City of Souls

exactly why he was doing so now, but the vulnerability it exposed was so raw I both wanted to protect it and look away at the same time. And I had to tread softly, I knew, or he’d turn away.

“You know why I did that,” I said softly.

“Because Ben chose wrongly.”

“Partly.” And I wouldn’t apologize. Ben should have known he was bedding down with Regan, not mistaken her for me. Sure, I understood she’d tricked him. And that life was complicated…I think I got it more acutely than most. But that was precisely why I wanted my most intimate relationship to be simple. I opened my mouth to say that, but we were already pulling into the workshop bay, and Hunter shoved the gear into park. He told me to wait in the car while he disengaged the alarms.

I sighed at the slamming of his door. I’d waited too long to speak. Other than a few intermittent beeps from within the warehouse, complete silence enveloped me. Hunter disappeared inside. The bay door lowered to encase me in darkness.

I leaned back my head, closed my eyes, and sighed again.

15

While Hunter busied himself putting space between us, I again cursed the timing of our return to the warehouse. He’d opened up to me for a moment there, like the dappled edging of the sun through the trees, the first real opportunity at intimacy since I’d left his bed in this very warehouse more than a month earlier. I knew even before stepping from the car that the precious sliver of vulnerability, like the sun, would be clouded over again by the time I joined him inside. Again I wondered why it couldn’t be simple.

No, not simple, I silently clarified, but true. Undivided. Decisive. A woman wants to be chosen, after all, the one deemed precious above all others. The thought made me think of Hunter’s eyes fixed on the road as he asked about Ben. Could that be what he wanted as well?

“Wow. I’m always leaving, aren’t I?” I laughed, a small, unamused puff trapped in the cab of the car. How ironic that I could do so much leaving while trapped in Vegas, in this body, in this life. How ironic also that my return from another world was what emphasized all those little departures.

Before I could think, or back out of it, I went inside and said that same thing to Hunter.

“What are you talking about?” He was occupied at his drawing board, shuffling papers and tossing foam pieces into an open bin. He looked like he wanted to shrug off my words but couldn’t quite. He knew exactly what I was talking about.

I just smiled. “I mean, I left Ben…actually, I left him a note. In a mailbox.” I shook my head at the stupidity of thinking that was somehow acceptable. “Then I left you for him…then him again. But you helped me return from Midheaven, do you know that?”

He swallowed hard and shrugged. His actions were jerky, not at all his usual lithe, catlike movements.

I leaned against the table, toward him. He turned, disappearing behind the clouded plastic screen separating the workshop from the shooting range. I raised my voice. “You did. I was…trapped there. It would have been easy just to…” Give up. Die. The words slipped away. “Anyway, it would have been easy. But I remembered you once talking about my strength, how you thought it was beautiful, and that memory made me want to fight.”

It’d been in this very workshop, the sole time we’d made love. I’d left him then too. I edged around the hanging plastic sheet to find him standing before it, unseeing, motionless. He licked his lip, still not looking at me. “Not now,” he whispered. “Please.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that.

“You also said it was okay to change, to want something new. To admit you made a mistake and then make a new choice. For a new person. In a moment.”

I thought of what Solange had said as we were spinning in her planetarium, that I doubted my place in the world.

But I didn’t doubt this.

Sure, I wasn’t Solange, with her confidence and authenticity-her powers-but I was certainly the best me I’d ever been. I put my hand on his arm, hoping he’d choose this moment too. That he’d choose this new me. Hunter lowered his head for a moment.

Then he turned away.

It hurt. I closed my eyes. Yet I still wanted him. I opened them again.

And when he strode off to clear the target, I followed. A firing range, I thought. How appropriate.

“What are you doing?” he said, stopping in front of the first bull’s-eye, feeling me behind him.

Keeping my expression pleasant, I inched closer. “Sticking,” I said shortly, slipping my smile into the word.

“No, you’re being obnoxious.” He yanked on the old bull’s-eye, crumpling it in his hands. “Not to mention aggressive.”

“I know.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s so unattractive.”

He loved my strength. He loved my stubbornness. I stepped closer.

Hunter moved away, not looking at me. “We tried this before.”

His resolve was so firm it made me ache to shatter it. I smiled. “And we’re going to do it again.”

He whirled. “No.”

“Yes.” I snorted. He was right. It was obnoxious. “What, hero? Nobody and nothing touches you just because you’re bulletproof?”

He lifted his chin. “That’s right.”

I tilted my shoulder and batted my lashes. “C’mere, Bulletproof.”

His mouth actually twitched at that.

“See. You’re going to start liking this.” I let my glance fall to his mouth. “I promise.”

He swallowed hard, serious again. “Stop.”

Maybe I would have. If his gaze hadn’t slid over my halter top, lingered on the belly ring, caught on the zipper of my chaps. My smile widened, he took another step back…and I picked him up.

“What the-”

I threw him into the sidewall ten feet away, hard enough to knock some sense into him without causing injury. He was a big boy. He could tell the difference.

He was already on his feet as I advanced again, looking at me like my body had been taken over by aliens while I’d been visiting another world.

“You’re thinking too much,” I said, closing in. The thick silver encircling my wrists jingled. My leather pants rubbed when I walked. Hunter watched me warily. All combined? It was a huge turn-on. “It’s starting to annoy me.”

He swallowed when I stopped before him, body tensed, ready to deflect another shot if he had to. “One of us has to.”

I feigned turning away…and pitched him across the room extra hard for that.

“Joanna!” Now he was really pissed. I wanted to throw back my head and laugh.

I stalked him again, took the shooting stand he was keeping between us in an underhanded grip and flipped it across the room too. Steel clattered against concrete to send my blood soaring. I knew Hunter scented it. He inhaled deeply and his dark eyes dilated. I was hunting, I realized. Still hunting, still fighting, and-oh, look-damned feminine while doing it. God, this felt good. “Don’t say my name if you’re going to say it like that.”

I reached him, and he caught my wrists so I couldn’t pitch him again. I stepped closer. He angled his body, shielding choice body parts. Not a bit of trust in the boy. “How should I say it?” he asked.

“Like this.” And, gently, I lifted to my toes and breathed the syllables into his mouth.

It was a reluctant enfolding, his mouth closing so gently over mine that I might have missed it were it not for the accompanying warmth. I moved my lips, opening to him further, and his hands gentled on my skin, but he didn’t let go.

“I won’t leave again,” I murmured, leaning into him. The warmth spread to all the places my body met his-lips, arms, breasts. I pressed. “I won’t leave you again.”