Out for Blood by Kristen Painter Page A

that?
    She came a little closer but didn’t touch him again. “Your reasons are enough. But I am sad that you deny yourself for them.” Her lip curled in disgust. “The Kubai Mata.”
    “I don’t deny myself anything.”
    “They rule you. They are your master.”
    “They got me out of prison .”
    At the word, her mouth softened again. “You did not deserve that place for what you did.”
    “I agree, but the jury thought otherwise.”
    She spat. “And none of them tribe. None of them your people.”
    “No.” She had a point, but all that was in the past now.
    Her hand reached out and her fingers bunched in the fabric of his T-shirt. The space between them disappeared. She pressed against his chest and her pulse vibrated through his body, so fast it was like a shudder. Tendrils of heat curled around his muscles, brushing against his nerve endings with soft insistence. “I am your people.”
    “Yes.” She was. He was half Seminole. She was born of Seminole myth.
    Her lids fluttered as her hands slipped higher up his chest. “And I can set you free of the Kubai Mata.”
    He shook his head, her mouth dangerously close to his, her eyes impossible to look away from. He wanted her. Right down to the soles of his feet. “I… I can’t be free of them until my family is safe.”
    She threw her head back and laughed, the sound a soft caw-caw-caw . “I have promised to protect you.”
    “It’s not me I’m worried about. My sister, my mother, my grandmother. They’re my concern.”
    Her hand flattened down hard on his chest. “You think I would hurt them?”
    He looked into her eyes, searching for a reason to answer otherwise, but he seemed destined to always speak the truth around her. “Yes.”
    She pushed away, but he grabbed her hand, unwilling to let her go. Unwilling to dismiss the possibility that she could do what she said. “Give me your word. Your promise. Tell me you’ll protect them, too. Otherwise, I want nothing to do with you anymore.”
    Her eyes were wild, her mouth slightly open as her chest rose and fell. “What do you give me in return?”
    Reluctantly, he released her. “What do you want?”
    Instead of answering, she stepped back and dragged her hands through her hair, then held them out, her palms full of feathers. “Take these to your grandmother. Have her make charms for each of them.”
    He took the feathers and tucked them into the pocket of his jeans. What had he just agreed to? And why didn’t he care more what the answer was?
    “You are a good man, Thomas Creek.” She flattened herself against him, her breasts soft through the leather top she wore. Her hands came up to stroke the column of his neck, the shaved sides of his head, each caress dragging him toward the line between control and abandon. She leaned up and touched her mouth to his, just enough contact to pull a groan from his throat.
    Instantly, his emotions returned to the day he’d stepped free of the prison grounds. Every want and desire he’d ever had while trapped inside that steel and concrete hellhole now burned in him again. Nothing mattered but possessing Yahla. His hands tightened on the bare skin above the waist of her jeans. “I’m not as good as you think I am.”
    She laughed, the same birdlike sound as before, then pulled his head down to hers and kissed him with a fire that ignited every wicked thought coursing through his brain. When she released him, he was panting. She smiled and took his hand to lead him back through the window and into the bedroom.
    “You saved me. And now I am going to save you.”

 

Chapter Seven
     
    T he lights of Umberto’s restaurant lit up the night like a burning ember in an ashtray. The last time Lola had come to Little Havana, she’d been here to identify her daughter’s body. Pain pierced her heart as the car drove on. She hadn’t planned on coming back so soon. If ever. It wasn’t that she’d abandoned the neighborhood of her people; she’d just…