Chapter Fifteen
Twisted Steel and Sex Appeal
“Is he okay?”
“He’s fine.” Dusty slapped Edward’s hand away from her braids for the hundredth time.
“He’s covered in dirt,” the man commented, and Dusty rolled her eyes.
“He fell.”
“You tried to bury me in the desert,” Edward accused, still groggy. She opened her mouth to deny it, but the truth was she wasn’t sure what had happened out in the desert. Last she remembered, she was debating whether or not to use rootwork to find him... and then nothing. Best guess? The heat had gotten to her, and she passed out. When she awoke, she was butt-ass naked and lying curled up next to Edward. Had she stripped and tracked him down like a fucking bloodhound? It was a miracle she’d been able to find her clothes and Edward’s shoes as they trekked back to the car together. Dusty wished there was a Yelp for plugs because God knew she had some feedback for Sal once she saw the bitch again.
Maybe it’s a good thing Edward did everything I had left. The lollies had hit hard enough, and she hated to imagine what he was going through right now. The good news was that several hours had passed since her run-in with Conners, and Edward was already coming down. Still, he was swaying on his feet, and Dusty bit back a curse. If he passed out, she wouldn’t be able to lift him. She had no desire to drag his limp body across the parking lot. One time was more than enough. Twice, and someone was bound to call the cops.
Speaking of…from the corner of her eye, she could see the clerk’s fingers inching toward the emergency call button below his desk. Dusty sighed before sliding a stack of bills across the counter. “You got a room or not?”
Thank God she’d gone with cheap and roach-infested over the continental breakfast option. She wouldn’t have been able to afford a bribe on top of the room prices otherwise. Whoever said crime didn’t pay never mentioned it was because of inflation.
“Yeah,” the clerk said, still doubtful but less inclined to call the cops since Edward was clearly not buried in a ditch somewhere. Still, he glared at Dusty as he pulled out a keycard.
“Room 207,” he told her, holding the card just out of reach when she went to grab it. “No freaky shit,” he warned.
Exasperated, Dusty snatched the key card out of his hand. If she weren’t about to ditch Edward at a safe house, she’d be worried about how she was supposed to fund his kidnapping for the long haul. The money Sal had left in the envelope would only get them so far.
On her way out of the office, another notice for yet another missing person caught her eye. The woman in the photo had her hair pulled back in a bun and was laughing at something off-frame. Dusty turned away, her arm aching. The pain lingered as she lugged Edward down the hall toward their room. Fading only when she burst through their door, struggling to hold Edward upright. Walking him over to one of the two beds, she let him fall backward onto the pillows. As tired as she was, she had a lot of work to do while they were in town, so she didn’t plan on sleeping much. It would be a relief to get to the clubhouse so she could relax for once.
Going back out to the car, she searched the secret compartment in the trunk for a few goodies Sal had been kind enough to pack for her—for a fee, of course. Like the drugs, the weapons in the trunk had come with a hefty price tag, though Sal had thrown in some extra magazines out of the goodness of her heart. Dusty stuffed everything into her duffle bag and went back to the room.
Peeling off her jacket, she thought, God, what I wouldn’t give for a shower. At some point, she’d lost most of her jewelry. All she had left was an ivory bracelet she didn’t even remember buying. It was strange. She didn’t remember the bracelet, but at the same time couldn’t think of a day she’d gone without wearing it. Dismissing the matter, she eyed the bathroom with longing. Later, she promised herself, turning away. When everything’s done and there’s no more blood to spill. Until then…
Stripping down to just a cropped spaghetti strap and her leather pants, Dusty undid the button biting into her midsection and crouched on the floor. Her ass looked great, but she couldn’t bend at the waist for shit. Unpacking her duffle, she took inventory as Edward swung between consciousness and sleep just a few feet away. She was so engrossed in what she was doing that she jumped at the sound of his voice several minutes later.
“Why do you need so many grenades?” he asked yawning.
Dusty grinned to herself before glancing up at him. He was peeking at her from beneath the pillow he’d thrown over his head. She shrugged. “Better to have them and not need them,” she said. “In fact, I keep at least one on me at all times.”
Edward stared, “ Where ?”
“Sorry, Chere.” She checked the clip on the M92 Beretta and aimed it at the floor, getting a feel for its weight and bulk. “Trade secret.” Stretching, she climbed to her feet. She passed the bed, intending to head back outside, when Edward’s hand in hers brought her up short.
“Don’t leave.” His voice was hoarse, his expression pale and strained.
She hadn’t seen him like this since the tunnel, and her fingers tightened around his. “I wouldn’t,” she said, like a dumbass. Cursing herself for the reassurance even as she found herself leaning over him, the fall of her braids to one side of his body a wordless song. Bones stripped bare and rattling along soft palms.
She sat without thinking, let him pull her close and wrap large arms around her. He engulfed her. Like the sun swallowing down Icarus - she’d flown too close. She’d known as much the minute she pressed her lips against his throat. She wondered if he would let her go if she rose. She wouldn’t be able to escape otherwise. Like Conners, Edward was strong enough, powerful enough, that he could do whatever he wanted to her.
But unlike Conners, the knowledge didn’t disgust. Instead, it tightened things low in her belly.
“Were you really going to take all that crap?”
The question gave her pause, pulling her from the magic of his amber eyes and back into harsh reality. “I mean, yeah,” she admitted. “I guess so?” Granted, it wouldn’t have been all at once, but Dusty hoped that was self-explanatory.
To her shock, Edward’s eyes darkened. “You’re no good to me if you’re high all the time.”
Dusty pulled back with a snarl, but Edward jerked her back and held her still. She said, “What the fuck did you just say to me?”
The look in his eyes… He was still riding the high she craved, but was coming down fast. Though it made him mean, there was clarity in the way he regarded her -a knowing - she couldn’t shake free of. “I spent the day thinking I was Mojo Jojo on a goddamn rampage.” When she would have said something he held up a hand for patience. “Granted,” he amended, “it was thanks to the power of suggestion, but still. That shit rots your brain. Why do you even put it in your body?”
“For fun,” Dusty wriggled in his arms like an angry cat. “Jesus, you’ve never done something to take the edge off?”
He hesitated, and his resolve wavered. “All that just to take the edge off?”
Dusty shrugged. “Some edges are sharper than others. It’s not like I have a fucking problem.” She didn’t like being judged, didn’t like the way he looked at her as if he were trying to peer beneath her skin. What? Did he think she was some druggie with a chip on her shoulder? “Not like you’d get it,” she said snidely. “You’re just some spineless nerd.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she wanted to snatch them back, but it was too late.
Hurt flashed across Edward’s face, and his grip tightened to the point of pain. “You don’t know anything about me,” he said, his eyes ablaze. A heat she could feel, a burn she craved. In the recesses of her mind a flash of memory, too fuzzy to grasp and pull forward. She let the image of a man made of sunlight fade into obscurity. Sleep. Just a few hours of sleep and her imagination would stop running rampant.
“I know enough.” Why couldn’t she just let up? The sound of her voice was grating on her own nerves, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “I know there’s a darkness in you,” she continued. “A part of you that likes to beats the shit out of innocent old men.”
Edward flinched back, eyes dancing away, but she grabbed his chin and forced him to face her once again. “For fuck’s sake, Pretty Boy, you’re a sinking goddamn ship.” She breathed against his mouth. His hold on her slackened, and sensing weakness, she undulated in his arms like a serpent scenting the air. She rose over him until they were so intertwined it was hard to tell where one restless heartbeat ended and the other began.
“Your edges are as sharp as mine, darlin’.” She leaned forward, bit his bottom lip between her teeth. “That’s how I know they draw blood.” She grinned as his eyes darkened, as a growl danced its way from deep in his chest to travel up to his throat.
They’d spent most of the day on the road, and already night was encroaching, leaving their room in a sea of unfamiliar shadows. Dusty knew the dark. She always felt better there. Sometimes, she knew herself only as a half-starved thing. All teeth and twisting hunger. What would it take to satiate the beast in her soul, the dark, salivating serpent eager to consume the world?
A sacrifice, perhaps. Prey with wide amber eyes and hands painting sigils in the air. She would undo the world for a taste of him. But she knew, knew deep down, if she ever sunk her teeth into Edward Michael Hayes, there would be no letting him go. And she had to let him go. If there was one thing she was sure of, it was that he was not meant for this world any more than she was meant for his. He was the sunlight on burnished skin, and she was a dead woman walking. A ghost waiting to return to the grave that had lost her.
Fuck.
She could go for a blunt right about now.
“He wasn’t innocent.”
His voice brought her attention back to the here and now, and she frowned. “What are you—”
“The old man. My dad.” His breathing hitched, and she eased back, gripping his hand to steady him as he rose.
They sat on the bed together, legs entangled, tucked in close so the secrets had nowhere to go but where they put them. There, in the shadows and the quiet, he split himself open for her. Told her of the monster living beneath his bed and stalking his dreams every time he closed his eyes.
Once upon a time, there was a little boy. He was too small to fight back, and so he was swallowed down. “This is love,” he was told. But what the beast meant was, “This is what it is to break the thing you love.”
And broken it was.
His hands shaped worlds around them until she gripped his wrists and brought them back home, leaning her forehead against his so those amber eyes couldn’t see the rage birthed bloody and screaming in the bayou scrambling for purchase beneath her skin.
“I’ll kill him for you,” she growled, as she kneaded the tension from his palms.
Usually, she didn’t take hit jobs. They were messy. Too many variables to consider. But for this, for him, she would flay flesh from bones. The strength of her reaction should have scared her, but it didn’t. Dusty protected what was hers. It would have been the same for any of the members of the Legion. Her reaction, visceral and rending, was nothing.
“You can’t,” his lips quirked in wry amusement. “He’s too powerful for that now.”
Dusty scowled. “What do you mean?”
Edward shrugged, uncomfortable, and cleared his throat. His hands slipped from hers, and she fought the urge to pull him back to her. Swinging around, he set his feet on the floor and rested his head in his hands. “Water?”
Rising, Dusty limped to the mini fridge against one wall. She was surprised to find a few bottles of water stacked on the otherwise empty shelves. The owner knew his clientele at least. She tossed Edward a bottle, unsurprised when he went to catch it and missed. Sighing, she leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms beneath her breasts as he drank his fill. The urge to sharpen Bess was strong, but she refrained. For now.
“Who is this guy?”
Edward hesitated, then realizing he’d come too far to turn back, he shook his head. “When I was still a kid, he got involved in politics. He was the relatable good ol’ boy. An ‘average Joe.’ People flocked to him.” Edward’s voice was bitter, and she could understand why. “Anyway, getting into a good college was the only way I knew how to get away from him, and I worked my ass off to make sure I never needed him for anything once I graduated high school. Having a genius for a son was good for his numbers, especially once I started Marco Enterprises. I was proof he was a family man and a dedicated father. My successes, no matter what they were, were automatically attributed to my dad and how well he’d raised me.”
Edward turned away, his throat working. He gathered himself, then continued. “He showed up during a product launch a few years ago to shmooze potential backers for his Senate campaign.” His gaze grew distant, empty, as if he were leaving pieces of himself behind in the memories. “I didn’t even know he was in town. It blindsided me, and I…I lost it.”
Dusty rolled her shoulders, lips tight, but said nothing.
“Remember when I said I get lost sometimes? Well, it’s a little more than that,” he admitted, unable to look at her as he spoke. “Sometimes it’s like I’m someone else. Who I am now kind of disappears, and what’s left…what’s left takes over and—”
Frustrated, his words died before they could form, but Dusty understood well enough. She’d seen it, those moments when someone else seemed to be looking out at her. There was no fixing this for him, no protecting him from it. Desperate to distract from the unfamiliar sense of helplessness assailing her, she pushed away from the wall. Between getting assaulted and chasing a drugged-out Edward, she didn’t have the emotional bandwidth for anything else. She had a drug dealer to see, and she would need her wits about her.
Crouching, Dusty worked on restocking her duffle bag.
“Where are you going?”
“Get some sleep, Edward,” she said, gasping when he spilled from his perch on the bed to grip her by the arm. For such a big guy, he was light on his feet when he wanted to be, she noted.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Push me away.” His expression crumbled, and he shook his head. “Like I’m a burden. I can help you.”
“Why?” she asked roughly. “Why would you want to help me?”
“Because…” He hesitated. “Because we’re friends.” He frowned as her resulting silence turned icy, his brows drawing down in earnest confusion. “A-aren’t we?”
“We met yesterday. I’ve had stomach bugs for longer than the two of us have known one another,” she jerked her arm away and tossed the bag over her shoulder. “I went to Olive Garden for my birthday last year and kept the leftovers in my fridge for three days. Three . After I got my tubes tied, I was constipated for about a week. I waited seven whole days to take one shit—”
“Okay!” he barked, flushed. “I get it. I’m nothing to you. Less than shit.” His voice broke, but his expression was stony. “My mistake.”
Dusty buried the knee-jerk reaction to comfort him. To correct him. Things were better this way. She should have been treating him like crap from the start. Now, the two of them had formed some weird connection to one another and things were messy. Complicated. When it was all said and done, Edward would have to go back home, and she didn’t want men like Conners and Rudy gunning for him because of his ties with her. She had a weak spot for the goofball, and she didn’t want him to suffer because he was dumb enough to think she was better than a bullet to the head.
So, she let irritation darken her tone. “You hired me to help you,” she reminded him. “To protect you. At first, this whole kicked puppy thing was cute, but now you’re just dragging me down. First the fight club, then the tunnels, the bar, the fucking cop.” She stopped, cursed herself, and turned away. He didn’t need to know about what had almost happened with Conners. What happened far too often to women who looked just like her. Not like he would get it even if she did tell him.
“He’s too powerful for that now.” The despair in his earlier words echoed in her mind, and uncertainty tested the firmness of her resolve.
“Adele?” He reached for her, turning her like a dancer and tangling his fingers in her braids so he could cup her jaw in his palm. “What cop?” There was danger in those eyes. Trapped lightning threatening to carve a burning trail in the earth. Another memory threatened, but self-preservation beat it back again.
Something’s wrong
Dusty held her breath.
“What happened today?” he asked, the gentleness of his tone belying the eruption she could see brewing.
She gripped his wrist, leaning in so she wouldn’t have to strain her throat when she said, “I am none of your goddamn business. You’re nothing to me, remember?”
Edward’s jaw grew tight. “But you’re not nothing to me,” he bit back. “And you can’t protect anyone or anything if something happens to you because you’re too stubborn to ask for help. What if you wind up dead?” He ran a hand down his face. “My mistake,” He breathed. “Dying would be a dream come true, wouldn’t it?”
When her eyes widened, he bared his teeth at her, and for a heartbeat, she knew she was speaking to the Edward she’d seen in the ring.
“I know some things about you too,” he said with a growl. “I know no one— no one —chases Death like you do, Adele Burdot. Keep running, and you’ll catch up with him one day.”
Dusty stood frozen, tears blurring her vision despite her best efforts to remain unbothered. “Fuck you,” she whispered.
“You’re not sharp edges and broken glass, Dusty,” Edward said, and now he sounded tired. Sad. It enraged her. “You’re a fresh bruise, an open wound.”
“So what?” she scoffed, pushing away from him. Her mocking laughter crooked with rising panic. “You think you can just kiss it and make it better?”
“I could try,” he said, gaze was a glittering jewel, a promise of salvation or a trick. Dusty wasn’t sure which she preferred. “Let me try.”
They stared at one another for the longest time. Dusty searched his eyes, hoping to find…what? Weakness? Rot? Proof he was just like her? Even now, she wanted to go to him, let him kiss her all better. It took an almost physical effort to turn away. She couldn’t trust him, couldn’t believe a word he said. Not without proof. Not without blood. All the best pacts were sealed in blood, and he’d shed none for her and never would. In the end, Dusty strode over to the side table and bent to write a series of numbers on the legal pad next to the phone.
“This is Ape’s number,” she said brusquely. “If I’m not back by morning, call him. He’ll take you the rest of the way.”
“Dusty?”
But she didn’t linger or hesitate again. Slamming her way out of the motel room, Dusty practically ran to the Mustang; tossing her duffel bag into the passenger seat, she got in and revved the motor. She should have been relieved to be rid of him, even if for a little while. But the passenger side of the car was a black hole, and there was nothing in her large enough to fill it. The familiar rumble of the engine fed the wildness in her spirit, and in a squeal of tires and a plume of white smoke, she peeled out of the parking lot before the memory of Edward’s words, and the look on his face as he spoke them, could make her any weaker than she already was.
***
The Mustang’s brake lights disappeared down the street, and the motel phone loomed larger than life just a few feet away. Perching just so, on the edge of the bed, Edward tucked his hands between his knees and stared at the far wall.
Minutes ticked by, while the rush of blood in his veins faded to a dull roar. The room wavered; furniture threatening to disappear. Edward knew the signs, knew if he remained stagnant, his mind would leave him behind just like Dusty had. The old voice was back, whispering that he was worthless. Stupid. A spineless nerd.
He scowled. “I’m not a nerd,” he whispered to the peeling wallpaper. “I’m not a sinking ship either.”
No. He was a badass motherfucker, and it was time he acted like it.
The aging sunflowers on the wallpaper didn’t seem impressed by his affirmations, but Edward surged to his feet. Filled with renewed purpose, he stalked over to the side table and stared down at Ape’s cell phone number. Reaching out, he lifted the phone just as the motel door flew in. The door bounced off the wall, and one gloved hand reached out and caught it before it could slam shut again.
Ape stepped inside.
The power of Manifestation.
“What the hell, man? You couldn’t grab a fucking bag or two?” Irate, Diesel pushed past him. By comparison, the second man was more lanky confidence than rippling testosterone, though there was an undeniable charm to the crooked smile he threw Edward’s way.
“’Sup, Pretty Boy,” he crowed, as if greeting an old friend. “Got any food in this dump?”