Two Justice
TWO
Justice
Ella’s lighter than she should be. I lift her without effort. She stiffens in my grip, like she thinks she can intimidate me into putting her down. Cute. Not happening.
Not when this room is a live wire. When every tux hides a weapon and every smile could be the start of a war. Thorn’s wedding or not, this place is a powder keg. And she … she’s the lit match.
I set her down on her three-inch and deadly looking heels.
The orchestra starts playing Clair de Lune.
Of course it’s Clair de Lune. The kind of song that turns rooms intimate without permission.
Makes people say things they shouldn’t. Feel things they can’t afford.
The moment she opened her mouth in the hallway, my skin electrified. In a good way. No pain, just pleasure.
I want to hear pleasure come from her. More than anything else in the world right now.
My hand rests at the small of her back. I take her other hand and draw her against me. She fits perfectly, which pisses me off. Her body is warm, tense, dangerous. My own personal landmine in lipstick and heels.
Her cheek brushes my chest, and she shifts to breathe, like I’m smothering her. I might be. I hope I am.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Her smile stays fixed for the cameras, but her voice … her tone slides under my skin like silk laced with static.
Her voice soothes through me. Calms me. I’m accustomed to every voice causing a reaction inside me—from everyone.
This one is new. Soft. Sweet. I’m intrigued against my will, and my dick goes rock hard.
If she had any idea what her voice actually does to me, she’d have a weapon that could shred me.
I definitely don’t trust her with anything, much less that.
“Keeping you where I want you,” I say. “Away from trouble.”
Her sigh presses into my chest, warm and soft. I feel her frustration before I hear it. Then she tilts her head and looks up at me with those storm-lit eyes. “Listen, Justice. I’m sorry I almost killed your brother, okay? But I didn’t know things were going to turn out the way they did.”
There it is. That slight tonal shift. The true sorrow in her sweet voice.
The tone flows down my throat and settles like warm cider in my gut.
Her voice is a drug. Smooth. Addictive. The tenor calms the static for one damned second, and I hate that too.
I hum without thinking. The note inside me starts low and soft, then darkens, thickens into something closer to a growl.
I feel it move through my chest and into hers.
She blinks like I short-circuited something in her.
Her balance slips. My grip tightens. I keep her upright and make it look effortless for the many eyes on us.
“What was that?” she breathes.
“None of your damn business.” My voice emerges lower than I intended. Rougher. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t smile either.
She glances over her shoulder, scanning for allies. Alana. Thorn. An exit. She wants out. And I get it.
I scan too. A waiter’s pattern stutters, someone near the bar holds their drink too long, a flash of metal catches my eye near the back corridor. Threats are everywhere, and I have to track them all while she burns against me like a fever.
“You’re making a scene,” she says.
The woman is lucky I’m not, because a scene would involve my tossing her over my shoulder and escaping this glittering hell. “I’m just dancing,” I reply. “While keeping you out of trouble.”
“I wasn’t going to get in trouble.”
A chuckle escapes me, sharp and sudden. Her lips twitch. She wants to argue.
Instead, she relaxes. Just slightly. The tension in her frame shifts and softens.
Her body leans into mine like she might trust me.
Or like she’s tired of fighting me for one moment.
Either way, it sets fire to something under my ribs.
A low, slow burn that’s been building since the first time she opened her damn mouth and made me feel anything at all.
We dance one song. Then another. Her rhythm syncs to mine, and her breath evens out. Her body fits. She even starts to enjoy it.
That’s the problem.
Because if she keeps looking at me like that, if she keeps feeling like this in my arms, I might forget how dangerous she is.
She tried to kill my brother, and I’m the enforcer for our entire organization.
I have to make sure she can never do so again.
Plus, I need her help, which is a fact I strongly dislike.
But when she speaks, her voice slides inside me, and I want to return the favor. Bury myself so deeply inside her that she forgets all about attacking her enemies.
The thought shocks me, but the woman is a mouthwatering temptation.
And she has no fucking clue how precarious her position is right now.
I shift my gaze past her shoulder, surveying the room again.
Thorn stands near the edge of the ballroom with Alana tucked safely at his side.
He’s tense, even when he smiles, and his hand keeps ghosting toward his inner jacket pocket.
His instincts are screaming, same as mine.
They’re too exposed here. Too many angles.
Too many windows and too many cameras. I need them out of town by morning.
My eyes lock on Alexei Sokolov, who’s lounging near the orchestra, as still as a predator between strikes.
He tips his glass in my direction when he catches me looking.
Not a threat. Not now. But Alexei’s the kind of man who chooses chaos the way others choose a tie.
As the owner of Hologrid Hub, a social media offering that uses holographic options, he may not be planning anything at the moment, but that doesn’t mean he won’t tomorrow.
Ella shifts slightly in my arms, her soft scent pricking my instincts wide awake and centering them fully on her.
“Have you always been drawn to computers? To code?” I want to hear her voice again.
She tilts her head. “Since I was eight. I broke into a private school server to change a grade and was caught, but they couldn’t kick me out since I wasn’t on scholarship.”
Her voice hits differently this time. Lower register. Light sarcasm, like warm electricity winding through nerves already frayed raw. The softness sparks something in me I can’t control. Not anymore.
I grit my teeth.
The thing crawling inside me that makes simple voices somehow physically injure me, that’s coiled under my skin and burrowed deep in my veins, calms when she talks.
I don’t know why or how. It’s like she’s figured out how to hack me, and a part of me wonders if she has.
If she can hack into crystals and cause chaos that can infect people, why not in a direct line to men?
Her voice cuts through my usual pain with an erotic slide of heat.
Not perfectly, but enough to take the edge off.
This is the closest we’ve ever talked, and my cock is brick solid, taking me out of my pain for a moment.
No one knows the mess that has descended upon me.
Not Thorn. Not anyone in our organization.
I tried to save my brother and ended up screwing myself.
I’m good with computers; not as good as Thorn, but I should be able to figure it out.
The static in my vision is one thing, but voices hurting me worse than before, as bad as bullets, is pissing me off.
There’s a heat in my spine that never cools down, and it’s Ella’s fault.
Completely. But now she’s making me feel better.
She doesn’t know what she’s done, I’m fairly certain. No way has she hacked me—that was a fanciful thought now discarded. So she has no clue that she’s harmed me. That’s the dangerous part. If I ask for her help, she’ll know my weakness. Know she’s more powerful than she thinks.
So I don’t ask.
Not yet.
But if this illness gets worse, and it probably will, I may not have a choice.
I might have to kidnap her, which would solve two of my problems, really.
It’d take her out of commission when it comes to harming Thorn, and I could make her heal me once I have her locked down.
Yeah, I want her under my control. Completely.
She looks up at me like she’s about to say something else. I pray she does and brace for it. For her voice. For the tone that heals my pain and also fires my body alive in a primitive way that’s new.
God, I want her to talk again.
Even if it ruins us both.
Ella
I want to stomp on his foot. I really do.
Except his foot is huge, and his leg is between mine.
In fact, his entire body is too close, too hot, too steady.
It would be like trying to kick over a statue.
One with excellent posture and a superiority complex.
What did he mean about my moaning on the dance floor? Can he tell how my body reacts to him?
Hopefully he can see how my brain does—with a plan to destroy.
Then his hand shifts at my back in just a small movement, with light pressure guiding my next step. His touch feels invasive, controlling. Like he knows where we’re going even when I don’t. My nipples harden, and I hate how much I respond to him.
My breath escapes in this ridiculous, involuntary little sigh that I want to shove back into my lungs and set on fire. “I’m totally innocent here.”
“Ha. Baby, you left innocent behind several firewalls ago.” His eyes flick to mine.
He sees me. Of course he does. But he doesn’t smirk, doesn’t comment, and just watches me like he’s logging my every move, my every weakness.
Like this is all part of some mental file he’s building in case he has to put me down later.
It probably is.
Justice Beathach knows I’m the enemy. I know it, too. I’ve tried to kill people he’s sworn to protect, and I’ve breached systems he was ordered to keep locked. If we weren’t wearing formal wear, we’d be armed and bloody by now.
“You really think I’m that dangerous?” I ask, even though I know the answer. I want to hear him say it.