CHAPTER THREE
Near-death experiences
were entirely underrated.
Sure, nearly getting
taken out by a demon had been terrifying—her stomach still churned
and her bones vibrated with adrenaline aftershocks—but if she
hadn’t almost died, she wouldn’t be living this moment. This moment
she’d dreamed of for years, since she was way too young to be
involved with any man, let alone a man like Jace.
God, Jace. How many times had she imagined what she’d
say to him if she had the chance? If he ever noticed her as
anything other than Stephen’s sad, blind little
sister?
A hundred times.
At least.
But her imaginings
had always ended with her own hand between her legs, her body
struggling to believe it was Jace who touched her. Or who ordered
her to touch herself.
She’d guessed that
Jace was the kind who liked more submissive women. Despite a
healthy dose of women’s lib in college and a thirst for
independence fueled by living with her overprotective brother, Sam
still fantasized about being one of those women. She’d dreamed of
being with Jace so many times, it was almost impossible to believe
this was really happening.
It was really Jace
Lu’s tongue sliding between her lips, Jace Lu’s hands cupping her
ass, Jace Lu’s cock pulsing between her legs. Even with the thick
fabric of his jeans between them, she could feel how hot he was,
could imagine how he’d burn every inch of her when he shoved inside
where she ached.
“Spread your legs,”
he ordered, and she obeyed without hesitation, her body thrilling
to do as Jace commanded, just like she’d always imagined it would.
“Wider.”
She moaned as she
forced her legs impossibly wider and the hard ridge of Jace’s cock
ground against her clit. “You make me so…”
“So what? Tell me,
Sammy.”
“So … wet.” She
writhed against him, frantic for him to finish what he’d
started.
No, what she’d started. He was taking the lead, but she was
the one who had started this. There was no turning back now, even
if she’d wanted to. Which she didn’t, not for a split
second.
“Fuck, Sammy.” He
groaned into her mouth, the need in his voice making her head
spin.
“Yes. That’s a great
idea,” she said, the fear that still throbbed through her veins
making her bolder than she’d ever been in her life.
He laughed, a tight
sound that made it clear how she affected him. She made him crazy.
She, Samantha Quinn, the girl he’d always treated like a child to
be pitied, was making him lose his infamous cool. It was an
intoxicating realization, even more dizzying than the feel of his
soft lips trailing down her neck.
“We’re not ten feet
from the main street. Someone could see. Is that okay with you? If
someone sees me fucking you?” he asked, in a way that made it clear
he didn’t give a good goddamn.
Good. She didn’t
either.
“I don’t care. I
don’t care who sees.” And she didn’t. She didn’t care about
anything except getting Jace inside her. Maybe it was the fact that
she’d nearly died, or maybe it was just that she’d wanted this man
for way too long to risk losing her chance. “I want you. Can you
feel how much I want you?”
He muttered something
in Chinese with that Brooklyn accent of his. The combination had
always secretly amused her, but right now the foreign words
whispering across her skin only made her hotter. As hot as his warm
breath against her throat and his fingers smoothing up her thigh,
cupping her mound through her underwear before pulling the crotch
to one side and sliding his fingers inside of her.
“Jace!” She threw her
head back, banging it on the bricks, but she didn’t care about the
pain. Even pain felt like pleasure when Jace was touching her like
this. His thick fingers speared in and out of her, driving inside
her, filling every aching inch.
Even in her dreams,
she’d never imagined it would be so perfect, that his touch would
make her shatter apart even as another part of her was coming
together for the first time. Kissing Jace, feeling Jace’s hands on
her, made her feel safe in a way she’d never thought she could. It
was like she’d been free-falling through some vast, terrifying
blackness and suddenly had someone to hold on to.
They were still
falling—that hadn’t changed—but now they were falling
together.
“I want to fuck this
pussy, Sammy,” he mumbled against her lips, his words sending the
knot of tension in her womb spiraling higher. “Are you ready for me
to fuck my pussy?”
His pussy. His. The
way he’d taken such casual ownership of her body should have made
her angry, but it didn’t. It was what she wanted, what she’d always
wanted. She wanted to belong to Jace, every last part of her, and
her pussy was a fine place to
start.
“Yes, fuck your
pussy,” she said, surprised how right the coarse words felt in her
mouth.
Sure, she’d read her
share of erotic novels, but she’d never had the chance to play the
wild, naughty girl in real life. Her few boyfriends had always
insisted on keeping things soft and sweet in the bedroom. One had
even told her that it wasn’t sexy to play rough with a blind woman,
that it was like “kicking a three-legged dog.”
They’d been broken up
before she’d gotten her panties back on. That asshole clearly
hadn’t understood her or what she craved.
But Jace did, as was
evidenced by the way he ripped away her panties, without a word of
apology for ruining her sensible black underwear.
She knew it was black
because all her underwear was black. All her clothes were black or
brown, ensuring that she never picked out an outrageous color
combination. It was one of the tricks she’d learned through the
years, one of the ways she’d adapted. Not that she could quite
remember what the colors black or brown really looked like anymore.
Everything she’d seen before that night in the barn was a blur, a
muddled collection of memories that her adult mind couldn’t seem to
sort out, no matter how hard she tried.
As if summoned by her
thoughts, cold fire began to burn the backs of her eyes. It was
like a brain freeze from drinking a chocolate malt too fast, but a
hundred times less innocent.
And a thousand times
more terrifying.
“Sammy.” She heard
Jace whisper her name as if from a great distance and realized he’d
unzipped his pants and was using the head of his cock to circle her
clit. His pre-cum mingled with the wetness of her body, making the
swollen tip slide back and forth across her with an unparalleled
eroticism. Her breath hitched, and every nerve ending screamed out
its approval. She was going to come, right now, before he’d even
shoved inside her.
But even as her
nipples drew tight and things low in her body clenched with the
force of her release, her mind experienced an explosion of an
entirely different, entirely awful variety.
It was like a bubble
burst behind her eyes and suddenly she was somewhere else, someone
else. She was someone who could see, but she couldn’t envy them
their sight, not even for a second. What they were seeing was too
awful.
There was an evil
presence with them in the room. Sam could smell the same noxious
scent she’d smelled before she’d entered the ruins. It made her
choke as she turned to reach out to the person next to her. The
other person was small, but Sam sensed it was a man even though it
was impossible to make out his face. There was too much blood.
Blood pouring from his mouth and eyes, blood running through the
hands he pressed frantically to his face, trying to hold back his
death with feeble human fingers.
Samantha screamed,
but it wasn’t her voice, just like it wasn’t her arms that rose to
block the attack when a hulking shadow ran toward her. The oddly
large ring sitting on the woman’s left hand seemed familiar, but it
wasn’t Sam’s. She didn’t own much jewelry, and nothing so
chunky.
Before she could
place where she’d felt a ring like that before, a baseball bat
swept past her raised arms to crash down on her head again and
again, bludgeoning the life from her body. But still, Sam’s eyes
couldn’t focus in on the hands holding the bat that struck her so
hard she spun in a wild circle.
All she could see was
the knob of the front door looming too far ahead for her to reach
it, and a basket of flowers crushed to bits on the pale wooden
floorboards beneath her feet. The boards were almost white with age
and seemed to glow even brighter as drops of red splattered across
them, mixing with the lavender and pink of the flowers, a macabre
painting created by the blows that continued to rain down upon her
skull.
So that’s bloodred, Sam thought, the part of her
that was Sam realizing the woman she had momentarily shared a skin
with was dead seconds before Sam was jerked back into the darkness,
back into her own shaking, trembling body.
“No!” she screamed,
pushing against Jace’s chest, the feel of his cock ready to push
between her legs, of the aftershocks of release that were making
her body tingle and throb, suddenly making her ill.
How could she be
feeling pleasure when somewhere out there two innocent people were
being murdered? When she’d seen the murder herself, through another
person’s eyes?
“Please. I have to
go. I have to go!” Her voice cracked and a sob escaped her throat.
The realization that her little “gift” for predicting the future
had taken a shocking new form nearly snapped what was left of her
sanity. She wanted to curl up on the ground and cry, to beg the
powers that be for mercy, to swear she would be happy never to see
again if she was spared any more death.
But begging wouldn’t
accomplish anything, and Jace hated it when women cried. Really
hated it. She could tell.
“Hey, relax. You can
go,” he said, setting her feet back down on the ground. He stayed
close, however, close enough that it was impossible to pull her
dress down without brushing against him as he tucked himselfback
inside his jeans. “But you need to tell me what’s wrong. What
happened? Are you okay?” She felt every muscle in his body tense
and could practically hear his teeth grinding together. He was
wondering if she was going to go hysterical female on
him.
There was little
doubt she would, once the fact that two
people were dead really sank in.
“No, they’re not
dead. They’re not dead yet,” Sam mumbled as she scrambled away from
Jace, adjusting her dress with shaking hands. Something in her gut
told her it wasn’t too late. The man and woman from her vision,
whoever they were, weren’t dead yet, but they would be soon. She
had to find them, had to get to them before their murderer
did.
If she could only
remember where she’d felt that ring before. It had been on a
woman’s hand, obviously, but which woman? She met so many people at
her shop, and she always made a point to touch a woman’s ring and
ask about her jewelry. It was a great way to break the ice, to put
people at ease.
But this ring was
different—very large, a lump of cool stone. She’d felt it more than
once. On a cool, dry hand, thin fingers, almost fragile-feeling. It
hadn’t been that long ago, maybe last week, when the woman had come
in to talk about—
“Her daughter’s
wedding. Mrs. Choe!” Oh, God, the flowers on the floor in her
vision … they were the flowers she’d been taking to the Choes
before she’d wandered into the ruins. She hadn’t known the exact
colors of the flowers, but she’d recognize the basket anywhere.
She’d chosen it especially for its large, coarse weave interspersed
with woven half-moons in honor of Sin Moon’s name. She had to find
those flowers, to make sure they never reached the Choe
house.
Terror made her hands
shake as she squatted down and ran her fingers along the ground,
looking for her cane. She’d dropped it sometime in those first few
moments with Jace, those moments that might cost the Choes their
lives.
How could she have
let herself indulge her sexual fantasies when she’d been so certain
someone was going to get hurt that she’d risked walking into the
demon ruins by herself? No matter what Jace had said about the Ju
Du making the sounds she’d heard, a part of her hadn’t been
convinced. She should have kept looking for the woman, or, at the
very least, made a report to the police. Why had she given up?
Assumed the woman was dead and so her earlier dream didn’t
matter?
Shit. The dream! It
had been Mrs. Choe in the dream. The sensations were the same, the
feel of blood pouring down her face, her head exploding with agony.
She simply hadn’t realized right away because she’d been seeing the
violence as well as feeling it. Actually seeing—the way a normal person would, without
shadow fingers or other dream metaphors to mask the
violence—through Mrs. Choe’s eyes.
“Are you all right?
Do I need to call someone?” Jace asked as he pressed her cane into
her hand and helped her to her feet. “Maybe your
brother?”
“No,” Sam said,
tapping her way over to the Dumpster, where she’d left the
flowers.
“We don’t have to
tell him that I found you in the ruins,” he said in a soft, patient
tone. “We can just say I ran into you on the street and you needed
some help.”
Great. He thought she
was crazy. So crazy he wasn’t even angry that she’d come on to him
as if he were the last man on earth and then shoved him away. With
a hard-on like he’d been sporting, he was going to be in pain if he
didn’t get some relief, but he didn’t even care. Because she was
insane, and he was glad he hadn’t ended
up taking her to bed … or to brick wall or whatever. Everyone knew
crazy chicks got clingy, and Jace hated clingy. He was probably
breathing a sigh of relief that he’d dodged the bullet that was
Sammy Quinn.
Damn it. He’d called her Sammy. No one ever called her Sammy. She was always
sensible Samantha or friendly, likable Sam. Never Sammy. Sammy
seemed like someone she’d like to be, someone wilder,
sexier.
But losing her chance
at being Sammy with Jace would be worth it if she could just find
those flowers, if that basket was behind the Dumpster and the Choes
still had a chance at life.