Ripped (3 page)

My breath quickened again, and there was a throb from my clit, which couldn’t seem to calm down. I needed to get out of the car, but I hesitated.

I don’t know
why
I hesitated. In books, when women did stupid things because they found some hot guy really attractive, I hated it. It was the reason I read shifter books. It made more sense when some mystical alpha-bond-thing made you do it.

But
I
wasn’t doing anything. I pulled back from him, shaking my head.

“No?” He grinned. “Right, well, then get out of the car if you don’t mind? I’ve got places to be.”

Okay. He was letting me go. I should be relieved and ecstatic to be free of him.

Why wasn’t I?

I opened the door, and looked around for my purse out of instinct. But I didn’t have my purse. It was back in Starling’s bedroom at Prince Larbi’s house, where I’d left it. “Damn it,” I muttered.

“What?”

I shook my head, getting out of the car. “Nothing. I just don’t have a cell phone after all.”

He winced. “Oh. Too bad.” He looked truly sympathetic.

I wanted to hit him.

“Listen, I know I already said it, but I am sorry. Truly sorry.”

I slammed the door to the car in his face.

Screw his apologies. It was all his fault that I was stuck out here.

I turned and starting walking toward the Target. I’d have to ask to use a phone. Of course, I didn’t know anyone’s phone number by heart. They were all saved in my damned cell phone.

And I didn’t have any money for the metro, even if I could walk there.

That bastard might not have killed me, but that didn’t mean he’d done me any favors either.

CHAPTER THREE

Cade

I watched her walk away, admiring the way her tight jeans clung to her ass. Damn, she was gorgeous all right. And it was funny, because I could swear that she hadn’t hated me as much as she probably should have. Couldn’t figure that. She knew what I was. Had witnessed it. Seen the dead body and everything.

Maybe she was twisted in the head or something. Maybe
she
got off on corpses. She looked normal, but you never really could tell about people. Lots of people had really disturbing sexual fantasies.

Still, disturbing or not, I thought I’d be willing to go pretty far out of my own comfort zone to tap that.

“Not going to happen, Cade,” I said to myself, starting the car and pulling out of the parking lot.

I pulled out on the street, leaving the place behind when I realized that she probably didn’t have any money. She said she didn’t have a cell phone, so she probably couldn’t call anyone. And without money, she couldn’t take the metro. I was leaving her at the mercy of strangers. In the suburbs.

Damn it.

I turned the car around and pulled back into the parking lot.

It took a minute to locate her, but I finally saw her stepping up onto the sidewalk in front of the Target. I drove my car over and pulled up next to her, rolling down the window. “Hey, there.”

She turned to look at me. “What? Did you decide you wanted to kill me after all?”

“No!” I was wounded. “I told you I wouldn’t, love.”

She cocked her head. “What the fuck? Are you British? Were you British before?”

I cringed. Fuck. I had decided to give her a ride and somehow sent a message to my brain to relax and be nice to her, and that had gotten interpreted as letting down my guard entirely. Well, there was nothing for it now. “I usually try not to attract attention to myself when I’m on the job. Anything that would make me stand out, like a foreign accent…”

“So, you
are
British?”

“My mother was,” I said. “And people tend to learn to speak from their mothers, so…” Not worth explaining that my mother had died when I was only five years old and that I’d grown up with my aunt in Wales until I was ten, when my father had remarried and decided that he was capable of raising me again, so I’d been shipped back to Connecticut. “Look, you want a ride?”

“What?” She stared at me as if I had lost my mind.

I rubbed my chin. I probably
had
lost my mind, if it came down to it. “I feel bad about ruining your day. I figure I could drive you back home. Not back to the prince’s house, you understand. I can’t go back there. But assuming you live somewhere around here…?”

She sighed. “I live in town.”

“Where in town?”

She told me.

I eyed her. “Really? That neighborhood?”

“What?” she said. “I can handle myself.”

I supposed that she did seem fairly brave. “Well, I can too. I don’t mind driving you there. What do you say?”

She looked back at the Target for a second. Then she turned back to me. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Because you need a ride.”

“Yes, but why are you being nice to me? You were going to kill me earlier.”

“I was never going to kill you. I only said that I was.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that? If I get back in your car, you’ll just take me someplace and kill me and dump my body in the river or something.”

“I really wouldn’t,” I said. “I don’t have any reason to kill you.”

“And you had a reason to kill Larbi? You and him have some kind of disagreement?”

“No. Listen, I’m not admitting to anything here, but I may have received payment for some of my activities earlier in the day. I definitely haven’t got any business pertaining to you.”

She studied her fingers.

I waited.

She looked up at me.

I smiled. “Think of it as an apology. For screwing up your day.”

She sighed. She yanked open the door to the car and got inside. “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

And I wasn’t entirely sure why I was offering her the ride in the first place.

* * *

Shell

But when we got back to my apartment, there were five police cars parked in the parking lot, so he kept driving.

“I’ll take you a block down,” he said. “You’ll have to walk from there.”

“They’re there a lot,” I said. “It might not have anything to do with you.”

“Better safe than sorry,” he said, pulling the car over by the curb.

I turned to look at him. The drive back had been uneventful, and we hadn’t really spoken. He’d fiddled with the radio the entire time, and the music had been too loud for conversation.

He gave me a lopsided smile. “Well, sorry again.”

In spite of myself, I smiled back. He was just too damned attractive. And weirdly, he seemed… nice. That probably meant he was a psychopath, though, right? I mean, what other kind of person could kill someone and act like it was nothing? The thought gave me chills, and I stopped smiling.

“What’s your name, incidentally?” he asked.

“Shell,” I said.

“Like Shelly?”

“Like Shell,” I said. “My parents had this idea that they wanted their children to have unique names. They thought they were doing us a favor, since their names are Christopher and Mary. But they had no idea what it would be like.” I grimaced. And here I was sharing personal information with him. Something about him made me feel comfortable. That was probably part of his psychopath charm, I guessed.

He considered and then flashed me another smile. “I like it. It’s pretty.” There was a sort of sparkle in his eyes, as if we were sharing a private joke.

I didn’t understand what it was about this guy that made me feel so drawn to him. But I guessed it hardly mattered, because I was a block from my house now. I was going to get out of the car and walk back to my place, and I was never going to see him again. I felt a little disappointed by that thought.

Right then, I should have been reaching for the door handle, taking off my seatbelt, getting out of the car. But I didn’t do any of those things. I just eyed him, taking in his broad shoulders and his powerful arms.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“They call me Ripper,” he said, still grinning.

“That’s not a name.”

He shrugged. “Maybe not, love. It’s all you’re going to get, though.”

“Why do they call you that?”

He scratched his neck. “I guess it’s meant to be like Jack the Ripper.”

I drew back.

He laughed. “Well, I’m not anything like him. I don’t kill prostitutes or anything. I almost never kill women at all.”

“Almost never?” I squeaked. What the hell did that mean?

“Well, sometimes there is a woman that needs killing. I don’t approve of a wholesale whitewash over an entire gender. There are bad women, just like there are bad men. Saying otherwise is sexist. It doesn’t give women credit. Paints them out as innocent, childlike creatures. I mean, what is this? The 1800s?”

I puzzled over that for several seconds. I supposed I could see his point. “So, you only kill bad people?”

He smoothed his eyebrow with one finger. “Bad probably isn’t the word for it. I mean, I guess since I kill people,
I’m
probably bad.”

I blinked. Now, I was just confused.

He wasn’t looking at me anymore. “You should probably go.” He leaned over and undid my seatbelt.

Now we were close.

My breath caught in my throat.

His face was inches from mine. “Not that I’m admitting to anything, mind,” he said in a soft voice.

I tried to make noise, but all that came out was a gurgling sound.

His tongue darted out and ran over the edge of his bottom lip. His lips were very full, I realized. He had long lashes and thick lips, and yet he simply oozed masculinity.

I had this urge to reach out and run my forefinger over his lips, trace them. I bit down on my own bottom lip.

His eyes searched mine, questioning me.

I drew in an audible breath. He was going to kiss me. We were close, and he was looking at me in that way that men did before they…

And I was going to let him. I was going to let the stone-cold psychopath kiss me. I was going to press my body up against his firm chest and run my hands over his shoulders, and—

He opened the door, pulling away from me.

The cool air whooshed inside the car.

I shook myself, feeling deflated.

He settled back into the driver’s seat, looking at the ceiling. “It was nice meeting you, Shell. Have a good life.”

I lurched forward. “Thanks for the ride,” I mumbled, and I got out of the car, feeling clumsy, as if my legs didn’t properly function. Once on solid ground, I leaned against the open door, steadying myself. I peered in the car at him.

He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was staring straight ahead, and he was composed, not smiling anymore.

I shut the door. I backed away.

The car roared to life and pulled away from me, back onto the street. I watched until it was out of sight.

* * *

Shell

“So, he was tall?” said one of the cops. There were two of them in my living room. I had been right that the police cars in front of my apartment were there for a completely different reason than to talk to me. They were probably busting a drug deal or something. I don’t know. After I got home, I called my sister, though, expecting her to come over. (Even without my phone, I was able to access my Google contacts through my computer, so I could find her cell phone number that way.) But she was too busy hanging out with the prince’s family, who “needed” her. Instead, she sent over cops to question me.

“Tall, yes,” I said.

“Caucasian?”

I nodded. “Well, he was kind of… tan. Sort of a golden brown color.”

“He was of Asian descent?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know. He said he was from England, so maybe he had Irish or Scottish blood? There are darker skinned Irish people, right?”

“Wait, he’s from England?” The cop made a sour face, turning to his partner. “You think we could catch a break, right? But this isn’t even going to fall under our jurisdiction, is it? We’ll do all this work, and then we’ll just have to turn him over to the British government. And the Feds will take all the credit, after we do all the legwork.”

The partner nodded. “It’s a bitch, all right.” He looked at me. “Oh, sorry, ma’am.”

“I don’t care if you swear,” I said. I rubbed my forehead. I wished they would just leave. I really wanted to relax and be alone. I was ashamed to admit it, but after everything I’d felt, what I really wanted was to curl up and spend some quality time with my vibrator. I needed to simply release some pressure. It wasn’t because I was still feeling residual attraction towards the guy who had basically kidnapped me.

Because that would be insane.

And I was not crazy.