Kim Harrison - Dates From Hell

“I can’t wait to get inside you. You’ll die of the pleasure, baby.”

Baby?

Uck. I was going to have to put a stop to that. He sounded like a used car salesman, trying to sell me a vehicle I did not want.

His thumb teased me again, and I decided later would be time enough to discuss endearments. Who’d have thought a guy’s thumb could be so arousing. Of course, I couldn’t recall ever being this aroused.

Eric must have felt the same way because he yanked me in between two buildings and shoved me against the wall, slapping his lips against mine a little too hard. I tasted blood when my teeth cut my lip, shuddered when he licked the blood away.

I should have been angry, disgusted, a little scared. Instead I felt…wanted. Something I’d never felt before. Sure, in a tiny sane portion of my mind I knew I’d lost it, but right now I couldn’t summon the will to care.

Eric’s body shielded mine from the night, his erection pressed against me too high to be of any help. I’d have to climb his body, wrap my legs around his waist if I wanted any relief. I was contemplating doing just that when the snick of a match made me still.

Someone else was in the alley.

I yanked my mouth from Eric’s. His lips slid across my jaw, then latched onto my neck. My gaze went past his shoulder to the man hovering in the shadows. The glow of his cigarette did nothing to reveal his face. I got a sense of height, breadth, and darkness.

“Eric,” I whispered.

He continued to rain kisses across my chest, then rooted at the neckline of my brand-new black dress like a nursing child. My nipples tightened in anticipation, even as the glitter of eyes from the shadows caused a tingle of unease to dance across my skin.

What in hell was wrong with me? I was definitely not an exhibitionist.

“There’s someone here,” I said more loudly.

“Doesn’t matter,” Eric muttered, fumbling with his pants. “Gotta do you now or I’ll fade away.”

That got through to me. I might be attracted, aroused, insane, but I was definitely not so far gone that I’d let a virtual stranger screw me in an alley while another one watched.

“No,” I said.

He ignored me, sliding my dress up my legs, yanking at my pantyhose. The nylon went ping as his thumb popped through. A run shot down my leg, even as his erection beat a pulse against my stomach.

I began to struggle, becoming just a little afraid, yet in the midst of all that, I wanted him. And that scared me more than anything else.

“You’ll die happy, baby,” he muttered. “They always do.”

A hand slapped onto Eric’s shoulder. “She said no, hibrido. ”

Though the words were harsh, the tone was mellow, the accent south of the border. A voice that could haunt me for the rest of my life.

Eric shifted, his shoulders blotting out everything but him. Neither the hand on his shoulder nor the whispered warning even slowed him down.

The salt, however, did.

I wouldn’t have known what had been thrown in Eric’s face, except some of it hit me. The grains burned my eyes like hellfire.

Eric made a sound that was half snarl, half shout, and shoved away from me so hard my shoulder blades scraped the brick wall.

He swung around and the other man shot him.

Right in the head.

The shot was muffled— silencer, I thought—yetthe sound still bounced off the walls and echoed down the alleyway. Tensing in expectation of the blood splatter, my eyes slammed closed.

Nothing happened.

When I opened them again, I was alone.

No Eric. No stranger. No blood. What the hell?

I stepped onto the street. No one appeared to have heard the gunshot, or if they had, they didn’t care, continuing on their way with the typical zombielike trance of lifetime New Yorkers. The tourists were too busy staring upward, either dazzled by the neon or trying to find their way to their hotels by way of the skyscrapers—a method similar to using the stars in places where stars could actually be seen.

I was dizzy with the adrenaline, both confused and frightened, so I wandered back into the alley, and I saw him.

Just a shadow, a slip of darkness against the light as he moved onto the street one block over.

I didn’t think; I ran. If he vanished into the crowd, what would I do? How would I prove anything that had happened tonight? I didn’t consider why I thought I needed to prove anything.

I burst out of the alley, and someone grabbed me around the waist. The force of my forward motion, and the sudden end to it, swung me about so fast, my feet lifted off the ground. A choked sound came from my throat, but I didn’t have the air left to scream.

Even if I had, it wouldn’t have mattered since he slapped his hand over my mouth and dragged me backward. I just couldn’t win tonight.

“Why are you following me?” he asked.

“Why do you think?”

My lips moved, but the words were garbled. His body, rock-hard against mine, tensed.

“If I lift my hand, do you promise not to scream?”

Since screaming hadn’t worked very well for me so far, I nodded, and the hand went away.

“You shot my date in the head!”

“What date?”

I blinked. “The guy in the alley.”

“What guy?”

“Eric Leaventhall. Slim, blond, handsome.”

He snorted.

“What does that mean?”

He didn’t bother to answer, continuing to hold me aloft, my feet dangling near his knees. He was so much taller, so much broader, so much stronger, I felt helpless. And while that should have unnerved me, instead I got kind of annoyed.

“You mind?”

I swung my feet, almost cracking him in the shin, and he set me down but kept his arm around my waist. I could neither see him nor run away.

“There wasn’t any man,” he said.

“Of course there was. He bought me a drink. He—he—”

I ran my tongue across my lip, felt the telltale ridge where my teeth had ravaged the skin when Eric kissed me. I wasn’t crazy.

But this guy was.

“Let me go,” I ordered.

Amazingly, he did, and I scampered out of his reach and spun around.

My first thought: What a shame. He was too gorgeous to be insane. As if beauty and lunacy were mutually exclusive.

As dark as Eric had been light, bulky where Eric had been slim, this man was large, hard, his hair shaggy, his face shadowed by at least two days’ growth of beard. The clothes had obviously been slept in, a lot, though even before that, they’d been years away from new.

His blue work shirt had faded nearly to white from repeated washings. With it unbuttoned to his sternum, I saw the hint of a tattoo, though I couldn’t tell what the shape was. The jeans were ancient, too, the boots scuffed and dusty, his black leather jacket a relic.

His eyes were as dark as mine, but he had longer lashes. Isn’t that always the way? High cheekbones, a fine blade of a nose. I wasn’t certain, but I thought I saw the sparkle of an earring. Nothing fancy or swingy, just a shiny silver stud piercing one lobe.

He was so different from anyone I’d ever encountered—exotic and wild—I had to remind myself he’d just murdered my date in cold blood. Except…

Where was the blood?

According to him, there hadn’t even been a date.

I was back to the eternal question—was he crazy, or was I?

“There was a man with me,” I said, “and you killed him.”

“If I had, you shouldn’t be troubling your pretty little head.”

My eyes narrowed, but he ignored me.

“That’s the quickest way to getting it shot off,” he continued.

“In other words, Eric troubled his pretty little head? About what?”