Blood Deep (Blackthorn Book 4) (18 page)

T
atum hadn’t hesitated
in sitting on Eden’s lap as soon as he’d returned, her body soft, warm and inviting as she’d pressed it against his, her high-thigh Lycra dress leaving nothing to the imagination.

Despite a glimmer of late afternoon daylight outside, the curtains in the lounge remained closed, their heavy dark fabric pooling to the floor behind Pummel’s sofa.

He’d seen the look in Pummel’s eyes at his return. Pummel hadn’t expected him to succeed. He hadn’t expected him to come back with the goods on the list – if at all. He’d glimpsed inside the four paper bags before his deliberating gaze had locked on Eden’s again. And then he’d smiled.

There were no questions from Pummel. Instead, he’d leaned back in his seat, indicated for Eden to take the sofa opposite, and they’d all fallen right back into the conversation his return had silenced.

There was someone who
hadn’t
uttered a word though. Someone who, on his return, had glanced up from her sofa chair only to snatch her attention back to the book in her lap the second their eyes had met. Clearly she’d got out of the makeshift binds and out of the lock-up okay. Clearly she was still irritated with him. Clearly she had still said absolutely nothing to Pummel.

His heart had flipped the moment he’d seen her again, his resolve to stay focused on the task melting just a little the moment he’d looked back into her eyes. It wasn’t helped by the fact he could almost touch the density of the atmosphere between them as he’d sat opposite her.

She was back in the mid-calve fitted trousers he’d seen her in the first night, an unflattering chunky sweater consuming her slender frame, her bare feet curled under her thighs as she sat cross-legged in the chair. Earphones in, she’d barely looked up since her initial glance. From what he could see behind her mask of ringlets, her expression was subdued, her shoulders tense beneath her cascade of dark hair.

Whatever she was, that iridescent substance was a clue. When Cass had first shown it to him, he’d assumed it was artificially created. But unless Jessie had a lab all of her own somewhere, it seemed the substance in that vial was very much natural.

Cass hadn’t explained where it was from, only the strength it evoked. And if she’d taken it from the labs, the labs owned by Sirius, then he
had
to know more than he was revealing. More to the point, he had reasons to keep it from Eden. There was more to Jessie than just another temporary cure. And if it was something to do with that other liquid, if that was something more potent, he needed to know.

The relaying of stories and laughter, now secondary to the drug and smoke smog that whispered in the air, should have relaxed him. Tatum’s sensual lips working the back of his ear, her proficient hand massaging his swollen erection, should have been haze-inducing enough to absorb his attention. But all he could focus on was Jessie.

He’d sensed the tension escalate in her body as Tatum had sauntered past her to straddle him. He’d seen, by furtively watching across Tatum’s shoulder, that Jessie’s jaw had clenched, that she had stopped turning the pages of her book as Tatum ground against him.

From the moment he’d laid his head on the pillow in the dark and isolated basement dive that the TSCD had put aside for him, she’d haunted his mind. Once the official business was over, once Sharner and the others had left, once he’d settled down for a few hours’ sleep while he waited for the items on the list, his thoughts had lingered on what had happened between him and Jessie in the lock-up that second time.

He’d thought it was going okay. He’d clung to her hesitancy to kill him. He’d moved gently and softly to draw her in, trying to work out what made her tick whilst, to avoid blowing his cover, maintaining the edge she’d expect – at least until he was more confident of whom he was dealing with.

Then
she’d thrown him the curveball with the tainted seduction routine. Unfortunately for her, the switch had been too much of a contradiction to her behaviour in the bedroom, her awkwardness too transparent to someone of his experience.

He’d understood why she’d planned what she had, but the set-up had still left a bitter taste in his mouth – more so because he’d started to believe she really was different. He’d been uncharacteristically naïve. If she’d been in that row all the decades they suspected, she was bound to have learned a trick or too.

Still, he hadn’t expected it to go as far as it had – hadn’t expected her to linger so long in his touch before calling time. He’d done it to call her bluff. Instead, he’d caused her to lose her focus for just a short while. There was no way he could deny it had turned him on too. That, as he’d slipped his fingers between her legs expecting them to be shoved away, he’d instead felt her arousal.

Discovering her tension hadn’t been of repulsion but anticipation, he too had taken his attention off the task. He’d wanted to relax her; he’d wanted to show her he was nothing like the rest of them. When he’d sensed the innocence of her responses, the almost undetectable trembling of the strong and defiant female in his arms, felt her lose herself on the crest of the wave of her own curiosity, something unfamiliar had stirred inside him. And he’d let himself indulge for a short while.

But he’d managed to pull back, had recognised the stirring she’d incited in him could make his job more difficult. A stirring that had briefly made him take his eye off the ball.

Coming back to his senses, he’d pinned her face first down on that pool table. In part, it had been out of irritation. More so, it had been to prove what he
could
do but chose not to, in an attempt to salvage the situation and maybe gain a fragment of trust.

For purely selfish reasons, he had subsequently mocked her for wanting him to persist, only to see into her eyes as he said it – the fist that had instantly met with his jaw proving that he had got dangerously close to the truth.

And it was
that
truth that lingered in his mind as much as having seen her drawings of him. Her fight had revealed even more. Because no matter how strong she was, how quick when taking people unsuspectingly, it wasn’t
just
that she wasn’t used to combat with people like him – she
hadn’t
wanted to hurt him.

Jessie didn’t belong there. More and more, he saw it. The girl was the refreshing breeze in a stagnant room. She was the shard of light within a bottomless abyss. She was intriguing him beyond physical attraction. She was burrowing somewhere deep – somewhere few did.

She’d burrowed deep enough that when he’d lay on that bed, staring at the smoke-stained ceiling, still reeling from the putridness of the environment he’d taken on, thinking of her had made him feel better. Thinking of her had caused his thoughts to drift, to wander back to the pool table; of what could have happened had he not chosen to expose her plan when he did. If she would have stopped him. How he could have had sex with her right there in that lock-up – unplanned, raw, instinctive. Taken her over the pool table that was as dented and damaged as him.

Lying on that bed, he’d unfastened and opened his jeans, taking hold of what was already rigid against his shorts. And clutching onto the headboard behind him with one hand, he’d worked himself with the other – hard, brisk strokes, proficiently keeping himself at the brink for as long as he could.

Now, held by Tatum’s hand, he felt himself stiffen just at the recollection of it, the thought of how powerful it had been when he
had
come. Jessie had been vivid enough in his mind back then, but seeing her in the flesh again reminded him why coming just thinking about her had been so easy.

Only now he was annoyingly distracted by Tatum purring against his ear as she took all the credit for the further hardening in his jeans, her hand squeezing the bulge that pushed against her palm, her other hand tightening on the nape of his neck as her tongue lapped at his ear.

He breathed deeply through his nose, keeping himself as calm as he could, refusing to let Tatum bring him to the climax she was working so hard to achieve.

His restraint was made easier as Jessie’s head remaining downturned, being felt-up in front of her leaving him feeling like shit. And it wasn’t purely due to concern about the renewed distance between them again, his strategy failing – it was concern about her. It was concern about how she was feeling about herself when, so soon after their intimate moment together, he’d not only revealed that he wanted her for nothing more than what Pummel wanted her for, but that Tatum’s persistent hand working its way into his jeans only hours later was making a mockery of their brief intimacy.

Pummel was enjoying the show though, his eyes blatant with approval. It was a different story for Homer. Homer’s eyes glinted with jealousy, with resentment – yet another complication he could do without. And it was resentment that escalated as Tatum picked up pace, not caring who was watching.

But Eden cared. He cared about what he sensed in Jessie’s composure as she sat there, the flush of her cheeks confirming that what had happened between them hadn’t solely made an impact on
him
. It was unspoken, unexplained, hard to define, but it was there. And it was never more apparent as he looked across Tatum’s shoulder again, out of sight of the others, to see that, behind her shield of hair, Jessie’s absorbing brown eyes had instinctively looked up to meet his.

She was the first to break away, doing so with a cool edge of dismissal, like feuding lovers, and
her
claiming closure.

He wanted to push Tatum aside, grab Jessie’s jaw, force her to look at him to question those eyes more, let alone why it had created such a deep stab in his chest. More so, he wanted her to see that, despite Tatum’s attention,
his
remained focused on her. Not least because he got the feeling resentment exuded from her for more reasons than their altercation; something he was convinced of when Tatum finally opened his jeans completely and pulled down the front of his shorts to take him fully in her hand.

Jessie pulled her headphones out of her ear, tucked her novel back down the side of the chair and stood.

‘Leaving so soon?’ Pummel asked.

‘I’m tired,’ Jessie claimed.

Pummel held her gaze for a torturous few moments. ‘But you didn’t ask permission.’

Eden’s attention snapped from Jessie to Pummel.

Homer, Chemist and Dice all fixed their oppressive stares on her as Jessie stilled immediately. Her lowered head, the tension in her hands, sparked an unpleasant stirring deep in his gut.

‘Sit back down,’ Pummel said.

He heard Dice chuckle. But it was Chemist, the sweep of his tongue along his lower lip as he dragged his lascivious and amused gaze over her, that made Eden’s lower spine ache.

This was the dynamic he hadn’t yet seen. This was the materialisation of the unexplained control Pummel had over her. If he hadn’t been convinced of it before, then he was now. It was never more obvious than when the defiant, brave, bolshie female he had had to fight to subdue in the lock-up sat back into her sofa-seat without further argument. As she perched on the edge in a move that was uncharacteristically compliant from what he’d seen of her so far, it was a compliance he didn’t like. A compliance he now sensed was there only out of self-preservation, to avoid further humiliation.

He could see she’d experienced this before: the unpleasant consequences of noncompliance. Like someone’s pet used to being scolded, she’d suppressed every instinct to bite back.

This
was Pummel’s power. And it was the type of power that sickened him to his core. Eden absorbed her humiliation, his jaw clenching at the cruelty in Pummel’s eyes.

‘There’s a good girl,’ Pummel said, his voice soft, mockingly playful before he blew a sequence of smoke rings into the air. ‘Now,
ask
my permission.’

Eden dug his nails into his palm, Tatum’s grasp on his now waning erection even more of an irritation.

Jessie looked across at Pummel with an impassive yet, at the same time, impressively steely look in her eyes. She wasn’t just brave, she was smart. She knew how to play this game. She knew how to swallow her pride.

‘Please may I go to my room?’ she asked, her tone triumphant in the calmness she’d maintained.

Eden felt the surge of admiration heat his chest.

‘Hmm?’ Pummel asked, his eyebrows raised. ‘Please,
who
?’

Eden closed his eyes for a second, reminding himself why he was there, what he needed to do. Why, to do anything that was instinctive to him at that moment would end in trouble for them both. He took his packet of mints from his pocket, placing one in his mouth, reminding himself to stay calm.

Jessie took a moment, her jaw tense. She breathed steadily through her nose. ‘Please,
Pummel
, may I go to my room?’

He wasn’t sure he could have done it. Even with the mask he wore every moment he was there, he wasn’t sure he could have rolled over and taken a kicking like she was then. Something thick clogged at the back of his throat – something that was hard to swallow. What could have been interpreted as weakness then, no doubt how Pummel in his ignorance would have interpreted it, was more strength than he’d seen in anyone for a long time. He may have worked every day with the toughest of the tough, trained to fight, trained to detach, hunting down whatever third species he needed to every night that thought they could break the curfew, dragging them kicking and screaming back into Blackthorn, or to the authorities – but
this
was survival.
This
took guts.

This was the female who was now well and truly snagging him.

Pummel sighed theatrically. ‘I’ll give it some thought. Until I’m done, sit back and give us all something nice to look at while I decide if I want you to remove that big old chunky thing you’re wearing to give us a proper look.’

Eden’s gaze snapped from Jessie back to Pummel. There was no fucking way.

She eased back into the sofa chair, still not daring to meet anyone’s gaze.

And he hated it.