millimeter she had in her hands. He didn’t want to frighten her because, for once in his violent life, he did not want to be who he actually was.
This stranger with the parted lips and the wide eyes made him want to be different. Better. Improved from the base beast that he had been since his transition.
“I’ll shoot,” she said.
He closed his eyes briefly as the syllables she spoke went into him. And then he felt compelled to respond. “Lower.”
When his lids reopened, he was standing right before her, his body having made its own decision about where it wanted to be.
“What?” she breathed.
Syn reached out and took the trembling end of the muzzle, putting it in a better position for her. “Not the head. The chest. You want to aim here. It’s a bigger target and the heart is where you can do the most effective damage.”
With her gun properly set, he took a step back. “There. Now you can kill me properly.”
As he waited with patience for her to pull the trigger, there was such great peace in his capitulation that he was only vaguely aware of a gathering noise above him, some kind of rhythmic thumping sound.
It did not matter. Nothing mattered.
He was hers to command, and if she wished to take his life here and now, he would willingly give his mortal coil unto her. No matter how much it hurt or what his suffering was, it would be a good death, one he had long deserved.
Because this female, who captivated his black soul as surely as if she held his beating heart in her palm, would be the one killing him.
* * *
On Jo’s list of things to do for the night, shooting another human being was not in the top five. The top ten. It wasn’t even on her list.
Especially not one that smelled like this. Jesus, what was that cologne of his? It was nothing she had ever run across before. Then again, the same could be said for the man himself. He was enormous, positively gargantuan, and the black leather he was wearing did absolutely nothing to make him seem smaller and less imposing. With a tremendous shoulder span and thick arms, his lower body was likewise developed, heavy thighs holding him upright, big boots covering his feet.
But his face was what really got her attention. It was lean, the hollows under his high cheekbones giving him an austere look, the intelligent eyes sunken in deep, the jaw hard cut and unforgiving—as if he was into punishment over reformation. His hair was mostly shaved, nothing but a three-inch-high Mohawk picket-fence’ing his skull from front to back, and there were no tattoos showing. She was willing to bet he had them under his clothes.
Or maybe he was just acres of smooth skin over all that hard muscle—
Stop that right now, she thought.
Bottom line, the fact that he seemed unconcerned with the gun she was pointing at him made sense. By sheer presence alone, he could have turned a bazooka into a BB gun.
“Leave me alone,” she said. “I’m going to shoot.”
“So shoot.”
Neither of them moved. Even as the rest of the city continued on, its felonies and misdemeanors proceeding apace, its night traffic of deliveries still streaming on the bridges and stop-and-go’ing on streets, its people living and breathing in whatever crammed square footage they rented, between Jo and the big man with the Mohawk, all was still, some kind of fulcrum created between them, around which the world tilted and whirled.
“I’m serious,” she whispered.
“So am I.”
His big hands went to his biker jacket and he pulled the two halves apart, revealing a vicious pair of steel daggers strapped, handles down, to his broad chest. Then, in a gesture that made no sense at all—not that any of this was in contention for the Yes-this-is-actually-happening Prize—he let his head fall back on his neck, the muscles that rode up the sides of his throat popping out in sharp relief, the jut of his chin the summit to the mountain of his towering body.
It was as if he were submitting himself to her totally.
Giving himself over.
To her—
Up in the sky, the police helicopter made a circle and came in their direction, its icy-bright light skimming down the alley, illuminating the colon created by the buildings that were squeezed in tightly side by side and across from each other. The beam hit the man in his pose of inexplicable supplication, bathing him in what appeared