Asia smiled in contradiction to her poisoned thoughts. “You haven’t even asked me my name,” she noted.
“Nor have you asked mine. I imagined you would ask when you were interested, and you would give when you were ready. I am in no hurry. I don’t plan on losing track of you anytime soon.”
Asia suppressed a shiver and simply smiled up into his pine green eyes again, rather creeped out by her own morbid thoughts. She wasn’t afraid that she couldn’t handle him, it was just how wretchedly sincere he sounded just then. It made her want to scream inside and out. But Asia Callahan, renowned as one of the very best bounty hunters and martial artists in the biz, always got her man, and this one was the most important catch of her life.
Maybe even her sister’s life.
“Let’s go,” she said quite suddenly, her fingertips trailing slowly down the back of his neck in a sensual invitation. “If we’re going to party, I want to get started. Now.”
Julian raised a brow at her sudden and swift change of gears. There was no denying how genuine the invitation was—she did indeed want to get going—but he also sensed she had a not-so-hidden agenda, and it made him hesitate. Oh, had he been anyone else he would have believed the bold beauty he held against his body and her invitation to play, but he wasn’t just anyone else and she wasn’t just any woman.
The question was—who exactly was she?
It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter, he thought fiercely. He had to have her and he would do everything to see that he made her his.
“My place or yours?” he asked roughly as her touch powered through him in racing spears of energy. It could all sound almost normal. Almost real. Julian craved what she offered so artfully, his heart racing to know her and how she would feel in the throes of lusty, energetic screams. “Never mind. You’ll come with me,” he told her in the very next breath.
She gave him another of those enigmatically simple, shallow smiles that never quite thawed the icy calculation in her eyes. Julian did not pay that any mind. She was voluntarily allowing him to take her somewhere private, and that was all that mattered.
He swept her outside of the club, keeping her tight and close to his body. He ignored Vincent’s leer and thumbs-up and hastened his prize to the rental car he had chosen a month earlier. He knew the racy design earned him status in the eyes of some women, and he also knew it would make no impression on this woman in particular. He rather enjoyed that idea. It was indicative of a woman who, for all her fine embellishments, was not dependent on material things. He thought of how useful that would be as he ushered her into the vehicle and hurried to get behind the wheel.
“I need to stop at my car for my purse,” she informed him quickly, leaning her warmth against the length of his arm and trailing fingertips against his chest. He nodded curtly and threw the metallic beast into gear.
Asia snagged her bag from her car, not bothering to check what she already knew was ready and waiting for her within it. Even if he hadn’t stopped as she had requested, she was prepared for that, too. This was just added insurance.
Julian Sawyer was going to regret the day he’d ever laid a hand on her sister.
Chapter 2
Asia was quite familiar with where Sawyer lived and lurked. She knew the entire layout of his rather classy apartment, from the broad living room to the wood-paneled kitchen, and especially the roomy back bedroom where he had taken so many of his nightly conquests. Of course, they hadn’t always made it that far into the apartment. Julian did have the annoying habit of keeping all his shades tightly drawn, so it was only with parabolic microphones that she had learned as little as she had. Tonight that privacy was a deeply felt blessing. If there were newly aware Feds out there watching, she was going to keep them forever guessing over what was really going to happen. She might have preferred the anonymity of her own hotel room, but any agents worth their salt would have followed them there just as easily. At least she knew exactly how well versed he was in sealing his privacy.
The door closed and she tossed her purse down on a nearby chair as she turned and fully confronted the enemy. She wriggled a little slink into her carriage, reminding herself that she was supposed to be there for a good fuck and she needed to keep up that image until she was able to finally make her move. If that meant getting down and dirty, then so be it. Asia would do anything if it gave her even the smallest chance of restoring her sister to her.
Anything. Even if it meant completely seducing the repulsive beauty of this sociopathic Casanova.
Julian shut the door and dropped his keys on a side table, his eyes riveting onto her as she stood in a pose of proud display for him. Her Amazon’s body tantalized and teased, she knew, the provocative cling of her clothing an amazing lure to his innately male sexual need for visual stimuli. She had watched him and knew his every last preference. He didn’t care for any particular hair color, it seemed, but he tended toward women with long hair. He loved the long-legged ones most of all. He seemed to react very strongly to willfulness, enjoying fire and a bit of fight. Above all, he liked aggressive women. It wasn’t hard to figure out that Julian Sawyer was looking for either a rough ride or a good fight to get himself off.
Asia tipped one spaghetti strap to the very edge of her shoulder, silver sliding low against her breast and threatening to run free from the nipple it clung to.
Julian’s eyes ran dark, like evergreen as they fell to the tempting, teasing display, and she could swear he made a deep, dangerous sound of need and blatant desire. She recalled that she had noted him to be an eerily silent and methodical lover. She had heard woman after woman cry out in satisfaction, attesting that he actually knew what he was doing, but outside of his breathing she’d never heard so much as a groan from him. In fact, he’d been unnaturally quiet and still. She wondered if she should be flattered or afraid of anything different from the norm. Perhaps the more he was provoked, the more likely he was to lose control. Perhaps it was his sexual response getting out of his control that set off his psychosis. The thought only encouraged her to goad him. She wanted him to snap. She wanted him to give her a reason to open up hell on him.
She reached to push aside the opposite strap, but in a quick flash of movement she barely saw, he crossed to her and caught the thin strips of silver fabric, closing his large hands around her arms and shoulders as he kept her dress from sliding free of her body.
“No,” he said deeply at her surprised and questioning look. “When I see you naked for the first time, it will be as a lover, not as a stranger. You will tell me your name first.”
She hesitated at the dictate, knowing it was a very visible pause by the way he frowned so seriously. If he had been anyone else, she would have thought she’d hurt his feelings. But in all the time she had been stalking him, the one thing she had noted above all else was that Julian Sawyer was a man of very few emotions. He was always calm and always steady. Perfectly controlled at all times. Except for tonight. Tonight he was different. Different for her.
“Asia,” she offered at last, the firmness of her tone warning him that was as far as she was willing to go. “My name is Asia.”
He digested that for a moment, and she wondered how long it would take before he considered his condition satisfied and subjected her to the slightly chilly air-conditioned atmosphere of the apartment.
“Asia,” he echoed, his large hands sliding smooth and warm up over her shoulders until, she realized, he had resettled the straps of her dress into a less precarious position. The unpredictability of his actions disturbed her a little. This wasn’t how he had been with the others before her; he had shown no interest in speaking to them. Asia tried to remind herself yet again that a difference was a good thing. Something had set each pair of women of the past seven months apart from all the others. She needed to be set apart if she was going to be among that select class of victims.
In keeping with her character of the night, however, she dropped her hands onto her hips and cocked her hea
d as she bent a knee forward enough to rub her leg between his thighs where it settled against them.
“I thought you were out for a fuck,” she noted bluntly. “You can skip the Mr. Romance routine. I don’t need it.”
He studied her carefully a moment, reaching to trail his fingertips up along her throat. “I think you do need it,” he observed. “I think you have a great many needs you’d rather not share with me. You want this to be uncomplicated and straightforward, where it cannot be.”
“Sure it can,” she forced herself to say even as his uncanny words made her heart race beneath her breast. “You are a man. I am a woman. As long as we have all the interlocking parts required—and I admit, a fair amount of skill would be nice as well—we can get straight to where we both want to be. You haven’t had a hard-on for me for this long because you want to talk to me,” she pointed out.
That earned her a wry smile, Julian’s expression a bit sheepish and fearfully endearing as he ran a hand back through one side of his dark hair. She had thought it was black, but up close she could see it was the darkest possible brown. It bothered her suddenly that there was so much about him that was appealing. It was like roses. Something so fragrant and beautiful that you couldn’t help burrowing your nose into it shouldn’t have things like thorns and bees to hurt you. She appreciated how naïve and unlike her such a thought truly was, but just because she rarely indulged them didn’t mean she didn’t have them.
“My needs go well beyond those of my physical body,” he said to her, those green eyes flicking up from their low position in his bent head. She felt snared by that look, her throat tightening with a strange sense of having gotten in way over her head. She wanted to laugh aloud at the ludicrous idea as soon as she had it.
“Well, mine don’t,” she countered, realizing she didn’t sound as convincing as she should have. She reached out to cover that up with her touch, having already realized how easily it distracted him. She snaked her arms around his neck, drawing herself in tight and snug to his body. “Your physical body will suit me fine,” she whispered softly as her lips brushed against his ear.
Julian groaned softly as she wriggled against him, his hands tightening reflexively against her shoulders. Before she knew it, he had turned his face against her neck and was…
Sniffing her?
Asia’s brows lowered in a perplexed expression of disbelief as she felt him breathe deeply and sigh an extraordinary exhalation against her pulse. Even more unusual was the fine tremor she felt run through him.
“Such a sweet invitation,” he breathed against her softly, his nose nuzzling against her pulse. “Too bad it is a lie.”
He had her by her throat in an instant, his hand locking hard and fast around her as he kicked her feet out from under her and sent her slamming down to the floor on her back. He controlled the entire action, however, keeping the impact minimal, if not shockingly violent, as he ended up with his grip shy of throttling her and his face mere millimeters from hers. He had thrown a leg over hers, firmly pinning her to the hardwood floor as she instinctively reached to grasp the wrist of the hand at her throat.
“For a woman who wants to fuck so badly, you smell decidedly clean of sexual arousal,” he growled harshly. “What game is it you are playing? Why are you here?”
“I don’t…Are you out of your mind?” she rasped, the pressure of his hand just enough to warn her of his strength and the possible consequences if she ticked him off enough. “What the hell are you talking about?” Indignation seemed the way to go. Maybe a little fear. The more she was threatened, in actuality, the calmer and more in control Asia got. His kindness had rattled her much more than this would. This she understood.
This was what she had wanted.
She thumbed the catch on her ring, then grabbed his wrist again so the micro-fine needle injected into his skin. He would mistake the sensation for the cut of her diamond. In a sense it was exactly that. The heavy narcotic serum flooding into him would make him hers in an instant.
“I am talking about this…”
To her shock she felt his hand sweep up under her dress. His fingertips dipped into her panties below the waistband and it was all she could do to keep from freaking out as thick male fingers skimmed over her denuded mound and dove with intimacy between her nether lips.
“Warm. Damp, to be certain,” he observed, “but in no way bearing the heat or wetness of a woman longing for sex.”
“You’re blaming me because you haven’t done anything to turn me on?” she demanded incredulously.
“Your scent is fear-scent, and yet not. You smell of a hunter. The predator. The ziniprano. Tell me, zini,” he said in a heated, fierce whisper of threat as he wedged himself in between her legs, “if it is a fucking you so desire, will it matter to you how it comes about?”
The intent behind his devious invitation and the hard actions of his heavy body over hers triggered a hell of a lot more than fear in Asia. She knew she needed to wait, if only to see the narcotic hit him like a ton of bricks, making all of this infinitely easier, but she couldn’t. His intimate touch grew deeper as he spread her legs wide around his hips and Asia learned that there were just some things even she couldn’t do.
“I don’t know,” she countered in a rasp of pent-up fury and hurt. “Why don’t you tell me how you did it to my sister, first?”
He went still in surprise, just as she had hoped for, leaving himself wide open for her free hands to make their mark.
Asia was a jujitsu master. She had achieved black belt status at a very young age, and had only increased in degrees until the time she had become the sensei of her own dojo. The art of self-defense, the art of power in small movements. This was what she used to drive rigid fingers into his throat and eyes simultaneously. She took satisfaction in his roar of agony as she used the ripple of her fit body to buck him off her at the first available opportunity. She spilled his significant weight onto the wooden floor and pounced on him in fisted, violent strikes.
She hadn’t expected him to be an easy target, and he did not disappoint her. She didn’t even know how he had grabbed her and thrown her, but the next thing she knew she was getting floor burns on her bare legs as she skidded and tumbled away. She rolled up to her feet in smooth continuity, her hair whipping back as it spilled free of its twist. She ignored it, even though it was now a liability, and focused on her giant adversary as he growled with ferocious anger and crouched as if preparing to charge her. His following hesitation was a godsend. The more time he took, the more time for the drug in his system to take effect.
“What is this?” he confronted her with a roar of fury. “Why do you play this brutal game with me?”
“Because you are nothing but violent, evil filth, and this is what you deserve! You stole the single most precious thing from my life, as well as those most precious to the lives of countless others, and it’s time you paid the price for that!”
“And you are going to make me pay, zini?” His laughter irked her as it rolled in irritating waves of derision over her. “Little warrior. So cold-hearted, no? To play such a game as the bait just to lure me in close. For what? What is this imagined slight I have done to you?”
“My sister, you prick!” she screamed, months of pain and fear suddenly overriding all of her cold control. Hot fury and unwanted agony burned in her throat and clenching fists. “You stole her! I want her back! You will give her back to me, or so help me, I will kill you!”
Why isn’t the drug working? Damn it, Justin had guaranteed it would! She’d watched him test it on a gorilla, the injection taking under sixty seconds to drop the beast completely.
“I doubt that is how this will end,” he said flatly. He seemed confident of that as he straightened and strolled directly across the room.
She fought. With everything she had and everything she knew, she beat him off her again and again. But every time she made a strike that should have taken him down, he simply shook it off and kept coming a
t her. It was as if he didn’t feel any pain at all, except she knew that he did when he grunted or bellowed out from her critical hits. Fighting in heels lent disadvantages and advantages, not the least of which was the stiletto she drove deep into the back of his thigh, shedding first blood as she yanked free.
That was when everything changed.
She had pulled free with a spin so by the time she came full around, her fists raised in a pose of defensive aggression, blood poured down the back of his leg as he stumbled briefly to a knee.
At least she thought it was blood.
It was pink.
Not a thin or light red, not red of any variety or shade, but a brilliant carnation pink bordering on fluorescence.
The sight made her do a double take, the shock of it taking a moment to sink in as she stood frozen at the ready. Julian stood up slowly and turned around, his malachite green eyes glittering with a dangerous resignation. Asia had never known true and utter fear before, she realized. She knew that because she was feeling it right then when she finally understood just why the drug had not and would never work on Julian Sawyer.
He wasn’t human.
Julian didn’t know why he felt so betrayed by the acts of the gorgeously violent woman he was suddenly facing, but he did. He felt it bone deep and beyond. It was finally clear to him the reasons why she was there. Apparently, her sister had been Chosen. One of the thirteen he had taken over most recently. Asia had sought him out on purpose, set out to lure him in any way she could, and had primed and pimped herself for vengeance. His unexpected reaction to her and the way it had muddled his senses and reflexes had almost provided the key opportunity she would have needed. But that was over now. Reality was settling cold and sober onto his shoulders, resigning him to acts of inevitability.
She would be his fourteenth and his last. If there had been any doubt, which there had not, it would have been out of his control the moment she drew blood and so obviously realized he wasn’t what she had expected him to be. His cover was completely blown. Useless. If she knew he was responsible for the disappearances of those women, then it was a sure bet that others did, too. That irked him, simply because he took such pride in how flawlessly he conducted his work.