Vengeance Borne (19 page)

“Did Finn stay put when you told him to?” he asked, dusting bits of gravel from his pants.

The amused smile on her face was all the answer he needed.

Chapter 14

THE KID STARED over Trish’s head, eyeing Jacquelyn warily, as though she was the predator. To be fair, he had little recollection of his encounter with the Goblin, and she still had her Glock drawn. You know, just in case the Goblin had a buddy hiding in the ditch somewhere. Trish took the reins, using her Bearer’s tricks to calm him down enough that he could tell her he’d been hitching to New Meadows from McCall after his car broke down several miles back. Jacquelyn often wished she were the motherly type, the one people opened up to. But having a gun pointed near his face probably did little to endear the kid to her.

“Let’s get Micah home and then I’ll take this young man into town,” Trish said, helping the still discombobulated kid into the backseat of the truck.

Fine by me
. The fact that the dazed teen needed help Jacquelyn couldn’t give him was a sore reminder that the only thing she was good at was killing. Plain and simple. And wasn’t that just awesome? What kind of mom would she ever be with her skill set and personality? “Hey Mom, did you make cookies?” her son would ask, friends in tow. “No, kiddo, I didn’t. But if you guys will stop your whining for a few seconds, I’ll teach you how to adjust your aim when your clip’s loaded with silver instead of steel.” Nice.
I’ll win Future Mother of the Year for sure!

It was best to leave Trish and her soft, motherly nature with the kid. Besides, Micah needed to rest. He had a nasty gash in his skull and four bleeding wounds across his shoulder where the Goblin had taken a swing at him. And just because she wasn’t the mothering type, it didn’t mean she couldn’t worry about him. “Don’t take your time playing taxi driver though, Micah needs some first aid.”

Trish smiled her pleasant enigmatic smile, as if oblivious to Jacquelyn’s mega uptight tone. “He’ll be fine until I get back, won’t you dear?”

Micah was perched in the front seat of Trish’s truck, sandwiched next to the hitch hiker teen and he nodded in response, too quiet and withdrawn for Jacquelyn’s peace of mind. He hadn’t spoken to anyone since Trish showed up, and she was afraid that she’d pushed him too far. Not everyone learns to swim the first time they’re thrown in the deep end.

As the truck bounced along the old country road, Jacquelyn tapped her fingers against the butt of the Glock, the
thrump, thrump, thrump
set her mind at ease so she could think. The Goblin had known about her Fury trouble, obviously. Vengeance and violence had a tendency to draw in an abnormal share of supernatural creatures, like sharks scenting after blood.

At least the kid was safe, and Micah, well, relatively unscathed. She could chalk the night up as a success. But Jacquelyn wondered, as the truck approached Trish’s house, why it didn’t feel so much like a win? “I’ll see you in about fifteen minutes?” she asked Trish as she helped Micah out of the front seat.

“Less than.” Trish shifted into reverse, edging the truck back before Jacquelyn had a chance to close the door. “Get him cleaned up and make him a cup of tea. I’ll be back to get Micah’s head on straight.”

Jacquelyn closed the door, and Trish turned the truck around and headed back toward the highway. She looked up at Micah, his gaze fixed on the front porch.
Looking at anything but me
, she mused.
He must be pretty pissed
. A Waerd’s life wasn’t for everyone, in fact, it’s probably why the Sentry stole them as babies. No one would volunteer for this job. And a Bearer’s life couldn’t be much better, weeding through emotions, trying to untangle his own from everyone else’s. A pang of sympathy tore at her heart. Micah hadn’t asked for any of this, but he sure as shit was neck-deep in it now.

“Do I come off as a pussy or something?” Micah asked as Jacquelyn followed him slowly up the front steps.

“What? No. Why would you ask that?”

“I’m not trying to pry or anything, but Christ, do you have to feel so sorry for me? Seriously, it’s a little emasculating.”

Empaths. Might as well be freaking mind readers. “I guess it’s my turn to be sorry, then.” Jacquelyn rushed ahead of him to open the front door and he glowered.

Acknowledging his injured state wasn’t helping his macho attitude.
Ugh. Men
. She walked into the living room in front of him, because holding the door open was only going to help his case against her. “I don’t think you’re a pussy,” she remarked. “You shouldn’t have been out there tonight, though. It would have been better for you if I’d eased you in. It’s just that—”

“If we hadn’t gone out there, that kid could’ve died. I’m not okay with that. You did what you had to do, and you shouldn’t worry about how I will or won’t deal with any given situation. Was I freaked out? You bet your ass. Anybody would be after seeing an honest-to-god Goblin for the first time. Sort of shatters your illusions of reality, you know? But I recovered. And it didn’t sit right with me, hiding behind that tree watching you out there.”

“Why? Because you wanted in on the action?” That was Finn’s issue with letting her take the lead. He seemed to like getting his hands dirty. Maybe Micah did, too.

“No.” Micah locked his eyes with hers. “Because you shouldn’t be risking your life alone. It was dangerous, and stupid. Don’t do it again.”

Searching for something, anything that would tell her he was joking, that he’d been more concerned with his ego than her safety, she came up empty. His face was etched with concern, his eyes large and serious, probing hers as well. What was he looking for there?

“So what you’re saying,” Jacquelyn started, turning toward the kitchen, “is that we’re partners and I should treat our relationship as such?”

He walked behind her, and she pulled out a chair at the dining room table. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“Sit, so I can clean you up before Trish gets back.” She grabbed a bowl from the cupboard and a washcloth from a drawer. “If you’re going to be hanging around for a while, and if you plan on flexing those Bearer’s muscles, I can agree to be a fair and equitable partner.” Turning on the tap, Jacquelyn waited for the water to get warm, her back to Micah. She filled the bowl and wet the cloth, ringing out the excess. “I guess we better see how thrashed your shoulder is…”

As she turned to face him, her jaw went a little slack. And her legs. And her spine. In fact, her entire body felt a little like Jell-O. He sat at the table, his shirt tossed over the back of the chair. Michelangelo’s David would be green with envy if he could see Micah without his shirt. Her eyes trailed from his perfectly sculpted shoulders, down the ridges of his abs. A smile played on his lips as he watched her, bemused. She pulled up an emotional barrier, lest he sense her lustful appreciation of his torso and cleared her throat. With all of the charm of a nervous thirteen year-old, she set the bowl on the table, sloshing warm water over the side. “Ready for me to clean your battle wounds?”

“I’m at your mercy,” Micah replied, but the playful glint disappeared from his eyes, replaced by a smoldering heat. And it scared the shit out of her.

Jacquelyn forced the air out of her lungs in a huff, realizing that the only way to get close enough to clean the lacerations was to stand between his legs. Stepping closer, she positioned herself, the inside of his thighs brushing up against her. “Sorry to invade your space, but I need to get close to clean these.”

Micah’s lids drooped over his eyes and his head tilted back, away from her face which was positioned just above his left shoulder. The gashes weren’t terribly deep, he wouldn’t need more than a little TLC from Trish. Though a Bearer couldn’t heal himself, he could be healed by another, and Trish was the most powerful Bearer Jacquelyn had ever met. Healing Micah wouldn’t take an eyelash’s bat of energy. With gentle swipes, she washed the blood from his skin, rinsing the rag in the warm water before she wrung it out. She traced a finger along the jagged cuts, careful to stay away from the red, puffy flesh already showing signs of infection. “Does it hurt?”

Jacquelyn looked down at Micah, his eyes closed and his face calm. He could’ve been asleep, his breathing was so even and relaxed. “Believe it or not, I’ve been hurt worse.” He peeked through one eye and smiled.

A rush of pleasure shot through her body and her stomach fluttered as though a thousand butterflies had taken flight. Yup,
just
like a thirteen year old. Jacquelyn rubbed the back of her hand against her cheek as if rubbing away the blush she was sure had settled there. Waerd’s didn’t blush, and they sure as hell didn’t get goddamned starry-eyed over a cute—oh, who was she kidding? Micah was
gorgeous
. Whether his shirt was off or not.

He shifted in his seat, sitting up straighter and he pressed his legs together, momentarily pinning her against him. Jacquelyn sucked in a breath, unable to release it, and searched her mental cache of meditation techniques to try and slow her racing heart. “I think that’s clean enough until Trish gets back.” She dropped the cloth in the bowl and swished it around. “But I need to look at your head.”

“Go ahead,” Micah murmured, his voice low and just a little lazy as if he were about to fall asleep.

“I—I uh, need to get behind you to look at it,” Jacquelyn stammered, leaning away from his bare chest. An internal argument had begun and she was slowly talking herself into taking another stab at cleaning the cuts that crossed the left quadrant of his chest. You know, just to make sure they were really,
really
clean. Her fingers stretched out toward a muscled pec… “Whoa!” She started back, forcing him to relax his legs and let her retreat. “Can you give me a second? I just remembered… Um… Yeah… I’ll be right back.”

Micah sat up straight, his gaze alert as he winced, massaging his shoulder just above the wounds. “What’s the matter?” His eyes darted across the confines of Trish’s dining room. “Is someone here?”

“No,” Jacquelyn answered with a sigh.
Just you, me, and your beautiful body
. She wished she could slap herself across the face, snap herself out of whatever insanity had possessed her. “I’m a little dizzy, that’s all. Happens sometimes, you know, coming down off the adrenaline high from the hunt. I need some air. I’ll be right back.”

She took the door that led from the kitchen to the back porch. “What are you thinking?” she asked aloud, bringing the heel of her palm to her forehead. “Get your shit together, Jax. Micah is
off limits
. You just broke up with Finn a month ago for shit’s sake! What are you
doing
?”

“Talking to yourself, sounds like.” Trish’s voice broke through the darkness as she stepped onto the porch. “He’s a good-looking young man, isn’t he?”

“Who?” Jacquelyn asked, deadpan.

“You know damn good’n well who.” Trish just loved to give her a hard time, and Jacquelyn had left the door open for her teasing. “Don’t beat yourself up for being attracted to him. If I was forty years younger, I’d be trying hard to make him notice me.”

“If you were forty years younger, you wouldn’t have to work at all to get his attention,” Jacquelyn pointed out.

Trish walked past her and opened the door. “You’ve got that right,” she said with a wink, closing it behind her.

Trish wasn’t who Micah expected to see walk back through the door. She took off her jacket and draped it on one of the dining room chairs before giving him an affectionate smile. “Sorry to disappoint you, dear.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you should know by now that you can’t fool a Bearer. It takes a lot of practice to learn how to mask your feelings. She’ll be in shortly, I imagine.” Trish filled a tea kettle from the tap and set it on the stove. “I thought I told her to make you some tea. That girl never listens.”

Micah sat quietly, looking toward the door. He’d promised not to pry into Jacquelyn’s feelings, but it was hard not to when she broadcast them like a reader board running with bright red letters. What she didn’t know, was that the racing pulse, laced with both curiosity and desire wasn’t far from what he’d been feeling too. At times, he couldn’t differentiate between her emotions and his. But when she’d stood between his legs, bending so close he couldn’t ignore the sweet scent of her skin, it had been his own heart that picked up in rhythm and his own breath that came quick though he sat still as a statue while she cleaned his wounds.

“Whew!” Trish interrupted his thoughts, slamming a cupboard door shut. “If it gets any steamier in here, I’m going to have to open a window.” She dropped a teabag in a mug and set it on the table. “You need to learn how to put a wall up. I’m not the only other empath in town, kiddo.”

Jacquelyn wasn’t wrong; having someone pry into your feelings was damned annoying. “I’ve been running for a long time, Trish.” Micah’s voice was low as he shared his secrets. “Even when I was standing still. This is the first time in my entire life I’ve ever felt like stopping.”

“Maybe you just needed to find your place in the world. Fate leads the way, we have only to follow.” The teakettle whistled, and Trish lifted it from the burner, the shrieking wail fading like the Banshee’s cry. She poured the steaming water into the mug and slid it across the table to him.