Unbound

He jerked the wheel right before Spring Mountain Ranch, the turnoff coming more quickly than he remembered, though the view from the asphalt top was as spectacular as always…and theirs alone. Wild burros and rattlers regularly canvassed the dusty range, but as the first bolts of lightning pinged off the desert floor, all that flashed back at them were Joshua trees, sagebrush, and the red sandstone range framing the basin. JJ killed the engine, and for a moment they were both silent, enjoying the beginnings of a storm that would turn the dry washes into rivers sure to flood the valley.

Then the woman rose, straddling the windshield in one liquid motion, skirt rising to her hips. She challenged him with a downward glance as her bare foot carelessly crushed a wiper. “I love a good desert monsoon,” she said, and licked her lips as the sky cracked open.

JJ moved so fast she was pinned to the glass before the first raindrop fell. His hands were in her wind-whipped hair, his mouth eating her laughter. He had to remind himself to be careful with her—she was mortal and more fragile than his kind—but her hunger was spiced, and it fueled him. It was probably just the drink, but with his eyes closed, his mouth open, and his body spread atop hers, he felt pieces of him shifting inside, as if loosening from tethered moorings, suddenly unbound.

When JJ finally opened his eyes, he was surprised to find their positions reversed. He was pinned to the hood, her clothing pushed aside, his jeans half down his thighs. She lowered herself over him, a private smile revealed in a sharp crack of splintered light, but when her hips began pistoning above him, he forgot even to be surprised.

He decided later that despite her aggressiveness, she was a closet romantic. Why else wait until the storm had heightened, and they were both about to climax, to pull out the weapon? The need for symbolism, coupled with raw power, obviously motivated her…him, too, which was why he happened to open his eyes in that moment, wanting to watch her rain-streaked face as she cried out into the wild night. Instead he saw her wide, dark eyes hard with intent, and the honed edge of a tomahawk barreling toward his chest.

JJ barely pulled his palms from her waist in time to counteract the lethal blow, but once it’d been deflected, adrenaline lent the sobriety needed to disarm her. He flipped, crushing her against the car she so loved, her slim frame denting the pristine hood. The glyph on her chest began to smoke. “Guess I don’t have to be so gentle after all,” he said, and made a second, deeper dent.

The impact didn’t stop her throaty laughter. “Satisfy a girl’s curiosity before she dies?”

“Is this a final request?” he growled, forearm across her neck.

“At least you’ll finish off something tonight.”

“Besides your life, you mean.” He dug a nail into the flesh of her fingertip, and felt a false print pop off. He sucked in a deep breath but still couldn’t scent anything of her Shadowy nature. She’d covered it with a synthetic, then. It was easy enough to do.

She smiled weakly. “When did you get the tattoo on your right shoulder?”

She’d seen the yin/yang symbol. The word desire was etched out in the shaded side. The other held fear. “I was nineteen.” He saw no harm in answering now.

“And now you’re twenty-eight.”

She relaxed beneath him as his brow furrowed, all her strength sinking inward. He remained on guard.

“JJ,” she teased in a threadbare croak. “I’ve known you since you were five.”

He froze above her, all the shifting inside of him ceasing, reversing. “And you are?” he asked, voice as hard.

“Solange,” she said simply.

Lightning cracked over his shoulder as memories moved through his skull. Solange. Sola. Ma Sola.

“You’ve lost your accent.”

“Second generation French.” She shrugged easily, like they didn’t have a past, and she still had a future. “Easy when you’re raised here.”

“Have you waited twenty-three years to kill me?”

Her tongue darted out, wetting her bottom lip. “I’ve waited to see why I didn’t.”

They looked at each other, and JJ inexplicably lessened the pressure. Then he caught himself, and picked up her conduit, the tomahawk. The heft was eerily unfamiliar. He lifted it above his head.

She gave him a slight smile for being able to do what she hadn’t. “I’m sorry.”

Again, it threw him.

“About…my parents?”

She nodded again.

He raised a brow. “So sorry you were going to kill me?”

He felt her forearm flex before her fingertips trailed up his arm, playing just below his tattoo. “I was going to put you out of your misery.”

“Don’t do me any more favors, Solange.”

But as her fingertips continued to play on his skin, he lowered her weapon. Warren’s words revisited him as he stared into the cocoa depths of the woman’s eyes. Death’s not important…not even a violent one. Thoughts were crucial, he’d said. Actions exposed one’s state of mind.