Ellora's Cavemen: Tales from the Temple II (29 page)

“No!” She jumped forward and grabbed him by one thick shoulder. “Jack, don’t you dare do this to me! I love you! I don’t want to lose you.”

He looked up at her. She almost stepped back from the molten shimmer in his eyes, but somehow caught herself in time. If she rejected him in any way now, he was lost.

You don’t even know me anymore. You have no idea what I’ve become or what I’ve done.”

“I know all that matters. I know you’re a decent man who loved his sister so much you were willing to embrace something alien to bring her killer to justice. I know you hunted him until you found him, and then you beat him and killed the thing inhabiting his body. That’s enough, Jack. Let the system do its job.”

173

Angela Knight

“The system.” He sneered the word. “All it takes is one crooked lawyer and one gullible juror, and he’ll be out on the street killing again. The only way the rest of the world will ever be safe is if he’s dead.”

“
I could see to it that he gives a complete confession, right down to the location of all the
bodies
,” Xedda said. “
Johnny Cochran wouldn’t be able to get him off
.”

Quickly, Lark relayed what the spirit had said. “Jack, this would let all the families get closure. They’d all be able to confront him in court and see him get what he deserves. Don’t they deserve that satisfaction after everything they’ve endured?”

Jack looked down at her. As she watched, tense with hope, his cold executioner’s mask cracked. He opened his arms and let Simpson fall in a bloody heap to the pavement. “You’re right,” he said, his voice suddenly weary. “They have as much right to watch him get the death penalty as I do.”

“Thank God!” Lark stepped around Simpson and flung her arms around Jack, hugging his hot, sweaty body with all her strength. Her eyes slipped closed in relief. “I don’t know what I would have done if…”

For a moment, he went still. Then, with a low growl of hunger, his powerful hands closed over her waist and lifted her off her feet. Her eyes flew open as he dragged her tight against him.

Startled, Lark stared up into Jack’s molten gaze. Damn, she’d forgotten how big he was—with biceps the size of her head and a broad, powerful chest that tapered to narrow hips. He felt like heated steel plastered against her this way.

Hungry
heated steel.

For a long moment he stared into her face as though memorizing each and every feature. Then his lips curled into a wolfish smile, and he was kissing her, his mouth hot and open on hers, his tongue sweeping between her lips to tease and stroke.

With a muffled, famished groan, Lark lifted her arms and twined them around his neck again. The motorcycle helmet he wore felt cool and smooth under her fingers as she cupped the back of his head. God, it had been so long, and she’d missed him so badly.

She could feel her body awakening, cream flooding between her thighs. Judging from the hard ridge pressing against her belly, Jack was getting a hard-on to make a Clydesdale weep with envy.

Finally he drew back to stare down at her, his gaze feral with sensual demand. “The thing is, I’ve got all this energy I need to burn off. How’d you like to give me a hand with that?”

Lark felt her nipples harden, reacting to the demand in his gaze.

“What about it, Lark?” he purred. “Think you can tame me?”

She smiled dryly. “Not even with a whip and a chair.”

174

Taming Jack

Jack laughed a low, dark sound. “I like a woman who knows her limitations,” he said, then lifted one bleeding hand to caress her cheek. “But think about it. Wouldn’t it be fun to try?”

“
You’d better do more than try, Lark
,” Xedda said suddenly. “
He needs us.”

Not as much as I need him.

His trailing finger slipped downward, brushed across the top of her breasts. Her eyes drifted closed.

“
This is serious
,” Xedda insisted, even as Lark groaned while he thumbed one nipple. “
Simpson’s Dark Rider isn’t the first one Jack’s taken over in the past six months.

There’ve been at least three others—three too many, in fact. You saw how close he came to killing
Simpson. Unless we can link with him psychically, anchor him, the next time he tries to absorb
one of the Dark Riders, he could be lost. And then he’ll become as big a danger as they are
.”

Lark looked up at Ramsey, her brown eyes huge, her full lips parted. There was something catlike and delicate about her fine-boned face, enhanced by the cap of short, dark hair that left most of her long neck bare. In contrast, her body was lushly curved, with generous breasts, a narrow waist, and voluptuous hips. He knew she fretted constantly about the five pounds she thought she needed to lose, but to him she was perfect, a sensual meal he ached to sample.

God, suddenly he was starving. It had been too many months since he’d touched her, since he’d kissed the tiny mole over her right hip, since he’d licked the rich cream between her thighs. He wanted to back her up against the brick wall behind her, slide up that short little skirt, and drive hard into her.

Down boy,
he told himself. Taking a Dark Rider always put a nasty edge on his appetite. Tonight it was even worse than usual.

Images spun through his mind: pinning Lark’s lush body under his, raking her pink nipples erect with his teeth, licking and sucking until she begged him to take her in the long, ramming thrusts he craved. He growled in his throat, shifting on his booted feet as the hunger rolled in him.

Jack? Jack, you must listen!
The familiar voice of his Paladin spoke in his mind, but he ignored it, unwilling to think about anything else but possessing Lark.

Then the urgency in Gav’s voice penetrated the fog of need in his mind. “
We need to
link with her and her Rider
,” the Paladin said. “
You’re too strong for me, boy. I can’t hold you
alone.
”

Hell, he knew that. He’d almost broken Simpson’s fat neck when he’d seen the bastard’s memory of murdering Heather. Not even Gav’s desperate demands that he stop had been enough to drag him back from the edge. He doubted anyone but Lark could have reached him.

The Paladin was right, Jack realized. He needed Lark’s help to maintain control.

175

Angela Knight

But were she and her Rider strong enough to anchor him the next time he absorbed a Dark One? He’d met two other Spirit Women in the past six months, but both had retreated the minute they’d attempted a link, afraid he’d drag them into madness with him. They’d probably been right.

He’d hoped destroying his sister’s murderer would sate the demons the Spirit Riders had sensed, but it hadn’t. If anything, the hunger to kill the killers had grown worse.

He was becoming a monster. Now even Gav was afraid of him.

As he looked down into Lark’s soft, dark eyes, he doubted she had the strength to drag him back from the edge. She was too…soft, too gentle for the darkness that fought to devour him.

Worse, what if she tried to help him, and he ended up destroying her?

She deserved better.

“
So do you
,” Gav told him shortly. “
And since she’s the only hope you’ve got, you’d
better hope she can do the job. Because if she can’t, I’ll have to kill you myself in order to break
the link that binds us. You’re infecting me with the darkness, and I can’t allow that. Or we’ll
become a monster as bad as anything we fight
.”

Lark watched as Jack summoned a patrol car to take Simpson to the county jail, along with an ambulance to treat the killer’s victim. Xedda had healed the worst of Carolyn’s injuries, but the spirit had deliberately left many of the surface bruises.

Without their violent evidence, Simpson would have tried to argue that what he’d done to the girl had been consensual.

Then it was the killer’s turn.

Following Xedda’s instructions, Lark walked over to the thug’s unconscious body and bent to place her fingers against his head. She felt the burning rush of energy as the spirit surged into his mind and went to work planting compulsions.

Why couldn’t Jack do this?
she wondered.

“
The Paladin gives him great physical strength, but not psychic abilities
,” Xedda told her absently even as she fought to force her will on the killer.

As the spirit worked, Lark began to sense Simpson’s mind through their connection. It was like being plunged into a nest of maggots. She shivered in revulsion.

The viciousness of the man’s thoughts, his perverted fantasies, his sheer sick evil shook her to the core.

The minute Xedda finished, Lark backed away, feeling as though she’d touched something vile. “Now I see why you wanted to kill the disgusting bastard,” she said to Jack, who crouched by Carolyn’s side, checking her pulse. The girl was still sleeping, deep in the grip of Xedda’s spell.

176

Taming Jack

“Yeah. With any luck, we may be able to get him the death penalty,” Jack said, frowning over at the unconscious killer. “I don’t want to risk him ever getting out of jail.”

“Xedda made sure he’ll take the detectives to the bodies he’s dumped, so that should help,” Lark told him.

“Good.” He rose to his feet, reminding her again just how damn big he really was.

“You do realize you’re a witness?” he said. “You’re going to have to testify about what you saw tonight.”

She winced. “What do I say? I sure as hell can’t tell them the truth.”

Jack smiled slightly. “Sure you can, just not the whole truth. Describe the fight, but not the supernatural parts.” He shrugged. “That’s what I always do.”

“But what about all this?” Lark gestured at the broken brick. “Two normal guys in a brawl wouldn’t have done this much damage. And there’s a lot more blood around Carolyn than you’d expect from her current injuries.”

“
If we combine our powers
,” Xedda said, “
We might be able to clean up the scene just a
bit.
”

Lark relayed the suggestion to Jack. “Yeah.” He nodded thoughtfully, then shrugged. “It would give me something to do with all the energy I absorbed from Simpson’s Rider. Gav and I can’t do anything with it, but your Spirit Rider is another story.”

He held out a big hand to her. She took it automatically. And gasped at the male hunger she sensed burning hot in his tight control.
Damn,
she thought nervously.

She could sense Xedda’s dismay even as the spirit sent out a spell to clean away most of the blood and repair the damaged brick and dented steel.
“His mind—he’s
stronger than I expected,”
the spirit said.

Do you think we can do it—link with him and give him this anchor you mentioned?

“I don’t know. He may be too much for me.”

Oh, hell
, Lark thought as her heart sank. That was not what she wanted to hear.

177

Angela Knight

It was well past midnight by the time Lark started for home. She’d spent hours answering the questions of detectives and giving her statement; she should have been staggering with fatigue.

And she would have been, if not for the fact that Jack rode his big cycle right behind her. She knew when the two of them reached her bed, sleep would be nowhere on the agenda. At least, not judging by the looks he’d given her every time she’d been in sight.

Even as wet heat welled between Lark’s thighs at the thought of being with him again, unease rode in her mind. This anchoring business had all the earmarks of being a bitch. Entirely too much rode on it, and she wasn’t even sure she understood what she was supposed to do.

That was no surprise, since damn near everything else to do with the Riders was equally incomprehensible, illogical, or downright fantastic.

Blue lights flashed in her rearview mirror. Startled, she looked up to see Jack riding her bumper. He whipped the big cycle around her car and drew even with her.

As Lark looked over at him, he gestured to the side of the road ahead of them, then opened the throttle and roared out in front of her.

She blinked at his taillights. “He’s pulling me over.” A slow smile tugged at her lips. “Why, whatever does he have in mind?”

As Lark watched, the cycle’s taillight veered off down a dirt road between a stand of trees. Smiling wickedly, she followed, lifting a brow at the Dead End sign she passed.

Evidently, Jack had this little stop all planned out.

They rounded a bend in the road. Lark grinned outright as she realized how completely hidden they were from any passing motorist. Ready for whatever naughty off-duty games Jack had in mind.

She already had a pretty good idea what those might be. She’d confessed a kinky fantasy along these lines months ago, one night when they’d killed a bottle of very nice red wine. Jack had been intrigued, but reluctantly told her the idea sounded like a great way for him to lose his job.

Lark could sense Xedda’s amusement now.
Don’t worry. I’ll make sure nobody sees
you.

She laughed and flicked open the first button of her white silk blouse.
“
What a pal!”

Glancing downward, she decided she needed more cleavage and unbuttoned two more.

Lark looked up in time to catch Jack’s signal. She stopped and turned off the Honda’s engine, watching with anticipation as he killed his blue lights, lowered the kickstand and swung off his bike. Her headlights illuminated his big, muscular body as 178

Taming Jack

he sauntered back toward her, moving in a long-legged swagger, a flashlight propped on his shoulder.

Before they’d headed for home, he’d showered in the Sheriff’s Office locker room and changed into a fresh uniform. Now he looked like the embodiment of spit-and-polish authority as she rolled down the window and gave him her best innocent look.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?”

Jack directed the flash into her face, then down at the cleavage she’d artistically revealed with those open buttons. “Step out of the car, Ma’am,” he growled.