Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jake was about to lose it.
The absolute last thing in the world he’d expected this morning was for Angela Clemens to come knocking on his door. Now he knew why Cain had ordered him to stay at the safe house. He’d been furious with the command to the point of seeing red. Desperate to do something with his hands, he’d decided to work on his car and one of his bikes, hoping it would calm his nerves. But each passing minute only made him think about Angel more. Crave her more.
All Jake had wanted to do was go to her.
Instead, Cain had somehow seen to it that Angel go to him.
When Jake had caught the faintest scent of her light, clean perfume in his garage, it brought him to a complete stand-still. He’d stayed there, motionless near his bike, and opened his senses. He scented the air. He listened.
Holy hell. She was in the lower level of the facility. In the same building. Less than a few fucking feet away.
He heard her heart racing, that beating of butterfly wings, soft, fast and pure. He smelled her fear, mixed with anticipation. He heard her soft breaths coming quick and unsteady. Unable to stop himself, he’d taken a chance and reached out for her mind.
But it was like throwing a match into a fireworks stand. She’d placed a ward up around it probably out of habit, but nothing so strong he couldn’t get through with a little push of his own magic. And what he found when he did made him itch something furious inside.
Jake listened to her come toward the garage door, and knew exactly when she raised her hand to push the call button. He beat her to it, raising the garage door, and then watched – and listened – as the door slowly lifted.
Her honest, unfiltered thoughts fed to him like gasoline, fueling the fire, feeding the flames. What he’d felt from her during the two weeks he’d worked with her and again when he’d surprised her at the coffee shop was amplified a thousand fold as she came into view and her big, beautiful eyes fell on him with the innocent wonder of a woman who hadn’t been ravished in far too long.
And there was not a single doubt left in Jake’s mind. Angel Clemens was fiercely and uncontrollably attracted to him. Him. Jacob Crow. He was the lucky bastard who’d caught her eye – the eye of a warrior who kept herself in bruises just so she could save her extra rare healing ability to use on others. He was the undeserving son of a bitch who’d won the attention of a heart-of-gold warden with hair like silk, a smile like moonbeams, and a soul that loved freedom.
By the time he was reaching around her to close the door behind her, his gums were already aching, and he was ready to combust. And the truth was, he wasn’t so sure he’d be able to go easy on her if he did.
He turned his back on her out of concern for her safety more than anything, but when her thoughts turned to his tattoo and her dreams, he started to feel lost. He’d been entranced with Angel the moment he’d laid eyes on her at that sovereign meeting. But it was clear they were connected on a deeper level.
As his mind spun and his heart literally ached like the rest of his hungry body, Angel told him she wanted the Apex case. He should have seen that coming. The Apex was after her; that much was obvious. And when Jake listened to the inner turmoil of her reasoning, his aching chest tightened further. He saw the same memory flashes she did. He heard her anguish. And then he caught her dangerous promise… I would give anything to be superhuman strong!
The mentally bellowed desperation had brought him up short and had him turning around to study her carefully. Had she meant it? Was she serious? Because… he could arrange that for her.
All it would take is one bite on his part. And one swallow on hers.
That thought nearly drove him right over that ledge and would have done so but for the dizziness that swept over Angel then in her rising fear. She was not only afraid of the Apex. She was afraid Jake wouldn’t let her on the job. And then she was afraid that even if she did make it on the job, she would lose. And she was afraid of others dying again.
That terrified her most of all. And his admiration for her shot up yet again.
He felt her unsteadiness, and suddenly he shared her need for something a little more stabilizing. So as she’d touched her fevered forehead and tried to gather her wits, he’d approached her with vampire stealth and offered to take her for a drink.
He happened to know from reading her file – over and over again and in memorized detail – that one of her favorite drinks was the White Russian. Well, this was the perfect time for one. And he really did know a place where they made the drink to perfection. He happened to enjoy the drink too. Vampires were fond of hot alcoholic concoctions because it warmed their blood in two different ways, and for a vampire that was heavenly.
Besides, he could damn well use a drink right now. Angel was on thin ice with him. Maybe a drink would mellow him enough to keep him from losing his shit.
He’d pulled on a shirt, much to her unspoken disappointment, grabbed his jacket, and escorted her out of the garage. He tried desperately not to touch her – not yet, anyway – as he led her through the back of the Monsters safe house to the larger, private garage where many of the cars belonging to Monsters members were parked. The Monsters clan was comprised of men who’d all had lives, some of them quite long, before becoming “cursed” enough for Cain to notice them and welcome them into the fold. Cain was selective, and for good reason. They had secrets to hide, not the least of which was his.
Due to their individual histories, many of them had belongings they didn’t yet wish to part with – houses, land, vehicles, gobs of money. The money was banked or invested. The homes were tended to by hired servants who lived in the households and maintained them on a continuous basis. The land was tended by ranchers, farmers, gardeners, and so forth. And the vehicles were housed in warehouses or garages across the nation.
This garage here contained seven vehicles in total, aside from the two-dozen motorcycles it was capable of storing. Two of the bikes and one of the cars were his.
Jake pressed a series of numbers into an electronic pad on one side of the building, allowed it to scan his hand print, and one of the garage doors opened.
He could still hear Angel’s heart hammering away behind him in the lot where she waited. He turned a little and shot her a glance over his shoulder. He’d meant to reassure her, but the moment his eyes fell on her again, he was lost to the monster in him. The wind was moving through her hair, framing her face as if she were some lost specter on a clifftop. Her eyes were glassy and narrowed against the cold, her cheeks were flushed, her lips parted. She was an advertisement for some designer perfume or shampoo. She was too beautiful.
He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “This way.”
As if the devil were on his heels, he entered the garage and made a bee line for his car. The mint ’64 Pontiac GTO gleamed with liquid black shine under the lights of the garage. He’d taken the tarp off it this morning to rub down the leather – one of the many things he’d done to keep busy and try to get his thoughts straight as he waited to hear from Cain. So the car was ready and waiting as he approached it.
But Angel’s footsteps were slow behind him. He stopped and faced her. She was moving through the cars and bikes as if in a dream, her breathing shallow, her eyes gleaming as bright as the paint on his car.
“Wow…” she whispered. “Are… are these all….”
“They belong to the clan members,” he told her, following her gaze. With some amount of pride, he noted that as she scanned the motorcycles, her gaze paused and settled on one of his. It was his favorite actually, a 1952 Vincent 998cc Black Shadow in the same condition now as it had been when he’d bought it.
As was fairly standard for Vincent motorcycles, the seat was big enough for two. What he would give to get her on that seat. To have her pressed up against him, her arms wrapped tight around his stomach as he thrust the bike into a higher speed and made her squeeze him harder.
But he knew how she felt about bikes, and she proved as much when after lingering for a while on the Vincent, her gaze flickered and she swallowed hard. She looked down for a split second as if to compose herself, then turned her attention to the other vehicles in the garage.
“Most of these bikes are mint condition vintage…” she said. “A Brough Superior, a Vincent HRD, a Crocker Big Tank Twin, an Indian Tomahawk from the sixties, and that ‘52 Vincent Black Shadow....” She shook her head in frank admiration. “It must have cost the owner a fortune. And these cars – just wow. They’re all muscle cars, every one of them, and they’re all mint too.” Her tone was nearly a whisper now as she moved slowly through the garage.
Jake decided to just watch her and wait. He was having too much fun observing the expressions change on her lovely face. Each emotion was displayed so clearly and matched her inner thoughts so well. She was devoid of duplicity. It was a beautiful thing.
But then the tone of her thoughts shifted ever so slightly, darkening a touch from pure admiration and awe to both of those emotions tainted by disbelief. But how? she asked herself. How is this even possible? Does one of the Monsters crew own some kind of auction house or something? I mean, I guess no one knows anything about any of them, but… damn. She moved from a ’68 Dodge Charger to a Plymouth Road Runner from the same year, both with exquisite paint jobs. Then came a ’69 Cobra Jet, and finally she stopped on the other side of his GTO and stared down at it.
Holy damn, her mind whispered. “Jake… is this your car?” she asked, bewildered. Her cute little voice actually trembled. “This ’64 GTO?” She didn’t wait for him to respond. Her eyes moved down the jet black hood to the shaker scoop. “With a shaker hood and… shit, the original red leather interior and… every single upgrade you could possibly get with the package back then?” She blinked several times, and her thoughts told her a number of things overlapping: Wake up from this dream, do you think I’m allowed to touch it, I want to go for a ride, holy shit.
Jake stifled his laughter behind a big smile and ignored the fact that his gums hadn’t stopped aching and his fangs were still waiting for the slightest green light from him. The windows of his car were down at the moment. Angel leaned in through the window frame on the passenger’s side. He bent to lean in the driver’s side, watching her as she admired his possession.
“You know… this car was the first of its kind,” she told him. “It was the car that heralded a new age of muscle and wheels. Made when street racing laws were just going into effect, forcing a crack-down on racing. The GTO was the brain child of John DeLorean himself, who was chief engineer at Pontiac at the time.” She laughed softly, shaking her head, her beautiful eyes roving over every inch of the car’s fifty-year-old interior.
“In ’63, GM faced a sort of crisis,” she said. “Their main market had been the speed-minded youth, and in fact at the same time Lee Iacocca was already working on the Mustang for that reason – but that’s a whole other story. With the new laws facing them, they found themselves suddenly limited.” She leaned her elbows casually on the window, allowing her hands to relax. “So DeLorean basically said, ‘Let’s make a race car and disguise it.’ And they made the GTO.”
She met his eyes, and a smile curled the corner of her pretty mouth. “This beast dressed up as a gentleman was still technically a violation of engine displacement policy,” she said with a laugh. “And even though DeLorean took the name GTO from the Ferrari 250 GTO, the Pontiac was faster. Its production made all sorts of purists steam above the collar.”
She straightened slowly to come away from the window, and he followed suit, meeting her eyes again as she placed her hands wide over the top of the car. “They limited initial production to five thousand, figuring it wouldn’t sell because of the changing market and regulations.” She grinned a killer bad-girl grin and said, “But they were wrong.”
Fuck, Jake thought as his guts tightened and his cock hardened. He’d never seen anything sexier in his damn life than Angel Clemens with her hands on his car, her smile like that of a speed demon from Hell.
He wanted to take her on this car. On the hood. Right now.
“So, is it yours?” she asked again, now that she’d stopped filling him in on a history lesson he’d already been well versed in. After all, he’d lived it.
Jake forced himself to concentrate on the here and now rather than what he swore to himself would happen soon, and decided the best answer would be to just show her. He opened the driver’s side door, and just before he slid his body behind the wheel, he said, “Get in.”