Читать книгу Something Wicked - Julie Leto, Julie Leto - Страница 10

ONE WEEK.

One week?

Josie wrapped her arms tightly across her chest and leaned her forehead against the wall. She’d come so far. She wouldn’t stop now, not when Rick’s life was at stake. Any battle between the Guardian witch and the rogue cop would result in serious casualties. Stretching, she slid her hand, palm flat, against the door, hoping and praying he hadn’t escaped while she and Regina argued.

To find him, she’d tapped into skills she’d tried to deny since the day she’d been released from juvie for the last time. Once she was independent-minded enough to realize that her mother’s “games” deprived other people of their hard-earned cash and sense of self-worth, Josie had tried to stop the endless stream of cons and grift operations her mother had employed to keep them from living on the streets. But she’d never been strong enough or clever enough to change her mother’s chosen way of life. By the time she was a few months away from turning eighteen, Josie had known her chances of a normal childhood had run out.

Determined to at least keep her adult life cleansed of bad karma, Josie had celebrated her birthday by saying sayonara to her mother and moving back to Chicago. She took control of valuable real estate left to her by an aunt, opened her store and embraced the Wiccan religion of her grandmother. She’d completely reinvented herself, erasing a past fraught with illegal activity and devoid of hope. If she could accomplish such a transformation alone, then no matter what had happened to Rick to send him into this downward spiral, she knew he could come out of the darkness.

She’d make sure of it.

Revitalized, she tucked the necklace Regina had given her down into her T-shirt. Valentine’s Day. For others, it was the holiday of love. For Rick and her, it was D-day.

She knocked on the door, then pressed her ear to the scarred wood to hear if anyone moved inside.

Was that a groan?

She knocked again. “Rick?”

A grunt? Was he hurt?

“Rick!”

She tried the lock. It wouldn’t budge. She glanced down the hall, but nixed the option of running for help. The last time she’d hesitated for this long, Rick had eluded her, disappeared with nothing but a barely warm trail in his wake.

She backed up, aimed her foot at the area near the knob and kicked hard.

Pain shot from her heel to her thigh. She hobbled backward, cursing, when a crash sounded beyond the door. Instinct took over. She attacked again and this time, the lock surrendered, the door swung open and Josie toppled into the room.

The smell caught her instantly—the potent sweetness of leather, gun oil and shampoo. And…sage? She bent down to find wilted leaves strewn liberally across the threshold, then followed a trail to another collection beneath the window. Sage protected against evil. That together with the crisp smell of aftershave, the unexpected scent of a man she’d chased through Detroit, Pittsburgh, Boston and now, New York City, brightened her outlook. Maybe he wasn’t so lost after all. She clung desperately to her impressions of Rick Fernandez—salt of the earth. Even tempered. Open-minded. And at this moment—passed out.

The grimy windows, shaded by blinds with broken and bent slats, blocked out most of the neon glow from the signs outside. But in the center of the room, on a bed devoid of any covering except for crisp, surprisingly white sheets, lay Rick, facedown and fast asleep.

A clock radio, blinking the midnight hour for likely the last few years, had been knocked to the floor. Appropriate, since time stood still the minute she spotted him on the bed, covered only by a towel. His skin damp, his hair spiked from a shower and an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s clutched in his hand, he was breathtaking.

His dark skin and muscles, which looked hard as stone even in alcohol-induced sleep, made her mouth water. A gold chain cut a contrasting line across his neck, and she imagined that the cross he always wore was tangled somewhere behind his head. They’d only had one real date six months ago and, despite their instant attraction, they’d opted to take things slowly. Now that she’d seen him nearly naked, Josie wondered what kind of a fool of a woman agreed to such a Puritanical condition.

Truth was, from the moment she’d met him, she’d fantasized about Rick naked in bed.

Just not exactly like this.

She shut the door. When she turned back, she gasped. He was sitting up, a gun leveled at her heart, his eyes glazed by a mixture of exhaustion and alarm.

“Rick!”

“Josie?”

She stepped into the dim light streaking in from the window. He scrambled across the bed and snapped on the table lamp.

“Josie.”

For a second, she thought she might have heard relief in his voice, but looking at the deep frown on his face, she figured the sound was simply wishful thinking.

With all the will she possessed, she remained rooted to the spot. She had to be smart. Keep her head. Think coolly. Logically. Just like Rick would have. Before.

“Yes, Rick. It’s me.”

He laid the gun on the mattress but didn’t take his hand off the grip. “What are you doing here?”

She pressed her lips together tightly, unsure at first what words would come out of her mouth. Why was she here? Really?

“I came to find you.”

He snorted. “Congratulations.”

Rick leaned over to the nightstand, exchanged the gun for a package of cigarettes and, finding it empty, threw it, disgusted, onto the floor. Glancing around, Josie doubted this hotel had smoking or nonsmoking designations. She was certain this dump had no maid service, much less the room service she needed to order up a pot of coffee to counteract the slight slur in Rick’s speech and the thick red rims around his once bright and shining dark eyes. Only six months ago, he’d been a cop. A detective. Decorated. Respected. Likely well acquainted with man’s inhumanity to man and yet, when she’d literally run into him at the police station on the day of her first and only paranormal premonition, his gaze had held a smart optimism that had instantly grabbed Josie’s attention.

Now, she saw none of that inner glow. She saw shadows. Anger. A deep, ravaging sadness. Hadn’t she expected this? She’d prepared herself for the jaded darkness that had to come with a man who’d just learned that the evil he’d been fighting all his career was a drop in the bucket compared to the evil that existed in secret. So why was a lump forming in her throat, which was so tight she was scared to breathe?

“Mac wants to meet with you,” she said, having practiced this speech to so many hotel mirrors since she began her search that she had it down pat. Mac Mancusi had been the Chief of Detectives when Rick had disappeared. He’d also been the only other Chicago cop to have witnessed the murders that had sent the city into a tizzy. The mayor dead. The lifeless body of one of the most powerful defense attorneys right beside him. Obviously, a murder-suicide. Obviously—only because Regina had manipulated the scene, with Rick’s reluctant help, to reflect just that scenario.

In reality, the mayor, a murderous warlock, had tried to kill Mac and Lilith so they couldn’t stop him from using the city’s criminals to do his bidding, and the attorney, a rogue witch, had been his right-hand man. Mac and Lilith had stopped the evil plot, but at great cost. Particularly to Rick.

“Mac, huh?” he asked coolly. “I figured he was the one who was two steps behind me this whole time.”

She eyed him quizzically. “No, that was just me.”

“I had no idea you had bloodhounds in your Latina genes,” he snarled, emphasizing the Cuban-American accent he’d long ago learned to play down.

She, on the other hand, suppressed the instinct to tell him off in rapid-fire Spanish.

“Our ancestors did find the new world,” she snapped back. “What’s one rogue cop to a whole continent?” She cursed. Now was not the time for petty exchanges. She did not have a lot of time. “Mac nearly died that night, Rick. Took two months before Lilith recovered completely. If not for them, a lot of people would have fallen under the influence of a very evil man.”

“He wasn’t a man,” Rick corrected, his frown revealing new lines on his once smooth and youthful face. He’d aged in six months. Physically and spiritually.

“He nearly killed your best friend,” she insisted, her heart cracking for the degeneration of the man she’d known, the man she knew he could become again, if only he could see she was here to help.

“Why do you think I left Chicago?”

“To play vigilante?”

His eyes widened at the snap in her tone.

“You think that’s what this is?”

“I think covering up the crime cut at your soul,” she admitted. “I think the magical world bursting into your ordered, ordinary life set you on a difficult path you don’t know how to get off of.”

For an instant, she thought she might have hit a nerve. But a split second later, the flash of surprise in his eyes disappeared.

“Go home, Josie. This is no place for a sweet kid like you.”

Okay, that crack made her fingers itch. By nature, she was a pacifist. But every woman had her limits. And one was being called a kid by a guy who’d had to take a very cold shower after the last time they were alone together.

“You’re kidding, right?” she asked, incredulous. “Who do you think you are, Humphrey Bogart? John Wayne? More like John Wayne Gacy, if you ask me.”

“I’m not a killer,” he spit.

“According to whose reality? I’ve seen the bodies, Rick. I’ve smelled the stench.”

“It’s not killing when the monsters aren’t human.”

“I don’t give a damn about them, you idiot,” she said, marching across the room until she stood at the edge of the bed. One glance into his liquid ebony eyes and her anger abated. He wasn’t doing a bad thing. Destroying evil was something he should be proud of. But he wasn’t proud— he was desperate. And that desperation was going to get him killed.

Even after all he’d been through, Rick still managed to look gorgeous. His chest, so naturally tan and sculpted, glistened against his towel and the white sheets beneath him. Josie’s body stirred, reacting to his as it had before. As if no time had elapsed. As if nothing had changed, when honestly, everything had.

Good Goddess, she ached to launch herself onto him, press her body tight against his, kiss him soundly and erase all the dark ugliness haunting his eyes and the sardonic lines framing his former devil-may-care mouth. This wasn’t Rick. Not the Rick she remembered. Not the Rick she’d fallen for so hard. Not the Rick she could have loved, if they’d only had the chance.

Still, his newly hardened edges made her belly flutter. Not to mention the effects of his naked chest and that oh-so-loose, oh-so-easy-to-remove towel. She had to contain a little sigh and fight the impulse to touch him and see how her pale flesh contrasted against his natural darkness, to tangle her fingers in the hair that spiked across his chest, then grew into a narrow line that led to areas she’d once felt pressed tight against her but had never had the chance to take into her hands.

He looked askance, but when he finally allowed his gaze to linger on hers for more than a split second, she saw a shadow of regret flit through his eyes.

After taking a deep breath, she sat down on the bed beside him.

“Tell me what happened. Tell me why you left.”

He shook his head. “I can’t look back, Josie. And you need to leave. I’m not the same guy you met six months ago.”

“Tell me about it.”

He cursed.

“No,” she said, laying her hand on his, trying to ignore the way his bare flesh glistened in the dim light. “Really. Tell me about it.”

He moved to get off the bed, but Josie held his hand so he couldn’t escape. He tugged and turned, revealing a gash across his arm. The skin was pink and puffy. Healing, but with jagged edges that told her he hadn’t sought the best—if any—medical help.

He chuckled when he spied the horrified look on her face. “Just a scratch.”

“That’s what the black knight said in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when King Arthur chopped his arm off.”

Surprisingly, Rick laughed. Not a hearty guffaw by any means, but more than a snigger, which had to mean something. Like he wasn’t totally lost.

“I haven’t thought about that in—”

“Six months?” she questioned.

“Longer.”

He sat back on the bed and Josie couldn’t help but notice that the edge where he’d tucked his towel had begun to loosen. Her heartbeat accelerated. The idea of seducing Rick in order to lure him back to Chicago had come to her as naturally as breathing. The possibility of finally confronting the sexual tension that had first drawn them together made her nipples tight and her inner thighs ache. She’d wanted him for so long—the man he was and the man he’d become, even if she wasn’t entirely certain yet who that man was.

With shaking hands, Josie slid out of her leather jacket, revealing the snug tank tops beneath.

He eyed her suspiciously.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m hot.”

“Then leave,” he said, jerking his head toward the door even as his eyes begged her to stay. Or was that her imagination?

Did it matter?

She smiled. “It’s hotter outside. Unseasonably hot for New York City in February. Or haven’t you left this hotel room lately?”

“I’ve left,” he muttered.

She stretched, lifting her hair off her back, then arching her shoulders so that her breasts curved enticingly. Cheap trick? Oh, yeah. “Really? When? Because in Philadelphia, you didn’t even take a hotel room. You slept in that junker you bought from that all-night car dealer.”

“You were in Philly?”

She stood and, with one quick flick, undid the top button on her low-slung jeans. She would have kicked off her boots, but she had some serious misgivings about the stained carpet.

“And in Detroit and in Boston,” she replied.

She walked closer to the window and hoped that her silhouette against the neon slats of the blinds pushed the right button. They’d been apart for so long and even then, she hadn’t known him that well. But if she could just connect with him, get under his skin, she might be able to lure him back to Chicago. To his friends. To his old life. Out of danger from both the supernatural world and his own self-destruction.

Grabbing the hem of her layered tank tops, she lifted them over her head. She was wearing nothing now but a lacy black bra and unfastened jeans with the edges of her panties peeking out from between the teeth of the zipper.

“Don’t do this,” he said, his voice more pleading than commanding.

She slipped her hands between her jeans and her hips, tugging the fabric down a few inches, making sure he had a good look at the black lace she wore underneath. “Don’t do what?”

Though she hardly trusted her normally clumsy self to step forward when her nerves were jangling like wind chimes in a thunderstorm, she made the attempt and succeeded. She was still three feet away from him, but a warring mixture of desire and restraint clouded his eyes. His jaw was set so tight she thought the bone might crack.

“Don’t…” Rick whispered, “try and seduce me.”

His tone faltered. The words came out half as an admonishment and half as request. And she knew very well which half she was going to listen to.

She licked her lips and closed the rest of the distance between them in three purposeful steps.

“I’m not only going to try, Rick. I’m going to succeed.”