A Shock to Your System (Dangerous Creatures #2) (12 page)

Jamie looked down into Ethan's face, and
their eyes just locked onto each other.

Jamie loved him so damn much. He choked on
the feeling inside of him and he needed to kiss him. He fell down
onto his elbows, pushing against the itchy sheets and the tough
pillows. He pressed his mouth down onto Ethan's warm lips. Their
teeth and tongues clashed, the stubble of his beard scratched. He
was going to have red scratchy marks later.

Good, he thought, something to take with him
when this was over. If only to have a piece of Ethan with him for a
couple of days, it was worth it.

Ethan's hands left Jamie's hips to hold onto
his face. His touch was gentle as his fingers slid back into
Jamie’s hair. Electricity sparked through him as it always did when
he rose to these heights, and for the first time, he didn’t think
he could hold it back.

Then Ethan did something he rarely did. He
submitted, and Jamie slid his tongue into that warm, wet space and
came hard.

He moaned into Ethan's mouth, and he
couldn't stop moving, couldn't stop. Period. Not going to happen.
Nope. Nadda. Never. Everything became tight and the spasms in his
body shook him. He spilled his seed onto Ethan's chest, forgetting
all about the bandages because by then it was too late and Jamie
was too far gone to care.

Ethan grabbed onto Jamie's hips again,
thrusting up into him and groaning as his own body became tight and
twitched. He was thrusting up into Jamie's body, and then he let
out one last shout before he finally came.

Jamie wished Ethan hadn't been wearing the
condom just then, because he wanted to feel what it was like to
have the man really and fully inside of him. He wanted to feel him
skin to skin, and he wanted to feel what it was like to have his
warmth flooding him.

Their bodies settled, and moans made way for
panting and smiling sighs. More soft kisses followed between their
aftershocks.

Ethan held onto Jamie's head, petting his
hair and running fingers across his skin.

His eyes were so damned soft. Jamie became
uncomfortable under that stare, but only because he wanted it to
mean something that it couldn’t. “What are you looking at?”

“
You,” Ethan said, kind of
lamely, but then he continued. “There was blue lightning in your
eyes and hair.”

“
Really?”

Ethan nodded. “On your body, too. It danced
over my palms when I touched you.”

“
Did it shock you?” Jamie
asked, immediately worried.

Ethan shook his head. “No. Though the hair
on my arms is standing up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do
that.”

“
I’m usually better at
holding it back with sex. I had all my teen years practicing to
make sure I didn’t do it when getting off.”

Which meant that the orgasm Ethan had given
him had been beyond spectacular. And it was. He didn’t need shocks
of blue lightning to tell him that.

Ethan burst out laughing at his words, and
Jamie was so touched by that, that he nearly started laughing right
along with him.

Then Jamie froze up as he looked down at the
mess he'd made on Ethan's chest. "Fuck!"

He tried to move away, but Ethan was faster
than Jamie was, grabbing him and stopping him from moving. "Hey,
hey, where are you going?"

"To get a cloth so that mess doesn't seep
through your bandages or something," Jamie said.

Ethan looked at him for a few second, as if
deciding whether or not he was telling the truth. He finally smiled
and let Jamie go. He grinned and went into the bathroom.

The familiar burning sensation he got
recently after sex followed him inside.

Jamie shut and locked the door. He didn’t
know why, maybe force of habit. He always was the emotional type,
and he was feeling pretty damned emotional right then.

He grabbed a clean washcloth from the pile
on the counter, and it was shockingly white, considering how the
rest of this place looked. Jamie wet it just enough under the water
to dampen it, and then he looked up at himself in the mirror.

His cheeks were slightly flushed from the
sex, and his heart was beating fast. It pummeled against the inside
of his ribs like the damned thing was trying to smash through them.
He felt sad…but good. He was going to be depressed as all hell once
tomorrow came; he didn't know how he was going to function when it
came time for him to go his own way and travel north where the laws
against paranormals weren’t as strict, without Ethan.

For now, he was feeling a least a little
like his old self. Tomorrow would happen, well, tomorrow. He could
put off this shitty feeling until then.

If this was going to be his and Ethan's last
night together, then they were going to make the most of it. They
still had two more condoms left, at least.

A crash sounded in the other room, and after
a lifetime of looking over his shoulder, Jamie was immediately on
edge.

"Ethan?" Jamie called

Shouts sounded, and then more crashing. The
door handle to the bathroom rattled.

"I'm going to break it in!" a voice shouted
from the other side. A voice Jamie definitely did not recognize,
but didn’t need to, to know who was there.

They'd been found by the hunters.

Chapter Eight

Jamie had two seconds to figure out what he
was going to use as a weapon before the door was broken down and
turned into splinters. The hunter on the other side already smashed
against it once, probably with his body, and either the guy was
super weak, or a miracle had happened, because the flimsy door had
held.

Jamie went for the towel rack. It wasn't
steel but it would do, and after a hard yank that pulled out some
of the drywall, he had something he could use.

The hunter finally broke through the door
with a loud crack and smash, just as Jamie procured his weapon. The
guy was, in fact, pretty small. The hunter looked to be around
Jamie's age, early twenties or so, but he was at least two inches
shorter, and didn't have the muscle on him that Ethan did.

The height difference made it incredibly
simple to just swing his metal towel rack like a baseball bat. Even
in the cramped space of the tiny motel bathroom, he hit his target
right in the face, but the damned kid was trying to get back up,
and he was reaching for something holstered to his back. A gun.
That was totally a gun: a real gun, and not the kind that carried
tranquilizers.

He swung again. He caught
the man in the hand, who screamed in pain as the gun flew from his
grip. Jamie didn’t stop swinging, even if he was insanely grossed
out by the sight of the blood that splattered in red drops from the
guy's face as his nose was rearranged and his lip split. A white
piece of
something
also went flying. A tooth. That was definitely a tooth, and
now he felt like a dick because he was knocking the guy’s teeth
out. But it was either him, or Jamie and Ethan. Jamie didn't want
to get thrown into a lab with needles and weird smells, or for
Ethan to get tossed into a small grey prison cell.

He was out of breath by the time the hunter
stopped moving. Jamie was too much of a wuss to check to see if he
was dead or not. He hoped not, but Ethan was more important.

Jamie rushed out of the bathroom when his
opponent was no longer moving. He didn’t want to think about what
that might mean. He was in such a hurry to get out of there, to be
away from the unmoving hunter that he was completely naked when he
left. He hadn’t even realized it. He was also holding onto his
weapon like it was a sword.

A crappy, not as effective, blunt sword.

On the carpeted motel floor just in front of
the bed was one unmoving hunter, but he was also face down and
there was no blood that Jamie could see on him. So he could assume
the man was alive. Maybe. It was the last hunter in the room that
had Jamie concerned. The man was wrestling around with Ethan, and
he was about the same size as Ethan, so he was giving Ethan a good
run for his money as the two struggled with each other.

He was the only other hunter left standing.
Unless there were more outside, that was three in total.

They bared their teeth to each other like
they were snarling, rabid wolves, grabbing for each other’s throats
as they threw each other around the room.

Blood seeped through the bandages wrapped
around Ethan’s chest and thighs, but it seemed he didn't even
notice. Ethan must have been in the zone, because he only had
enraged eyes for the hunter. He looked like he wanted to tear the
head off of his enemy.

That made it completely inappropriate for
Jamie to think it was hot.

Cut it out! Not the
time!
Jamie snapped himself out of it.
This was serious and he couldn't stand by and watch. Resolved to do
something, he took two steps forward to smash his towel rod into
the back of the hunter's head, just like he'd done with the little
one in the bathroom.

Then the two men spun around as they wildly
fought, and Jamie just barely managed to stop himself from bashing
in Ethan's skull and cracking it open when he went to swing a
second time, stopping himself just before he hit the wrong guy.

Fuck
! What the hell was he supposed to do? He couldn't swing at
the man and risk hitting Ethan, and the hunter wasn’t going
down!

The hunter Ethan fought with started playing
dirty. He took the risk of getting his hands and arms away from
Ethan's throat in order to punch at his bleeding wounds.

Ethan howled, but somehow
he managed to hold on. He seemed to be
tightening
his grip on the other man
in response to any pain instead of letting go.

"Run you idiot!" Ethan yelled, his face
nearly as red as the blood on his bandages. Because he was still
staring right at the hunter, it took Jamie a half a second to
realize that Ethan was speaking to him.

Whoopsie.

He probably should run, it would make sense
and be safer for him, but he couldn't. Jamie's feet were locked to
the floor as though he had shackles on his ankles that were bolted
to the shitty carpet. He wouldn't budge—couldn’t—even when he told
himself to. Ethan would be on his own, and the hunter was starting
to get the upper hand.

Then, wait a minute? What the hell was he
doing? Enough time had passed that Jamie had more than enough juice
inside of him to stun the guy. Duh.

Clenching his fists, Jamie rushed over to
the hunter, reached up and yanked on his hair. He gripped it tight
enough that he could pull out chunks, and probably would have if
the hunter hadn’t arched backwards, a scream sounding from his open
mouth. He wouldn’t be able to hold on for more than a few
seconds.

"Ethan, let go!" Jamie yelled.

Ethan immediately flung himself in the
opposite direction. The second he was clear, Jamie let the
electricity flow right in the nick of time, because the hunter had
just spun around with the spelled shackles in his hands.

He didn't get the chance to put them on
Jamie's wrists as he shrieked and jumped five feet into the air,
but Jamie managed to keep his hands on the man.

Jamie had only ever electrocuted a few
people in his lifetime. None of them were dead, and he didn't
intend on killing anyone, but the smell was always the same. So
were the stunned shrieks that his victims released before no noise
came out at all, and their mouths stayed open—wanting to scream,
but unable to.

The scent of burning hair was almost
overpowering. He couldn’t handle it. The hunter dropped to the
floor when Jamie released him, and then his hair started to smoke.
Some of that hair was still in Jamie’s fingers.

Gross. Gross.
Gross
. He was going to puke.

Jamie watched closely, inching forward,
making sure the guy was alive. After a few breathless seconds, the
man sucked in a deep breath and coughed, though his eyes remained
closed and his hair still stuck up.

"What the fuck?" Jamie turned his head and
looked at Ethan. The man was staring down at the hunter with his
nose curled and a hard frown on his mouth. When Ethan brought his
arm up cover his nose, Jamie realized his disgust stemmed from the
burning smell.

This whole thing probably wasn't going to
help him win points with the man, but then again, they were
supposed to be separating soon, so it shouldn't matter.

It
shouldn't
.

"How did they find us?" Jamie asked,
considering Ethan always knew so much more about the way the
hunters and collectors worked.

"Don't know, it's too early for them to have
found my truck, but stranger things've happened. Most likely
someone recognized you and called you in."

"How would they recognize me?" Jamie
asked.

Ethan was already moving. How was he doing
that? Didn’t his wounds hurt? Ethan didn’t seem to notice as he
went to the door of their motel room, which was slightly crooked on
its hinges from where it had been bashed in, and then he checked
outside quickly before shutting and locking the door. "You wouldn't
have just been on the radio, you know. Your picture would’ve been
sent to every hunter’s phone. To be honest, I'm just shocked there
weren’t more of them."

"
More
?" Jamie demanded, and he looked
down at the two guys on the floor, then glanced over at the
bathroom. "I thought three was plenty."

"They thought I was a hostage, or dead. That
usually requires more people to be on the job," Ethan said, and he
started snatching up his clothes and putting them on.

It made sense they would think he was a
hostage. He kind of had been, if Jamie really wanted him to be, for
a few minutes. Maybe that was how he’d taken one guy out so fast
before fighting with the other. They might’ve seen him and assumed
this was partly a rescue, and Ethan got the jump on them.