Bite Me (Woodland Creek) (7 page)

Alice nodded. “Well, good. I…I thought about you sometimes,” she said.

“You did?”
Interesting. Very interesting. Please, keep talking. Say more.

She nodded. “Yeah. I, ah, used to wonder about where you went after, well, after everything. I thought you were dead for a while.”

“
What
?” She couldn’t have shocked him more if she’d punched him in the gut.

“You did?”

She didn’t look at him when she nodded. “Yeah.”

Jake blew out a hard breath, and then he realized what happened and he groaned. “Motherfucker,” he said. He rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes until he saw bright squares. “I know what happened. Fuck. I’m sorry. I don’t know why it never occurred to me…”

Alice nodded. “That Jake the Snake had to die in order for Jake Christopher Redfield to go back to his normal life?”

He nodded. “Fuck me. That’s so messed up.”

Of course his drug dealing, thug persona had to die. The fact that Jake had been shot had only made things easier to fake. He couldn’t even figure out why he’d thought that Alice would’ve thought differently.

“How did you find out I was alive?” he asked.

He’d wondered why she hadn’t tried to even send him messages when he was in the hospital. He waited for them, thinking for sure that she would’ve found a way to get a letter, a card, or an email to him.

No letters came from names he didn’t know, and no cards came that didn’t have names or addresses attached to them. He knew all the people who sent him get well cards and even balloons. Nothing to make him think that Alice had sent him anything, or had found a way to visit when he’d slept. He’d requested the nurses leave the window open at night, knowing the large tree several feet away would help her glide into his room if she needed to.

Still nothing.

“I don’t know,” Alice said. "It was almost a year after you were gone, and then I started thinking about it. You were a cop. You told me you were a cop, so it wasn’t like I was making guesses about it,” she said. “And I started to think about all the movies I saw where the cop dies at the end, just to actually be alive. I’m not the best with computers, but enough weeks of Googling your name as I knew it, and I finally found an actual picture of you from the academy, and then I got your real name, and then I found out you were still alive.” The blooming color returned to her cheeks. “I couldn’t find out anything else. I tried to find out where you lived, where you worked, but I couldn’t get anything else. I even hired someone to help me, and he couldn’t get anything either.”

“The fact that you found anything at all is impressive.”

And sloppy on the part of the guys in charge of erasing his life.

“I thought about trying to contact you, but when I couldn’t find…” She shrugged. “I guess I just figured I would let it go. None of what happened really mattered anyway.”

“Hey, no, that’s not true.” Jake grabbed her by the arm, stopping her. He had no idea where they were. It seemed they’d just been walking aimlessly, and now there was grass and trees everywhere, and what looked like a school in the distance, but the cop car was still tailing them, so they were safe.
She
was still safe, and he needed to have this conversation with her.

Might as well have it when he didn’t have to worry about someone jumping out at them with a gun.

Or while in the shape of a giant dog.

Her eyes were so damned wide as Alice stared up at him. Her pink lips were parted, and Jake barely held back a groan, because it had been so long since he had her this close.

He was holding her, gripping her really tightly by the arms. He might even be bruising her, but all he could see was her mouth.

He leaned in and kissed her, taking advantage of her parted lips. Talking was overrated.

It took Alice’s brain a couple of long seconds to catch up with what that burning sensation on her mouth was. The taste of Jake’s tongue in her mouth, which was exactly the same as she remembered it, thanks to the fact that he still drank his coffee the way he had nearly ten years ago—with lots of sugar—made her head swim.

Alice felt like she was eight feet under water. Everything was quiet. There were no noises, not even the sound of the wind or the police cruiser she knew was still not far away. Just them.

Just like in every romance novel, comic, manga, or movie she’d ever read or seen since they’d parted ways.

Yeah, she read manga. For artistic purposes, of course.

Alice wanted to lose herself in everything that was happening, but at the same time, she wanted to catalogue everything. Ten years ago, she’d lost herself in his kisses, in the way his hands touched her when he made love to her, and in the way his tongue had dipped into her belly button, and when she thought he’d died from the gunshot, a gunshot that should have been hers had he not jumped in the way, she’d wished more than anything that she had catalogued those feelings.

She’d wished that she kept better track of just how much his touches had made her burn up inside, because once he was out of her life, once she thought he was dead and gone forever, she’d wanted nothing more than to relive each and every one of those sensations.

She tried; she really did, but she was being swept away in it. Jake’s fingers on her cheek and chin gently pushed her head to tilt back, giving him even better access than he had before. She moaned and completely lost herself in the warm slide of his tongue inside her mouth.

It felt like he was tracing small letters in there as he licked her deep. He’d always been so damned good at this. No other man she’d kissed had ever felt like this. Alice thought she’d found one or two who could compare over the years, but now that she had Jake again, she knew there was no comparing this. Apples to oranges, or something like that. She couldn’t think properly at that moment.

When he pulled back from her, but still kept so close that their noses were almost touching and his hands were still on her face, it felt like she’d finally come up for air from that eight-foot deep pool she’d sunk into. Her entire body was warm, and it took her a second to realize what that horrible feeling was in her gut.

She was terrified this wasn’t what she thought it meant.

Jake’s head moved a little farther back, and his hands slipped away from her face and throat. “You’re… Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“What?”

Alice took stock of herself and realized she was trembling. It was all the pent-up nerves inside of her that wanted out, but Jake had probably taken one look at that and thought he’d scared her or something.

Her hands struck out faster than a cobra, and that was saying a lot, considering Jake was a snake shifter. Alice grabbed onto his brown leather jacket and held on tight. She was probably ruining it, but she couldn’t let him go. “No, I’m not…you didn’t scare me. Not really.”

“You’re not scared then?”

“I mean, I am, but…” She couldn’t look at him. This was too much. It was almost too much for her to handle, and the only way she could keep on talking was if she stared down at both of their feet.

They were almost toe-to-toe. Why hadn’t she remembered how big his feet were?

“I’m fucking petrified,” she admitted. “But not because you kissed me at a bad time.”

She could feel the way he stared at her, waiting for a proper explanation. Alice had to fight to take in proper breaths.

“I’m scared, because…because I’ve honestly thought about that, and almost nothing else, since the day the ambulance took you away when the police finally came for us, when they arrested Bobby and you told me to run. Then I thought you’d died, and I realized I probably didn’t even know your real name, didn’t know where you were buried…”

She had to stop going down that little rabbit hole. She’d blab forever about how much she missed him if he let her do it.

“I’m scared that you’re only kissing me because you’re testing yourself. That you don’t really mean it, or that you just want to see if it feels the same.”

She still couldn’t look at him, but she heard the tiny gasp he released when she said that.

And she was still gripping his jacket, like a teenaged girl holding onto the boy she liked while he was trying to break up with her. It was all kinds of pathetic, but she couldn’t exactly stop herself now, could she?

Jake sighed, and Alice held perfectly still when his hands came up to rest on her shoulders.

She expected him to push her back, but he didn’t do that. He just let his hands sit there. He wasn’t gripping her the way she was, but she still felt that burn. Everywhere he touched burned and tingled. Even her lips still felt warm and tingly, like she’d just had a spicy drink.

“I
was
testing myself,” Jake admitted.

Alice swallowed.

“But not in the way you think I was,” he said. She heard the smile in his voice, and Alice had to look up at him.

“I was seeing how long I could kiss you, or touch you, before I’d be able to stop myself. I don’t even care that the cop is watching us from his cruiser. I just had to do it.”

Alice bit down on her bottom lip. “It’s been ten years.”

“I know,” Jake said. “And we’re both different people. I wasn’t even myself when you were with me back then. I was as much myself as I could be, but I loved you. I wasn’t faking that, and I knew you were the one I’d love for the rest of my life when Bobby tried to shoot you. I couldn’t let him do it.”

“You nearly died for that.” She remembered the way he’d jumped in front of her, and then quickly shifted into his snake form after the gun went off.

He’d been so quick, and Bobby had panicked. The man had tried to stomp his feet down on Jake’s long body as Jake slithered forward so damned fast it almost hadn’t seemed real.

Which was when Alice had tackled the man to the ground, giving Jake the chance he’d needed to bite Bobby’s face.

It was enough to make the man retreat, and Jake had shifted back into his human shape.

For the first three seconds, Alice had thought they’d gotten lucky, that the bullet from Bobby’s gun had missed both of them.

Then she watched, horrified, as a bloom of red expanded across the white tank top Jake had been wearing. He’d fallen to the ground, and Alice had cradled him, trying to stop the blood flow before finding a cell phone and calling 911.

She’d thought he was dying then. He’d looked like he was dying, and he’d probably thought so too, which was why he’d reached up with a shaking, bloody hand and touched her cheek.

“A-Alice. I’m a cop,” he’d said.

And Alice had wanted to cry. She did a little, and kissed his cheek. “I know.”

She hadn’t known. Not really, but she’d suspected. A lot. Enough that it didn’t surprise her to hear him say it.

His eyes widened. “Are you a cop, too?” he’d asked, his voice raspy.

She’d really started to cry then, shaking her head. “No. I’m just what I’ve always been.”

“H-how did you know?” he’d asked. It had probably amazed the hell out of him, finding out that Alice had known. She could’ve had him killed so many times if she’d ever uttered her suspicion, but she never said anything.

Alice hadn’t wanted him to speak at all. It had seemed like a waste of energy, but she hadn’t wanted to quiet him either. If those were going to be his last words, then Alice wanted to savor every single one of them.

“You were always too good,” she’d said.

The ambulance arrived quickly, with enough cop cars to light up the warehouse where Bobby and his men had been hiding their stolen goods and drugs. More proof that Jake was a cop. Half of the city’s police force wouldn’t show up for a single shooting if Jake had been another nobody thug. She’d only had to say his first name.

Alice had stayed with Jake for as long as she could until she heard heavy footsteps stomping up the stairs.

“You need to go,” Jake had said in that raspy voice that scared the hell out of her.

Alice shook her head. Jake’s face was a blur because of her tears.

“You won’t survive a cage. They’ll make sure of that. Go away. Have a—a life,” he said, and then clenched his bloody teeth. “Get out of here.”

He said each word on what sounded like a pained breath, and Alice became aware of the noises all throughout the warehouse. Cops shouting, stomping feet on the old wooden floors, even a gunshot or two as the last of Bobby’s men at the time fought for their money and freedom. It would only be a matter of time before they found Jake and her together.

And Alice knew he was right. She wouldn’t survive a cage. Even if she spent a couple of days in a jail cell, that didn’t mean she would be safe. What if the people she’d just turned in came after her?

Her fear got the better of her. Alice took one of Jake’s hands and pressed it down on the wound. Jake grunted.

“Sorry, hold it there,” she said then kissed him one last time and backed away.

She shifted into her squirrel form and ran her little furry ass for the nearest window just as the cops broke down the door.

If they noticed the rodent leaping from the window and gliding toward the nearest tree, no one said anything. Their focus was probably on their bleeding friend.

Alice stayed in her tree. It had been a dead tree, no leaves, but she was small enough that no one noticed her as she watched Jake being pulled out of the building on a stretcher and being loaded into an ambulance.

Bobby was put into a separate ambulance, and that was the first time she’d gotten a look at his face. It hadn’t been melted by that point, but swollen up like a balloon. He’d been vomiting, and looked very much out of it. He didn’t put up any kind of struggle as he was carried to his ambulance on another stretcher thanks to Jake’s venom.

She’d selfishly hoped he would die, because then she and Jake would have nothing to worry about.

But Bobby had survived, and during Alice’s daily check on the news, she saw his picture online amongst the list of those who had died.

And now, look where they were. Almost ten years later, they were completely different people, older, more jaded, and they were still being affected by what happened back then.

“You saved my life,” Jake said.

Alice looked up at him sharply, eyes widening. She shook her head. “No, I nearly killed you.”

“I was fine. The ambulance got there in time and it just hurt a lot after, but you did save me,” Jake said. “You could have outed me at any time, but you didn’t.”

“I loved you,” Alice said.

“Do you still love me?”

She bit her lower lip and nodded. She couldn’t hide that from him. She couldn’t hide anything from him. Even back then, there had been something about him that made her want to spill all of her secrets to him, that had made her want to tell him about her father, about how she’d ended up working for some very bad people.

Yeah, she’d suspected he was a cop, or at the very least, a soul like her—lost to the world, thrown into things that he had no business being in.

“I don’t even know you,” she said.

At least that was true.

Jake let go of her shoulders, and he pulled back just enough to take off his jacket. He hooked it over one arm and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt.

“What are you—” Alice noted the snake tattoo he had on his forearm. A diamondback rattlesnake. “Thought you would’ve gotten rid of that,” she said. It was common for people to have tattoos, even people who didn’t have criminal records, but Jake had his own ink that he’d been pretty proud of back then.

“I got rid of almost all the others, except for this one,” Jake said. “The others will go soon enough, but this one I wanted to keep.”

Alice frowned. Without thinking, she reached out and touched his arm, pulling him closer so she could have a better look. “Something’s different.”

Then she spotted it, the thing Jake had wanted her to see.

The rattlesnake was coiled around a little rodent with big black eyes. She didn’t have to ask to know it was a flying squirrel. It was her.