Blood Deep (Blackthorn Book 4) Read online

  The prospect that he had come back to see her hadn’t crossed her mind. Any possibility that he was interested in her for more than what she could do hadn’t occurred to her. But despite his touch throwing her off course for a second, even more than it had in the lock-up, she was instantly back on task, her heart sinking, when she looked across the room.

  Just as she had suspected, sauntering three steps ahead of Homer, Tatum was on her way to join them.

  As deadly as Mya, only with a mind of her own and an intelligence to go with it, Tatum wore the numbers on her arm with pride. Numbers that warned of the painful demise of the three men who had dared cross her in her past.

  It was a cruel move on Pummel’s part, but a predictably strategic one. Newbies could use whatever façade they wanted, but get them between the sheets and it was a sure way to get to the true detail of who they were. If Eden’s previous behaviour – both with turning down Mya on the roof and his self-restraint with her in the lock-up – was anything to go by though, this wasn’t about to work in Eden’s favour.

  But as Eden looked up only to be snagged by what he saw, she now didn’t just have the threat of Pummel uncovering their secret – one session with the sadistic Tatum could do precisely the same.

  Tatum’s strides were confident, her head held high, her full hips swaying in her tight jeans. Jeans low enough to show her hipbones, her pierced belly button and the dove of peace that ironically spread its wings over flesh curvy enough to differentiate her between a girl and a woman. Her cropped top, gold silk with thin spaghetti straps, hung loose on her slender shoulders, the deep plunge barely covering her small, braless breasts that sat high and firm beneath.

  From the far side of the pool table, Eden raked her slowly with his gaze, his bottle poised at his lips. But just as her unease coiled into a fist of uncharacteristic and inexplicable jealousy, he paused for only a moment longer before knocking back a mouthful. Placing the bottle back on the edge of the table, he leaned over to align his next shot.

  As part of their usual routine, Tatum sashayed up to Pummel and lifted her five-foot-seven-inch stature from her flat, jewelled sandals to allow him to kiss her on the cheek. He was lord of the manor and she was lady – their connection purely professional, as was their shared understanding over Eden. Turning away from him again, she spread her arms along the end of the pool table.

  ‘What’s your new friend called, Pummel?’ she asked.

  ‘Eden,’ Eden answered, not looking up at her as he took his shot from the far end of the table. ‘And I’m more than capable of talking for myself.’ He stood upright, his gaze coolly meeting hers fleetingly before he moved around to the adjacent side of the table to take his next shot.

  Pummel smiled, rubbed his jaw lightly with his fingers as he waited, as much as everyone else, to see what Tatum would do next.

  Tatum bit into her bottom lip, her head tilted slightly to the side as she watched Eden bend over. And as she raked him with unashamed interest, accompanying it with a smile that told Jessie he’d already captured her attention in ways other than just another little job for Pummel, Jessie’s stomach coiled with more than jealousy – it coiled in possessiveness.

  He was her find. He was her problem to deal with. A problem now increasing by the minute if he reciprocated Tatum’s interest.

  Eden stood upright and strolled around the back of Tatum, collecting his bottle before heading back down to the far end of the table nearest Jessie.

  As he took a mouthful of beer whilst contemplating his next shot, Tatum trailed her long nails along the mahogany edge on her way around to him, all the while drinking in every inch of him as he leaned over once again to align his cue.

  This time he missed.

  Tatum met him at the corner of the table, directly in front of Jessie, so close that Jessie could see every freckle scattered over the pale skin of her nose and cheeks, the blunt strands of her thick auburn bob sleek against her feminine, enviably well-defined jaw as her narrow hazel eyes gazed blatantly into his from under her low, fine eyebrows. Her full and sensual lips, as bare as her face aside from heavily made-up eyes, curled into a smile as she made full-on eye contact with Eden. ‘Sorry,’ she said, taking his bottle from him as she moved in closer. ‘Did I put you off?’

  She caressed her lips with the bottle rim before tilting her head back slightly to consume a slow mouthful as she watched him from under half-dropped, black eyelashes that made her hazel eyes seem even paler.

  ‘And you are?’ he asked.

  Jessie’s heart plummeted at the question as Eden squarely held Tatum’s gaze.

  ‘Tatum,’ she declared with a smile that didn’t vary whether she killed or seduced. Pressing her lips together, she passed the bottle back to him.

  He didn’t even bother to wipe it before he took his own mouthful. His gaze dropped to her chest, to her hips. He even blatantly tilted his head to check out the jut of her behind – something that only made Tatum’s smile broaden.

  It was the worst-case scenario: she was his type.

  The sickness in the pit of Jessie’s stomach intensified. Her hands tightened on the wooden seat, the struggle to keep up the appearance of indifference, she was sure, slipping a little. She should have left, but like watching the ticking clock amidst the inevitable loss of a loved one, she felt helpless to watch on.

  As Pummel moved in to take his own shot, Eden pulled away from Tatum to ease up onto the stool only two away from Jessie – his far enough forward for her to see the right side of his face.

  ‘You don’t have a lot to say for yourself,’ Tatum remarked, stepping between Eden’s spread thighs as Pummel reclaimed his lead in the game. She reached for his wrist, laying it out flat to expose his forearm. ‘But I like the quiet type. I think there’s something very sexy about a man who has nothing to prove.’

  Brushing the leather of his watchstrap, her fingers were feather light on his skin as she ran the pads of them delicately up his arm, tracing the numbers. As her lengthy nails skimmed his skin, her spaghetti strap slid down her shoulder with the motion, partially exposing her breast to him. But she did nothing to rectify it as her eyes met his again.

  Jessie’s jaw tightened as she watched through her shroud of hair, restraining herself from shoving Tatum away.

  ‘I bet you can make a man bleed with those,’ Eden said, glancing at her nails before knocking back another mouthful of drink.

  And that was the problem: she would.

  Tatum smiled again. ‘I can use them however you want,’ she said, releasing his forearm to slide both hands up his inner thighs, splaying her fingers dangerously close to his crotch as she leaned in to whisper something in his left ear.

  He didn’t even flinch. Instead his smile was fleeting before he took another mouthful of beer, his cool dismissal only fuelling Tatum’s need for persistence – particularly when he placed his hands low on her hips only to move her away to take his next shot.

  As he bent over, Tatum stepped in beside him, slid her hand down his behind, leaned over and whispered to him again.

  Only this time he met her gaze; smiled despite missing his shot. Eden stood, cupped the nape of her neck and whispered something back, his groin unashamedly close to hers as he backed her against the table.

  Tatum’s eyes flared too tellingly, not least as his hand slid down her behind, disappearing between her legs as he whispered another something into her ear. In a move one step more blatant than Tatum’s, it confirmed that, despite her previous doubt, she hadn’t got him wrong. From a grasp that exposed him as anything but a gentleman, he proved he was exactly like all the others.

  Like the rest of the cons, sex was about sport, entertainment, the dispelling of aggression or experimentation. She’d seen enough of it over the decades and had seen that side to human nature in its darkest and most twisted form, until everything that was bad and fetid and wrong with it became the norm – sex linked only to fear or power or control. That was her reality.


  And for someone who looked like Eden, someone with that edge of charm, she had no doubt he regularly turned it to his advantage to get what he wanted – just like he had no doubt intended to do with her.

  A sinking sensation consumed her as what followed in the next agonising twenty minutes was far more than just harmless flirting. Because, when it came to Tatum, there was no harmless flirting – and it seemed Eden was of the same ilk. It became more than just playful taps on her behind as she got in the way, more than just glances as she perched or leaned on the table between his and Pummel’s shots. Instead, Eden’s confident and controlled gaze was brimming with sexual intent, something that pushed every single one of Tatum’s buttons and subsequently did nothing to help his cause – or dispel the very encounter Jessie so desperately needed to prevent.

  When he eased back onto the stool as Pummel took over again, as Tatum backed between his legs, her hand disappearing behind her to massage his crotch, he had no shame in wrapping his arm across her collar bone, letting his hand slide down to clasp her breast as if they were familiar lovers alone.

  Worse, his thumb that had glided along Jessie’s lower back with such secret intimacy, that had made her feel more alive than Pummel’s cold touch ever did, was now cruelly gliding over Tatum’s hardened nipple with a pressure that seemed stomach-churningly cold considering his gaze never left the game.

  And not once since Tatum had arrived had he glanced back in her direction.

  The stark reminder, the crash to earth of what she was dealing with, cleared her head. And when Eden moved Tatum out of the way to take his next shot, winning the third game, it was the clincher.

  She needed him gone.

  He held his hand out for Pummel to take. ‘Hope you’re a man of your word, Pummel.’

  With a smirk, Pummel accepted. He looked across at Homer. ‘Tracker’s room is free now, right?’

  Tracker’s room – up the stairs on the other side of the arch. Pummel was keeping him close.

  ‘Unless you’re expecting rent from a corpse,’ Homer confirmed.

  ‘You’ve got yourself a bed until tomorrow,’ Pummel declared, turning his attention back to Eden. ‘Then we’ll talk again.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Eden said, placing his cue on the table to conclude the game, having secured his reason for playing.

  ‘Mind if I show our new boy the ropes?’ Tatum asked, her hand sliding into the back pocket of Eden’s jeans.

  Pummel flashed a grin that Jessie had seen one too many times. ‘Sure. Make him feel at home.’

  Jessie watched Eden leave with the same quiet confidence that had marked his entry, grabbing his jacket along the way. Less than a handful of hours since his arrival in Blackthorn and he had nested himself in the most lucrative row having already played one of Pummel’s most prized possessions and now about to get up close and personal with his other. She couldn’t deny giving him credit where credit was due.

  For as long as it lasted.

  ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’ Homer asked, keeping his voice low despite Eden being out of earshot.

  ‘I want to see if our new resident bad boy is as bad as those numbers say he is,’ Pummel said quietly as he watched them leave. ‘You saw that stuff – however the fuck he got his hands on it, he still did. I want you to do some digging around between now and dawn. Find out if anyone else has got a penitentiary number that matches his. I want to know everything about him.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Tatum will be finished with him soon enough. I’ve got the feeling he’ll pass. I’ll set him a task at dawn. And if he’s playing me,’ he said, looking back at Homer, ‘he’s dead.’

  5

  It had been risky, but Eden knew Pummel’s type only too well. Lord his authority though he may, deep down the notorious con had a respect for those who dared face up to him. And that was what Eden needed to get in there: his respect. Respect and to snag his curiosity. Clearly he’d managed the latter with the honeytrap, or initiation, or rite of passage, or whatever the fuck Tatum was as she lead him out of the room and down towards the kitchen.

  The red-haired beauty moved with a natural elegance, promoted by the quality of the top she wore. From the flow of the fabric, let alone what he’d felt, it was one hundred per cent authentic silk. Clothes of that quality were hard enough to get hold of in Blackthorn, let alone afford. Those who got access to it had to be able to pay for it one way or another, whether on the black market or paying above the odds in the one or two stores that managed to sell it – stores owned by people no one dared risk stealing from. Tatum rightly wore it like the status symbol it was. And on her shapely body, it took balls to walk around that place like that. But she had to know that and, from the way she’d come on to him so quickly, she believed she had nothing to fear. Either that or she thrived on risk as much as he did.

  He leaned against the doorframe as she sauntered across the kitchen to grab a label-less wine bottle and a couple of glasses. No doubt the contents were as home-brewed and subsequently potent as most other alcohol supplies in Blackthorn.

  She sauntered back past him, cocked her head as an indication for him to follow.

  Glasses clinking between the slender fingers of one hand, the neck of the wine bottle held in the other, she strolled past the foot of the stairs, the sway to her hips as well-practised as her seduction routine. Because it had to be well-practised. There, in Blackthorn, sex was used as a weapon as much as any iron or steel rod. The south, in particular, was brimming with as many deadly females as males. There was no such thing as a superior species there. Women moved in gangs the same way the men did and knew how to fight as effectively as they knew how to seduce and manipulate. There, women would slaughter you mid-act just for the fun of it. And an intelligent woman, like Tatum, was the most lethal of all – smiles and seduction one moment then a six-inch blade in the back or castration the next.

  But, for now, Pummel seemingly wanted him alive.

  As he reached the foot of the stairs, he looked over his shoulder to see the girl had exited behind them.

  At first she stilled, her hand clutching the handle on the door she’d closed behind her. She glanced at Tatum stepping through the arch into the neighbouring house, before glaring back at him. And it was a glare that didn’t falter even as she looked over her shoulder from halfway up the stairs – a glare that brimmed with indignation at his presence.

  There was something else behind those brown eyes too – something that exuded vulnerability from his actions. Beneath that vulnerability, though, lingered the silent warning that she’d finished with him about as much as he’d finished with her. That look was as intoxicating as it got for him – ten times more compelling than the sexual swagger of the woman who was escorting him to his new room.

  He held her glare for a second longer than he should have, wanting it to be clear to her that nothing had severed their connection despite Tatum having entered the mix. Something he’d be proving to her soon enough.

  And he couldn’t help but smile as she frowned. Not only was there a lot to like physically; she had a sharpness in her eyes, a quick retort, and a defiance towards him that screamed challenge. But more than that was a composure, a compassion shining through a haze of corruption and standing out against a backdrop of darkness.

  ‘Hey,’ Tatum said, recapturing his attention. She glanced up the stairs, but the girl had already, thankfully, disappeared into the shadows of the stairwell. She cocked her head back towards the arch. ‘This way.’

  ‘What’s up there?’ Eden asked, indicating up the stairwell.

  ‘Pummel’s room. Homer’s too.’

  No mention of the girl.

  With her glass-holding hand, Tatum looped a free finger around the front pocket of his jeans, tugging him gently through the arch that had once been a dividing wall to the terraced house next door.

  He stopped at the foot of the staircase on the other side of the wall. The same pattern ran all
the way through the row – and the further away the rooms, the denser the population, the more opaque the darkness, the more lurid the potential. ‘How many houses are in this row?’

  ‘It stretches to sixty. Most rows span to about forty.’

  ‘Have you got any problems with turf wars?’

  ‘No more than expected. A few have tried their luck with Pummel but no one has succeeded yet. Everyone knows it’s not in any of our interests to have a full-scale war. Not with each other.’

  ‘What about the third species? Do you get many problems with them?’

  ‘Not much. They stick to their own turf, west and east. The lycans tend to stick to the north. If you’re smart you’ll stay out of their territories, especially the hub. They don’t take much to our markings.’ She indicated towards the density beyond. ‘That’s the party end. You’ll find whatever you want down there. And in the floors above it. It can get rough in some of the end rooms, so know what you’re getting into. Are you a watcher or a participator?’

  ‘Depends on the show.’

  She laughed; tongued her upper teeth fleetingly. ‘Be warned, I have ways of calling your bluff. So does Pummel.’

  ‘And me yours.’

  She smiled. She pondered for a moment as she searched his gaze. ‘I think I’m going to like you.’ She caught hold of the buckle on his jeans and led him up the poorly lit stairs. ‘So you’re new in Blackthorn?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But you’re not from this locale?’

  ‘I am. I was extradited to a pen in another.’

  ‘You must be a bad boy.’

  ‘I just have a problem with being told what to do.’