24. Jackal
TWENTY-FOUR
JACKAL
I could put up with a lot. Moving a woman into our quarters after she strung me up and burned me with a cigarette, sure. Letting her and my wayward, confused friend bring a cat in the place, okay. But I drew the line at sharing a bathroom with a girl.
“Fuck no.”
I sat the beer in my hand down on the counter, giving her a pointed look as she leaned over the other side of the island and stared me down. No matter how long she stared me into submission, I wasn’t about to bend on this one. No fucking way. There were some things sacred to a man. My bathroom was mine. There was a reason we each had our own, sacrificing space for an office or personal gym or whatever else we could have had to build three bathrooms for three grown men.
“Dingo’s is too small,” she pointed out, leaning on her forearms, her tits about to spill out of the top of her shirt. “Coyote doesn’t have a closet in his.” She ticked off her talking points like they were supposed to make a difference to me. “You have a spare closet in your bathroom, extra counter space, and a shower and tub both. It makes sense.”
“I’ll do whatever you want,” I growled at her, leaning in until we were nose to nose. “I’ll kill for you. Grovel like some fucking pathetic bitch. I didn’t even flinch when I found that fucking furball in my bed yesterday.” My nose twitched as the furball in question let out a little howl from the other side of Coyote’s door, protesting his temporary lockdown. “Hell, kitten, I’d even let you have another go at this dick, as much as I’d rather stick it in a blender, or a pile of glass. But I draw the line at sharing my fucking bathroom with you.”
Her lips spread in a slow smile, those blunted fangs of hers a pale imitation of my own impressive dental work. “I wouldn’t hop on your dick again if you were the last man on this planet.”
“Debatable,” Dingo muttered, coughing to cover up his slip of the tongue.
“Keep lying to yourself, kitten,” I shot back, knowing damn well she enjoyed herself when she had me at her mercy. “You’re just afraid to find out you like it more than you want to.”
“You’re a cocky sonofabitch,” she pointed out. Her nose scrunching up like a bunny. “But you’re still sharing your bathroom with me. I need a place to put my things, and it makes sense.”
“Fucking kick rocks,” I deadpanned, leaning back before she got the idea to reach out and get physical with me. My scalp still tingled where she’d yanked me around by the hair the other day, intent on causing as much pain as possible when she found out I’d used her fancy face towel to clean the blood off my boots. “I said what I said.”
“So did I,” she said finally, leaning back on the stool she perched on. “You three have a contract to fulfill. You won’t be able to keep me out while you’re gone.”
My eyebrows traveled so far north they almost disappeared into my hairline. “You’re not coming along?”
The way she dismissively turned away bothered me. “Why should I? Can’t you handle it on your own?”
“Oh, sure, and we’ll just transfer the funds from the pay straight to the bank account you didn’t tell us about on our way back, shall we?”
Dingo sighed like a parent watching two children fight, walking away with a roll of his eyes. “You two are ridiculous, like fucking toddlers fighting over whose air you’re both breathing.”
“She’s the ridiculous one,” I insisted, jerking a thumb in her direction as I turned to the fridge to pull out another beer. “Only one of us here is being unreasonable, and it’s not me.”
“It’s a bathroom, Jackal,” he pointed out, clearly downplaying the situation. “Just let her fucking use the space. It won’t kill you.”
It just fucking might. “Why not just give her yours? You don’t use it that often. ”
Okay, so that was a lie, but I was grasping at straws here. Sure, I had the space, but damn, if a man’s fucking bathroom wasn’t safe anymore, where would the line eventually end up? Mars?
She’d only been here a week, and already she’d taken over the fucking place. I knew this agreement with her was a bad idea. I was quickly coming to wish she’d just killed me instead. At least then we wouldn’t be wasting a perfectly good drinking morning with an argument over my space.
Which I wasn’t sharing.
No fucking way.
“You aren’t planning to finish the one you started?” she asked, gesturing to the half-empty bottle on the island in front of her. “What a waste.”
I watched her grab the abandoned beer and lift it to her lips, downing it in a single gulp. The way her throat worked as she swallowed my abandoned beer made my pants uncomfortably tight, and I bit back a groan at the erotic display, hating the way I reacted to her.
Sure, she was hot. And okay, so I wanted to fucking rail her any time she walked in front of me. I was only human, and I was a man. With eyeballs that worked.
A girl like Ivy was made to turn heads.
But that didn’t mean I was gonna give her the upper hand in knowing how she affected me.
“I don’t remember telling you I was done with that beer,” I pointed out, popping the cap on the new one in my hand.
She leaned back and crossed her arms, a smug look of satisfaction on her face. “I don’t remember asking.”
“Would you two just fuck and get it over with already?” Dingo spat, making a fake gagging motion with his finger. “Y’all are insufferable.”
“Get bent,” Ivy and I said in unison, lending some credibility to the idea we’d been spending too much time together lately. We locked eyes, and I brought the beer to my lips as she watched me, glaring daggers in my direction as the cool liquid slid down my throat, doing absolutely nothing to quench my thirst.
I was growing to hate this little arrangement. I wanted to strangle her, drown her in the bathtub, maybe just run her over with my bike. If she fell off because she wasn’t holding on tight, then that was on her.
Right?
Right.
“I’m not giving up my shower,” I said with finality, tossing the now-empty bottle in the sink. “Keep dreaming.” My eyes turned to Dingo and Coyote next, who stood together with shit-eating grins on their faces, watching the chaos unfold from a safe distance. “You two ready to go? We have work to do.”
“I’ll see you boys when you come back,” Ivy called after us as we picked up our helmets and bats, the weight of my trusty wooden beat stick like the familiar warmth of a friend’s embrace or a lover’s kiss.
“If we come back,” I muttered, slamming the door behind us.
Mere hours later, we stood around in the entryway of the Guild, watching as the life drained out of the girl we’d just rescued. Well, that I’d just rescued. She nearly fell in the pathway of my bike, for fuck’s sake. I could have run her over.
The Skeleton Crew owed me for this one.
I didn’t like them or their fucking habits, but their girl—she was alright. Feisty, not in the psychotic way that Ivy was, but she looked like she could handle the three of them on her own just fine.
I never thought I’d see the day the wild Blackwood broke down and went full-blown insane, though. Thought he was gonna jump the Surgeon when the guy started pulling bullets out of her skin. Pretty Boy had tended to her like she was his broken little doll, carrying her up to his room as he argued with the man who’d spent half his life putting broken soldiers back together on the front lines so they could be propped up and keep shooting.
I wasn’t afraid of many people, but damned if the Commandos didn’t scare the fuck out of me sometimes.
Surgeon used to be a combat medic, and when they stationed him in the front lines hospital for POWs, he started taking the nasty ones apart, piece by piece, showing them as much mercy as they showed our men when the tables were turned in the other direction. The whole lot of them were crazy, but he was ruthless, and showed no mercy to his enemies. Then there was Ghost, who we didn’t know much about. Legends said he was a SpecOps guy, experienced in blending in and going undercover, dismantling whole cartels, syndicates, and armies from within. He wore this fucked-up Japanese demon mask, only half-covering his face. And then there was their third, the Sentry, whose precision with long-range guns was frightening. None of them were the kind of people you crossed, and they’d been in the Guild from the day Lilly founded it.
So to see someone argue with, no, threaten, the Surgeon, was quite a shock.
I didn’t stick around after they joined us, my skin itching as I fought the urge to skitter off like a scared dog. I wasn’t going to let them think I was afraid of any of them, least of all the Skeleton Crew. But I knew when my presence was unwanted, and right now?
Oh yeah, I’d overstayed my welcome.
But those fuckers owed me now. And eventually, I’d cash in. For now, holding on to that favor was the plan. I didn’t want it to go to waste.
When I got back up to the dorms, I stepped into what looked like a war zone .
Ivy stood in the center of the room, her hands on her hips as she supervised Dingo and Coyote, who were busy stripping off their boots. Her eyes cut to me, and she frowned harder, those beady eyes narrowing so much I could have sworn she closed them.
“You’re covered in blood,” she pointed out, which had to be the most pointless and obvious observation she’d ever made. And I wasn’t really in the mood for her bullshit today.
“In case you forgot, we did just murder a man. Or did you forget we had a job to do?”
I yanked my shirt over my head and tossed it to the side of the room, kicking my boots off as I went along, heading for my bathroom and the warm comfort of a shower to wash away the girl’s blood.
I stopped dead in the doorway as I took in the chaos created in my absence.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Littered across the counter were various face creams, makeup containers, hairbrushes, all sorts of odds and ends of the feminine persuasion. I yanked open the door to the closet to find she’d shoved all my towels to the side and installed a temporary pole to hang dresses and long tunic shirts from. Her duffle bag of unmentionables sat on one shelf, a stack of socks and other odds and ends on another.
They say when you get really, really angry with someone, you see red. But my vision didn’t change as I stormed out into the front room, no longer concerned with the blood I trailed along in my wake.
“You bitch.”
Her eyes flicked up, dismissed me, and then turned back to Coyote, who had already moved on to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. “Don’t forget, you’re on dish duty tonight. That means all of them, dog.” She pinned Dingo with that laser gaze next. “And you owe me a new pair of shoes. ”
“That was an accident,” he complained, rolling his eyes. “I told you I didn’t see them there when I dumped the gear.”
“Patent leather and brain matter don’t mix,” she said dryly, sitting on the couch with a huff. “Your fault.”
“Whatever,” he conceded, disappearing into his room in search of new clothes.
Coyote turned his back on us as the sink filled with water, so I simply marched up to her and grabbed her hand, dragging her behind me on the way to my bathroom. When we passed through the door, she jerked out of my grip and crossed her arms, looking for all the world like she’d done absolutely nothing wrong.
I was livid.
“What the fuck is all this?” I seethed, swinging my arm wide to encompass all the various women's things on every surface of the room.
She flicked imaginary lint from her shoulder, leaning against the doorway. “Looks to me like it’s a bathroom.”
“You know what the fuck I mean.” When she made no move to explain, I stalked over to her, slamming a hand against the wood above her head, nearly splintering it from the force of my aggravation.
That got her attention. The catty, cunning bitch looked right up at me and smiled, disarming my brain like it was a bomb and she had a pair of scissors, and had just cut the wires.
“I told you already; what’s yours is mine.” With a nod to the sink area, her smile widened, and she lifted her nose even higher in the air. “Did you think I was kidding when I told you it would happen whether you liked it or not?”
“I locked my bedroom door when I left,” I pointed out, eyes narrowing to slits.
Again with the fucking dismissive shrugs. “I can pick locks. Even rich kids need to sneak around every now and again.”
Rich kids. “You grew up so spoiled; everyone just gave you whatever you wanted, isn’t that right?” I felt my features twist into a sneer, and I couldn’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth. “Of course, I bet that had a lot to do with daddy dearest paying off his family to look the other way and ignore his human trafficking side business.”
Her hand snapped out and slapped me across the face before I could blink, stinging already sensitive skin bruised from the wind on my face from the ride tonight. Absently, almost without thought, my hand lifted, fingertips searching the heat of my skin for?—
For what?
Did I really expect anything else from such a willful woman? Someone capable of dealing in human lives?—
Must run in the family.
I bit my tongue that time, knowing when enough was enough, and when it was too much. There’d be time in the future, once she got comfortable, let down her guard, to show her the light, but I’d promised Coyote I wouldn’t spill this secret. I didn’t know why he cared so fucking much, but I owed him one.
My nose tingled as I swallowed my rage and grinned down at her, half my mouth turned up in a cunning smirk as I rubbed the jaw she’d slapped. “You’re a hell of a hitter, kitten,” I teased, tongue probing the inside of my cheek to see if I’d bitten the inside of my mouth.
“I hit harder when my hand is closed,” she said simply, ducking under my arm to move to the sink. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to do a treatment on my hair.”
I glanced down at my bloody clothes and frowned. “Uh, sorry, but that’ll have to wait. I’m covered in someone else’s blood and I need a shower.” My eyes cut to hers in the mirror, our reflections meeting each other’s glares with equal combativeness. “Your little hair treatment will have to wait. ”
“I’m not leaving the room,” she said, touching the edge of her lips in the mirror, checking her face for imperfections.
She was calling my bluff. She really thought I had enough shame that I wouldn’t?—
“Suit yourself,” I conceded, closing the door behind me. She returned to searching through her sinkful of cosmetics, and I grinned wickedly as I started stripping in silence, letting my clothes fall to the floor with a loud rustling.
I could feel her eyes on me when I stepped out of my pants and padded quietly over to the shower, turning on the water as I stuck an arm in and tested the temperature.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked suddenly, her voice an octave higher than I’d heard it yet.
“Taking a shower. You’re welcome to leave if my nudity bothers you so much.”
She huffed in annoyance and refused to look up until the sound of the glass partition sliding open and then closing again alerted her it was safe.
She put on an air of badassery, a persona of this woman who gave zero fucks and took what she wanted from life, damn the consequences, and damn the people she stepped on along the way. But deep down, underneath that mask she put on to hide from the world, to hide from her pain, was a woman who yearned for something more. Who knew her life was a lie, but was powerless to change it.
And I didn’t miss the way her eyes were practically glued to the shower while I was in it, though she couldn’t see anything. Hell, I could hardly look away, but forced myself to for the sake of my eyeballs. Even as an adult, getting soap in your eyes really fucking sucked.
I took longer than usual to shower the blood off my body, pink water swirling the drain as I tried to forget the way The Skeleton Crew’s girl had reached out her hand—by all accounts, she had no reason to trust me. But she needed a lifeline, and for once in my life, I did the right thing, saving her from those whackadoos Bonnie and Clyde.
I didn’t want to know what sort of horrors awaited them when the Bone Boys discovered it’d been them taking a shot at their girlfriend.
I imagined if someone came for someone in my circle, I’d act similarly.
Did that circle now extend to Ivy?
I shook that bullshit thought from my mind, hating that it snuck in to begin with. Just because I wanted the bitch to fuck me again didn’t mean I was getting soft. Just because I may or may not have had a hand in turning her into a killing machine fueled by rage and revenge plots didn’t mean she was suddenly an important person in my life. Hell, the bitch had bargained with us for our lives in servitude, instead of sending us to an early grave.
She didn’t deserve a second of consideration, in my opinion. The only reason I hadn’t overpowered her already and set us free of her bullshit bondage was because of Coyote. Whatever he was thinking, I knew he took it seriously. So I’d let it play out for now, and if she wanted to challenge me for dominance, then more power to her.
She could just fucking try.
I shut off the water and placed a palm on the glass, shaking my wet hair out before I opened the door and prepared to give the stubborn bitch an eyeful.
Instead, she was already standing there with a smug look in her eyes, lips drawn into a taut line, a towel dangling from a single finger, stretched slightly in my direction. Those baby blues skimmed my body, then trailed over it slower a second time, before she quirked a brow and stepped forward, my towel still just out of reach.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” I couldn’t help but taunt, crossing my arms to keep from covering myself. Two could play this game.
She stalked around me in a circle, her fingertips grazing my skin as she touched the scars she’d left not long ago, a testament to her torture session. “You’re healing well, I see.”
Rolling my eyes was an uncontrollable move. “Admire your handiwork some other time. It’s fucking cold in here.”
Her eyes jerked to my dick as she rounded me again, and I had to swallow a bout of laughter as they widened, her lashes fluttering as a blush worked its way up her throat. “So I can see,” she said slowly, pretending there wasn’t a fucking anaconda between my legs. I was a shower, not a grower, and I knew damn well I hadn’t shrunk, even under such an icy stare.
“For someone who says she’d never fuck me in a million years, you sure are obsessed with my dick.”
For my sass, I got a towel in my face as she stalked by me, her hair regiment forgotten in her haste to pretend she wasn’t affected.
My grin widened, eyes glued to her ass as she stormed through my room and out into the common area, probably off to torment someone who’d be quiet and take it, like Coyote.
“Nice ass,” I whispered to the empty room, toweling off my body as I sauntered into my room and shut the door behind her. “Too bad it’s attached to such a bitch.”