And fate was a son of a bitch.
And Jacob Crow was, after all, cursed.
*****
What am I doing? Why did I drink all of that? Angel wondered at her behavior. She was bewildered by everything she’d done over the last hour.
And how damn strong was that drink, anyway? The bartender had been generous, that’s for sure. Of course, Angel had taken Jake’s drink, and maybe his had been made stronger because he was so much bigger than she was. Regardless, she’d had too much. She’d had just enough to make her careless.
This is a mistake, her inner Jiminy Cricket told her. Oh shut up, she told him. Stupid bug.
But she was buzzing hard. Her fingers and toes were tingling. Her heart was racing. Her belly and groin were pulsing with building need, uncomfortably warm and sensitive.
Angel glanced over at her impossibly handsome companion. He really was impossibly handsome. Every woman in the restaurant had been looking at him. Every single one. Why was that? What were the chances? What was this ultra-magnetism he possessed?
Maybe we’re all monsters….
His words echoed against the walls of her mind, and something began to unfold in the shadows of her head. She blinked, frowning as she stared out the window at the passing landscape. It shifted from city to forest, and she had the general impression they were headed somewhere north of San Francisco.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her voice a little softer than she’d have liked. But Jake didn’t answer, and Angel didn’t ask again.
Her head was suddenly spinning, her warden instincts kicking in because she was effectively compromised. She was slowed down by the alcohol, and no one but Jake knew where she was. She was in the passenger seat of a vehicle going pretty damn fast, alone with a man she was having unexpected doubts about.
Realizations hit her one after another.
When she’d fled from Vega territory, Cain had somehow helped her. And when he had, he had healed her, even her bruises. Even her torn and sore muscles. But Darius refused to tell her how he’d done that. She’d woken up feeling so good, she hadn’t needed any pain meds. How? How had he done that? Was he a healer like her? But if so, then how had he known just when she needed help most? And then, how had he found her?
No one knew anything about the Monsters. They covered their tracks with such care, the cover-up was suspicious in and of itself. The fact that they were able to destroy any and all records of each of their members was frankly unbelievable.
And that’s just it, she realized. It really is unbelievable. As in, it’s impossible.
And all of those vehicles in that garage… they were worth a fortune. This car alone would sell at auction for a good two-hundred thousand. How had Jake afforded it? Just like Cain, he was young. Mid-thirties at the oldest. The Monsters MC moved around constantly, making a steady eight-to-five job highly unlikely. Was Jake just really good with money? Was this the result of careful investments?
It was possible. But were they all that good with money?
And why were so many of the vehicles vintage?
Maybe we’re all monsters….
There were other things too. She realized them now that she allowed herself to think about it all. She’d just swallowed all of her coffee despite planning to play it safe in his presence. She wasn’t that wanting in willpower, was she?
And she always sensed Jake coming before he arrived. She could feel him when he was near. As if he gave off some kind of signal. Maybe it was just the strength of her attraction to him; she wouldn’t know. She’d never felt this way about anyone before.
But what if it wasn’t? What if it was something else?
She glanced at his profile again. He was so striking, Angel actually felt a kind of pain when she looked at him. She couldn’t even say where exactly it hurt. It was just that he was achingly beautiful.
Inhumanly so.
I’m caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
All at once, Angel felt for the door handle of the GTO. And then she took a quick breath and steeled her nerves. “Pull over,” she said softly.
She could see Jake glance over at her, but she refused to meet his gaze. She knew his eyes would be hard. She knew, just knew, that he was way ahead of her. She knew he could sense her sudden reservations. He wasn’t normal. If she looked at him, he would drive straight into her soul, and she would be lost.
“Please,” she added, with a little more force.
After a few seconds, Jake slowed the car and turned the wheel. They pulled onto a smaller road that diverted from the highway and led into the darkness of redwoods so tall they blotted out the sun.
Panic bubbled up inside Angel. Where were they?
No, don’t panic now Angel, she told herself firmly. You can always transport if you have to.
Once they’d gone a quarter mile or so, Jake slowed the car further and pulled it over into an alcove on the side of the road. The moment the car came to a stop, Angel turned the handle and jumped out of it as if the seat were on fire.
But she staggered to a halt to find that Jake was already out from his side of the car and standing in front of her before the passenger side door had even fully closed.
And that was the tipping point.
“Okay,” she exhaled shakily, feeling disaster on the horizon. “That’s it.” She swallowed hard as her heart pounded so fast her head hurt. She felt her gun at her back but she also knew it wouldn’t matter. Not with him. Not if she was right. “That’s the last straw,” she said, shaking her head.
Suddenly she wished she had bothered with all of her wards that morning. She wished she hadn’t been lax, hadn’t let down her guard so thoroughly. But she’d wanted to be frugal with her magic, and more importantly Jake made her feel happy. He made her feel safe.
Except for now.
Right now, Jake was looking at her as if he was composed of green fire, and his eyes were windows to that conflagration. He towered, indomitable, stark, and powerful, and Angel grasped that she’d opened up to him completely, becoming vulnerable. “What are you?” she demanded. Her head was swimming. She was unsteady, and slightly sick. “You really are a monster, aren’t you?”
He watched her in stony silence. It was as good as a confession.
Chapter Thirty-Four
All this time, none of the spells or wards she’d used to protect herself or oust supernatural influence around her had given her any clue that Jacob Crow wasn’t who and what he pretended to be. As far as she’d always known, he was human. He was the Monsters clan second-in-command, he was an amazing tracker, he was beautiful. But he was still human.
Now she realized her mistake. The fact that her spells hadn’t revealed his inhumanity to her didn’t mean anything. Not really. Because his own spells and wards could easily negate hers.
Yes, he had eaten in front of her, shared a beer and coffee with her, and they’d moved around in the sunlight. He sported a tan and she’d seen him sustain wounds as a human would. But magic could create all of these illusions for a supernatural creature, especially those who’d been around a few years.
His painfully vibrant eyes… well, they’d always been superhuman. They were to her, anyway. They were too vivid, too powerful, too hauntingly beautiful. The way he fought when on a job was like a deadly dance; he was always just stronger and just faster than his opponent. He’d never quite blurred in his movements the way some supes could, but he’d never slipped up either. He’d never lost a fight. Not since she’d met him.
And then there was the way she felt when he was near her. It was the way he made electricity slide along her nerve endings and awaken things inside her, even from that very first day and that very first meeting.
And there was the way he seemed to know her. Not in an “I’ve read your file” kind of way. But in a way that was deeper, truer, and absolute. He knew when she needed space, knew never to crowd or suffocate her, but he knew when to assert himself too – and how. He knew when she
needed to be touched, even when she didn’t realize it herself, and he knew when she absolutely did not want to be.
With Jake, Angel felt the way she wanted to feel. She felt as if an impossible catch of a man, a genuinely good man who was strong, free, beautiful and savage, had set his sights on her and only her and wasn’t going to give up until she was his.
No human male could make a woman feel that way. That was why women read romance novels! That was why she read romance novels!
Jacob Crow was everything Angel had ever wanted in a man, and that was just it. That was too much. It gave him away. She’d set her bar on men impossibly high on purpose. She’d never wanted to fall in love again. She’d never wanted to hurt that way again. But he’d managed to meet her bar anyway, and surpass it.
And just now? Moving like lightning to suddenly appear in front of her, a deceptively calm tower of quiet storm – as if he hadn’t moved at all? It was just not viable. No mortal moved that fast. It was all impossible.
“You aren’t human,” she told him with finality. It wasn’t a question. She didn’t need him to confirm it. She already knew. “Please don’t insult me by denying it.”
But he didn’t try to. Instead, his luminous eyes took on a pain-filled cast, and the green in them sparked to inhuman life, taking on an eerie glow that confirmed her accusations. Her breath caught, but he stayed where he was and kept his hands at his sides.
The expression on his beautiful face was something desperate. It made her chest hurt and caused her to waver inside. But those eyes were still glowing, and as she watched, they trailed hungrily down her face to her lips.
She steeled herself. She was terrified to ask the question even though she already knew the answer. It was as if not hearing it, not hearing the word, would make it not true. But she tried to push the question through her teeth anyway. “Are you….” She faltered.
She couldn’t do it. Not now. Not after fifteen years of being strong. A sob climbed her throat, and she angrily shoved it back down before she gritted her teeth and haltingly asked, “Jake… are you –”
“I’m in love with you, Angel” he said, his deep voice hoarse with emotion. “That’s what I am.”
Angel felt the blow to her heart, slamming into her so hard she reeled and rocked on her feet. She heard it too, like an eighteen-wheeler crashing full throttle into a brick wall.
That wasn’t at all what she’d expected him to say. Her heart had stopped working with the blow, knocked unconscious maybe, but whatever the case it was no longer beating. Her lungs followed suit, refusing to take in air.
In two strides, he was in front of her, towering over her with all the strength and control she was losing by the second. She tried to step back, but his leather-clad arm snaked around her waist like steel, and his striking eyes drew her to him. He held her there in his green glowing chains as pain fingered its way through her lungs.
Breathe, his voice commanded in her head. Breathe now, Angel.
He was killing two birds with one stone. He was helping her, forcing her body to take the breath it needed. And he was giving her the answer she was asking for. He was in her head. Because he was a vampire.
The truth made her see stars. But she had no choice but to obey. She inhaled sharply, then exhaled with a helpless, overwhelmed moan, and her legs began to collapse. Jake’s hands moved along her body to the holster at the small of her back. With extraordinary speed, he unfastened it and tossed it to the grass several feet away.
Then he gripped her hips and shoved her back a step. Her shocked form was pressed hard against the shining black bodywork of his car. Cold metal struck her back, not painful but a sharp contrast to the firebrand steel of the body in front of her. His hands on her skin burned her, yielding her to him.
“I love you, Angel. I love you and I need you.”
Angel closed her eyes, unable to fight against the pull of emotion and physical sensations overwhelming her. He crushed himself against her, forcing her body to give to his. She felt the unyielding evidence of his desire even through his jeans, and it made her weak as hell. She was sure another desperate sound escaped her throat, but his words in her ear drowned everything else out, working like a drug on her system. “I need you like you wouldn’t fucking believe.”
She felt him straighten against her, and she opened her eyes to stare up into a smoldering gaze that burned her to ash. He held her there with those eyes, letting her slowly burn. “I fought with myself all day to keep from showing you,” he told her fiercely. The pupils of his mesmerizing eyes flickered like candle flames, a bright contrast to the darkness of his palpable hunger. “To keep from doing this.”
He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, then laid her down on the hood of his car, and when he did his fingers slipped beneath her shirt to grip her tight waist skin on skin. He branded her there, marking her as his. She knew then that she was lost to him. Because she wanted that brand everywhere.
Her hot breath once again caught in her lungs, hitching on a bolt of hard, sharp desire. She closed her eyes and this time failed to suppress a moan.
As he climbed onto the hood and knelt over her, larger than life and darker than death, Angel raised her arms to push him away. He was too much, too intense, and her defense was instinctive and basic. But Jake easily caught both of her wrists in one strong hand and held them to the hood of the car above her head.
There were a dozen different moves she could have made to escape him then, or at least to escape a human in his position. But he wasn’t human. And for the first time in Angel’s life, the woman who loved freedom and control wasn’t all that sure she wanted either any longer.
Jake’s breath ghosted across her ear when he leaned in, the heat of his hard body radiating just inches above hers. Confusion danced with the dizziness in her head, deliciously weakening her, going against everything she had ever come to believe she wanted.
He’s going to annihilate me.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Intense desperation to spare what yet remained of her will flooded Angel. She was determined to save herself, no matter the feelings throbbing through her with more wanton lust each passing second. She would use magic if she had to! She would fight!
Jake’s free hand played along her side, burning his possession into her as he inched upward until he was gently wrapping his fingers around her throat and his thumb was brushing tenderly along the line of her chin.
No! her mind tried to scream, but even in that silent sanctity, it came out as a whimper. Had she been strong all this time only to finally submit to a vampire after all? Was that her twisted destiny? Fear still laced every blood cell in her veins, fear of losing who and what she was, fear of giving herself away completely to something so much stronger than her. And anger was still there too… he’d lied to her. He’d kept the truth from her, whether it was for her own good or not.
No. She thought it with more force this time, and her eyes flew open.
It was a mistake. It was possibly the biggest mistake she had ever made.
Her body electrified at once beneath the fundamental assertiveness of the man above her. The gleam in his magnificent eyes was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. It alone was powerful enough to send moisture flooding between her legs. But her nerve endings crackled to sensuous life with a violent sensation somewhere between pain and pleasure when her eyes fell on the sharp, white fangs that now showed from behind his lips.
He was stunning in his primal, predatory beauty. No vampire had ever looked like this. No man had ever looked like this. Angel could no longer contain the groan of desire he ripped from her lungs. It climbed her throat and escaped her lips like the wanton, traitorous testimony it was.
Jake’s already firm hold on her wrists became brutal. He slowly smiled. It was a pure-pirate smile filled with deadly teeth and dark, otherworldly promise.
Angel’s lips parted, freeing her erratic, shallow breaths. She shuddered, her body trembling in need beneath h
im. “You… you’re doing this to me!” she partly hissed and partly moaned, her voice shaking as much as her body. He was using his vampire powers against her, he had to be. It was some kind of undeniable superhuman allure. There was no other explanation for the severe depth of her desire.
But even as she quietly accused him, she knew she was dead wrong. He didn’t have to do a damn thing to her to make her melt beneath him on the hood of his jet black car. She’d wanted him from day one. The final step to her undoing was simply knowing he’d wanted her too.
Jake’s dominating hands held firm as he leaned in, and the fingers he’d wrapped gently around her neck tightened slightly. It felt good. So good. As his firm body crushed hers, Jake’s lips touched her earlobe softly, brushing across it like feathers, then her temple, then her cheek. He smelled like leather and night and the promise of wild sex, and Angel turned her face away, squeezing her eyes shut, stubborn to the last.
Jake pressed his lips to the side of the throat she’d unwittingly offered him. Angel gasped and arched beneath him, inexplicably wanting something more – needing it. When she realized what she was doing, she tried to whip her head back around, but he held her firm with the hand at her throat, his thumb on her chin keeping her right where she was.
“You forget, Angel,” he told her in response to her accusation. “I can read your mind.” Delicately, his tongue flicked against her taut flesh, right above her pulse. That pulse reacted by leaping hard, then settling into a painful rapid-fire pace.
Oh gods… her mind was at the precipice of oblivion. She was aching furiously now. He laughed low and wicked against the vein, and the deep vibration moved through her like an edict.
“Not that I need to. Your body speaks volumes.”
He rose above her then and released her arms, framing her face with his hands. In the next instant, his lips crashed down on hers in a kiss so passionate, it was cruel.
Monsters, Book One: The Good, The Bad, The Cursed Page 20
