I WOKE ON MY BACK with her cheek on my chest and her palm resting on my abdomen. The sheet was down at my waist and just covered her breasts. Her hair was tucked behind her ear except for a few strands that escaped and curtained across her nose and mouth.
I’d fucked her hard, soft and lazy, and then . . . then she fucked me. I never wanted it that way. I liked control, but her straddling me, the slow grind of her hips and the ecstasy on her face . . . it was worth giving her that control.
I was royally fucked. Should’ve known that from the beginning. Christ, I had known but I played it off as lust, tried to act as if it was nothing. Convince myself she was just another chick.
But she never was.
How the fuck did I get here? To wanting her more than I should. To craving every inch of her, needing to hear her voice or watch her move. I couldn’t fuckin’ breathe without her.
It was suffocating and was fucking everything up because not only would we have Drake to worry about, but Waleron and Adrian. I didn’t even want to consider Xamien’s reaction to everything. He was going to kill all of us.
It was too late now. The dice had been thrown and I had to deal with the consequences.
I slipped from the bed, careful not to wake her, pulled on my jeans and walked out into the living room. My brother was sipping his coffee, leaning against the mantel. I’d heard him arrive back last night when I was getting up to snag a third condom from the washroom.
Grabbing a mug, I reached for the carafe of coffee and poured the steaming liquid into it. I heard him approach, but didn’t bother looking as I set my mug down at the kitchen table and pulled out a chair.
“You plan on sticking around or fucking off before she wakes up?”
I sat, curling my hands around the mug. “Fuck you, Holden. I’m not that much of an ass.” Yeah, I was. I fucked plenty of women and did just that. She deserved better than that. She deserved a hell of a lot better than me. Didn’t mean I was letting her go.
Holden pulled out the chair beside me, sat, and then stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankle. “You weren’t at one time. You are now.”
Yeah. And I never gave a fuck. Until now. Until her.
Now, I’d told off Adrian which rolled over into Waleron and neither were Scars to fuck with. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. I always had a plan . . . now I didn’t. All I knew was that the job was never a job. It was a way to get close to her. To make sure she was protected and no one else got near her. That was more crucial than ever.
I put my hand on the hilt of my knife when Holden reached into his side pocket. Max was right; I didn’t trust anyone, not even family. Holden and I were inseparable as kids until the night I fucked up and Beth paid the price. Holden hated me ever since and I didn’t blame him. Last time we saw one another, he called me a self-destructing fucked-up, cold bastard. I’d agree with the cold bastard part, but I called it self-survival.
“Easy, Wasp,” he said, pulling out a cigarette which he didn’t light; instead, he just rolled it back and forth between his thumb and finger.
My brother started calling me Wasp when I was a kid and tried to take a nest down by hitting it with a stick. Nest fallen, the swarm of pissed-off wasps came right for me. I ran right into the pigs’ pen and dove head first into their swill. Escaped without a single sting, which, as a ten-year-old, was something to be proud of. “Fuck, man, you’re worse than the last time I saw you.”
I snorted. No, I was just feeling emotions I shouldn’t and had to get my shit together. My edges were peeling away and she was under my skin so tight I couldn’t breathe without her.
I’d thought after fucking her the first time, the obsession would ease, but it fuckin’ heightened. I couldn’t even look at her walking up the mountain or I would’ve thrown her against a tree and fucked her over and over again like some teenage boy instead of an immortal assassin. Not a place I should’ve even been thinking about fucking a woman when this mountain had all kinds of memories attached to it.
Then when I saw her cold and shivering . . . all I wanted to do was hold her in my arms and make it better, make everything fuckin’ better. And that type of thinking was what made her dangerous to me. It scared the fuck out of me because I was acting irrationally and irrational got you killed and worse; it would land her right back where she started—in Drake’s hands.
But that was never supposed to happen. I was chosen because I’d make certain that wouldn’t happen. I’d said I’d do whatever it took to keep Drake from ever using her to get his Ink back.
An Ink that would stop at nothing to destroy every living being. I knew the penalties if I didn’t do my job. It was catastrophic and yet . . . there was no fuckin’ way in hell I’d do it.
“So, is this the girl Drake’s after?”
I stiffened and my head snapped up to look at him. “You heard?”
“Xamien and Waleron have every Scar out hunting him. Yeah, I heard, but what I can’t figure out is why you brought her here. You hate this place. You hate me. You hate our Talde. Fuck, you hate everyone.”
I didn’t. I tried to hate Holden, but the truth was I stayed away from him because I did care about him. My tainted shit would never touch him and yet here I was.
“You want us to leave?”
“Fuck, bro. I have no right to tell you to leave. But I haven’t heard from you in ten years, then all of a sudden you show up here with the pretense that you need a place to hang for a bit. That’s bullshit. If you don’t want to be found, you won’t be. So, what’s the deal? Why are you here?”
From the moment I took the job, I knew I’d bring Max here. It was the only place I could think of that hadn’t been touched by my job.
“Needed a place few have Traced before.” That was true. I doubted Drake had ever been here and it would give us time to escape if I heard him coming.
Holden was taller than me, but only by an inch and broader in the shoulders, more like a muscled, fit linebacker while I was a quarterback. His dark walnut hair hung over his ears, in light curls he was forever pushing back from his face. He was a Scar Tracker and could track scents like a bloodhound. He’d used it to find me when I fucked off in the night to go to the pubs. Then when I was sixteen, he used it to track me when I was left hanging to rot. But it had been too late for our sister.
“Adrian’s pissed.”
My back stiffened. Fuck, Adrian must have called Holden when he couldn’t get a hold of me since I destroyed my phone. “When isn’t he?” Holden often spoke to Adrian to get info on human-trafficking rings. Holden’s Talde focused mostly on children being kidnapped and taken for reasons I didn’t want to know about. The Talde went in and got them out.
Holden’s brow furrowed. “You screw up a job?”
“About to.” My job had been simple. Now it was complicated.
“What’s going on, Wasp?”
A whole lot of fucked up.
Holden sighed. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t do it.”
I shoved my mug away, the taste now bitter in my mouth. “Don’t do what? You have no idea what’s going through my head.”
Holden abruptly got up, shaking his head. “I do. I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’re my brother. I was there, remember? Do you think I don’t know what you’ve done all these years? Trying to erase what happened by not giving a shit about anyone.” I looked down at my feet. “Jesus, that’s it. You care about her, don’t you? You like this girl.”
I got up so fast, my chair toppled over backward. “They should’ve fuckin’ hunted him down the day they found her. Xamien and his Talde should’ve known the place wasn’t just a hideout for vampires.” I knew what I was saying was illogical, but after being with her, holding her, kissing each scar, I wanted to crucify the bastard. “Jesus, Holden. She has scars . . .” Scars I’d licked and kissed and touched, trying in some crazy fucked-up way to make them better. Make her better. “He fuckin’ hurt her,” I whispered in a ragged tone.
Holden stepped forward to put his hand on my shoulder, but I jerked away from it. From him. “And you’re not responsible for what Drake did. Just like you’re not responsible for what happened to Beth. No matter what you did or didn’t do, Wasp, they were going to kill Beth. I know what you’re thinking. You want to go after this sick bastard. Fuck, you hunted those vampires for twenty years until each and every one of them was dead. Pissed off a lot of vampires, too.” And it was worth it. Worth the sacrifice of all the lives I killed in order to get to them. I had no regrets about what I’d done. “You care about her, then stay here and do your job. Protect her and let the others find him.”
“Protect her?” I huffed, shaking my head as I met his eyes, coldness seeping into me as I spoke the words I knew would change everything. “No, Holden you have it wrong. I was hired to kill her.”
Holden tensed. “What?”
I clenched my jaw and curled my hands into fists. “Anyone can protect her, hide her away someplace. Think about it. Why me?” I sneered. “Because I’m the only fuckin’ one who would kill her if there was a chance Drake could take her.”
“Fuck.” Holden staggered back, his hand in his hair as he sat back down on the chair. “And Xamien knows?”
“Fuck no. Xamien would never consent to anything like this and that’s why he’s been kept in the dark.”
“But Waleron knows?”
I snorted. “Who the fuck do you think set it up? He’d never risk a multitude of lives for the sake of one.” Waleron had suspected Max’s ability six months ago when Max had touched his Ink and calmed it. According to Adrian, Waleron didn’t think much of it until word spread that Drake was looking for a young girl with scars on her who was a Healer. “Drake is after her ability and it’s damn vital he doesn’t get her to use it on him—ever.”
I picked up quiet movement in Max’s room. The mattress creaked as she got up then walked across the hardwood floors. I looked up as she came out of the bedroom and walked down the hall. My heart pounded hard against my ribcage as if it was attempting to break free so it could race over to her, beat next to hers.
Jesus Christ. I was fucked. Cemented. That was what it felt like. All this time, I thought I was chipping away at her shield when she’d been chipping away at mine.
I cared. I fuckin’ cared. Holden was right. She was in me and it wouldn’t matter how many times I had her; I’d want her again.
“Word is she’s a Healer and that’s why Drake wants her back. But that isn’t a reason for Waleron to want to kill her, Jasper.”
“It isn’t.”
“So what the fuck?”
She was in the doorway and our eyes locked. She didn’t smile like I’d hoped. Fuck, the girl never laughed. I hated that. I wanted to hear her laugh while she lay in my arms and I teased her.
Her steady gaze slid from mine to Holden’s. “Because I can heal his Ink.”
Holden looked at me, brows drawn together. “Whose Ink, yours? Or Drake’s?”
I closed my eyes, lowering my head.
Fuck.