A Brutal Tenderness (17 page)

“Is she going to be okay?” I ask. Jewell’s hospital room’s
door is slightly ajar and I keep my voice low. But it carries.
Oh, yes. The doctor’s eyes widen a little, and I have to remind
myself that he doesn’t know who I am. Right now, I look like a
tough-as-nails biker who beat up five men, three of whom are
currently in the hospital under his care.

As patients. I can’t help the tight little grimace that curls my
lips. Those dim fucking cowards. It’d taken nothing for Adams
to convince them I needed a beat down. Less than nothing.

He nods and my shoulders drop minutely just as I see Jewell
stir in my periphery.
I turn, and the doctor lays hands on me. I look down at his
hands, then slowly look up to meet his eyes. “Don’t . . . just be
calm, Mr. Castile.”
“Yeah,” I agree, as my eyes say,
Back off.
He does, his hands fluttering like nervous birds until
captured by the pockets of his white lab coat.
I stroll into Jewell’s room, nervous, guilty, happy as damn
hell to see her.
I watch her face as she takes in the damage to my body.
When her eyes land on my abused hands, her lip trembles and
her sadness at my expense is the final straw.
I have to tell her.
Then she gives a small sob, covering her bruised face with
her hands, the IV flailing around like a transparent snake.
Jesus, don’t cry. I can take anything, bring on another five
shit heads to beat up.
But not Jewell’s tears, please . . . not that.
Her small shoulders shake, and I move, sitting down beside
her. “No . . . shush . . . I’m here, babe, I’m here.” The monitor
starts to scream because her heartbeats are all over the place as
I gather her against me and tear out the electrode that feeds the
noisy piece of shit and it abruptly stops.
A gray-haired nurse bursts in, takes one look at my huge
body overwhelming Jewell, who’s practically in my lap, and
jerks her chin toward the hall. “You, out.”
No way.
I stare her down and she meets my look head-on. Tough
broad. “I will if Jess tells me,” I say, though I don’t want to move
from her side. Just having her against me slows my heartbeat,
putting every physical malfunction and calamity back to rights.
Her beady eyes narrow on me, as mine do on hers. “I don’t
think Miss Mackey is in any shape to decide anything of the
kind.”
Jewell’s blue eyes, the beautiful green hidden from me, hold
standing water as she takes in a shaky breath and I wait for her
answer.
How could I ever think I didn’t love her? I wonder, as I cup
her small face against my hand. It feels like I always have. I
smile down at her and Jewell lifts the corners of her mouth in
response.
“Did you . . .” she begins and gives a dry swallow.
Dumb ass, she’s thirsty. I pick up a cup with a straw in it.
I bend it as it touches her lips, and she looks at me with those
trusting eyes as she takes water from my hand, and my eyelids
burn with emotion. I suddenly want to feed her, take care of
her.
I never cry, but she brings that kind of emotive response to
the surface of me with a look. With a touch.
“Did you save me?” she finishes.
Not nearly enough
, I answer in my mind. Outwardly, I nod in
slow response.
Jewell searches my eyes, satisfied by what she sees there.
Probably too damn much, I think. Then says to the nurse, “Let
him stay.”
The nurse presses her lips together with a huff and closes
the door with more force than necessary.
“Battle-ax,” I mutter under my breath, and Jewell gives a
little giggle, covering her mouth with her hand. The gesture
hurts her face, and mine turns serious when I see her wince of
pain.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and she presses her finger to my lips.
“He only got one hit in right?” I ask around her finger.
Jewell nods.
Neither one of us speaks right away. Then she asks, “How
many?”
I know she’s asking me how many guys I fought. I don’t tell
her it could have been twenty with not a hope in sight and I
would have fought them all for her.
I swallow, my Adam’s apple doing a dry plow up and down
in my throat. “Five,” I say.
Jewell’s gasp tells me how scary that is, and I wrap her
tighter. “Where are they now?” she asks, and I close my eyes. I
can’t stand her fear, chasing the vision of her terror out of sight.
Then I think that she’s already been hurt twice. Once
defending me, once being around me.
That shit head Maverick is right: I’m hazardous to her
health.
Not that I can stay away if I try. No, I’m far too selfish for
that now.
“Here,” I answer her earlier question.
“What?” she asks, her heartbeat a visible pulse in the hollow
of her throat. Beating fast, looking for escape, her body pulling
out of the warm shadow of mine.
She stares at me and seems to figure it out. “How?”
I shrug, knowing how careful I have to be with the details
as I gaze out the window, lies coming easier without her eyes
on mine. “When I saw that dickhead Brock hit you . . .” I give
a small shrug, and it moves her closer into my body and I hold
in my sigh of pleasure at the increased nearness. “I saw red, I
literally steamrolled them.” I think about it, trying to capture
the memory of my fists, movements like wayward amnesia,
and it floats just out of grasp and I give a small laugh. A laugh
more of anxious tension. There’s something a little scary about
beating up people in some kind of out-of-body fugue. Like
someone . . . or something else borrows me and has done all the
work, giving me back this shell of myself, beaten, defeated, and
more angry than when I began. “I don’t really remember doing
much of it.”
I scrub my hand over my chin with irritation, then plant my
fist on my knee, my other arm curling around Jewell. Waiting
for her to tell me to take my weird ass out of her room.
Out of her life.
My heart thuds in my chest, my respirations kicking up a
notch.
“I’m sorry, I . . .” she begins.
Whoa, she doesn’t get to apologize to me. It’s me who is
sorrier than I can ever make up for. For everything. For the
injustice of my assumptions about who she was, who I now
know her to be, for starters.
“It’s okay, Jess,” I say, putting the full force of my convictions
behind the words. She hears it, feels it . . . lays her hands on my
wounded fists, and I turn them into her touch like a man dying
of thirst who sees the vision of an oasis before him.
“I know you need more than me,” I say, giving her an out.
Love makes you a stranger to yourself, your needs a distant
second to hers. I’ve seen her face, I know she’s conflicted as fuck
and I’m the cause of it.
I see Jewell’s surprise, and a laugh escapes me. “You oughta
think about stuff with a straight face. You’re an open book.”
Jewell’s cheeks flame, being caught with her feelings for
everyone to read. But not everyone’s reading them. Just me. It’s
one of the things that make her what she is.
I’ll never trade it for anything. That open vulnerability of
hers is almost as attractive to me as  .  .  . well, everything else
about Jewell. It’s not just her hot body, though I can’t deny that
raw open wound of need between us. My feelings are all mixed
up with who she is.
Faith knew. She knew that what I’m missing Jewell has.
“It’s okay,” I finally reply. “It’s what I like best about you.”
I watch the water of her emotions churn restlessly over her
face, seeing when they finally calm. “So  .  .  . where do we go
from here?” she asks.
And I do it. I open my mouth to spill my guts to her,
compromise be damned, and Carlie throws herself into the
room, slamming the door against the wall where the doorstop
latches it.
I stand, turning as she plants two palms into my chest and
pushes me, giving me a reluctant smile of gratitude.
About time, Carlie’s a tough customer. I can’t help but
smile, Jewell needs another warrior at her back.
“I know you saved her ass but  .  .  . shoo, hero!” she says,
and my smile turns to a laugh as I shake my head, walking
backward toward the door.
Jewell watches me with sad resignation.
Don’t leave me
, her look says.
My heart stutters in my chest at those eyes.
Never
, my eyes
say, but instead of speaking those words, the words that would
bring Jewell comfort in the middle of an investigation where so
many lives hinge, I just give a little two-finger salute and walk
away.
My heart remains with her. Beating and lifeless in my chest
as the space grows between us.
She’s slaying me. And I’m defenseless against her.
I realize I always was.

O’Rourke falls into step beside me as we exit the hospital. He
turns to me, and I say nothing. I know I’m turning in my shit.
Nobody can take these kinds of risks with the subject and come
away with his job.

But he blows me away with a stay of execution, if you will.
“You’re staying.”
I stop, planting my hands on my hips, the skin scabbed and

pissed when I splay my fingers. I wait. I’ve never been much
for words, and I don’t get uncomfortable with silences. Where
others fill them with conversation, I let the silence spin like a
web.

O’Rourke knows this and lets his thoughts come together.
Finally he says what he’s thinking. “It’s too late in the game to
pull your messed-up ass off.”

Ah.
He scrubs the little bit of hair on his head. Back and forth,
back and forth, then drills me with angry eyes. “You’re in too
deep. I don’t know how we’ll ever salvage this, Steel. You’ve
fucked it six ways to Sunday with your unethical bullshit.”
I open my mouth.
He wags his index finger in front of me, and my mouth
snaps shut. “Uh-uh. No. I do the talking.” His eyes lock with
mine. “Not you, not Adams. Because he’ll cover for whatever
idiotic idea you’ve got up your sleeve.”
Not everything, I think, remembering him hitting Jewell.
I’m still not done with that.
O’Rourke begins walking and I reluctantly follow. When
we reach the unmarked black SUV, he turns, my hair having
grown long enough to hold the moisture of the steady drizzle
that falls.
“Stay out of the dancer’s tutu.” I can feel the frown on my
face and he steps into the line of my body. “Watch her, guard
her, lead our guy out from underneath the rock where he’s
hiding. But stop . . . Fucking. Her.”
I close my eyes, the scent of Jewell, her body in my hands,
underneath me, part of me, accepting me, a tactile imprint
that’s burned into my brain like a toxin. A tonic.
I don’t know which, I just know I have to have more.
A brushfire of etched memories sears and burns in my
brain, and I can’t erase it.
Being told to not have sex with Jewell isn’t the issue. Can I
turn off my cock? Yeah . . . somehow.
It’s the heart that I can’t.

“You can’t work the press,” Jonas states as he waves around a
dismissive hand, taking a sip of old cold coffee. A staple of the
locals around here. They don’t give a shit about the java, only
that it’s fully leaded.

I sigh. “Listen,” I say, leaning forward, trying for reasonable
and, judging from Adams’s face, missing it pretty good. “He’s in
jail for the serials, got it?” I say, jerking a thumb at my partner,
who gives a small nod of acknowledgment.

Jonas Moore grunts, slapping his iPad closed, and leans
back, taking another sip of the thankless coffee. The waitress
walks by and he flicks the rim for more.

Disgusting. I grimace, scrubbing my face. My patience . . .
well, the hell with my patience. I don’t have any.
She pours more with a smirk. She knows it’s shit. Good old
Doris.
I’m in a foul mood and want to shove that sludge up his ass.
Adams rakes a look over my face and gives a half shake of his
head at me like a prayer, and I almost laugh right there.
I’m going to lean on this little scab until he folds. Fuck it.
I move forward and a flicker of genuine fear flashes through
those flat brown eyes of his, then is gone. Male-kind hasn’t
totally lost that instinctive circle, where males prowl around,
taking the measure of one another. Moore just saw a primal
assessment that makes him uneasy.
Good.
“My partner is taking a little vacation, and while he’s doing
it, the real killer will come out and play.”
“No,” Jonas says in a terse verbal slap. “We go to print with
this trumped-up bullshit, and every female between sixteen and
seventy thinks she’s safe from this animal. Thinks the feds have
nabbed and tagged the sicko who’s been doing the girls.” He
throws his stylist behind his ear, signaling just how done he is
with note taking, or anything else, for that matter.
“I won’t be a party to this . . . falsehood. It endangers people.
It endangers lives,” he states with sanctimonious finality.
I slap my hand on the table and his cup leaps off the surface,
coffee grounds and brackish brown water slopping over the rim.
“If we don’t do this, all the ground we’ve gained will be lost. He
has to feel complacent, ready . . . superior.” My eyes nail him to
the spot. “Help us nail this guy,” I say with quiet intensity, my
body buzzing with it.
Jonas looks into my eyes, and the moment swells
uncomfortably between us. Not for me.
For him.
I let the silence build until it strains the air we breathe and
my partner shifts, then Moore begins to squirm. I remain silent,
giving nothing.
I know I’ve won. It’s in his eyes.
Jonas takes a deep sigh. “Two weeks, Agent Steel.”
I throw my hands up in easy surrender now that my way is
coming to pass. “That’s all I’m asking for . . .” I begin as if I’m
going easy on him, and he shakes his head, as grim as I’ve ever
seen another human being.
Jonas Moore stands. I move to stand as well, towering over
him like I do most males. I put my hand out to shake his,
and he ignores it, his eyes locking on mine with barely veiled
disdain. “God help you if you’re wrong,” he says, “and he uses
this window to hunt again while innocent women lie like lambs
before the slaughter.”
He turns and walks away, his cold coffee gone.
“Man, that sucked.”
“He’s right,” I say to Adams, and he cocks a brow. “It’s a
risk.”
Adams shrugs. “No guts, no glory, Steel.” He claps me on
the back.
My sense of foreboding grows. The last piece is in place.
Thad should bite.