One Wrong Move (21 page)

He smoked in sweet silence for a minute, the time it took for her to wind up the scold mechanism again.

“That’s bullshit,” she informed him. “You’ve just got to be in everyone’s face. It’s how you define yourself. You wouldn’t know who you were if you weren’t being a pain in the ass to someone.

Right?”

He considered that possibility from all sides as he basked in the nicotine chill. “We all have our schtick,” he offered.

She snorted. “Don’t you get sick of it? Doesn’t it make you tired?”

“Still not breaking a sweat.” At least not for the reasons she meant. He thought of her rosy buttocks, her sweet, lickable dimples. He fought the impulse. Like he’d fought before.

He lost, again. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m bad. I know it. I don’t know how to be any other way, and it’s too late for me to change.”

“God, Aaro. That’s so self-defeating.”

“Nah, just honest.” He twisted around, fixed her with a narrow gaze while he blew out a long stream of smoke. “You hate smoke?”

She waved the question away. “Of course. I’m a nonsmoker.

Cigarette smoke is toxic. And nasty.”

He blew out another long stream of it in her direction. “Make it worth my while to stop,” he said.

Her eyes went wide. Those long lashes, all around, like coal smudges. He kept his eyes on her, letting his meaning sink in.

“I’m bad,” he went on. “But there is that small skill set I told you about earlier. The short list of things at which I am expert.

Who knows, they might make up for my more glaring faults.”

He shrugged. “At least a few of them. You won’t know unless you try me.”

“There you go again,” she said. “Being bad. Trying to shock me.”

“No, just proving you right,” he said. “Don’t you like to be right?”

“I don’t like to be played with.” Her voice trembled.

He smiled slowly. “You’ve never felt me do it.”

“Aaro.” She swallowed, a few times. “This isn’t fair.”

He shrugged. “Life never is.”

“With all that’s happening, this is hardly the time . . .”

“This is the time we have,” he said simply.

The truth of that statement reverberated like a big gong.

Silence spread afterward, heavy and liquid. The energy between them shimmered like a desert mirage. He felt her response. Awareness. Desire. She wanted it. No matter how scared she was.

Time to lighten up. Stave off her impending panic attack.

Pissing her off again should do it. He finished his smoke, stubbed it out.

“You know what your problem is?” he said, lighting up another smoke. “You’re not used to a strong come-on. You’ve never developed a standard set-down strategy for dickheads like me. You never needed to, with that bag over your head.”

“Quit it with the bag bullshit,” she snapped. “I’m sick of it.”

He gestured with the cigarette. “But that trick won’t work with me. I’ve seen you without the braid, the tent, the buttons up to the neck. That thing you do with your lip.”

“I do not do anything to my lip!”

“You hide it. Like you hide all the good stuff. Your lower lip is pink, like a satin pillow.” He stared, fascinated. “But you suck it in, squish it flat. I understand, if you don’t like a guy looking at how hot and soft your lips are. Imagining them closing around his dick.”

He saw from the look on her face as she sprang off the bed that he’d pushed too hard.
Shit.
Dick-for-brains. Literally.

He moved without thinking to head her off before she got to the door, which was wired shut with squealers. He grabbed her before she could yank the knob. She batted at his arms.

He held her fast. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That just slipped out.”

“I can’t stay here with you,” she burst out. “I can’t deal with you.”

“You can’t leave now,” he said. “You have no place to go. And you don’t have cash with you, either, right?”

Her eyes slid away. “I can go to a bank—”

“No. You can’t use your bank card, or your credit. You can’t go to the cops. The mobsters got tipped off about Lily’s nine one one call. You can’t go to your friends. You’d put them in danger.

Like Shira’s in danger now.”

“I put you in danger, too!”

“That’s OK. I was born to be put in danger. It’s all I’m good for.”

She stared at him, breathing hard.

“I’m a pain in the ass, and I’m crude and lewd, and I stink of toxic smoke, but I’m all you’ve got, for now. So use me.”

“Yeah?” Her eyes blazed at him. “And just who do you think would really be getting used, Aaro?”

“It wouldn’t be like that,” he told her. “I wouldn’t use you.”

“Right,” she muttered. “And until you hand me off tomorrow, it’s my job to make this bullshit worth your while?”

He was about to snap back at her when the look in her eyes finally came into focus for him. Comprehension slipped in, like a knife between his ribs.

She was scared of him. Of course. Like he should be surprised, knowing what he knew about her. Being what he was.

He stepped back, hands lifted in the air. “I won’t lay a hand on you unless you tell me to,” he said. “And I would never, ever hurt you.”

She still huddled, big-eyed, tight-lipped. Unconvinced.

“I’m sorry,” he said, with some effort. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It was just the hard-on talking. It talks loud, but it’s not the boss.”

“I wasn’t scared.” Her chin went up. “That’s, um. Good to know.” Her eyes darted around, finding no good place to rest.

“So what is this huge favor that you owe Bruno, anyway? I’ve been wondering.”

His first impulse was to slap the question to the ground, hard enough so that it never dared to rise again. That, however, did not jibe with his current attempt to not be a dickhead. The words ground out.

“Not technically a favor. A fuckup. I have to make up for it.”

“What fuckup?” she prompted. “What happened?”

He let out a savage sigh. “You know what happened to Lily?

When she got abducted by King’s goons? The hospital at Ros-aline Creek?”

“She told me the story,” Nina said.

“Right. Well, that was me. That happened on my watch.”

She looked blank, so he tried again. “I was the asshole who was guarding Lily when that happened. Do you understand me now?”

“Ah,” she said softly. “Yes. I do.”

He was inexplicably pissed that she had no more to say than that. “So,” he said. “There it is. That’s it. That’s the fuckup.”

“That’s all?”

“What, that’s not enough for you? You need more? They took her! I couldn’t stop them! She almost died, and so did Bruno! All because of me! So as you can see, my track record sucks. Big time.”

“Your track record’s pretty good with me,” she said.

He waved that away, with an angry swat.

She studied him. “Lily told me how they set up that scam. I would have been fooled. Anyone would have been fooled, Aaro.

Anyone.”

“Yeah, well, anyone wasn’t. I was.”

“So you need to redeem yourself? For not being perfect? Is that why you’re going to all this effort? To make up for that?”

He stuck his cigarette back in his mouth and sucked on it, to preclude letting anything stupid blurt out.

Nina twitched the cigarette out of his mouth. “Put this out.”

He gaped at her, smoke still trickling from his mouth. “Huh?”

She grabbed a cup from table, and tapped out his smoke in it.

Then she turned, and gave him a smile that almost stopped his heart.

“It just became worth your while,” she said.

Nina couldn’t read the look on his face. The few hours that she’d known him, he’d been so armored, so totally ‘fuck you,’ it took a minute to recognize his expression, and another one to believe it. Fear.

Aaro was scared. Of
her.
Holy shit. No one had ever been scared of her. But this guy, this rawhide-and-gunmetal guy who blazed raw sex appeal—he looked scared of her.

The realization gave her the urge to giggle, which she suppressed. Giggling would kill the moment. She did not want this moment killed. It was astonishing. She wanted to treasure it, follow it. See where it went.

Maybe it was the way he felt about his failure in guarding Lily.

He pretended to be indifferent and cynical, but it was bullshit.

He cared desperately. It was killing him. Like he cared for his dying aunt. It fogged her up, just thinking about it. He’d revealed so much of himself when he let her witness that. He’d handed her his operating instructions.

She wasn’t afraid of him anymore, and fearlessness felt good.

The voice of reason still yammered away in the back of her head, and yeah, it was still the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. He was a stranger, a totally inappropriate choice for a lover, badly behaved, and there was no guarantee the sex would work, however excited she might be.

In fact, chances were statistically overwhelming that it would be a disaster. Sex so far had been lots of staring at ceiling tiles, discomfort, embarrassment. Afterward, trying to explain. Reassuring her partners that it wasn’t their fault, it was her, not them, blahbity blah blah.

She’d started to wonder if she was, well, different. Some people were straight, some were gay, some were bi. And some were asexual. She’d been getting comfortable with the idea. Thinking that it might be OK, to be “a.” What a relief, to just relax. Give up the fight.

And
ka-boom
. Her mind was yanked open, shields down, no gray fuzz, no
nobody here nobody here
churning out. She was oh, so very here right now. So present. Like never before.

It was madness. But it felt like magic.

She laid her hand on his chest, and the contact made her nerves tingle, a zillion little bells ringing. He was hot. The fabric of his T-shirt damp. So hard, that lean economy of muscle beneath it. He smelled of smoke, the tang of male sweat. His heart thumped beneath her palm. Her fingers dug into his sinewy bulk.
Mmmm.

“All this effort, just to make up for being human,” she said.

His eyes narrowed. “If you’re trying to make me feel better about fucking up, don’t bother. I don’t need someone to hold my hand.”

“It’s not my job to comfort you,” she said. “And it wasn’t actually your hand I was thinking about holding.”

His chest jolted, but he jerked the laughter and his grin promptly back under grim control. “So what are you doing?”

“I’m calling your bluff. You are so busted, Aaro. Was it all just so much calculated bullshit, this amazing skill set of yours? Did I have my mind in the gutter when I assumed that you were offering yourself up as a sex toy when you invited me to use you? Am I that far off base?”

“Uh, no.” A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “By no means. My mind lives down in the gutter. It maintains a full-time residence down there.”

“Thank goodness. I’d have been mortified, if I’d gotten it wrong.”

“I’m just surprised, at the about-face. I thought you were scared of me. Scared of sex. That you thought I was a pain-in-the-ass buffoon.”

She smiled, dug her fingernails in. Feeling his nipples, tickling her palm through his shirt. “So you figured you were safe, right?”

His face was a taut mask. “Don’t push me.”

“Why not? You push me. But you know what?” She delicately scraped her nails down over his chest. “I see right through it now.”

He flinched back. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“That bag over my head,” she said softly. “You wear one, too.

Takes one to know one. That’s why I couldn’t read your mind, even though I can read everyone else’s. Your bag is a shield. Just like mine.”

He cleared his throat. “OK. I think you’re nuts, but I’ll play your game. What do you think you see in there? This one’s for free.”

She ran her fingertips over the rasp of beard stubble. He was so skittish, so painfully macho. He wasn’t going to want to hear about his grief and loneliness. It would just embarrass him, which would piss him off. Not conducive to what she had in mind.

She let out a careful breath. “I don’t think you want to know.”

He snorted. “Easy answer.”

“Easier for you, definitely,” she agreed.

The silence thickened, and when she put her finger to his cheek again, he leaned into her touch, like a cat. The shimmer of awareness intensified. “So it’s official?” His voice was almost belligerent. “You’re letting me fuck you tonight. Awesome. Let’s get started.”

She stifled a giggle. “There you go again. Get it through your head, Aaro. The rude-and-ugly bag over your head won’t work.

I’ve seen through it. The spell’s broken. It’s silly, now. Give it up.

Behave.”

“The desire to get laid can make even an asshole behave well for a little while. Then it passes, and it’s like it never happened.”

She tried not to smile. “Is that a warning?”

He shook his head. “A reminder.”

“You’re not an asshole,” she said. “I don’t know why you want to convince everyone that you are, but with me, you might as well stop.”

“You’re projecting a fantasy onto me,” he said grimly. “Don’t.”

She flapped her hand at him. “You think too much, Aaro,” she said. “Stop it before you hurt yourself.”

His chest jerked in harsh laughter. “Nobody’s ever accused me of that before.” He grabbed his duffel. “I need a shower. I’m foul. I was traveling for hours even before the mortal combat.

Give me a few.”

He vanished into the bathroom. Nina sagged down onto the bed.

The sky had fallen. Pigs flew. Hell was frozen over. It had made dreamlike sense, while he was standing there, zapping her with his wild energy, but once he fled into the bathroom, her in-securities crowded eagerly back. Maybe he’d come on to her out of habit. Some men didn’t know any other way to behave with a woman. And now, he was forced to deliver on his big talk, to sal-vage his macho image.

Then again. That erection had seemed very, very sincere.

The shower was hissing. The pressure was on. She’d never had such an intense reaction to a man. In personal relationships, she avoided intensity. She’d had plenty of that as a kid. She got plenty more working for the women’s shelter. She preferred careful, polite, safe guys.