“I like it when they fight. Don’t you?” Clement licked his lips, and Evangeline felt sick.
“Oh, sometimes. As long as they’re into it,” Bishop said in a conversational voice. “But are we really here to talk about sexual variations, or are you going to put your money where your mouth is and try to kill me?”
“If I take a run at you, it puts me at a disadvantage. You’ve killed enough people to know that,” Clement purred. “I think you should come to me.”
She saw Bishop’s broad shoulders shrug. “Have it your way.” He moved so fast he was no more than a graceful blur, kicking Clement in the side of his head. Clement staggered back, stunned, slashing out with his knife, but Bishop dodged him, moving to Clement’s side and kicking him in the back of the knees. Clement went down hard, his head hitting the ground with a thud, and he didn’t move, dazed.
Bishop went to stand over him, kicking the dropped knife away from him. Then he knelt down, grabbed Clement by the hair, and yanked his head up. “You cut my woman,” he said, “and you hurt my dog.” And to Evangeline’s horror, he took his knife and slashed the man’s throat.
Evangeline turned her face into the dirt and vomited. She could hear the gurgling sounds as the man bled to death, but Bishop didn’t move; he dropped the man’s head back and watched as he died.
She didn’t have enough in her stomach, and she was racked with dry heaves by the time he rose and turned toward her. He was going to kill her as well, she thought, no longer caring. What had the dead man said . . . “You’ve killed enough people . . .” Bishop the liar, the thief, the murderer, had no reason to keep her alive. She was a witness . . .
He scooped her up in his arms, and she fought him, her arms flailing, but he managed to subdue her with quick, brutal efficiency. She gave in, too sick and exhausted to continue the battle, and he carried her past the body, pushing her head against his shoulder so she couldn’t look. A moment later they were in the camper, and he was setting her down on the bed with exquisite care. She knew she should jump up, hit him, run, but for the moment she was just numb, and there was no way she could stop him from doing whatever he wanted to do.
He moved away from her, and she closed her eyes, trying to disappear into herself. But then she remembered she was naked; she reached for the sheet, pulling it up around her and curling into the fetal position.
Bishop came back. “Sorry, that won’t do.” She felt the mattress sink beneath his weight, his strong hand catch her shoulder and force her to face him. It wasn’t worth the struggle, and as she let him pull the sheet away, she told herself she didn’t care. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen her body before.
She opened her eyes then, looki
ng up into the face of a killer. It was the same face. The high cheekbones, the familiar-unfamiliar eyes. She looked at him, and it hit her with the force of a blow.
She wanted to fuck him. For a crazy, irrational moment she wanted to pull him down over her, take him between her legs, rut with him in the blood that covered her, and it didn’t matter how sick she felt: she wanted him. She wanted to wipe out death with life, she wanted to change everything. She stared up at him and said nothing.
“I’d wash you off in the stream but you’d be more likely to pick up an infection,” he said in a flat voice. He had a wet cloth in his hand, and he was washing her, cleaning the blood away from her skin. He worked with impossible gentleness, and all she could do was lie still and watch him, keeping her face expressionless. He found a place that hurt, and he frowned, his touch even more gentle. “It’s not that deep,” he said. “I think I can close it with butterfly bandages. I’d rather not have to stitch you up—I’m not very neat with my needlework.”
I’m supposed to smile at that, she thought. She couldn’t. She lay still as he rinsed out the cloth and drew it down her body with the impersonal attention of a doctor, as if her body had never meant anything to him. Finally he pulled back. “You’ve got two gashes, both of them shallow, and they bled enough that they should be fairly clean, even though you ended up rolling in the dirt. I’m going to put some disinfectant on them and bandage them . . .”
“What about Merlin?” She could finally talk, though she almost didn’t recognize her voice.
“As soon as you’re taken care of, I’ll go after him. Either it’s too late or he’ll be fine—five minutes won’t make any difference.” He must have brought her first aid kit over to the bed with him, because his hands were on her again, and she felt the sharp tug as he closed her torn flesh with the butterfly bandages. One slash was on her collarbone, the other was across the top of her breast. Any lower and it would have been across her nipple. She shuddered.
“You’re cold,” he said, finishing with the second wound, his cool hands on her breast, and she wanted to cry. But she didn’t cry anymore, she reminded herself. He flipped the sheet back over her, and she felt an odd, disjointed relief. “I’ll get you something for the pain.”
“I don’t need anything, I just need Merlin.”
He ignored her, moving away, and when he came back, he had a bottle of water and a pill in one hand. It wasn’t from her medical kit, and she looked at it dubiously. “I’m not going to . . .”
“If you want me to go after Merlin, you’ll take it,” he said flatly. “I’ve got other things to take care of out there, and I need to be sure you’re all right.”
“I’m all right without drugs . . .”
“Take it.” His voice wasn’t just implacable, it was dangerous. She wanted to protest again, but something in those blue eyes stopped her, and she took the pill. She had every intention of tucking it in her cheek, but she ended up swallowing it by accident.
She was too tired to glare at him. She sank back on the blood-stained sheets and closed her eyes. “Bring Merlin to me.” Her voice was barely audible. “No matter what.”
He said nothing for a long moment, and she was tempted to open her eyes again. She didn’t. “Rest,” he said finally. “I’ll bring him back.”
James Bishop stared down at Evangeline, controlling his need to touch her again. He had had better days in his life. He really hadn’t wanted Evangeline to know just how dangerous things were. He’d been a fool to think he could outrun Clement—even though he’d checked to make sure there’d been no tracker planted on the truck or the camper, he somehow must have missed it. It was unforgivably sloppy on his part—the kind of mistake a rookie would make. He’d been so determined to get Evangeline out of harm’s way that he’d almost gotten her killed.
He wasn’t used to making mistakes—another reason why he couldn’t risk being anywhere around her. The Corsinis knew she was a way to get to him, and they were as relentless as the Committee. It had taken five long years to bring the Corsinis’ filthy sex trafficking to its knees, but the rest of the crime family continued on like some overbloated octopus—the other arms slimy and lethal.
He never should have left Evangeline’s side earlier—that or, even better, he should have made sure Clement never got near her in the first place. He’d been searching for Merlin, whose sudden disappearance should have alerted him, and he’d played right into Clement’s hands. He’d fucked up, and he’d ended up with Evangeline’s beautiful, creamy skin marred by that bastard’s knife, with Merlin out there, possibly hurt or dead despite Clement’s assertions that he didn’t kill animals, and worst of all, he’d ended up with Evangeline knowing exactly who and what he was, a calm, methodical killer. It was no wonder she’d thrown up in the dirt.
There was nothing he could do about it now. He stared down at her as she lay beneath the bloody sheet, and he could see the outline of her body perfectly. He’d never wanted to fuck so badly in his life.
He was used to it—the normal aftermath to taking a life. But he’d never wanted to fuck anyone else he’d worked with or been with, and he’d killed more people than he wanted to remember.