Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (10 page)

Jake just smiled at him, his own eyes still shining with that veneer of boy-crush worship.

“Oh, I
so
want to keep him, Dakota,” he murmured. “Are you sure I can’t borrow him, just for a little bit? He needs abusing more than anyone I’ve ever
seen.”

Nik’s frown deepened more.

“Please,” Jake said, squeezing my arm that time. “I promise not to break him...”

I felt my teeth grind a little at that, too. Giving my brother a harder stare and ignoring the questioning look that came to Nik’s face, I felt my jaw clench more when Irene and Jake continued to watch Nik like he was their new favorite toy. I stomped my foot to get Jake to look away from Nik and over at me, no mean feat in the five inch heels he’d strapped around my feet and ankles, and nearly enough to topple me into Irene’s lime green fridge.

“Can we seriously get out of here, Jake?” I said. “I let you have your fun. It’s ten-thirty already, and Gantry said we couldn’t be late.”

Jake sighed.

He took his weight off the counter, still looking at Nik, either because he was annoyed Nik didn’t seem to be as enthralled with him as Jake was with Nik, or because he was still contemplating all of the decadent possibilities inherent in Nik’s total lack of experience with the way things worked here.

Either way, it irritated me, enough that I found myself wondering if I could get Gantry to kick Jake out of the country again.

I was about to say something to that effect, when Jake gave a last sigh.

He more or less acknowledged my words then, if only by pulling his jacket off the back of Irene’s kitchen chair.

“I’m ready, I’m ready...” he muttered, still watching Nik’s face. “God, now I have an erection...”

“Leave him alone, Jake,” I said, my voice closer to a growl. “Seriously. You need to cut it out. You don’t want to piss Nik off. Trust me on this.”

Jake glanced directly at me after I spoke, smiling before he looked back at Nik.

“Our Dakota is possessive,” he smirked, falling back into his usual, bratty smugness with me. He looked Nik over again, winking at the morph. “You should feel honored, Nikky. That’s a first for her. She clearly doesn’t want me touching her new, sexy, little alien friend. Selfish, selfish, selfish...”

I bit my lip, but didn’t bother to point out that Nik had a few good inches on him, and probably weighed a third more than Jake, to boot.

Nik gave me a direct look. “I will feel it if you have trouble,” he said, pointing to his chest. “Can I wait outside?”

“No,” I snapped, shoving Jake towards the door. “Gantry’s coming to get you in an hour. I’ll find you later and fill you in on what happened, okay? Just...do what Gantry says, okay? You can trust Gantry. Unlike Jake.”

Nik nodded.

He seemed like he would have liked to say more, but he didn’t. Instead he just stood there, watching silently as I continued to hurry Jake out of the room.

Even so, I felt another stab of conflict as I left.

It was getting harder and harder to pretend that my feelings about Nik weren’t more than a little confused. I could only imagine the kind of trouble Nik could get into with Gantry, given the conversation that had just transpired, but I didn’t really want to think about that, either. Nik was far from a fool. He would be more careful in what he said to Gantry now. I suspected he’d taken my words to heart about Jake, too.
 

Still, there was no way he’d figure this stuff out overnight.

I continued to hustle Jake out the door as the realization hit me again.

Truthfully, I wanted Jake as far away from Nik as humanly possible, for reasons I’d only half-admitted to myself...but I also wasn’t kidding about the lateness thing.

Gantry wouldn’t have mentioned the “be on time” thing for no reason.

I was already seriously regretting that I’d told Jake he could come. In fact, I might have insisted he stay behind, if the idea of leaving him alone with Nik didn’t scare me even more than having Jake with me at the modeling agency downtown.

If Jake was with me, at least I could keep an eye on him.

So we grabbed a taxi and headed downtown, picking one up on Broadway faster than I expected. If it had just been me, I probably would have walked or taken the bus, or ridden my bike, if it had occurred to me to get the Enfield back from Gantry the day before. The Enfield, which had been a present from Jake himself, funnily enough––or more precisely, a gift from the checkbook of the guy he left behind in Italy––was a high-end, modified motorcycle that had been my pride and joy before I fell through that dimensional portal.

But I hadn’t gotten the Enfield back.

And anyway, given how Jake dressed me that morning, neither the Enfield nor the bus would have been remotely practical or even feasible. Well, not the Enfield, at least.

As it was, I felt pretty ridiculous.

Teetering down the street in a skin-hugging, dark purple mini-dress that barely covered my butt and crotch, I felt about as capable of defending myself as if I’d been wearing a straight jacket. In fact, less so, although I didn’t have direct experience to say that definitively.
 

The dress left few of my bumps and curves to the imagination, even apart from that, and the most modest thing about me was likely the clunky silver necklace Jake had slung around my neck, like some kind of vicious dog choke-collar. Even that, Jake claimed as some one-of-a-kind original, a “piece” like it was some work of art instead of a trinket that social climbers slung around their necks to give rich old guys an excuse to stare at their chests.

I noticed Jake managed to make himself look fashionably presentable, too, only wearing a lot more comfortable-looking clothes than what he’d pushed on me. His designer jeans and fitted dress shirt showed off his Italian coastal tan and muscles to fine effect, but also left his sexuality sufficiently ambiguous that he would have options, depending on who we met.

It scared me that I knew so well how my brother thought.

The cab dropped us off on the curb in front of one of the biggest high-rises in downtown Seattle, a big black building that locals jokingly referred to as the “Grim Reaper.”

I hadn’t had a lot of occasions to go inside there before, but I’d met a client or two in the lobby. I knew it had several banks of elevators, as a result, some of which only went to a chunk of the upper or lower floors, presumably to make the climb up those seventy-plus stories faster. Given that ol’ Death Angel probably housed some of the most expensive business real estate in town, especially on those upper floors, I supposed it made sense.
 

Under the segregated elevators, the high-end clients wouldn’t have to ride with the peons working the lower floors...or wait laboriously on the ride to the top while those same peons got off and on the cars for lower-level suites.

Jake followed me as I teeter-walked to the bank that only visited levels thirty-seven to seventy-six. Jake stood there, preening a bit yet looking suitably mysterious as I pressed the button to call the next elevator down to the lobby.

Luckily, we were still too early for lunch and too late for the first mad-rush coffee break that usually occurred around ten a.m.

Even so, the lobby was hardly deserted.
 

In a building like this one, it never was. I’d seen a number of people checking us out as a result, and not all that surprisingly, I guess.

Jake and I had always made quite a pair, with our similar looks and unusual coloring.

It was part of the reason Jake always wanted to drag me around to parties with him when we were both younger...and before I wised up enough to realize I was being used as an accessory in his scams. I knew my outfit was designed to be eye candy, anyway, drawing male attention as much for the skin showing and my legs as anything to do with my face and figure, per se.

That part didn’t bother me; in fact, I was counting on it.

Funnily enough, I’d found that wearing this kind of thing made me more anonymous, not less, and less likely to be recognized later by anyone who saw me, no matter how hard they stared. People stared at my legs and my butt and my chest. Some noticed my hair, or my waist, and even my eyes...but for the most part, my face blew right past them.

Which was perfect for me right then, since I wasn’t keen to have any more people finding out I was back in town. So yeah, I was banking on no one remembering me today...or recognizing me, either.
 

This wasn’t my usual part of town, anyway, clients or no, which was the main reason I’d let Jake dress me up in the first place. Not too many people would know my face with this much make up even if they
did
know me, much less the skin-tight dress and my hair down with those loose curls Jake had painstakingly ironed into it.

And yeah, that was assuming they bothered to take note of my face at all.

Even so, I averted my gaze on a few stares.

All but one, that is.

We were still waiting for the elevator when I fielded a stare from a pair of baby blues that I recognized. I froze, like a deer in headlights, and the frown that had crinkled the man’s boyish face suddenly turned to understanding, then full-blown recognition. I felt a deeper kind of misgiving trickle down my spine as I watched those same eyes turn to ice.

Shit. Bundy.

Not the real Bundy, of course. The guy I’d once been paid to set up for rape.
 

Getting him to try and rape me hadn’t been hard.
 

Getting out of there with my life after I provoked him and before the cops could get there to catch him in the act, had proven a bit more difficult.

I watched Bundy-boy look at me. I saw his eyes flicker down the dress to the high heels.

Unfortunately, he
had
seen me in a lot of make-up before.

His eyes shifted to Jake. I saw him take my brother’s measurements, as well.

I couldn’t help thinking Bundy was probably trying to decide if Jake was Nik, the guy who’d thrown him across the alley and probably dislocated his shoulder that night.

Just when I was about to nudge Jake myself, a guy in an expensive-looking suit walked up to Bundy and slapped him in a friendly, we’re-all-rich-guys-here-together kind of homo-erotic way. Bundy’s colder, more sociopathic look faded.

Turning in a blink, he smiled at the man who had accosted him, giving him the appropriate yes-I’m-confident-I’m-one-of-you look in return, right before he motioned the guy in the direction of the nearest coffee bar.

He spared me a final, threat-laden glance before he finished walking away.

Swallowing, I pushed the elevator call button again.

I found myself wondering if I should have brought the Glock, after all. Then again, where the hell would I have put it? I’d sooner give a loaded gun to Jake as hand one to a toddler.

I entered the first set of doors that opened in front of us, clearing my throat to get Jake to follow. Of course, in doing so, I interrupted where he’d been posing for another group of professionals in tailored suits.

I saw him smile back at an appreciative look from a forty-something exec type, a woman with a seriously aerobicized body, one she probably tortured herself a few hours a day to achieve, including an hour at lunch in the building’s downstairs gym.

The same woman looked at Jake like he was a particularly delicious piece of candy that she’d like to roll around inside her mouth.

And yes, watching that little back and forth gave me an involuntary shudder.

When Jake joined me inside the elevator car, he was practically gloating.

“I’m amazed you haven’t hunted this ground to death already, Jake,” I muttered, mashing my finger down on the button for the sixtieth floor.

Jake only grinned, attempting a nonchalant shrug as he adjusted his shirt collar in the mirror at the back of the elevator car.

“New crop every year, sweetie,” he purred unapologetically.

Sighing, I pretended I hadn’t heard that, leaning my butt against the brass railing in the back of the car, grateful to give my feet a break in the outrageously high-heeled shoes.

“We might have a problem,” I told Jake. “Do you have your phone on you?”

He handed it to me without a word.