Chapter Sixteen
Ava couldn’t manage to get that fucking dress over her head, so she fell asleep with it still on, the dress holding her together. There was blood on her—some her own, some maybe belonging to Cale Jacobson’s hired muscle.
When she woke, it was overcast but still light out. Her whole body ached, especially her ribs, but she pushed herself up as the key clicked in the lock.
Jack reentered, a new car key in one hand and several paper Safeway bags in the other. He set the keys down on the table near the door, locked the door firmly behind him, and then set the groceries down, all without speaking to her.
There was a small refrigerator humming in the corner of the room, which Jack arranged groceries in meticulously. As meticulously as he shot the man who had hurt her. As meticulously as he poured gasoline on a truck and a body. As meticulously as he touched her.
“Hi,” Ava said. “Do you usually avoid greeting the people you’re sharing a room and a murder with?”
Jack crossed the room, stopping directly in front of her. “Get up,” he said, because social norms apparently meant nothing to him. “Let me help you out of that dress.”
“First you want me to put clothes on,” Ava complained. “Then you’re demanding I take them off. What’s next?” Surely he could see why this was confusing.
Jack hooked a hand under her arm and scooped her off the bed with unnerving ease. “Do you ever stop flirting?” he asked, turning her slightly so that he could reach her zipper.
Ava’s stomach flipped violently.
“Oh,” she said, peeking at him over her shoulder. “Is that what we’re doing?”
His warm, heavy hand stilled at the nape of her neck, chasing shivers down her spine. “Ava.”
“Jack.”
“What we’re doing,” Jack said, then cleared his throat. His voice had dropped an octave, the way it had when he’d found her in the warehouse and left six bullets in the man who’d hurt her. “Is serious. It’s deadly fucking serious, Ava Cavalcante. And you need to stop forgetting that.”
Jack eased the zipper down and then tugged the dress off, helping Ava as she shimmied out of it.
When she had extracted herself from the dress, he did not release her, his hands still on her shoulders, her dress pooled on the floor.
Every bit of her skin felt like it was aflame, every ounce of her alive in a way she was not sure she had ever felt. Maybe in her life.
Jack’s index finger trailed a path down her shoulder, tracing the curve of her body. “He hurt you,” he said softly.
Ava shivered. At his touch, at his words. “I’m all right,” she said. “Jack, I—”
He spun her to face him, his hands rough. She wished they had been rougher. “I would have killed him slowly,” he said. “If I had known. Those six bullets were a mercy.”
Jack’s dark eyes flared dangerously. He opened his mouth like he wanted to speak, but then his eyes swept up and down her body, slowly, consuming every inch of her.
Ava drew in a shaky breath. The pain had faded into background noise. Everything had faded into background noise—this job, this motel room, all of it. “You’re . . . you’re staring,” she said.
You’re seeing me, she wanted to say. But she found, despite this, that she couldn’t bear to pull away from him.
Jack tilted his head, the look that flickered in his eyes all danger. “Do you want me to stop?” he asked.
Time slowed, the little motel room falling away until the only thing that existed was this moment, was—
Jack.
“No,” Ava breathed. “No, I don’t want you to stop.”
Jack’s hands tightened on her arms, and he moved her away from the bed, toward the center of the room. He paced slowly around her, his eyes never leaving her.
“Jack,” Ava said. She needed—she needed him to stop staring like he could see right through to her soul. To all the damage she carried.
His steps slowed, his eyes flashing to meet hers.
“Ava.”
His voice was low.
He was—a bad idea. A danger to her, to others. He had killed before and he would kill again, and again, and again.
He had saved her life. When he touched her, it was electric.
“I want—”
What did she want?
She wanted so few things these days. She wanted Cale Jacobson dead, and she wanted a shower and another nap, and she wanted some chocolate, and she wanted Jack to be so rough with her that she forgot everything else in the world.
She hadn’t fucked anyone since Ari, and what did it say about Ava that the first sex she’d wanted after losing her wife was with a violent, dangerous criminal?
Ava took a step toward him, and the pain rushed back in.
In an instant the hunger in his look evaporated, concern replacing it before the mask settled over his face again. There was not much use for concern in a business like his, she supposed. But she had seen it, brief as it was.
“Before—anything else,” Jack said, clearing his throat again. “Before anything else, let me help you get a shower and see to your injuries. Come on.”
“That’s not what I want.” Ava’s voice sounded whiny, even to her own ears. Bratty, Ari would have called it. But Ari was always calling her a brat. Ava’s chest ached at the memory.
“Mmm,” Jack said. As clear a dismissal as anything Ari ever did when Ava’s brattiness got the best of her. “Do you want to take my arm? Or I could carry you.”
He was fully dressed and Ava was completely naked. Again.
It wasn’t fair.
“You should be naked,” Ava blurted as she took Jack’s arm.
Jack’s dark eyebrows shot up. “You want me naked?” he asked, a slight grin tugging at his mouth.
The carpet beneath Ava’s feet was soft, and she focused on that sensation, focused as hard as she could so she would not have to feel the muscles of the arm she was leaning on or feel the weight and heat of his gaze.
“I just mean it’s not fair that you’re always clothed and I’m not.”
She wasn’t making sense. It was the vulnerability, that she was always vulnerable, always a mess, and he never seemed to be either of those things. And she had always hated vulnerability, even when she’d had a loving wife who never held it against her.
Oh, it was definitely a smirk on his face now.
“I’m sure I can oblige you, Ms. Cavalcante,” Jack said. “I wasn’t planning on getting in the shower with this on. Though in fairness, I do think your nudity has been your choice.”
“Not when you were waiting for me at the hostel,” Ava groused as Jack pushed open the bathroom door. “That was an ambush.”
“You walked right in,” Jack said. “I wasn’t hiding. It’s not much of an ambush if the danger is in plain sight.”
“And that’s you?” Ava asked as he laid a towel down and then helped her to a seat on the closed toilet before he started the water. “The danger, in this equation?”
Jack’s eyes found hers again, dark and unbearable and unsettling in a way she felt . . . well, in all the places that mattered. “Do you think I’m not, Ava?” he asked. “Do you think I’m not the most dangerous person you’ve ever met?”
Her stomach flipped, though not entirely in an unpleasant way. It should be in an unpleasant way. But the feeling was warm, and curious, and . . . yes, hungry.
“Am I not the most dangerous person you have ever met?” she asked. “I attacked Cale Jacobson in broad daylight.”
“That makes you infinitely less dangerous, actually,” Jack said practically, dumping most of the motel body wash into the bathtub. “Do you like roses? I hope you like roses, because this motel has roses on every-fucking-thing.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Ava said. “I can be dangerous.” She could and he should take it seriously. But it was strangely comforting, too, to even now be cared for as if she were not an infinitely destructive force.
He turned back to her, rolling up his sleeves. “I’m going to lift you and put you in the tub,” he said. “Unless you have an objection.”
“I always have objections,” Ava said.
In her library days, she had taken to saying Objection, Your Honor during staff meetings whenever she felt things were going awry.
In retrospect, that was probably one of the many factors her former colleagues disliked about her.
She’d had only one friend, a kind older woman named Lizbet who used to remember Ava’s birthday and bring her a plate of snickerdoodles every year.
Jack waited patiently, crouched at the bathtub, those sleeves rolled up to reveal infuriatingly well-toned forearms.
“Yes,” Ava said in annoyance, when it was clear that the bratting had gotten her nowhere. “You can put me in the bathtub.”
Jack lifted her, more carefully than he had any right to, and set her in the growing heap of rose-scented bubbles.
The warm water burned in some places, where her skin was scraped, but her sore muscles eased almost instantly.
The shampoo was far out of reach, but Ava reached for it anyway, grunting a little as she scooted forward.
“Let me,” Jack said.
“Didn’t you promise to be naked?” Ava asked. “Why are you still clothed?”
She had always been bold—in fact, when she was fourteen, she’d had sex for the first time when she’d pointed at a boy leaning against a locker in her school and said You, with me and brought him back to a quiet place behind the bleachers. But this version of her was something past bold.
Reckless, maybe.
Racing toward danger just to feel something.
It was an instinct Ari had helped her curb, back when there was an Ari. Back before Ava’s entire world had been ripped to shreds.
“If I do take off my clothes, you’re going to behave yourself while I see to your injuries,” Jack said. Not like a negotiation. Like an ultimatum.
Ava humphed loudly even as her heart raced faster in her chest. “I never behave,” she said. “It’s what makes me charming.”
“I was going to use the word bratty,” Jack said calmly. “And you badly need your scrapes cleaned and your ribs wrapped, and I’m going to do those things before—”
“Before anything fun,” Ava repeated with a sigh. She couldn’t take her eyes off him—the corded muscles in his chest, visible through his shirt. How was she supposed to listen to a lecture on wound care right now? “I remember.”
“How can you be in this much pain and still be this . . . sassy?” Jack sat back on his heels and looked at her with a flicker of amazement on his face.
“I’m good at pain,” Ava blurted before the full meaning of her own words caught up with her. “Now take off your shirt. Please.”
Jack hesitated for a moment and then shrugged off his flannel, his eyes never leaving hers. “What is it you want from this, Ava?” he asked softly.
He dragged the thin cotton tank top over his head next. He was fully shirtless now, his chest and abs as tightly corded as she had imagined they must be.
“What we all want,” Ava shot back, her eyes sweeping up and down and lingering at the bulge pushing against the front of his jeans. “To have a good fucking time before I die.”
Jack’s expression shifted, some of the intensity masked again. “Is that what’s waiting at the end of this for you?” he asked.
“Oh, hell no,” Ava said. “This isn’t therapy. I was planning to ride you until I can’t think, Jack, not have a heart-to-heart about our feelings. Unless you wanted to talk to me about why your emotional baggage pushed you into a line of work where you’re making money from killing other humans?”
The mask slid firmly into place again. There was no emotion, not a hint of it.
“No heart-to-hearts,” Jack said with a nod of his head. “Let me wash your hair.”
He cupped the back of her neck with one hand and lowered her into the warm soapy water.
Ava was weightless, held by the water, held by Jack. Held.
He ran his other hand slowly through her hair, untangling the knots gently. His calloused fingers traced lines on her scalp, the headache that had been clinging to her for days finally receding.
When Jack pulled her up out of the water, Ava couldn’t quite look at him.
No heart-to-hearts. Just fucking, and killing, and running for their lives. And more of that tomorrow, until it all ended.
But still, but still—his hands were so gentle as he washed her hair.
He massaged the shampoo (also rose scented) into her scalp and then lowered her under the warm water to rinse. When he conditioned her hair, he used more than she would have, rubbing it in all the way to the ends of her curly auburn hair.
Ava found she didn’t have the wherewithal, or the spirit, to comment on Jack’s lack of complete nudity. Not when he was looking at her like that.
“I didn’t want to know,” Jack said after a long silence in which he gently rubbed soap up and down her arms and legs.
“Why you’re doing this. Why you ended up here.
I looked into you, because I look into everyone.
I know about the medical debt and the credit card debt.
I know about the 5Ks you used to run, and the club where you meet with your domme.
I know about your library science degree, and I know about the job loss, and I even know what your coworkers say about you on the internet. ”
“Was it Linda?” Ava blurted, because this was veering dangerously close, again, to the kind of vulnerability her life no longer had space for. “It’s always fucking Linda.”
“It was someone named Lizbet, actually,” Jack told her.
That stung more than it should have, but Ava squared her shoulders anyway.
“But what I don’t know is the why,” Jack continued.
“I don’t know what you lost or who you lost, or why you think it’s Cale Jacobson’s fault.
But I don’t think death is the only thing waiting for you at the end of this, and if you think that, then you’re too volatile to do this with me.
You’ll get me as far as Cale Jacobson’s party, and Ava . . . the rest I’ll have to do alone.”