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.