Dark Fates (A Paranormal Anthology)(104)

A hand fisted her jacket and yanked her backward. Screaming, she whirled and let her momentum propel her into Thug Number One. He was huge, but she’d been fighting bullies her whole life. Slamming her steel-reinforced boot down on his foot, she was rewarded by his grunt, but he didn’t let her go. The other guy was there, and he got hold of her around the middle. Kicking out with her legs, she struck the first man over and over, finally landing the money shot.

It was his turn to curse as he went down. Steel-toed boot to the junk had to hurt. Her captor slammed her into the wall, and the world went spotty. Blood filled her mouth, and she turned in time to catch the back of his hand across her cheekbone. Pain exploded in her face, and she fell, but she was also free.

She scrambled to her feet and started running.

“Fucking bitch!” The man was after her again, but Clutches-his-Nuts was still on the ground. Ahead of her, a door opened. Jubilee didn’t have time to think. She hurtled straight toward it, squeezed through the opening, and slammed it shut even as Thug Number Two hit the door bodily. The thud vibrated the wood.

Three things struck her at once. A very muscular Asian man wearing only a towel filled her view, he was dangerous, and she was alone with him. She jerked her gaze up from his rippling pecs to meet the most darkly handsome face she’d ever seen. But his eyes…they were cool and appraising and fierce. Her stomach cramped, and terror swamped her. He filled the room. His presence occupied every inch of the available space.

If Andropov and his goons scared her, this guy filled her with panic. She had to get out of the room. Whirling, she grabbed the door handle and twisted. Somehow, between dashing into the room and seeing its occupant, she’d forgotten how close behind her pursuers had actually been.

The two goons filled the doorway, and she was face to face with a gun.

I’m going to die. The thought barely had time to crystallize before she flew backward and landed with a bounce on the bed. The man in the towel was suddenly between her and the goons. Acting on instinct, she rolled off to land on the floor on the other side of the bed.

They were going to shoot him, but the gun didn’t make any sound, at all. Crawling on her hands and knees, she peeked around the edge of the bed and froze.

The man with the gun lay on the carpet—dead. His face. Oh, my God. His face. What was left of it had been torn from his forehead to his cheekbone to his throat—not that he had a throat left. It’d been sliced wide open, and blood soaked the carpet beneath him. His mouth was twisted in a rictus of horror. A thud echoed through the room, and she glanced up to find the second thug dangling from the towel man’s upraised arm, his head canted at an odd angle. The door to the hallway was closed, but it didn’t matter. Her erstwhile rescuer stood between her and the only avenue of escape.

As if reminded of her presence, he let Thug Number Two drop and pivoted to look down at her. His eyes had turned a deep topaz and seemed lit from within. She opened her mouth to scream and a squeak escaped. Retreating, she ducked behind the bed like a child in the hope he wouldn’t do to her what he’d just done to Thug One and Thug Two.

The whisper of movement rasped over her nerves, and she braced her back against the wall and pulled her knees up to her chest. Somehow, she wrapped her hand around a power cord and tugged the alarm clock off the table and into her hand. As weapons went, the clock wasn’t much, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Tall-Hot-and-Deadly squatted down a foot away from her. All the moisture in her mouth fled because he’d lost the towel, and, if his chest was a work of art, his thighs and his… Don’t look. She jerked her head up to meet the considering gaze in his topaz eyes.

“Hello, little one.”

His voice rolled over her like creamy butterscotch, and her panties went wet. She felt her eyes widen, and all the oxygen backed up in her lungs. A person could drown in that voice.

“Are you hurt?”

No. She was just fine. As long as he kept talking. She loosened her death grip on the alarm clock. “What?”

He extended his arm and brushed two fingers against her bruised cheek. Electricity flooded through her, and her face pulsed at the contact. She flinched, and he withdrew the touch.

“It might be broken.” He was so calm. “We’ll have to get that looked at. Did they hurt you anywhere else?”

He looked her over, and, belatedly, she realized his manner reflected true concern.

“Bruises.” One word. It fit. She hurt where they’d slammed her into the wall. And her stomach ached from being squeezed in the hard band of Thug Number Two’s arm. Thug Number Two with the broken neck. Fear soured the shivers of lust quaking in her system, and she bit her lip.

“Are you going to rip my face off?”

Would it be insane to ask him to kiss her before he did? The unbidden thought popped into her head, and she shuddered. Clamping her knees together, she tried to think of a reason why she wanted him to kiss her, beyond the obvious sexy-as-sin body. She dipped a look down to his cock. It seemed to stiffen under her regard, and her fingertips tingled with the urge to touch.

She was a street rat, not a streetwalker. Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought.

“No.” He chuckled, but the amusement on his face faded almost as quickly as it appeared. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with you.”

Somehow, the response was a lot less comforting than she’d hoped. Jubilee swallowed and tried to look away from the gorgeous man, but that left her staring at the torn-open throat of Thug Number One. Sour bile filled her mouth.