"Dante asked me to give it to you."
He extended his own, and their fingers brushed. Tingles ran up her arms and down her spine from the one spot of contact.
He didn't remove his hand. She didn't remove hers. Within seconds, it became another game where neither backed down. The sensations thrummed through her body, pooling in her belly and spreading through her blood, making her a little heady as she kept her eyes locked on his sharp blue ones, unable to read a single thing in them. Had she not felt his flesh and blood pressed against her own body, she would have believed he was a cyborg. Unfeeling. Cold. Aloof.
And that doused ice on her hammering heart.
"Why do you hate me?" she asked him the only question she could not find an answer to, the one question that had bugged her more than she cared to admit.
His lips tightened infinitesimally, his eyes flickering away.
And suddenly he stilled, his eyes leaving hers and sweeping through the parking lot. Morana blinked, clearing her head, and looked around, trying to see something.
All she saw were vehicles and all she heard was the thunder and rain.
The hand that hand been touching hers at the tips suddenly jerked her forward, his other hand clamping down on her mouth and drowning the muffled shriek that would have escaped her otherwise. One second she was standing next to her car, the next she was behind a pillar, pressed into it with a very muscled man against her front, one of his hands on the pillar beside her head, the other still on her mouth.
Morana tried to bite his hand off and he looked at her once, his eyes alert and telling her to be quiet. Morana felt anger fill her but she nodded. He removed his hand and leaned over the pillar, his eyes scanning the entire area. His chest brushed against her breasts as they both inhaled. And though she noticed that, she didn't focus on it, keeping her own senses open as adrenaline filled her twice in half an hour and her heart pounded, her stomach knotting as she looked and tried-
Movement.
She shifted slightly to look better, and the man pressed to her followed her gaze. Three men, three burly looking men, jumped out from behind the car she'd been watching, attacking, their hands raised with knives in them.
Heart slamming against her chest, Morana watched, stunned, as before she could take a step, Tristan Caine had one man down on the ground and was fluidly moving towards the other. One of them broke off from the group and headed towards her. Morana had never fooled herself into believing she was a badass because of her strength. Nope. She was one because of her brain and using that very brain, she took out her gun, switching the safety off in the same motion, and shot the man right in the knee without blinking.
He fell down with a cry, whimpering in pain as he clutched his leg, and Morana turned to see two men down on the ground, unconscious or dead she didn't know, and Tristan Caine flat on his back as the last man stood above him. Morana raised her gun instinctively before she stopped herself. She wasn't going to save him. Not at all. If he couldn't save himself, then someone else had done her job for her.
But she watched with her heart in her throat as the two men exchanged kicks and swift moves faster than her eyes could catch before the man slammed Tristan Caine down on the ground so hard Morana's ribs would have cracked. But Tristan Caine raised his legs in the same movement, using the momentum, and wrapped his ankles around the guy's neck, before flipping him down and getting him in a chokehold.
"Who do you work for?" he asked the gasping man in a cold voice that didn't belay any exertion, even as his chest heaved with quick breaths.
"Who sent you?" he asked again, the same questions he'd asked her the first time he'd pinned her to a wall with her own knives.
The other man spit on the ground, shaking his head. And Tristan Caine snapped his neck.
Morana was no stranger to death and murder. It was as much a way of their world as women being controlled by men was. So she didn't flinch or gasp or betray any emotion. But her stomach fell to the ground, her hands trembling slightly, the gun shaking in her grip.
Tristan Caine stood up and walked to the guy she'd shot, his eyes surveying her body once, for injuries maybe, before going back to the man.
"Talk or you die."
The man grimaced. "I will die anyway."
Tristan Caine tilted his head. "But it can be painful or it can be painless. Your choice."
The man fainted.
Morana stood a few feet away from him, her eyes glued to his face as he turned to hers.
"You should leave," he told her quietly.
Morana nodded, her insides in shock, and turned towards her car, keeping her eyes peeled for any other jumpers with knives, her gun loose in her hand.
She walked towards her car, her eyes rising from the ground, and she came to a complete halt.
There, in the
middle of the parking lot, stood her Mustang where she'd parked it, with all its tires slashed open. Morana stood in shock, staring at the car. She'd bought that car with her own money. Her first car. This was the only friend she had, the only friend that understood her thirst for freedom. This had been her companion in so many escapades and her partner in crime. She'd repaired it on her own, took care of it on her weekends. She loved it. And there it stood, with all the tires ripped open.