committed enough questionable acts in the last few weeks, and she didn’t need to add breaching client confidentiality to the list. But she needed to put some of it into words, to at least have one person confirm she was off the rails while also being terribly sympathetic to the desperate state of her vagina. Neha whipped her phone out of her purse and typed out a quick message to her cousin Tejal, who was bound by the rules of family to be on her side even while criticizing her choices…and who knew the world of supernaturals all too well.
Hey. You around this weekend?
Tejal was half-Punjabi, half-Gujarati, and wholly a Naga—a snake shifter. Fully inherited from her Gujarati side, as the Punjus in their family never failed to point out. Thanks to thousands of years of intermarrying with humans, and being hunted to near-extinction by enemies, their particular breed of shifter was dying out. Tejal’s twin sister, Toral, was a genetic researcher out in the Bay Area—working on a database project to help keep the world’s tiny Naga population alive. Tejal was doing her own part for their people as an ob/gyn at a fertility clinic in North Brunswick. It didn’t escape Neha that her cousin’s entire life involved holding babies. And she had an adorable black Lab. Whether she was getting laid at the moment was something Neha would, no doubt, find out after spilling her own personal soap opera.
Minutes went by like hours before the three little dots signaling her cousin’s reply appeared. For you? Always. Chaat and chat at the usual place?
YES, PLEASE!!!
It was enough to unknot some of the tension in Neha’s shoulders, to help her get through the rest of the day and night without making any more questionable decisions. At least not conscious decisions. Because, of course, Joe followed her back home to Kensington and into her dreams, where he did more than just steal a quick kiss across a table. He touched her and held her and wrangled her body into impossible circus-performer positions, all while whispering the filthiest suggestions in her ear. Not to rile her up, not to distract her, but to make her feel good. So damn good.
“Neal and Nitesh are going to kill you,” Tejal said the next day, before Neha even finished sketching the picture of a tough-as-nails jerk who’d lasered her clothes off with one look. “No,” she corrected herself. “They’ll kill this guy and then they’ll kill you.”
Her brothers, Neha knew full well, would only murder her in the metaphorical sense. “Shh!” she cautioned. “It’s bad enough white people assume all desi girls get forced into marriages or honor-killed. No need to put that out into the world.”
Besides, she was pretty sure Joe Peluso could break Neal and Nitesh in half. A cardiologist and an IT guy, respectively, they probably couldn’t bench-press 100 pounds between them.
“Do you see any white people here?” Tejal rolled her eyes, scooping samosa chaat onto one half of her paper plate before arranging a few pani puri shells on the other.
Not a one, actually. Just a mix of various desi folks. From all across South Asia. She and her cousin were surrounded by the comforting hubbub of conversations in Urdu and Gujarati and Tamil and Bengali. The benefit to meeting at their favorite hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant. Neha had taken a Jersey transit train out from Penn Station in the morning. Since that involved swiping through at checkpoints and having her entry and exit from New York City recorded by drones, she’d fully expected to spend the entire day with Tejal and then probably pop in on her parents for dinner. She might as well make all the hassle worth it. Cue plastic trays heaped with delicious street food—and a side of carefully edited gossip.
There was no chance of anyone from the firm, or the other side of the case, finding her here. Her conscience and her libido, however, had no problems tracking her across the river. She could feel the prick of one and the burn of the other as she shifted on the bench seat and tried to focus across the booth. Tejal looked unbearably pretty. Traditional. She wore her long hair in one thick braid. Her clothes were bright and flowy. Thick kohl lined her eyes and her nose piercing was a simple red jewel. On the surface, she represented everything Neha no longer was. Below it… Well, that was a different story. There were painful chapters. Secrets. Things Tejal couldn’t shed like her skin.
Tell her. A part of Neha was itching to spill every last detail. To open up to her cousin about Joe Peluso being a supernatural, a shifter. Tejal was guaranteed to understand that part, even if the “Oh, and he killed six people” bit was a deal breaker. She’d have insight. She’d have advice. She’d be dragged into this. In the end, it was that thought that kept Neha reined in.
She exercised the same kind of restraint as she gently tapped the shell of one of her pani puris, breaking a wide enough hole to add the chana and aloo filling. “It’s not like I haven’t dated bad boys before,” she pointed out with a heavy sigh. Mr. Fifty Shades of Nope came to mind. And the guys in high school who’d spent more time smoking stinkweed behind the football field than going to class. And the L-school douchebag who now worked for the Republican Hindu Coalition. Gross.
“But this is a different kind of bad boy,” Tejal countered, infinitely practical…and more on target that she could possibly realize. She filled her own puri and then pushed the dish of tamarind water across the table at Neha. “Your type was always…wrong for you. Slackers. Sto
ners. Conservative assholes. I was always like ‘What is Neha thinking?’ every time you’d tell me about who you were dating. And you may not be hooking up with this guy yet, but he sounds like someone you actually click with. Is he worth the risk?”
“Are any of them worth the risk?” Neha laughed.
Tejal winced, acknowledging the point…and lifted her pani puri in a toast. It was filled to the brim with tamarind water like a crispy, spicy, shot glass. Mere seconds from collapsing. Much like their lives, it seemed, the snack’s structural integrity was shaky at best. “Cheers,” she said wryly.
Neha quickly prepped her own and echoed the sentiment—“Cheers”—before popping the one-bite treat into her mouth. Tart-sweetness exploded in her mouth…and it almost overpowered the taste of her guilt.
At least she had the luxury of making shitty choices. Both of the twins dated sparingly, knowing that they’d have to factor in their responsibilities to the Naga. Falling in love with someone who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help propagate the species was practically a betrayal.
And what’s falling for a criminal? Is Joe worth that risk? Because what would that even mean? He was behind bars…with absolutely zero guarantee he would be set free. He wasn’t even interested in being set free. She’d compared herself to women who wrote to serial killers…but what if that wasn’t a tired joke but her actual reality? How could they possibly make a relationship work when all the beats would be played out over monitored visits? Was she ready for that?
The questions stayed with her for the next hour, pushing her back to the city instead of to see Papa and Ma. Is he worth the risk? It haunted her for the rest of the weekend and chased her into the office on Monday morning. Is he worth the risk? And why am I willing to take it?
Chapter 7
Joe’s next hearing was in a couple days. But his hearing wasn’t the problem. No, it was his seeing. All the damn visions he was hoping Neha would keep away. The Peluso Theater was up and running, playing the Technicolor feed across his eyelids instead of letting him sleep.
Big Bad Wolf Page 6
