Most Wanted - A Fantasy Romance Novel (The Shadow Blade Series) (6 page)

‘Is it clean?’
she asked, examining the wound.

He glanced at
her and nodded but she watched as he doused a cloth and swiped it with alcohol
anyway. Better safe than sorry. The Sucker virus was like the Aids virus. It could
only be spread by bodily fluids; semen, spit, blood. And only through sex, or
if saliva or blood got into an open wound. Suckers technically weren’t demons.
They were humans infected with a demon virus. Sure, once upon a time, long ago
there had been demon Suckers called Originals who had come to the human realm
and started infecting humans, but now the Originals were all gone.
 

Jax tossed his
bloodied T-shirt on the side and leaned back against the counter his eyes
resting on her face. He was lucky it was just a scratch and he seemed to be
healing already, making Ariel wonder about the truth of the myth she’d heard
that Blades healed faster than your average human. She wished she had studied
the myths and history of the realms more, but unfortunately her training had
been of the practical rather than the book-reading variety. Her father had been
an advocate of throwing children to the wolves and seeing how they fared.

Ariel turned away
from Jax, feeling heat spreading up her neck, suffusing her cheeks. If she
stared any longer at Jax’s naked torso she wasn’t going to be able to form a
coherent sentence. She turned to the window, but managed to catch sight of his
reflection, his broad chest and shoulders and the rippling line of his abs.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ she murmured under her breath. ‘I mean
them
,’ she added hastily, cursing
herself. She turned towards the wall where there was no danger whatsoever of
catching a reflection of him.

It was true. She
had no idea what those things were. Suckers for sure, but some kind of new
breed. But frankly she was finding it hard to focus or give a damn right this
moment in time.

Jax had grabbed
a towel from the side and was patting himself dry. He walked over to the refrigerator
and took out two beers. Handing one to Ariel he led the way through into the living
room. Ariel followed him, feeling the atmosphere turn markedly heavy, charged with
electricity, like the air before a storm. She stood there, at a slight loss, feeling
an unfamiliar prickling of nerves, as Jax drew the curtains and turned on a
single lamp in the corner.

When he finally
turned to face her, Ariel’s stomach flipped over as though she’d just plummeted
off a cliff edge. His eyes were mesmerizing, warm brown and filled with
challenge.

 
‘That’s quite a scar,’ she said, her
throat constricting, as he crossed towards her. She was still working out how
to play this, struggling to stay focused and not lose the upper hand. She
stared at the white jagged line that ran across his shoulder blade.

Jax glanced
down. ‘That’s nothing,’ he said, setting his beer on a side table and then
flexing his bicep.

Ariel raised her
eyebrows lazily because it was obvious as a Sucker’s fang dripping in blood
that Jax was just trying to show off how fit he was and how big his biceps
were. Still, if they were on display… and actually it was a pretty impressive
scar he had running up all the way to his shoulder blade.

She leaned in
closer. ‘What was that from? A Saw demon?’

He nodded.’

Ariel glanced at
him, then back at the scar. ‘Doesn’t look like a tail mark.’

‘It wasn’t. She
had sharp nails.’

Ariel tilted her
neck to the side, ‘Now this is a wound,’ she said, lifting her hair and
pointing at the mark on her neck, a long, white scar that travelled all the way
to her shoulder blade. Jax’s fingers traced the scar and she jolted, surprised
as much by the gentleness of his touch as by the surge of heat and current that
was now coursing through her body. She felt like she’d just touched an
electricity pylon. She straightened up, tossing her hair back over her shoulder,
unnerved at how much this guy, a stranger almost, was able to elicit feelings
and responses she hadn’t felt in such a long time. ‘A Sucker came at me with a
knife.’

‘You kill it?’
Jax asked, his voice so low she felt it vibrating through her.

She gave him a
look over her shoulder. ‘Of course I killed it. I don’t dig Suckers. Who do you
think I am? Sookie Stackhouse?’ She tossed her coat onto the sofa and pulled
the arm of her T-shirt down so he could see her collarbone. Scooping her hair
out the way she angled her body into the light. ‘That was a Scarab demon. There
were three of them.’

Jax couldn’t
resist running his fingers the length of the translucent white scar that ran
along the sweeping curve of her collarbone. He felt her inhale, saw the shiver
race across her skin and felt an answering pull in his gut.

‘Must have hurt.
Those are killer,’ he murmured, his fingers stroking up her neck. He was aching
to drop a kiss onto her skin. Damn, she smelled so good. But he still wasn’t
one hundred percent sure she was his for the taking. Since they’d stepped foot
in the house she’d been acting funny, the distance was back, that aloofness
that seemed to be her trademark. And the mask of indifference was firmly in
place, though the goose bumps prickling her skin seemed to tell a different
story altogether.

‘I got a Scarab
demon scar too. Right here,’ he said, pointing at his stomach.

Ariel blinked a
few times before her gaze focused on the scar he was pointing at, a thin white
line running at a diagonal across his stomach. Her cheeks were flushed pink,
her breathing had started to speed up. Jax’s gaze dropped to her breasts, the
full swell of them beneath her T-shirt. He couldn’t help himself. She noticed
immediately of course, and he saw the smile tug at the corner of her mouth -
that mouth that was just begging to be kissed.

With a glint in
her eye she lifted her top and showed him the smooth flat of her stomach. His
gaze lingered on her face for a few seconds before dropping to her waist, to
the pale dots that traveled across her slender hipbone.

‘Burn?’ he
asked, nodding in appreciation more at the curve of her hips than the scar.
They were like two injured army vets, comparing war wounds.

Ariel nodded,
and he caught the flare of challenge in her eyes, the defiant lift of her chin.
The heat rose inside of him like a fire flaming from an ember, startling him
with its intensity. She pulled her top up higher so it brushed the bottom of
her black lace bra and he had to dig his heels in to stop himself from picking
her up in his arms and throwing her down on the sofa.

She was showing
him another scar. It ran along the bottom of her ribcage, this time a knife
wound. It looked a mess, had been badly stitched, and yet somehow it only seemed
to accentuate the beauty of her body, to exaggerate the smoothness of the rest
of her, the perfection. He liked that she didn’t seem to care about it being an
ugly raised area of skin, that she was proud of it. Most of the girls Cy tried
to hook him up with were obsessed with how they looked. That kind of girl had
never been his type. He liked a girl who was comfortable in her own skin, who
wore sweats and didn’t need to wear make up to put out the trash. Ariel
reminded him of Neve in that respect.

The scar was
puckered, looked old. ‘Home stitched?’ he asked, stepping closer to examine it.

‘My boyfriend
did it.’ She winced as she said it and Jax’s gut clenched. His hand hovered
above the scar, not touching. Boyfriend? She had a boyfriend?

‘Ex,’ she
clarified quickly. ‘My ex.’ He caught the sigh in her voice. A bad break up
then? Something she regretted? There was a story there for sure, but he didn’t
want to hear it right now.

‘I can beat
that,’ he said, stepping away and letting his hand drop to his side. He pointed
at the scar left by a bullet, just beneath his clavicle. Ariel glanced at it
and nodded. Then she licked her lips and stepped towards him.

In the next
moment Ariel ripped off her T-shirt and tossed it to the floor. Jax stared at
her stunned into speechlessness, and tried to appear nonchalant. She was
standing in front of him in just her bra and jeans though, and nonchalance was
a challenge. He had to force himself to stay rooted to the spot, stop himself
from taking the two steps necessary to close the distance between them and
pulling her into his arms.

She pointed at
the scar above her left breast. He barely noticed. His eyes were tracing the
full curve of her breast, the dark pink of her nipple that was clear through
the black lace. He watched it harden beneath his gaze. Taking a long, unsteady
inhalation, Jax took a step closer.

‘Near miss,’ he
murmured. There was barely a millimeter between them now. His thumb hovered
just over her breast, aching to brush the nipple. ‘That could have hit your
heart.’

‘Who says I have
one?’ Ariel answered, her voice low and seductive.

Jax smiled at
her. She kept acting like she was heartless and tough but he knew there was a
softer, more gentle side to her. He had seen a glint of it when she stared at
his painting. Suddenly all he wanted to do was uncover it, tame her, reveal the
tender side he knew existed beneath her veneer of bravado.

‘You were
lucky,’ he said, his fingertips grazing the scar. She shivered beneath his touch
and he stroked a palm down her arm watching the goose-bumps rise in its wake.

She glanced up
at him, her eyes glowing dangerously. ‘Maybe,’ she whispered, her gaze resting
on his lips. ‘I don’t believe in luck though. The guy who fired the gun doesn’t
either any more.’ A sly smile tugged at her mouth. He ached to take her bottom
lip between his teeth and suck on it.

‘What you do to
him?’ he asked.

‘Get on my wrong
side and if you’re lucky I might show you.’

He drew in a
quiet breath. ‘Your wrong side? Aren’t I there already?’

‘No,’ she
answered, locking eyes with him. ‘If you were on my wrong side, you’d know it
by now.’

Jax hesitated a
beat. He dropped his hand to his side and then kicked off his shoes. She shot
him a questioning look but Jax ignored it and started undoing his fly. Her eyebrows
shot up. She quickly replaced her surprised expression with one of boredom.
‘Whatever you have in your pants,’ she drawled. ‘I really don’t need to see
it.’

His eyes danced.
‘Oh believe me, you wanna see this.’

Ariel sighed
loudly but her eyes were glued to his thighs and his boxers as he pulled off
his jeans. Heat spread out from her core and she felt her own breathing speed
up, her pulse joining it in a frantic gallop. He was packing, not weapons but
definitely something else of a high caliber. She could see the size of him
through his boxers and her body reacted of its own accord, the muscles of her
stomach and core tightening in anticipation. Jax turned around then, and her
attention was captured by the expanse of his broad, muscled back. Fuck, he had
a body to die for. Well, not to die for, because no man was worth dying for,
but damn, she wanted to see the rest of it. More than that, she wanted to trace
her fingers over every inch of him, take him in her hand….but most of all she
wanted to feel him pressing into her.

She looked up
suddenly and saw that his eyes were flashing, smoldering would be the exact
word. The temperature seemed to have jumped several degrees. Jax pulled his
boxers down over his butt.

‘Ow,’ Ariel
said, admiring his ass more than the scar that snaked across it.

‘Saw demon, laid
his tail right across my ass.’

Lucky Saw demon
Ariel thought to herself, thinking how much she’d like to lay herself naked
across his ass and every other part of him. ‘Could have been worse,’ she told
him, smiling. ‘Could have laid his tail across your front.’

‘I would have
had to have killed him twice if he’d done that,’ Jax laughed, turning around to
face her. ‘You?’

‘Me what?’ Ariel
asked, her arms still folded over her chest.

‘No more
injuries?’ he asked.

Ariel laughed
under her breath, seeing exactly where this was going and knowing now was the
last chance she had to bow out. She considered him through lowered eyelashes. One
night with Jax was certainly an interesting proposition. It would almost
certainly be fun. The outline of him through his boxers definitely invited
closer inspection. But then what? They had to work together. She was going to
have to hand him over to the Brothers one day. Still, she tried to reason, who
said emotions had to be involved? And it would be entertaining to see who could
win out in the bedroom. At the thought of him begging beneath her, her insides flipped
over.

‘No,’ she
finally answered, meeting his hungry gaze. ‘I’ve got more.’

Jax raised his
eyebrows. His lips were parted slightly, desire darkening his already dark
eyes. ‘Not going to show me?’ he asked softly.

Ariel rose to
the bait, slowly undoing her jeans, making sure she had his full attention
before easing one side down over her hip, exposing the black lace of her
underwear. When she glanced up, Jax’s mouth was hanging open and his eyes had
become heavy-lidded, almost glassy.

She slid her
underwear further down the curve of her hip, showing him even more flesh.
‘Sword,’ she said, exposing the start of the silvery fine scar that cut from her
hip all the way to her knee.

Jax stepped
nearer and suddenly his thumb was tracing the length of it. Ariel draw in a
sharp breath, feeling heat spear through her, her muscles jumping beneath his
fingertips. ‘You heal well,’ he said. ‘All things considered.’

Ariel shrugged.
She was half Shadow, of course she did. She swallowed, trying to steady her leg,
which was jolting beneath his touch.

Jax moved his
hands to her hips, holding them gently, his thumbs caressing the shallow dips,
setting her nerve endings alight. ‘So,’ he said, his voice a low growl in his
throat, ‘now we’re done comparing war wounds, what should we do for the rest of
the night?’