Chapter Three
Six months later
He knew that ass. Jacob watched the woman as she shifted her hips, looked around the bar, then turned back to the bartender. Her short auburn hair was cut close, framing her irregular face and giving her an almost pixie look. She was barely five feet five inches, dressed in soft black jeans, a black leather jacket and hiking boots. And she had the prettiest rear he had ever seen on a woman. She was tempting seduction, hot lust and a warning he didn’t need. He groaned silently.
She shifted again. Her bu**ocks flexed and his dick throbbed. Hell, he didn’t need this. It had taken more years than he wanted to remember before he stopped waking in a sweat, the feel of that tight ass gripping his cock, driving him crazy. Hell of a time for a rescue, he had always thought. And here she was, six months after he was forced to walk away from her again, somewhere she shouldn’t be, tempting him and the fragile control that kept him away from her. And this was the wrong damned place and the wrong damned time to be tempting his control.
The dirty little South American bar was filled with thieves, cutthroats, mercenaries and whores. He was here to buy information, get laid and get out, in that order. And she walks in. He sighed wearily. His internal trouble barometer was going off the scales, and the six yahoos at the table nearest her looked much too interested in that cute butt to suit him. That was his ass. Didn’t matter that he had never finished f**king it, or the tempting little cunt beneath it. He still considered it his if it was anywhere in his vicinity. And what the hell was that man doing with her? She wasn’t supposed to be with a man.
Every possessive instinct he possessed roared out in protest. The soft, feral growl that rumbled in his chest was no surprise. It was all he could do to keep it to a soft warning rather than the vicious snarl he wanted to release.
“Jake, what the hell’s wrong with you?” His companion, a gunrunner and general badass, hissed from beside him.
“Problems,” Jacob grimaced then tossed back the rest of his whisky. “We’ll have to fight our way out.”
“Why?” Confusion filled Danson’s voice.
Jacob glanced at the other man, seeing the calculation in the hazel eyes that watched him. He nodded at Faith.
“See that tight ass?”
There was a moment’s silence. Jacob glanced at the other man only long enough to get more pissed than he already was. Danson’s quiet, intense perusal of those tempting curves was an insult to Jacob’s possessive instincts.
“Nice ass,” Danson’s voice was too appreciative to suit Jacob.
“That’s my ass, Danson, twisting around at that bar. My ass, my woman, and she’s about to get herself and me in a hell of a mess.”
He stood to his feet, grimacing at the sudden tight fit at the crotch of his jeans. His eyes narrowed as the six bastards ahead of him geared themselves to confront the pretty little ass flexing as the woman looked around the room again. Damned fine ass, he sighed. He was gonna wallop it first chance he got for being so damned stupid as to walk into this bar.
* * * * *
“It’s gonna turn into a fight,” her friend and adopted Pack mate, Hawke drawled lazily as he leaned back against the bar and watched the small group of men who had been calling out obscenities and impossible suggestions for the past few minutes.
There were six of them, and Faith could smell the rancid scent of unwashed bodies and violent lust. They were men looking for a fight and a woman they could hurt. Evidently, the whores in this place were too damned easy if they actually thought picking on her right now was a good idea. She shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t need this. She was here to find Jacob, that was all. Despite the pulse of adrenaline that sped through her veins, she fought for enough common sense not to push the bastards further.
Damn him, she thought, and damn Wolfe for sending her here. She was doing just fine where she was. A nice little apartment, a job she could work at as needed, and no problems. Four years was a long time out of training, and six years out of the Pack was even longer. Her last dismal failure as an Enforcer, after Hope’s kidnapping six months ago, should have shown him that. She doubted his decision in this little mission he had given her. Didn’t they all have cell phones for a damned reason?
And to top it all off, he sent Hawke with her. Not that Hawke wasn’t a damned fine fighter and a hell of a guide when she needed one. But he was a man, and a male Breed at that. Dominating, bossy, particular, and one problem right after the other. Regular human men were hard enough for her to deal with nowadays, but a Breed male was an insult to the independence she had established over the years.
“Faith, I say we come back later,” Hawke muttered as the men behind her became a bit more restless. “I don’t want to be fightin’ for your virtue, hon.”
So much for his willingness to fight, she sighed. Any other time he would be pitching head long into the fray. They had been searching for Jacob for two months now, and she was tired of being bruised and bloody from the fights he instigated.
She glanced over her shoulder, restraining the urge to roll her eyes. It wouldn’t be her first fight or her last, she was sure. But she definitely wasn’t in the mood tonight. She just wanted to find Jacob, give him the information and the message she had, then return home and sleep for a month.
Why she had to go traipsing after his ass, she didn’t know. Orders. She was Liaison, she mocked Wolfe’s words silently. It was her job. Like Jacob wanted her running around after him. He had shown how important she was to him when he walked away from her, again, six months ago.
“Don’t worry about my virtue, Hawke, it’s been in doubt for years,” she replied mockingly.
She pushed her hand impatiently through her short hair. She wasn’t going to think about it, she promised herself. She had more important things to deal with than the memory of her lost virtue or the man who had taken it. Or if it even counted as lost virtue.
She shifted impatiently, her hand falling to the revolver strapped to her thigh, thankful that she had checked it before entering the seedy little bar. If things got out of hand too much, it was there, but she sure as hell didn’t want to have to deal with the problems that would come with using it.
“Faith, this could be a bad thing,” Hawke drawled lazily. “We draw too much attention and we’re screwed. We’ll never find your man then. “
“He’s not my man,” she muttered as she sipped impatiently at her beer. “And he’s supposed to be here tonight. He better be, I sure as hell paid enough money for the information.” Damned good thing it was Wolfe’s money and not hers, she thought. She got testy where her money was involved.