Page 5 of Mortal Heart

Moving like lightning, she wrapped her legs around his and twisted, knocking him over. As he fell, she flipped to her feet and dove at him, knife in hand, intending to land with her knee and all her weight right in his gut—or lower.

Sky, cars, and gravel whirled around her, and one blink later she was on her back, pinned in place. His eyes, edged with the tiniest glint of silver, were less than six inches from her own. What the hell did the silver mean? No time to wonder about it right now.

She twisted and bucked, trying to use his weight and body position to throw him off her, but his balance was perfect and all she managed to do was grind her back deeper into the sharp gravel. So she stuck the tip of her knife through the denim of his jeans and into his skin right at his groin, just deep enough to draw blood but without severing anything important. Yet.

Ronan grabbed her wrist and squeezed in the exact spot that caused maximum pain. She tried to head-butt him and break his nose. Somehow he jerked back just in time. She felt the crown of her head brush his bristly chin. He squeezed her wrist even tighter, but she stubbornly held onto her knife. The price was numb fingers and white-hot agony that ran all the way up her arm.

They stared at each other. Her chest heaved, but the bastard wasn’t even breathing hard. “Get the fuck off me,” Arkady said. “Or you’re a dead man.”

“I know your voice, but not your face.” Ronan’s eyes darkened. “Who are you? How do you know me?”

His voice was deeper and rougher than she’d expected. And if she wasn’t mistaken, the roughness wasn’t just a result of disuse. His entire body felt taut, like a volcano about to explode. Alarm bells went off in her head. She recognized that kind of tension—she’d seen it often enough in soldiers and Vamp Court enforcers under so much pressure they were on the verge of breaking. And when they snapped, they had a tendency to take others with them.

This time when she tried to buck him off, she managed to throw him off-balance just enough to free one hand. She went for what should have been a solid right hook to his jaw.

Instead, Ronan caught her fist in his much-larger hand and squeezed. “I asked who you are,” he said coldly. “Talk.”

The Pelican’s front door flew open and bounced off the outside wall. Angry male voices drifted across the lot, along with the sounds of feet scuffing in the gravel and fists striking flesh. Several of the combatants had apparently decided to take their dispute outside.

Arkady glanced in their direction, then up at Ronan. “Company’s coming,” she said in her most annoying sing-song voice. “We’re either gonna have to hide these bodies or start killing witnesses. Thoughts?”

3

RONAN

The blonde womanraised her eyebrows at Ronan, as if daring him to keep her pinned until the brawlers spotted them.

This woman was made of solid brass, Ronan decided. Highly trained, unflappable, and undaunted even now. She’d stabbed him, but just deep enough to make her point and no farther. She’d given him the choice to back off and live, or push his luck and end up with a sliced femoral artery.

He liked it. All of it. Even the pain. Maybe especially the pain.

This desire could all be part of Michael’s plan, but with his body against hers, Ronan had a hard time remembering that. And up close he could tell she was entirely human. Not one drop of demon blood or anything else that could explain why the sight, touch, and smell of her burned in his blood like a drug.

She was right, though—they couldn’t stay where they were. Even the Pelican’s shifty patrons wouldn’t ignore a man pinning a partially clothed woman on the ground. The last thing he needed was to be attacked by a drunken mob.

Ignoring the twinge in his upper thigh where she’d stabbed him, he let go of her hands and rolled off her body. He crouched next to the dead minions’ car, out of sight of the men fighting near the bar’s front door. She did the same, still holding her blade. Its point dripped blood—hisblood. Her wrist had already begun to darken and swell where he’d squeezed it, and her arms, side, and back bled where the gravel had cut and embedded itself into her bare skin.

With a muttered curse, she picked broken glass out of her arms and flexed her wrist to test its range of motion. “So? Hide the bodies?” she prodded. “Or kill the bar patrons one at a time as they head this way? We’d probably be doing society a favor.”

He didn’t disagree, but she didn’t really mean it, he decided after studying her expression. “I’ll hide the bodies,” he said. Staying low, he made his way around the back of the car, where the older of the two men had gone down with the blonde’s knife in his heart. It had been one hell of a throw, and not a lucky strike either. He was willing to bet she could do it nine out of ten times. Possibly ten out of ten.

She retrieved her knife, an exquisite tactical blade he coveted, with a matte black finish. It took a very sharp bladeanda powerful throw to go through a man’s sternum. She wiped it on the dead man’s shirt and returned it to her boot.

“You want to stash ’em in the back seat or trunk?” she asked in an undertone, jerking her head at the body. “Once we make some room in the trunk, that is.”

He kept his expression bland. “What do you think is in the trunk?”

“We both know what’s in the trunk.” She smiled thinly. “Or should I say,who. The question is, what do we do about her?”

She’d known about the girl even before the car’s driver threatened to shoot into the trunk. Her reaction to his threat had made that clear. But how? He doubted she was involved in the trafficking ring, but everything about her was a mystery.

When he didn’t immediately respond, she scowled. “Fine. While you scratch yourself and wonder how I know things,I’llput the bodies in the back seat before someone sees them.” She glanced at the second dead man and made a face. “You got him in the eye. That was a lucky throw.”

“No more lucky than yours,” he retorted.

“I don’t need luck.” She smirked and blew on her fingertips. “Not when I’ve got these skills.”

Once she reclaimed her other knife—with another wrinkle of her nose as she pulled it from the younger man’s eye socket—they put both bodies on the floor behind the front seats. Ronan covered them with the threadbare blanket that had doubled as a seat cover for the torn back seat, plus the empty fast food wrappers and other trash from the front seat as extra camouflage.

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