A Shock to Your System (Dangerous Creatures #2) (7 page)

"Bullshit," Jamie said.

The quick dismissal was irritating, but it
was deserved, so he pressed on. "I'm being serious. When I got the
call that there was a disturbance in the area, I volunteered to be
the first on the scene. I didn't know it was you, but even if it
hadn't been, I know how rough some of the others could be, and I
didn't want that for whoever it was. I didn't want it to be you. I
didn't want to hurt you or chase after you like that."

"Yeah, and instead you ended up shooting me
with a tranq gun."

He was clearly still pissed about that.

"And you blasted me with enough electricity
to shock me unconscious. That really fucking hurt, just so you
know."

"Not more than the flesh ripper, I'll
bet."

"That's not the point, Jamie. Any other
hunter could've had you euthanized for that."

"You're still wrong about sending
paranormals to the labs. And you're wrong about that girl. Maybe
she is on the wrong side of crazy because of what happened to her,
but her friends looked scared out of their minds. You were in a net
and screaming and they still wanted to get away from you."

"I'm not so sure it was me that the boys
wanted to get away from."

Jamie still looked angry, and Ethan was
tired of this. "I don't want to fight anymore."

The silence in the air sucked. The fact that
Jamie was sitting so close, and Ethan couldn’t even touch him, was
the absolute worst.

"Are you hungry?" Jamie asked. "I ordered a
pizza and some sodas."

Ethan managed a smile. "Of course you would
order junk food."

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Jamie
asked, but at least he was smiling now.

"It means that I noticed all the takeout
boxes in your fridge that one time you had me over. Pizza was
definitely a favorite of yours," he said, wincing only a little as
he shifted into a better sitting position. However, he didn't take
his eyes away from Jamie's face.

Now that the man was smiling and even
blushing a little, Ethan was reminded of just why he'd enjoyed
being around Jamie so much.

He was so damned cute, it should've been
sinful.

"Not exactly the best for a recovery, but
it's the best food to butter you up with so you'll let me go later
on," Jamie said, still grinning, like he didn't realize what he'd
just said.

Was he under the impression that he was in
Ethan's custody? That was the last thing that was happening here.
If anything, Ethan was at Jamie's mercy. Didn't he see that?

"Pizza should be just fine for a
recovery."

Jamie frowned as though he didn't believe
him. "Really?"

Ethan nodded. "Carbs, protein and fat for my
body to burn would be great right about now."

Jamie lit up. Not literally or anything, but
his smile was certainly bright. "Okay, great!"

How could he have ever thought to bring him
to Head Office? A guy who smiled like that didn't belong there.
"I'm not going to turn you in."

Jamie's eyes popped open wide. "What?"

Ethan took in a deep breath. "Don't ever
repeat this to anyone. None of your paranormal friends can ever
know. Just...say you got away or something. You got lucky and
escaped. I won't turn you in."

"Why not?" Jamie asked. "You were so gung-ho
about it before."

Jamie still sounded so
hurt and offended by that. "I wouldn't say I was
gung-ho
about it, but I
don't want to hand you over to the collectors after you saved me
from basically getting thrown into a meat grinder
either."

Jamie again didn't say anything for a few
seconds. In the short amount of time that they'd been dating—or,
well, been meeting up to fuck each other—Ethan had realized that
the man was the sort who liked to think before he spoke.

Didn't mean he always did a good job of it,
though.

"So, you're going to let me go because you
feel you owe me," Jamie said, and it wasn't a question.

"I guess that's the reason," Ethan
replied.

"And it had nothing to do with us?" Jamie
asked.

The bright lights of a vehicle flashed
across the windows and the room, cutting through even the shut
curtains of the motel room they were in, and Jamie tensed up. The
man almost came right out of his seat, as if getting ready to run
in case the lights came from a collector's van that was here to
take him away.

Ethan watched him. When nothing happened,
Jamie relaxed into his seat again as the car drove off.

Ethan's heart was speeding like it was on a
thrill ride, and it had nothing to do with the fear of being caught
by the collectors. It was everything, Jamie's scared-as-a-rabbit
reaction, his words, his actions.

Fuck. Jamie might as well have punched him
in the gut. The man had actually liked him, and not in the
little-kid-with-a-first-crush sense of the word either. In the few
times they'd been together, Ethan had been hopeful for calling
Jamie a friend, and maybe even, eventually, more than that.
Meanwhile, the whole time Jamie had thought of him as a
boyfriend.

Ethan hadn't realized that things had
progressed so quickly for the other man. He might not have been
inwardly calling Jamie his boyfriend, but he had hoped for it. He'd
enjoyed meeting the man, and looked forward to seeing him the few
times they made plans together.

And the sex had been fucking amazing. Ethan
had to think all kinds of disgusting things at that very moment
just to keep his cock from getting hard beneath the sheets as he
recalled some of the fun they'd had: the look on Jamie's face as
he'd moaned, his eyes squeezing shut, the smell of his musk hanging
in the air as Ethan thrust inside of him.

Now everything was so fucked up between them
that Ethan could hardly see straight.

It was better that Jamie not know about all
of that. It would be too hard when it came time for them to part
ways, and this was already hard enough for Ethan. No point in
rubbing salt into the wound.

"We hung out a couple of times and had sex.
That was it," Ethan said. "It's better if we don't try and make
anything more of it than that."

There. A perfectly logical explanation to
the completely illogical situation they were in. It shouldn't have
made him feel so damned bad, or made him not want to look Jamie in
the eyes.

That hesitation pissed him off. He was
making something out of nothing and reacting badly to it. Like a
bratty child not getting his way. Had this been any other break-up,
if it could even be called that, Ethan wouldn't have felt like such
a prick and his mouth wouldn’t be so damned dry. He needed to get
over it.

Jamie didn’t have to cringe about it,
though. Another thing to send the guilt signals flying inside of
him.

“
That was it?" Jamie
asked, not looking at Ethan either, not even looking at the
bed.

Ethan shook his head, glad that Jamie wasn't
looking at him. He wasn't sure he could handle looking into those
sad frost blue eyes. Jamie really could look like a kicked puppy
when he wanted to.

Jamie took in a long, deep breath, and then
he let it out and nodded. "Okay," he said.

The room was so damned quiet after that.

Then they looked at each
other at the same time. Ethan didn’t know about Jamie, but it felt
to him like his body had forced him to crane his neck over so that
he
had
to look at
the other man.

More romance novel bullshit, as if they were
meant to suddenly be staring into each other's eyes or something.
If this was a real romance novel then Jamie would have tied him
down onto the bed, or handcuffed him with his own shackles to the
crappy bed posts, spreading him out and making him helpless, while
simultaneously fighting off the lust that putting a former lover
into such a position would've naturally produced.

Ethan shouldn't be thinking about things
like that. Imagining sex while tied up was just making things stir
down below, a fantasy he wouldn't have minded otherwise was causing
him problems now, so he had to stop. He told himself he was going
to stop.

So then why was he having trouble not
looking at Jamie’s mouth, or imagining them at work on Ethan's
body? Jamie’s eyes were very clearly flickering down as well, his
blue gaze lingering on Ethan’s lips, as if he was thinking the same
dangerous things.

Then Jamie was leaning forward, as if pulled
by that same invisible force.

Oh fuck, why not have one more kiss?

The sudden knock at the door made them both
jump. Ethan hissed from the pain as his stupid fucking heart
launched itself into his nose. He instinctively reached for his
tranquilizer guns that weren't there. Right, as if he could protect
Jamie in the state he was in now.

Jamie’s eyes were as wide as a scared rabbit
about to be put into the cooking pot. “Who is it?” he called.

Ethan could’ve hit him for making such a
dumb mistake.

He shouldn’t be giving away their
position!

“
Pizza delivery,” called
the voice on the other side of the door, a voice that sounded too
young to belong to any hunter.

Ethan finally sighed, relaxing as Jamie got
up to answer the door.

Fuck. They’d nearly kissed each other. This
wasn’t going to end well.

Chapter Five

While they ate, Ethan did all sorts of
things that Jamie was too much in a panic mode to think of when
he'd first brought Ethan into this place.

For one thing, he'd asked for the radio on
the dresser, and he started playing around with it until he got to
one of the city's more popular talk shows. They were still close
enough to Lincoln Peak that they were able to get reception.

Fred Talk. Jamie hated this guy and his
stupid show. He was some ultra conservative nut who really hated
paranormals. Like super-hated them, as if he’d been personally part
of the civil war between paranormals and humans nearly a hundred
years ago.

"If the hunters and collectors are looking
for either of us, this guy should know it," Ethan said, picking up
a slice of pizza from the open box next to him.

Jamie had helped prop him up on all the
pillows earlier so that he could at least eat while sitting up.
Ethan had claimed to not need the help, but he didn't protest it
either. Jamie got the feeling that Ethan just liked having Jamie's
hands on him, and yeah, that might've been true for Jamie, too.

This was going to be the last day he ever
touched or saw Ethan again, and he couldn't help himself for
wanting to get as much in as he possibly could. Fuck, he’d nearly
kissed the man earlier, and he was torn between wishing he had,
talking himself into trying it again, and being grateful that
things hadn’t gotten that far.

He was going to go out of his mind.

To take his mind off of how much he wanted
to touch Ethan’s skin, he focused on just keeping the other man
comfortable. Or it could’ve been overcompensating, trying to keep
Ethan from realizing what it was Jamie really wanted to do to
him.

Ethan’s comfort was suddenly Jamie’s number
one priority. There hadn't been many good pillows on the bed to put
behind Ethan, so Jamie had even used the cushions from the little
chairs. Currently, Jamie's knees were almost touching his chest as
he sat in his chair without the pillow and cushion on it. He felt
like a little kid like this.

It was almost comical enough to make him
forget about how depressing it was to have to sit here, off of the
bed, seemingly so far away from Ethan, even though the gap between
them was less than two feet.

And all the while, Ethan didn’t seem to even
notice him. The man stared down at the radio in his lap, a frown on
his face as he listened to Fred run his stupid mouth, his pizza
slice on a little paper plate beside him.

The man was a heartless rock, and Jamie was
sick and twisted in the head for wanting Ethan to notice him and
stop paying attention to that asshole on the radio.

Jamie sighed into his knees.

The man just radiated that “I don’t give a
shit” lone wolf aura that made him look so sexy. The bandages, and
his messy chestnut hair also gave him the rugged, action movie hero
appeal that Jamie had always fantasized about with his hand around
his cock.

Was he doing it on purpose? It had to be on
purpose, right? No one was just that attractive, and gave off vibes
like that without trying, right?

Jamie tried to focus on his pizza, on
chewing and swallowing and so on. He even thought of what Ethan was
going to say to the people in Head Office when he returned with his
injuries, and without Jamie, but no, that didn't work. Of course
that wasn't what Jamie's stupid brain wanted to think about. All he
could think about, what with the way he was sitting, was the last
time his knees had been up in this ridiculous position.

It hadn’t been so ridiculous for how good it
had felt at the time though. They'd been in bed, of course, with
Jamie sitting in Ethan's lap, slowly riding his cock, squeezing his
anal muscles around the shaft on each up and down, back and forth
motion, driving the both of them wild.

There had been no sound in
the room other than that of their ragged moans and harsh breaths.
Jamie could still recall exactly how warm Ethan's skin had been,
how smooth it had felt and hard his muscles tensed every time Jamie
moved. He could still
feel
it even. God, he could even remember the exact
shade of pink Ethan’s lips were as they parted just slightly while
he'd gasped for breath, throwing his head back and exposing his
strong throat for Jamie to kiss and suck on.

Okay, not cool. Bad, bad, bad. The sudden
throb and twitch in his cock was enough of a sign that he was
thinking too much about this.