Page 60 of Carnal Wagers

His words followed me into the darkness of the wooded, grassy area, beyond the energy of the party-going. There, I felt like I could finally catch my breath, and I wondered for the first time whether I’d been better off before knowing him at all.

Chapter 18

Lined up on the road with two other cars, amid a cloud of fumes from burnt tires, I grimaced down at the grotesque figurine that replaced my standard gear handle. With a snarl, I wrapped my hand around it. This erotic plastic woman, with her hands both down and up her dress, was indisputably the only woman I’d ever felt so fiercely uncomfortable holding in my grip.

I had to admire my little stalker’s panache. She planned this and distracted me, while someone messed with my car, yet I was more irked that she relied on someone else to trick me rather than the fact she’d gotten one over me. I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel. Had it been the fucker waiting for her in that SUV?

“Go!” one of the drunk spectators on the side yelled and dropped his arm.

We took off in a rush of roaring engines and squealing tires. My vision sharpened. My heart pumped harder and faster. Everything else zoned out but the drive. The slits in the leather around the steering wheel felt deeper and more pronounced. Cars skirted close, almost kissing mine, and that edge of danger electrified me.

Too soon, the race was over. By the time I pushed on the brakes, the thrill was gone. It had barely been worth the gas spent.

One car kept on going, taillights disappearing around a bend in the road. The other squealed around in a U-turn, its engine popping, and tore back down the street like a scalded cat to the start line.

I veered my car around the bend of a business entrance and back onto the road. My knuckles grazed over my lips where mo síbhean’s teeth had dug in, a little reminder of the pain and pleasure she wrought in my life.

The whir of sirens dragged me out of the feeling, back to the dark street I coasted on. Blue and red lights lit up the distance, headed my way. Silhouettes swarmed the street. Headlights lit up on both sides of the road before loping forward and fully into view. One after another after another, cars piled onto the opposite lane, picking up speed, honking, rumbling, and roaring away. People inside yelled into the wind. Loud, punchy bass music thumped. Arms waved at me from windows and truck beds as vehicles whisked past, the cops hot on their heels. Jesus fecking Christ. This shite certainly had me questioning my life’s choices at thirty-five.

A female silhouette crossed the street from a copse up ahead, tight jeans hugging a luscious arse, and her thick curls swiping along the lacy back of her bustier that fit like a glove over her tight stomach. Now what was my poisonous little fairy doing? In the dark. Alone.

Headlights dimmed, I drove around the back of the small one-story building she’d disappeared around and parked parallel to the parking bumpers. Just as I exited the car, two people rolled atop one another from the other side of the building. A third followed, a metal pipe in hand. I hadn’t clocked who was in play yet, but I fitted my brass knuckles on my non-dominant hand and flipped open my karambit knife.

The one with the pipe swung down, missing the scrappy fighter on top’s head by mere inches. That same person slammed a fist into the person above them, propelling them backward, and swiped the legs out from under the pipe holder. He went down hard, while the person on the ground kicked up and landed on their feet in an impractical pair of wedged heels.

I smothered a grin and leaned against my sedan to watch the show. My fairy knocked them down like a hardcore enthusiast. Her form needed a little work, probably because of the heels, and her arms lacked some strength, but a fire burned in her that couldn’t be faked. It now made sense how she tackled that dealer a few days ago.

My first assessment of her was proving correct. She was a conundrum, the sort of intriguing that didn’t line up with the women I knew. Equal parts defiance and compliance, while never completely showing her hand. She was beautiful, feisty, and not the least bit fearful. It intoxicated my senses, and watching her fight in heels…even a dead man got hard for a lot less.

She faked right, dealt a knee strike to one foe, an uppercut to the second, then grappled onto the first and twisted his arm around his back. When a third man stumbled around the building, the distraction cost her. The second man threw a punch at her jaw. Her pained cry shot me to my feet.

I jumped into the fray before she landed on her back. I stabbed and slashed from the top of the man’s sternum to the bottom of his ribs, then dealt a hook and cross to her second attacker. When that didn’t quite knock the fucker out, I stabbed up through his chin. The third got one slice across the throat.

“I had it handled,” she grumbled, back on her feet, dusting her knees off.

“’Course you did. Until you didn’t.”

Her glare was almost adorable, except for the reddening of a bruise across her cheekbone and a bloodied lip, cracked down the middle. Red flared over my vision. My hand was on her face before I realized I had moved, and my thumb swiped through the blood on that lip I knew intimately.

“Does it hurt?”

She frowned, her gaze flicking between mine. Under the dimmed headlights, frosty pools of molten silver and cobalt swirled in her eyes. Uncertainty shone in their depths. For once, she wasn’t completely composed. It made her softer, sweeter, almost too much so. The perfect contradiction to her fight.

“No.”

I nodded to restrain myself from diving in to nibble on that swelling lip. “Who were they?”

“No idea.”

“Was it just these three?”

“There are three more on the other side.”

“Three?”

“What? I can handle myself.”

“Wait here.”