“Never happen…” I whispered through clenched teeth, trying not to move my cheek. Fury raged in me, hot, heavy, and completely impotent. But there was nothing I could do without making it worse. I couldn’t Shift my teeth or my hands without him noticing. I needed an opening. Something to distract him long enough for me to make a move.
“Never say never…”
Finally, the tip of the knife reached the corner of my mouth, and Dean pulled the blade away from my face. I set my jaw firmly, trying to stop the tears from flowing. But they came, anyway, and I allowed myself one heartbroken, pissed-off sob. It was done. No matter what happened next—even if I killed him with my next breath—Dean’s mark would always be there.
“Ready to let him go?” Dean’s words were for Jace, but his psychotic leer never left me, and his knife hovered near my neck. When there was no answer, he raised the blade again and slid the cold, blood-wet steel down the scooped neckline of my T-shirt, between my breasts.
“Don’t,” I whispered, acutely aware that the knife was now inches from my heart.
“Dean…” Alex warned. “Her face.”
Just as Jace growled, “Cut her again and I’ll kill you. If she doesn’t do it first.”
Dean grinned. One quick downward stroke split my shirt right down the middle. The blade snagged on the front of my bra, then that gave way, too, and I was exposed from neck to navel. “Maybe your face isn’t all we should decorate. I’m thinking concentric circles.…” He dragged the tip of the blade lightly over the curve of my left breast without breaking the skin.
My pulse pounded, and rage scalded me like the heat from a bonfire. I was ready for help now. I glanced at Jace again and blinked, begging him silently to do something. Anything to keep Dean from carving up my chest. Anything short of letting Alex go.
“What’s wrong, Jace?” Dean taunted, and my skin crawled when he pushed the left half of my shirt aside with his pinkie. “Not gonna want her after our little makeover?”
Jace swallowed and glanced at the blade, the point of which trailed lightly toward my left nipple. He was afraid of making it worse. Afraid that any movement on his part would make Dean cut me again. Leave his mark elsewhere.
I was scared of the same thing. Terrified to take a deep breath for fear of pushing the blade through my own skin. But I would not be this monster’s fucking pincushion!
“You bastard,” I whispered. I sucked in a shallow breath through my still half-constricted throat. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you,” Dean purred, dragging the back of the blade around the curve of my breast. “Why would you give it up for the token stray and Malone’s disposable stepson, but I get a big fat ‘never’? Sounds like I’m the only one you’re not wrapping your legs around these days.”
Jace’s growl rumbled through the room in a rapid crescendo. He pulled his own knife back and shoved Alex forward with his knee. Alex grunted in surprise, and Dean turned toward the sound, pulling the blade about an inch from my skin in the process, giving me the best shot I was going to get.
I grabbed Dean’s fist—still clutching the knife—and twisted with all the strength of my rage. I shoved his hand away from me. Hard. The blade slid into his chest, low on his left side. It slid between his last two ribs, meeting no resistance from bone.
Dean’s eyes went wide. His mouth dropped open. His left hand fell from my neck to clutch at the knife. Blood soaked his shirt, dripping toward his belt.
I sucked in a deep breath, then pushed him with both hands. Dean stumbled backward and tripped over Lance’s leg. He landed on his rump, still holding the knife handle. He stared at me in shock, obviously afraid to pull the blade out.
“Do something with him.” I flinched at the pain tugging at my cheek when I spoke, then nodded toward Alex as I pulled one half of my ruined shirt over the other, then tucked them both into my jeans to hold them closed. Mostly.
“Suggestions?” Jace gripped his half brother by the neck with his now human left hand and spun him so that they faced each other, the blade again pressed to Alex’s throat. “I should kill him. He was going to finish me, then…” His glance strayed to the remains of my shirt, and fury flashed in his bright blue eyes.
“He was gonna try.” I grabbed a three-inch-thick phone book from the end of the bar, then stomped across the floor, my footsteps shaking the whole building. I swung with both hands in spite of the pain in my arm. The book slammed into Alex’s head. Jace let him go, and Alex’s legs folded beneath him. He was dazed but not unconscious, so I squatted beside him and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at me while Jace stood over him with the knife, just in case.
“I will never marry you. I will never have sex with you voluntarily. And the day you touch me without permission will be the day you swallow your own testicles whole. Do you understand?”
Alex gritted his teeth and glared at me. But he made no reply.
“Stupid, stubborn son of a bitch. If you keep following your father’s lead, you’re going to die just like him. I should probably kill you now, to save me the trouble of kicking your ass later.” But I couldn’t kill someone who wasn’t actively threatening someone else’s life. I was the good guy, and it was hard enough to remember that sometimes without making gray-area kills. So I stood and kicked him in the head, softening the blow at the last second to make sure he’d survive it.
His eyes fell shut, his head rolled to the side, and his jaw went slack. But he was still breathing. Good.
Now that the moment was over and I’d survived—mostly intact—my aches and pains were starting to surface. My right wrist ached sharply, and my face burned like I’d been flayed alive, thanks to the knife I’d brought to the party and the salt from my own tears.I snatched a half-used roll of duct tape from the top of a narrow entertainment center and tossed it to Jace. “Tape them up?”
In the kitchen, I pulled the last paper towel from the roll on the counter and bent to peer at my face in the dented, grease-splattered toaster. I bit back a groan and blinked away more tears. The cut was long and straight, and blood stained everything below it, including my neck and the collar of my useless shirt. I wet the paper towel at the sink and carefully wiped away most of the blood, glad to see that it had stopped flowing. Then I knelt to glance under the sink for another roll—they’d come in handy on the road. Instead, I found a small, lidless box holding several pre-filled tranquilizer syringes.
Score. I shoved all four into the pocket of my jacket.
In the living room, I found Jace standing over his newly bound brother, watching me carefully, his expression a mixture of sympathy and heart-wrenching guilt. I knew that look. He felt responsible for my cheek because he hadn’t been able to stop Dean from cutting me. I felt the same way about my cousin Abby’s rape, though I wasn’t even there when it happened. And it was even worse when I’d left Kaci with the thunderbirds, though I’d had no other choice.
“I’m fine,” I insisted before Jace could ask. He looked unconvinced but knew better than to argue.
I turned to survey the room. Alex and Lance were out cold and bound hand and foot with duct tape. Colin Dean was bleeding all over the carpet, propped against the front of the couch, his face pale from blood loss, his eyes glassy.
“Can you pull the rental around back while I find Marc?” I asked Jace. I couldn’t risk anyone from the middle building seeing me, and I was worried about Marc. If he could have helped us, he would have, especially when Dean was carving up my face.
Unless he’d heard too much.
If he knew I’d slept with Jace, would he leave us? Would he have let them kill Jace and hand me over to Malone? Would he have let Dean cut me?
No. I shook my head, trying to shake off thoughts and questions I wasn’t ready to confront. Jace dug the car keys from his pocket, but as I turned to follow him through the open kitchen door, a small glint of light drew my focus to Dean, where he still sat with one hand around the body of the folding knife protruding from his chest. The flash had come from his other hand. What the hell?
Squinting, I came closer, and Dean tried to slide his left hand beneath his thigh. But I’d already seen what he held: his cell phone, flipped open and ready to dial.
“Nice try.” I stomped faster than he could react and smashed three of his fingers along with the phone.
Dean howled in pain, and I held my open palm out to Jace. He tossed me the roll of tape, then headed straight for the car. I peeled off a strip of tape and slapped it over Dean’s mouth, then pushed him onto his side—ignoring his wordless moan of pain—and bound his hands at his back.
With Dean silenced and immobilized, I marched toward the kitchen—and nearly jumped out of my own skin when Marc appeared in the open doorway, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans from the backpack I’d left with him in the woods.
“Damn it, you scared the shit out of me!”
“Chingao!” Marc crossed the trailer in an instant, brows drawn low, gaze trained on my fresh cut. “What the hell happened to your face?” He took my chin and carefully tilted my cheek toward the light. “It’s straight and clean. Shallow, but it’s gonna scar.”