Night Blade (16 page)

Figures he wouldn’t cooperate and nothing I said or did would change his mind.

He did take the time to stroke me down, head to toe, with some of the soap he knew I liked, although I don’t know how he got his hands on it. I had it made for me and it wasn’t anything you could buy at a store or online.

He washed my hair and tucked me back onto the bench while he dealt with his wet clothes and washed up, his gaze ever watchful…hungry. It was the look that turned my blood into lava and made me wish for crazy, needy things.

Crazy, needy things that he had the damnedest way of understanding.

I was about ready to self-combust by the time he turned off the shower. I went to stand up and he was already there, picking me and carrying me out of the ridiculously lush enclosure, setting me down and drying me off with a towel that was even warmer than the water had been.

“You do realize if you try and do something nice and gentleman-like, I’m going to punch you,” I told him.

He laughed a little.

“You do realize I can still see where something took a bite out of your side, Kit.” He splayed a hand over the wound. It didn’t ache nowhere near bad as it had earlier, although I could still feel the tug of healing flesh deep inside. “And there’s still some swelling here…” He touched gentle fingers to the back of my scalp and I grimaced at pain emanated out, a little starburst radiation.

“I know. They didn’t do a full healing. But I’m not fragile.” I turned around and slid my arms around his neck, leaning against him and pressed my lips to his. “I’m bruised and battered—doesn’t mean I’m broken.”

“No…you’re not. But I think I can take you in the bed instead against the damned wall,” he muttered against my mouth.

Hot little shivers raced through my belly and I smiled as he trailed his lips down my neck, biting me right where it curved into my shoulder. “Oh, I can deal with that, I think.”

He boosted me up and I wrapped my legs around his hips, sighing in pleasure as I felt the heat of him nudging me between my thighs. This…just this. This was what I needed, what I wanted.

I curled around him, my nails digging into skin as he went to lay me down and he shuddered. “Drives me nuts the way you do that.” He nipped my lower lip.

“Do what?” Whatever it was, I needed to know so I could it a lot.

“Do everything.” He trailed a path down my collarbone, caught the tip of my nipple in his mouth and tugged. “Everything you do drives me nuts. Either you make me want to beat my head against a wall, or I want to put
you
against a wall and do this…”

He slid a hand between us and I gasped as he pushed a finger inside me.

“That?” I managed to gasp out. “That’s all I make you want to do?”

The laugh that escaped him was caught between a groan and a laugh. “This. A hundred other things…Kit, shut the hell up.” His mouth on mine made sure I did just that.

And as he settled between my thighs, I wasn’t too interesting in talking anyway.

He came inside me and all the dark, awful shadows faded away.

There wasn’t any room for them when he was here.

And when we were together, like this, there wasn’t room for anything, or anybody but us.

* * * * *

Damon lay stretched out beside me, one hand on my belly. He had a leg flung over my thighs like he wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to go anywhere.

“Tell me now?”

I closed my eyes.

“Just don’t start growling at me,” I warned him. “I’m already…”

The word
fragile
popped into my head and I wanted to stab it with my sword until it was dead, dead, dead. But how I could I kill a word? “I’m already messed up and I don’t need you growling at me, okay?”

“You’ve had enough shit happen,” he said, even as his fingers started to flex on my skin, like a cat kneading its claws. In a way, I guessed that’s exactly what was happening. When I was stressed or pissed, I popped my wrist and flexed my fingers, absently reaching for the sword that always whispered in the back of my brain.

When Damon was brooding, he had a habit of doing things like this…
if
he felt comfortable letting his guard down.

I was about the only person I’d ever seen him doing it around.

“I was questioning a couple of wolves—the two of them on their own, I can handle. I know them, have had to deal with them before—even in ugly situations. But this time…well, things got dicey,” I said stiltedly. “Confidential case and I can’t discuss it, but I had to talk to them.”

“I already heard things went down bad.” He slid his hand up my torso until he could brush my hair back. “Chang said a Banner cop dropped you off here. Are you working with them?”

“I do sometimes,” I said and guilt settled nasty little hooks in my heart. “The Assembly and Banner both see me as a fairly neutral faction so I’m a good bet. I don’t have to do it often, but this was one of those jobs I pretty much had to take.”

“Why?”

“Because nobody else can work it as well as I can.”
Because if I don’t, you’re going to die and I won’t trust your life to anybody else
. “I guess it’s that bulldog mentality of mine.”

“Aided by a streak of luck?” he said softly.

“That, too. You know me. I usually land on my feet.”

“You ended up with a massive hole in your body this time.”

“And worse.” The hole that worried me was the one acid and guilt were chewing in my heart, even now. “Neither of them were high-level. I could take the two of them. Like I said, I knew them, which was why I went. But they were waiting on a drug drop and they panicked. I took them out almost right away, but their partner showed up and he was higher level. Had enough power in him to worry me so I focused on slowing him down while I tried to get out. All I had to do was get outside and I knew I could get Goliath’s attention. I slipped—I was bleeding bad and…well, one of them got close enough to grab me. He threw me, but it was close to the door. I could get out. I just needed to get my hands on one of my knives. It’s one of the ones the Green Road did for me.”

He grimaced. He knew those blades. The first time he’d looked at them, his eyes had flashed and gone dark. Then he’d smiled at me and said, “
You’re a mean little bitch sometimes, baby girl. Well done
.” I took that as approval.

“He had me pinned against the wall for a few seconds—he didn’t do anything, but while I was getting at my knife, he…it just put me in a bad place.” I didn’t want to talk about that bad place. There were things that had happened to me and Damon
knew
things had happened, but I couldn’t talk about them to him. Not yet. “Anyway. I got the knife in him and he shoved me away. That’s when the Banner cop showed up. I guess he dealt with the other one. I just sat on the floor and watched the silver work on the one who’d had me against the wall.”

I darted a look at Damon. “He didn’t even do anything, but I’m still freaked me out. Put me in a bad place mentally. It set a nightmare off.”

Silence swelled up, one of those deafening silences where you’re painfully aware of the ticking of the clock, of every breath you take, of the slightest, smallest sound.

“I’m told one of them got away. Which one?”

I closed my eyes, tried to think. “I don’t know…there was a third, weaker wolf in the background. Nobody I know. I think Bonner was the one Justin killed. Not sure of that guy’s name, but he was strong.”

Damon nodded. Then he sat up slowly, his eyes narrowing. “Justin. I know that name.”

Oh.
Shit
.

“He’s the Banner cop I’m working with.”

“No. That’s not why I know it, Kit.”

I stared at his back. The black ink from his tattoo spilled over the top edge of his left shoulder and I could see it shifting, rippling. Muscles flexed under the smooth surface of his skin and I could see the wild heat of his energy hovering above him. Mad. He was mad. Oh, yes.

“Who is Justin, Kit?”

I leaned back against the headboard and drew my knees to my chest. “I used to see him for a while.”

The muscles in his back knotted tighter. “Find another Banner cop to work with.”

“Not an option, Damon.” I blew out a careful breath and swallowed past the knot that had decided to lodge itself in my throat. “This
isn’t
a thing for you to worry about—”

He went from sitting on the edge of the bed to crouched over my knees so fast, I never even saw it coming. I was good. I was fast. I
thought
I knew how fast he was…and I was wrong.

“Don’t tell me what’s a thing for me to worry about,” he whispered, his voice just barely human now. “I told you that I’d try harder, but I never said I’d hold it together while you worked with some guy you used to fuck.”

“Stop it,” I warned him softly even as a forgotten fear tried to wing itself to life inside. I wasn’t going to be afraid and I wasn’t going to do this. Lifting a hand, I touched his cheek. He tensed like he might move away and if he had, I might have shattered. He didn’t though and I managed to keep that part of me from dying. “If I had a choice in this, I wouldn’t work with him. I don’t
want
this job and if I had my way, I’d bury my blade so far up his ass, I’d see the end of it out his throat.”

“Then do it,” he snarled. “I’ll help you bury the body.”

“I
can’t
.”
If I do, they’re going to kill you, damn it
…I stared at him and even though I didn’t say a damn thing, wasn’t even really planning on it, I felt the edge of pain slicing through my brain, like some nasty little parasite had decided to settle down inside my skull and chew its way through me.
Thanks, Justin
. The fucking oath he’d put on me.

I couldn’t even
think
the truth around Damon.

Only one thing kept me from showing the pain that was ripping through my skull and that was the fact that I was used to it. Far too used to living with pain and I was able to breathe through it, even calm myself down enough that my heart slowed and I was able to meet his eyes and say again, “I have to work this damned case, Damon. If I had any other choice, I’d walk away, but I don’t.”

Something had him worried, though. Whether he sensed the pain I was in or he saw something in my face, because that fury leeched away from his eyes, replaced by something that bothered me even more. It was that probing, insightful stare. His storm-cloud gray eyes locked on my face and he reached up, closing a hand around my wrist. “How much trouble are you in, baby girl?”

“It’s not me.” I closed my eyes so he wouldn’t see the fear in them. “It’s not me, Damon. I can swear to that.” I formulated the words I wanted to say and even though the headache grew to nauseating proportions, I managed to force them out. “But I have to work this case. I need Justin’s help and he’s the only person who can back me up the way I need.”

With my heart racing away like a Thoroughbred in the Derby, I made myself look at him, trying to focus through the pain. “I can’t let people die because you don’t want me working with an ex-boyfriend. That’s all he is to me. Somebody who came into my life for a while.”

“He’s more than that. I can see it.”

I sighed. Wiggling away from him, I shifted to my knees and draped my arms around his neck. “Yeah. For a while, he was. Damon, you don’t know how broken I was. For a very long while. I just…” I traced my finger down the lines of his tattoo, searching for the words. “Remember the wolf girl who was with Doyle?”

She’d been one of the ones trapped in that pit, one the hunters had turned into a toy. One they’d chased, over and over again. She’d never reached her spike and now she was living with one of the healer schools while they tried to fix the damage that had been done to her, body and soul.

I’d seen her a month ago and even that had been like a slice to my heart. She wasn’t even a shell of a person…and she’d reminded me too much of myself.

“For a very long while, I wasn’t much better than her. I was creeping out of that shell when I met Justin. He helped me climb the rest of the way out. So yeah, he mattered…for a while.

“But he’s not what you are to me.” I leaned back and cupped his face in my hands. “He never could be. Nobody could.”

His hands closed around my waist, kneading the flesh there as he pressed his head against my neck.

I held still, trying not to move, not to breathe, because I knew I was pushing this. Pushing him too far—

He sighed and shifted, rubbing his mouth along my neck. I shivered a little and relaxed. Everything was okay. Everything was just fine—
shit
—I hissed out a breath as he sank his teeth into my neck. My mind processed what he was doing but before I could decide if I was going to do a damn thing, his hand tangled in my hair, arching my head to the side as he pressed down harder, harder until his teeth broke through the skin.

He growled against me and I groaned.

It
hurt
—

There isn’t anything remotely sexy or romantic about having a six-foot five, two-hundred fifty pound werecat sink a powerful set of teeth into your neck.

But it was over in seconds and I was still in processing mode as he grabbed something from the bed to press against my neck. “You’re asking me to deal with something that I can’t change and I hate it,” he said, his voice hard and flat. “That’s how I’m dealing. The next time
anybody
looks at you, they’re going to see what I wanted everybody to know months ago.”

He lifted his head and stared at me, the storm-clouds in his eyes darkened to near black.

“Well. I guess this means there’s no point in worrying about whether or not I’m going to be a target anymore,” I said. “We just deal with that as it comes now, right?”

He snorted and shifted his attention to the bite on my neck. “Kit, you walk around with a target on your back. Sometimes I think you enjoy it.”

Chapter Ten

Two things woke me.

Well, one thing…the phone rang and it forced me out of the exhausted well of sleep. I did my damnedest to escape the sound, burying my face in my pillow and trying to roll away.