Most Wanted - A Fantasy Romance Novel (The Shadow Blade Series) (17 page)

Ariel pushed
open the door to Jimmy’s office. The first thing she noticed was that he had a
new desk. The second thing she noticed was the smug smile on Jimmy’s face. He
stopped chewing his cigar and kicked back in his chair, resting his tiny feet
on the desktop.

‘So you came,’
he said, flashing her his yellowing teeth.

Ariel narrowed
her eyes at him. What did he mean? How did he know she would come?

‘I wanted to
talk to you,’ she said.

‘You want to try
to buy your lover’s freedom?’ Jimmy asked.

Ariel flinched
back as if he’d kicked her. What? She stared at him. How did he know about her
and Jax being lovers? Her heart started to pound and the fog that had
surrounded her started to clear.

‘He’s not my
lover,’ Ariel growled once she’d gathered herself. Her cheeks were flaming
though.

Jimmy laughed.
‘So why you here then?’ he asked.

Ariel pressed
her lips together. Goddamn. She glanced over her shoulder. Vin Diesel had
changed shifts. Now he looked like that goddamn vampire from the Twilight
movies, the big set one with the blonde hair. He was grinning at her too. Ariel
suddenly put it all together. Jimmy had set this whole thing up. He’d seen the
CCTV image of her and Jax, had probably had her followed and being the cunning,
untrustworthy bastard that he was, had seen an opportunity to get his money
back and wipe the smile off her face at the same time. She hated him with a
passion she thought she had reserved only for Rikon. One day, she vowed to
herself, she was going to make Jimmy pay.

‘I bet on you
this time Ariel, just like you said I should.’

Her gut twisted,
acid hatred spurting through her. She glared at him. The little piece of
worm-faced shit. Jimmy pouted at her, still smiling triumphantly.

‘You bastard,’
she hissed.

Behind her she
heard the bodyguard move. Her hand slid into her pocket, felt the hilt of her
Shadow blade. It was so damn tempting. But if she made a move she knew it would
be her face on the front of a bounty flyer before the end of the night.

‘Never claimed
to be otherwise,’ Jimmy answered, swinging his legs off the table and returning
to his calculator and spreadsheets.

It was just
about the money? He didn’t like losing. He wanted to teach her a lesson? Well,
fine. She hefted her bag onto the table. ‘Here you go,’ she said, her voice
sounding eerily calm. ‘It’s all there, except for fifteen thousand. You can
have it. Just cancel the hit.’

Jimmy glanced
briefly at the bag before his gaze returned to his sheets of paper. His fingers
tapped on the calculator.

‘It’s six
hundred to cancel it,’ he grunted.

‘What?’ Ariel
screeched.

‘You heard. You
want me to call off the hit, you gotta pay six hundred thousand.’

‘Six hundred?’
Ariel spluttered. She didn’t have that kind of money and he knew it.

Jimmy’s fingers stopped
tapping. He looked up at her, his reptilian eyes cold and empty as panes of
glass. ‘Maybe you should think about bringing him in and handing him over to
the Brothers then. That’s a sweet amount of money. Could buy you a hit on Rikon
Fayette.’ His tongue flicked out to lick his lips.

Ariel’s breath
caught. If she handed Jax over she could have Rikon. She didn’t want to buy
Rikon Fayette though. She wanted to bring him in herself. She wanted to be the
one to kill him. She wasn’t going to pay anyone for that pleasure. And even if
a million dollars could buy her that opportunity she couldn’t do it if the cost
was Jax’s life. Anyone’s life, in fact.

She shook her
head at Jimmy. There was only one option. She needed to take her cash and
somehow find a way to make it more, make up the one hundred thousand short fall.
There was a room of demons betting on cage fights just a few feet away. She
grabbed her bag from the table and shoved past the dickhead wannabe vampire on
the door. Jimmy’s laughter followed her.

In the betting
lounge she saw Felix waiting anxiously. As soon as he saw her he pushed his way
through the crowd towards her. The room was stinking and heaving with bodies,
people yelling at each other and the screens, waving chits in the air and wads
of dollars.

Ariel hated betting,
but it was the only way she could think to make the money back.

‘Ariel,’ Felix
said as he reached her side.

‘What?’ she
snapped. She was preoccupied. She needed to watch the fights, figure out where
to lay her bets. Anxiety was gnawing at her. She didn’t have much time. She
wondered if she should head to Jax’s first and warn him but that would take
time and she might be better off trying to win the money. She cursed herself
for not ever having asked for his number. And sod’s law he had to be unlisted.

Damn it. Panic
was starting to take over, was clouding her judgment. She needed to stay calm.

‘Ariel!’ Felix
was pulling on her sleeve.

She glanced at
him irritated. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s Aaron. I
thought you might want to know. He’s gone after the bounty.’

Ariel stared at
him.

‘The bounty!’
Felix said again. ‘Your bounty. The Blade guy. He just left. He said he was
going to teach you guys a lesson. I think he’s pissed.’

Well durr, of
course he was pissed. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Aaron hadn’t
cooked this one up with Jimmy as a way to punish her, the sexist egotistical
bastard.

Ariel raced for
the door.

‘Where are you
going?’ Felix called out.

‘To Jax’s,’ she
called over her shoulder.

Jax cut the
engine and kicked down the stand to his bike. He pulled the collar of his
jacket up and checked his blades. He was walking into the lion’s den. There was
no telling what was behind that boarded up door but he could sense it was
nothing pleasant.

His blood was
hissing in his veins, pounding in his skull. Every single cell in his body knew
this was a bad idea and was trying to get him to reconsider. But he didn’t stop
walking. He would march on in there and demand to speak to this Jimmy guy. He’d
offer him any amount of money, whatever he wanted, for intel on where Ariel
might be.

He pushed open
the door. Inside it was dark and dingy. The festering smell of demon, vomit and
cigarette smoke mingled in a toxic cloud. Jax coughed and let his eyes adjust
to the gloom. He was in a long corridor. Further down, to the right, he could
make out a door. On the other side of it he heard shouting and yelling. The far
end of the corridor dissolved in darkness. He took a step, meaning to follow
the corridor all the way to the end where he guessed the office might be, when
suddenly the door on the right flew open.

A kid came
skidding out into the corridor. He glanced once over his shoulder and then came
barreling towards Jax. Jax pressed back against the wall, ducking his face into
the shadows, hoping the kid would just walk on by. He knew he must be giving
off a scent though, because as he passed by the kid’s head flew up and he did a
double take.

Before the kid
could yell out or do anything stupid, Jax locked his hands around his throat.
He pushed the kid into the shadows of an alcove and thrust him against the wall.

The kid was
wearing baggy jeans and a cap and he had chits of paper sticking out of every
available pocket. Jax didn’t know what kind of demon he was but he hoped he
wasn’t a Shifter or a Chameleon. The kid made no move to shift or camouflage
himself though, so Jax relaxed his grip.

‘I’m looking for
Jimmy,’ he said.

The boy’s eyes
grew even rounder. ‘You’re him,’ he croaked. ‘The guy. The Blade!’

Jax’s fingers
flexed tighter around the kid’s neck. How did he know who he was?

‘They’re looking
for you!’

Who? Who was
looking for him? Jax wedged his knee into the boy’s thigh. ‘Who’s looking for
me?’ he snarled.

‘Everyone,’ the
boy said, sweat breaking out on his brow. He was afraid. Jax eased off on the
pressure, but his body was tensed, adrenaline scoring through every blood
vessel, flooding his nervous system.

‘Bounty hunters.
There’s a bounty on your head,’ the kid gasped.

The boy scowled,
eyeing Jax’s enormous shoulders. Jax took in the news about the bounty. He
guessed walking in here wasn’t the best plan in that case. Too late for that
though.

‘I’m looking for
Ariel,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder. Someone had opened the door from
what he assumed was the betting lounge and a flood of noise had followed him
into the corridor. Over the top of it he heard footsteps heading their way.

‘She’s gone
looking for you,’ Felix told him.

Jax let him go,
stepping back. Looking for him why? To catch a bounty or to warn him?

‘Hey!’

Jax heard a
heavy footstep behind him and labored breathing. He turned, confronting a
bearded – actually more like furred – beast of a man.

‘Who are you?’
the thing asked.

Felix had
collapsed against the wall, his hands around his neck, desperately sucking in
oxygen.

Jax sighed,
angled his body, and then smashed his fist into the guy’s gut. He went down
like a sack of hay. Jax didn’t hang around to follow through. He sprinted
towards the door and kicked it open. He had to find Ariel.

Ariel scaled the
fence and dropped down onto the gravel driveway. Taking a few seconds to adjust
her senses to the outside she started to edge up the driveway. The moon was
easing in and out of the clouds. She felt the urge to dissolve into the shadows
but resisted it. She needed to save her energy for when she might need it

She was being
extra careful in case Aaron was hiding, lurking somewhere in the darkness. Her
instinct was telling her though that Jax wasn’t home and that no one else was
around. She couldn’t sense anyone and she couldn’t feel Jax either. The tugging
in her gut that she normally felt in his presence, the quickening of her pulse,
was entirely absent. She searched for it but no, disconcertingly there was
nothing.

She stared up at
the house. A light was on in Jax’s bedroom and another in the downstairs hall.
A thought crossed her mind that maybe she couldn’t feel him because he was
already dead but no, she was certain, however strange it might sound, that if
Jax was dead she would know that too, in her gut.

At least she
told herself that as she crept closer to the house, praying that she was right.
She jogged up the steps to the front door. It was locked. She rang the doorbell
and still there was no response. His bike was gone too from the driveway. Had
he gone out? Had he gone after her? The thought had occurred to her. Maybe he
had gone to her apartment wanting to find her? It was the kind of thing he
would do.

Ariel turned
around and jogged back down the steps. She didn’t know what to do next. Go to
her apartment and see if he was there? Go back to Jimmy’s and start betting?
Wait for Jax here? But no, she couldn’t just wait here. She was antsy enough as
it was. She needed to find him. She ran back towards the gate and her van, but
before she’d gone even fifteen meters she heard the full throttle hum of Jax’s
bike roaring up the driveway.

She jumped out
of the way as he rounded the bend. His headlights swept across her and he
suddenly swerved, kicking up gravel as he came to a flying halt.

He jumped off
the bike and strode straight towards her. Ariel froze. His expression was
fierce, almost terrifying. He stopped right in front of her and she noted the
way his eyes glimmered, as well as the fact his hands were coiled into tight
fists at his side.

 
He glanced down at the Shadow blade she
was clutching in her hand. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. His voice was
as gruff and aggressive as she’d ever heard it, but the look in his eyes belied
it. He seemed both suspicious and hopeful.

She shook her
head. ‘I’m here to warn you,’ she said, anger making her voice gruff.

He cocked his
head to the side. ‘Warn me?’. His voice had softened.

‘There’s a
bounty on your head,’ she told him, the anger of his betrayal now starting to
take over. Now she had seen he was still alive, was OK, her fury at him was
starting to build.

‘I came to tell
you. I tried to pay it off.’

‘Pay it off?’ he
cut in. ‘What do you mean?’

She swallowed
and glanced away. She hadn’t meant to tell him that part. ‘I,’ she stammered.
‘I went to Jimmy and tried to pay it off but he wanted more than I have.’

Jax stared at
her speechless. She had tried to pay his bounty? She would have done that for
him? He didn’t know what to say. She was glaring at the ground, scowling, her
beautiful lips pursed.

He took a step towards
her, reaching for her, but she glanced up sharply and with a single look froze
him in place. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said in a voice so quiet and laced through
with danger that he stepped back, holding up his hands in defensive as though
she was holding a gun to his chest.

His breathing
sped up. ‘Ariel,’ he said. There was so much he needed to tell her, to explain
and he didn’t know where to begin. He just knew he had to make her understand.

‘Don’t,’ she
hissed. ‘I don’t want to know.’

He took a deep
breath. ‘Is this about my wife?’ he asked.

Ariel threw back
her head and laughed. ‘Well, at least you’re owning up to having one now,’ she
said. Her eyes were flashing with lethal fury. He would have felt stung by it
but he was more concerned with making her understand.

‘Ariel,’ he said
again, sadly, softly, his shoulders sinking. He took a deep breath and met her
gaze head on. ‘She’s dead.’

Instantly
Ariel’s expression faltered. Her lips parted and her eyes widened. He saw the
relief travel across her face, followed swiftly by a wave of shame before finally
she fixed her usual mask of indifference back in place. She might try to hide
her real feelings but he could see them anyway, could see her eyes swimming
with tears.

‘Come in the
house,’ he told her, turning and leading the way.

For a moment he
didn’t think she was going to follow him but then he heard her footsteps
dragging behind him. He narrowed his hearing and tried to focus his senses on
the garden, checking to see if they were alone. But it hardly seemed to matter.
All he knew right now was that explaining everything, having Ariel understand
about Neve, was more important than the fact there was a bounty on his head and
that his life was in danger.

He dealt with
danger every day, had killed enough demons who had wanted to kill him that he
wasn’t afraid. He was afraid however of losing Ariel. This woman he barely knew
and yet who he did know, in the most intimate way. The woman whose mind
remained in many ways a mystery to him, but whose body he had fully explored
and already had committed to memory. He wanted to know everything there was to
know about her, to get past that prickly surface layer and have her open
herself to him in the same way she’d opened her body to him.

Maybe though
that was too much to ask.

‘It’s not safe
to stay here,’ he heard Ariel say as he shut the door behind her.

He rammed the
bolt across. ‘I’ll be fine.’

She glowered at
him. ‘You don’t get it,’ she said. ‘There are probably half a dozen bounty
hunters out there right now trying to find you. They’ve probably worked out
where you live already and are on their way. You need to leave.’

‘I’m not
leaving,’ he said, holding her gaze steadily.

She huffed
angrily and put her hands on her hips. ‘Don’t you get it? You won’t be able to
fight them all off. They’ll kill you.’

He shrugged.
‘Why’d you offer to pay it?’

Her lips parted.
He watched her trying to calculate her answer, her gaze dropping to the floor.
‘I just…’

‘You need the
money. I know how much you need it. You could have just come to me and told me.
You know I’m good for it. I can’t believe you were going to use the money you
earned. Why?’

‘Because…,’ she
spat angrily. She was like a panther, a caged one, pacing the hallway searching
for her exits. He kept his eyes on her as she strode to the door, glanced out
the window and then spun around to face him. ‘It was my fault that they even
knew who you were. I took you to Jimmy’s. I shouldn’t have. I put you in danger,
so it’s my responsibility to make it right.’

He stared at
her, trying to puzzle her out. That didn’t make it her fault. Why did she
always need to shoulder the blame for all the shit that went down in the world?
He wished there was something he could do to change that about her.

He shook his
head at her. ‘You didn’t put me in danger, Ariel,’ he said softly and when he
saw the look of skepticism on her face he added, ‘You need to stop taking
responsibility for everything bad that happens. The world is a shit place, a
lot of awful stuff happens to good people, and none of it is your fault.’

She frowned at
him then huffed loudly. ‘What happened?’ she suddenly asked.

Jax frowned.

‘To your wife?’
Ariel asked. She had stopped pacing and was standing by the door. Her shoulders
were slumped. She was watching him through the tangle of her hair. Jax felt the
usual stab of pain in his gut at the mention of Neve.

‘She died five
years ago. Cancer,’ he added when he saw the question forming silently on her
lips.

‘But…her
clothes,’ Ariel whispered.

He shrugged, a
solid lump forming in his throat. ‘I never got round to throwing them away. I
just couldn’t do it. I never had a reason to.’ He paused and waited until Ariel
locked eyes with him again. ‘Until now.’

He saw the flare
of understanding in her eyes, the blood rushing to her cheeks. He heard her
heart start to race in time with his own.

‘And the
underwear?’ she asked him, a tremble in her voice.

‘It was for
you,’ he told her, trying not to smile.

She looked at him
askance, suspicious once more. He shrugged. ‘I wanted to buy you something
nice. To say sorry for tearing your underwear off you the other night.’ He
looked away, embarrassed, but glanced up when he heard a soft chuckle.

Ariel was
smiling at him. It made his heart slam against his ribs, hope igniting inside
him. ‘And I have to admit to the selfish desire to want to see you wearing
them,’ he admitted.

Ariel’s smile
lit up her face. He smiled back, relief flooding through him like ice water,
bringing clarity.

She took a step
towards him then, that seductive glimmer back in her half-closed eyes. He felt
the heat of her body even from this distance, the magnetic pull of her lips.
His gaze dipped to her hips. The desire was instant, flaming red hot in him. He
had to force himself not to move, to let her come to him, to keep his arms at
his sides.

‘No one’s ever
bought me anything before,’ she said, when she was standing right in front of
him.

‘Well,’ he said,
finally lifting his hand to stroke a strand of her hair behind one ear. ‘That’s
about to change.’

She frowned at
him and he winced. He knew she was sensitive about him offering to pay for
things, that she was proud, but some things she was going to have to get used
to. He took her face in his hands. ‘Ariel,’ he said, ‘it makes me happy to buy
nice things for you. I know you’re a fiercely independent woman and that’s what
I…’ he broke off abruptly seeing the surprise flare across her face, ‘
like
about you,’ he finished. ‘But I’m
old-fashioned, I have a lot of money, more than I can possibly spend on myself
and I would very much like to see you naked, in my bed, wearing just lace. Can
you deal with that?’

Ariel considered
him for a beat, then nodded, her cheeks warming beneath his hands. He took hold
of her hair and twisted it in his fist then pulled her head towards him. She
gasped slightly, her gaze dipping to his own mouth, and he felt the heat rising
between them. When her lips were just millimeters from his own he stopped and
held her there. ‘I want you Ariel,’ he murmured. ‘I want you in my bed, in my
arms, in my life. Can you deal with that too?’