Page 7 of Twice Bitten
I winced. Obvious lie. Gods. Fucking amateur hour. Why me? I sent up a little prayer that Esther’s favorite cooking show would get canceled as karmic justice for this.
Before I could do anything to intervene, the asshole on the other end of the line laughed again. “Right. Like you’d leave it behind in Idaho. Call back once you’re in Lancaster and I’ll give you your instructions. I know you’re on the way, and you can’t be more than a few hours out. If you don’t call me by dawn, I’ll start cutting pieces off. Maybe I’ll start with your favorites.”
Jack snarled something about cutting pieces off himself, but the screen had already flashed with the end of the call. With a roar of rage, he flung the phone—and I lunged, using all my speed and strength, and caught it one-handed in mid-air, flying across the room and landing hard on the bed with a groan from the bedframe and a screech of springs.
I rolled over with a groan of my own, because the bedspread smelled exactly like I’d thought it would: cocaine, human excretions, and a tinge of mildew.
Enhanced senses truly weren’t all humans cracked them up to be.
I blinked and found Jack staring down at me, mouth hanging open and honestly quite impressive fangs on full display.
“If you break the phone, we can’t call him.” I cleared my throat. “Presuming you want to, of course. We could simply drop it in the toilet, forget all about this nonsense, and go for another martini.” Fuck. Had that sounded like a come-on? “Icould go for another martini,” I clarified quickly. “Alone. While you went back to Idaho. Obviously.”
Jack gaped at me a moment longer. Finally he cleared his own throat and said, “Obviously,” in a tone so dry I couldn’t interpret it. At last his claws retracted and he held out his hand.
“Nope. I’m keeping the phone for a few more minutes. Presuming you do want it in one piece.”
“Fair enough. I do need to calm down for a few minutes.” That came out a low, hoarse growl. “Move over.”
I barely had time to process that before he’d dropped down on the edge of the bed next to me. A quick roll had me out of his way in the nick of time; he flopped down beside me with a bone-deep sigh, the ancient mattress dipping so far in his direction I nearly rolled back into him.
Okay.
Restraint and some common sense. Not what I’d expected. Again. And now I had the heat of his big body warming my left side like a furnace and the slightly too rapid beat of his heart echoing through me. The scent of him.
On a bed.
I stared up at the yellowed ceiling, way too many questions running through my mind, his phone still clutched in my hand. The backs of my fingers barely rested against his hip, and all my senses narrowed down to that tiny point of contact.
The urge to move my hand rose up so strongly my arm vibrated with it. But I couldn’t move, right? That’d only draw attention to the fact that we were…touching. Sort of.
Jack hadn’t said a word or so much as twitched. I glanced over as much as I could without turning my head. His eyes appeared to be closed.
This didn’t seem like a typical alpha reaction to his mate being kidnapped and tortured, even if the alpha in question had some issues with said mate. I’d expected to have to dodge flying furniture while he ripped the place to shreds. And the other half ofwhat?
He’d seemed so sincere earlier. And now I felt like a fool. Why hadn’t I gotten up, told him to go fuck himself, and gathered a couple of other enforcers to back me up while we threw his lying, fuzzy ass out of town?
I didn’t know. And that made me feel even more like a fool. Something like humiliation squirmed in my stomach. But I still didn’t move or leave.
“Okay,” I said, and it fell into the silence like a stone. “Lucy? ’Splaining. Now. Before I call Esther and tell her you were a lot less forthcoming than you pretended to be. You can start with…” I stopped, unable to even start with what he could start with. I was really spoiled for choice, here. “How about you tell the story from the beginning. You know. The actual story. Not the expurgated bullshit version you fed us earlier.”
Jack let out a deep, heavy sigh, and the hand resting on his thigh twitched a little. Well, goody, a sign of life.
“My grandfather left me and my brother an…artifact. It’s…historical.”
The way he said it pinged all my bullshit meters at once. He sounded like someone reading one of those deceptive back-cover-text book reviews out loud: “Amazing…it’s…inspirational and…unforgettable.” That kind of thing. Like he’d left out anything you genuinely needed to know.
My brain whirred. Brent had stolen this…artifact. And now, it appeared someone had stolen Brent in an effort to acquire the other half of it.
“It’s dangerous,” I said flatly, still directing my words straight up, without looking at him. “Or very valuable. Or both. And it doesn’t work unless you have both parts.” My brain spun through a few more cycles. Yep. It clicked. “And clearly it’s worth killing for, since Brent fucked your brother and then attacked him in order to get access to the artifact, not as an end in and of itself with the theft as a panic-fueled aftermath.”
Jack let out a hoarse, startled sound. I smiled sourly at the bits of old paint peeling off the ceiling, my stomach going from humiliated sickness to a cold, heavy lump that felt a lot like betrayal.
Betrayal? No, I’d only known him for a couple of hours. No one could be betrayed by someone they didn’t trust in the first place.
But I did feel like a moron. I had trusted him: enough to hear him out instead of throwing him out of the bar, enough to take him to Esther, enough to come here and try to help him.
Because my own history made me weak. Because my own lying, cheating, sadistic mate was still out there somewhere, the unbreakable vampire blood-bond between us muted by magic I’d had to practically mortgage my internal organs to afford so that he couldn’t find me. Because even after eleven years, I still found myself looking over my shoulder a little too quickly when I heard a sound or thought someone might be following me.
