Chapter Eight

Ashe.

Damn right, I owed Wren a kiss. More than one, all over her pouty lips, and then I’d skip straight to the good stuff and kiss up the insides of her thighs. What would she taste like, feel like when I sank inside her? I got hard just thinking about it. Harder, actually, if that were even possible. I’d sported a chub since I’d first laid eyes on her. Now, as I pushed to my feet to stand next to her, watching her eye-fuck me, I was sure I wore the same expression she did while my dick strained against the zipper of my prison uniform underneath the guard’s uniform.

“I just realized I have on entirely too many clothes,” I said.

She lifted an eyebrow. “We should probably find a solution for that. Like a shower?”

Check, please. A low rumble started deep in my chest. “Only if you’ll join me.”

She grinned, and it was all I could do not to throw her down on the table right here. “I did say you owed me a kiss.”

Still spinning from my insane day, I just about went into a tailspin when I took her hand and hauled balls out of the DBD feeding area. Her touch charged a lightning storm through my skin, reminding me that I was here, and free, because of her. It had been stressful as hell to get to this point, but it was so worth it.

She turned to me, and her grin grew wider, even more gorgeous, fueling my need to kiss her, taste her, be inside her right now.

In the same wood-paneled hallway we’d come in through, I released her hand to push her back against the wall. Roughly, I tilted her head back and covered her mouth with mine, groaning when I could still taste the blood she’d drunk on her lips.

She arched into me, her arms wrapping to the back of my head, her chest pressed against mine. Her lips and tongue matched my intensity, and soft moans rumbled into me and then all the way down to my dick. Then, she rolled her hips into mine, and I just about lost it right there. With a growl, I wrapped my arms around to her ass to grind her up against me. She felt so good, so soft, yet unbreakable too. I wouldn’t have to be gentle with her. Her legs wrapped around my waist, and she used the wall as leverage to dry hump me.

Sweet vampire Jesus, why were we still wearing clothes?

I set her on her feet and pulled away, drunk with lust and blood and freedom and adrenaline. We needed to get to a room. Wren took my hand, her lips swollen with my kisses, eyes bright with hunger, her guard’s uniform top sliding down to reveal her bare shoulder. Fuck it. Who needed a room when the hallway would work just fine?

With a laugh, she sidestepped my advance to just take her right here and pointed to a door marked Bathroom. “I’ll wash your back if you wash mine?”

I groaned low in my throat because I was pretty sure I’d warped back to caveman days and had lost the ability to form words. Female, good. Naked female, gooder.

I followed her in, just barely noticing the blue-tiled floor, the cinder block partition between the restrooms and sinks on one side and the showers on the other, and the low, wooden benches. We headed toward the showers, still clothed, damn it. From the sound of things, we were alone in here, but thankfully the showers were partitioned and curtained.

Wren turned on the water, and I stepped underneath the spray, both of us still fully clothed. I’d worry about that in a bit. More, uh, pressing matters took up my brain capacity. The shock of cold did nothing to cool me down. I wrapped my arms around to her front and kissed the back of her neck while she fiddled with the temperature.

“I think the lever is broken,” she said.

I groaned into her creamy skin. “It’s really not.”

Her laugh turned into a moan when I skimmed my hand down her stomach to rub her through her two pairs of pants. She melted against me, leaning her head against my chest and pressing her ass to my straining dick. I slid my hands back up underneath her shirts as she arched her neck to give me better access to the soft skin around her collarbone. She tasted like heat and sex, all wrapped up into a tight, gorgeous package. I ridded her of both shirts, and she turned in my arms to help me with mine.

Like a magnet, my mouth found hers again with enough force to push us both back under the water. It soaked our lips and tongues but made me even thirstier. My hands roamed everywhere over her body, needing to get her out of her bra and pants but also to squeeze her tighter against me at the same time.

She peeled both my guard and prisoner shirts off of me and then ran her hands down my chest, following the streams of water until her fingers rested on the waist of my pants.

Over the sound of the water, a pop rang out. Loud and close enough to separate us. We looked at each other, both of us seeming unsure and very much wanting to go back to what we’d been doing.

Wren licked her lips and glanced down at my dick pressing painfully against my soaked, too-tight pants. “That pop wasn’t you.”

“No.” I stepped in closer, telling myself to hell with whatever that sound was. “It definitely wasn’t.”

She grinned, and I lifted my hand to her face to wipe a wet piece of platinum hair from her forehead when there was a loud bang. It sounded like the bathroom door bursting open.

Both of us jumped and stared out through the curtain as if we could see anything behind its cream opaqueness. The air in the bathroom changed, not just the hot steam escaping through the open door but also the sense that we weren’t alone. And three was definitely a crowd.

Was that Zac? I leaned against the wall of the shower stall and peered out through a crack in the curtain. A shadow moved along the floor, moving toward the toilet side of the bathroom first even though our shower was obviously on. Making sure that side was empty before they came for the naked shower people, no doubt. But we weren’t nearly as naked as I wanted to be. A bad thing under normal circumstances. A good thing if this person was trouble though. Maybe they just really needed to piss.

I turned back to Wren who was peeking out the other side of the curtain. She shot her arm out to catch mine and squeezed, her body tense. A warning. Shit. I needed a weapon, anything to get us out of here. My options were a cracked green bar of soap someone had left in the tray in the wall, and an empty travel-sized bottle of hair conditioner.

Awesome. Why did survival lately feel like a test I didn’t study for?

The curtain fluttered, and not because of us. Someone was coming, and not the happy kind either. I had the element of surprise in that I knew they were here, but I doubted that would be enough to get us out.

Keeping my eyes glued to the fluttering curtain, I pushed Wren back against the wall opposite mine, out of the way, I hoped. I waited, my whole body coiled tight. Then, when a slight shadow darkened the curtain, I took the spraying shower head and wrenched it out of the wall.

The curtain snapped open, and a vampire I’d never seen before wearing black ops gear stood there with his silver bullet gun already aimed.

Wren jumped at him. Shirtless, soaking wet, and sexy as fuck, she knocked the gun from his hand and immediately followed that with a wicked left hook that looked like it really rang his bell.

I stood there like an idiot with a shower head in my hands. Water gushed from the hole in the wall behind me and seeped out onto the blue-tiled floor around Wren’s boots and the vampire she was currently punching holes in. And the similarly dressed guy creeping around the bathroom’s divide behind Wren’s shoulder.

So, I would get to use the shower head after all. Things were really looking up these days.

The creeping guy lifted his gun at Wren’s back. I shot out of the stall, my shoes slipping along the wet tiles, and collided with him. The butt of his gun slammed into my jaw so hard I spun into the wall face-first. I bounced back before I fully recovered my senses, and the guy hit me again in the exact same place.

Pain exploded, times two. Fucker.

I went down with a splash in the already inch-deep water, feeling every single tile as I hit.

“Ashe!” Wren shouted behind me.

“Leave him alive!” the other vampire shouted at the exact same time.

Me. He was talking about me. They wanted me back in jail, alive, but they didn’t look like police.

Wren cried out, but I didn’t see what happened. I was too busy staring down the barrel of the gun pointed at my head by the guy who’d hit me.

“Drop your weapon,” he ordered.

Fuck that. I’d destroyed some perfectly good property to get this shower head. I lifted my free hand in surrender, released one end of the shower head, and slowly moved like I was going to put the rest of it down too.

Then I flashed it out toward his gun so it jerked the barrel away. He fired. Tile exploded right by my head, but I was already surging to my feet before he could aim again. I crashed the shower head into his nose, then punched him in the ribs, then in the nose again, the same exact spot. Ha! Blood squirted, and he tripped over the water onto his ass.

Movement blurred at my side, and I started to swing, but I caught myself. It was Wren, looking mighty pissed, her face cut and bruised but still just as gorgeous as ever. She splashed toward the vamp, who scrambled for his gun that he must’ve dropped. I kicked it out of his reach and then picked it up.

“Who are you?” I demanded and pointed his own gun at him.

Before he could answer, though, Wren circled to his back, put him in a choke hold, and squeezed until a loud crack echoed around the bathroom. She let out a wild battle cry as his head came clean off. Then she tossed it aside like it was a bad coconut and skipped back as his body slumped to the floor. Blood spattered the tiles around the twitching vampire.

I blinked. I’d never actually seen someone do that before.

Wren stood, her face hard and unflinching as if she did this every day. It was a different expression than when she’d busted me out of jail. Either that, or I was an entirely altered person, seeing her from a brand new, darker perspective now that she wasn’t dangling my own freedom in front of me.

She flicked her gaze to me, and her face softened. “I probably should’ve waited to do that until after you got your answer, huh?”

“Yeah,” was all I could say.

“I usually have no interest in what they have to say.”

Usually. I glanced behind me at the other pile of dead and headless corpses. Never mind these vampires. Who was Wren? This was the second time today she’d left a trail of bodies. Was this something she did every day? While a small, I-need-serious-therapy part of me thought it was kind of hot, another small part of me wondered if maybe I’d be better off in jail. She’d dragged me into a killing war I wanted no part of, even if one side was gunning for me. Though, yeah, to be fair, she’d also dragged me away from jail. I needed to push aside the rush my sudden freedom gave me, tell my dick to behave, and then have a sit-down with Wren to see if she’d eventually kill me too. Just because she’d set me free didn’t mean I could trust her. Or fuck her in the shower.

This was what I got for thinking with my dick. My freed dick, at least in the figurative sense. Almost literally too.

A surprised cry sounded from somewhere nearby, and I had a feeling we would have more company if we planted ourselves here for too much longer. I crossed toward the open door and pressed my back against it to peer out, aiming the gun I’d stolen at the ground. Farther down the hallway, trickles of blood spread over the floor from the dining room.

Shit.

“There’s nowhere to go,” Wren whispered behind me.

She was right. The sun was still up, which meant the vampires had black op’d their way in…somehow. Unless Zac had come back with some wheels, we were stuck. Unless Wren sicced herself on all of them, and I’d rather she didn’t. Just because I’d planned a murder I’d never carried out didn’t mean I was a big fan of killing.

“Come on.” I took her hand and pulled her out of the bathroom. We could hole up somewhere, maybe capture another of those vampires and get him to talk.

My and Wren’s wet feet slapped the floor, punctuated with a steady dripdripdrip off the few clothes we wore. We were leaving a wet trail right to us. I hadn’t seen any towels in the bathroom, but I did remember seeing some napkins in boxes near the shelves by the stairs. Better than nothing. We headed in that direction.

I handed her a package of napkins, then pushed her inside a small broom closet, flicked the light on, and left the door open just a crack to hear if we were about to be ambushed.

“Take off your clothes,” I said, simultaneously hating and loving the sound of those words.

“Only if you say that exact same thing to me later.” She grinned and leaned over to peel her wet pants down her hips, giving me quite the eyeful of perfect cleavage contained in her black lace bra. Smooth legs climbed a long, long way up to matching panties. She gave a little shake of her ass when her pants snagged on her foot.

Vampire Jesus, help me. I tore my eyes away and somehow got both pairs of soggy pants down over my boxers and raging boner, at least the third I’d had today, all in the short time I’d known Wren. If we weren’t constantly running, I could go somewhere and deal with it on my own before I drilled Wren. Grilled Wren. Grilled. Had a discussion.

Fuck.

Through the crack in the door, another armed vampire passed, dressed similar to the two in the shower.

Wren, without any sound, started to spring out after him, but I caught her elbow, spun her around, and covered her mouth before she could protest.

“You don’t have to kill everyone, Wren,” I hissed.

She flinched as if I’d struck her, and I hated the way she was looking at me now, with hurt and a little revulsion, exactly how Jessica had looked at Devin that night. That look dropped my gut to my knees, especially since I’d put it there. But Wren didn’t need to kill everyone. She needed to know that. Or maybe she did know that and didn’t care.

Her face contorted with anger, and she ripped my hand from her mouth. “They’re after you, Ashe. You want me to just let them take you?”

“No, I want you to let me question them.”

She waved her hand at the door. “Then let’s go.”

“Fine. Let me take the lead on this so I can get answers.”

She studied me for a long moment. “You don’t trust me.”

“I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you.”

Her eyes narrowed as she threw her pants at me, the wet fabric like a slap. “Where was all this distrust in the shower when your hands were down my pants, Ashe?”

“A moment of weakness.” One of many to come, I was sure, especially since she was mostly naked.

“Well. Thanks for that,” she said, her voice sharp enough to stake me through the heart.

She stormed out, and it was then I realized she didn’t steal one of the vampire’s guns. She didn’t need one. She was just as lethal, if not more.

I followed on her heels, our clothes wedged under my elbow and my gun pointed down. As soon as I cleared the broom closet door, the exit door to my left opened. Sunlight angled through, and I dove to one side of the hallway to avoid it. It couldn’t be a vampire coming in, but I tried to look as innocent as possible anyway, as much as a mostly naked escaped prisoner can look innocent.

The door swung shut, and I could finally see again.

Zac trotted down the steps, swinging a ring of keys around his finger. He stopped when he saw me, naked except for my boxers, then flicked his gaze to Wren farther up the hallway. She looked over her shoulder at him.

His gaze darkened when he saw the firm line of her lips, how she was moving away from me while wearing next to nothing, instead of toward me. Instead of on top of me. I could guess how this looked. Shit.

Zac slammed me into the wall with an accusing finger pointed at my face. “What did you do to her?”

Shaking her head, Wren continued down the hallway. “I saved his life, and he got all twitchy about it. Leave him alone, Zac.”

I shoved Zac off of me. “Yeah, leave me alone, Zac. We need to get out—”

A safety clicked off from the direction of Wren as loud as a cannon. A fourth person had joined our hallway party, in front of Wren, his gun pointed right at her head.

I dropped the wet clothes and stepped closer, my gun lifted. “Drop your gun.”

“He’s here,” the vampire shouted.

He being me. Fuck.

“Zac, we need to get out of here. Go make that happen. Now!” I shouted.

“I’ll get the car and pull it up to the door,” Zac said, his voice low, and sprinted back up the steps. The door opened, but I was far enough away from the sun this time.

Wren’s hands curled at her sides as she stared the vampire down, and I could guess exactly what she was thinking.

I took a step toward her and the vampire, my skin itching to get the hell out of here.

The guy narrowed his eyes at Wren. “Are you related to the queen?”

In a blur of movement, she knocked the gun out of his hands, twirled it around, and pointed it at him. “Who sent you?”

The guy went through all five stages of grief at the loss of his gun within seconds. “The queen herself. Seems like she’s got her eye on that one.” He nodded toward me.

Queen Ravana? Because I was accused of killing her sister, Bronwen, both of whom looked so much like Wren? What the hell did all of this have to do with me since I didn’t kill Bronwen? Pretty sure I’d remember doing that since I couldn’t even kill my own sister’s ex-boyfriend.

A car honked loudly from just outside.

“Wren!” I shouted.

She backed toward me quickly as the sounds of the other men—or women; both genders were equally pissed at me—closed in.

Then she turned and ran toward me. We took the stairs three at a time and burst through the door out into the daylight. Immediately the sun beat down on our naked skin in painful waves. An open trunk of a turquoise classic car waited for us. We threw ourselves in and slammed it shut.

“Fuck my life,” I said into the dark interior of the trunk.

We squealed away from Edna’s Itchen.

But I was so tired of running away lately. It was high time I started running toward some answers.