Page 16 of Howl Lotta Love

Lips already blue. Foam at the corner of his mouth. A hollow tooth or a capsule under the tongue—somebody had made sure none of them could talk before the fight even started, which told Jace exactly how organized the people behind this were, and exactly how little they valued the men they’d sent to do the dying.

He crouched beside the body anyway, checking pockets out of habit more than hope—no wallet, no phone, no insignia on the tactical gear that would tie back to anyone. Professional in the worst way. Somebody had spent real money making sure a dead man told them nothing, and that silence said more than a name would have.

Emma had gone wide-eyed at the sight of it, tire iron still gripped white-knuckled in one hand, watching a man die on concrete six feet away in a way that told him she was tucking the image somewhere she wouldn’t get to unpack later. Jace noted it. One more thing to deal with once the immediate danger stopped being immediate.

“Dead in under a minute.” Roman wiped his hands on his jeans, visibly insulted by the whole encounter. “Every damn time. Nobody attacks during a reasonable dinner hour anymore either. Always the parking garage. Always right when I’ve got plans, and always with the poison capsules, which, frankly, feels like overkill for hired muscle.”

“You didn’t have plans,” Diesel said.

“I had potential plans. Same thing.”

Jace didn’t join the argument. He was already crossing to Emma, blood running down her cheekbone in a bright thin line that locked his ribs up so hard it hurt to breathe past it.

“Let me see.” His voice came out rough, rougher than he could remember it coming out in years, and his hands—hands that had broken bone and opened flesh minutes ago without one second of hesitation—were not steady when he caught her chin and tipped her face into the light. The cut ran shallow along her cheekbone, ugly but survivable. Her wrist, cradled against her stomach, had already swollen tight and shiny at the joint.

“I’m fine.” Fast. Automatic. The kind of lie people told when they were anything but.

“You’re not fine. Hold still.” He pulled a handkerchief from his jacket, and the hands that hadn’t shaken once through four broken bones and one dead man trembled now, careful in a way that had nothing tactical left in it, pressing the cloth to her cheek like she might shatter if he pressed too hard.

Emma went still under his hands, watching his face instead of her own wound. “You’re shaking.”

“Aware of that.”

“You took down four men without blinking.”

“That part was easy.” He kept his eyes on the cut, on the careful pressure of his own fingers, because looking directly at her right now was more than he could survive. “This isn’t.”

Surprise crossed her face, then a quiet he hadn’t seen on her before. “I’m more scared of how much I trust you already than I am of them,” she said, low enough it barely carried past the two of them. “I’ve known you two weeks.”

“Twelve days.”

“Twelve days, then. Which makes it worse, not better.” She looked down at his hands, unsteady against her cheek, trying to reconcile them with the hands that had broken bone across the garage minutes ago. “I don’t let people in fast. I don’t usually let people in at all. And you didn’t even have to try.”

“I’ve been trying since the elevator.”

“That’s not the same as succeeding.”

“No.” Low. Certain. “But I’ll take it.”

The words he might have said next got buried under Roman clearing his throat from a very deliberate ten feet away, and the moment folded itself shut before either of them could do a single thing with it.

The safe house looked, from the outside, like every other brownstone on a block built to discourage attention—which was, Jace thought, hauling Emma up the front steps with one arm banded around her waist, the entire point.

“I don’t need to be carried.”

“You’re not being carried. You’re being assisted.” He didn’t loosen his grip an inch. “There’s a difference.”

“The difference is imaginary.”

“The difference is you nearly went down twice in the last block, and my imagination isn’t what’s holding you up right now.”

She didn’t argue that one. First real concession of the night. He pushed the door open into warmth and low light and the smell of coffee somebody had brewed hours ago and forgotten.

Emma stopped arguing somewhere around the front hall, and Jace understood why the second he caught his own reflection in the hallway mirror—jaw locked, eyes still faintly gold at the edges, a man who’d spent the last hour white-knuckling his own control in front of the one person he most needed to stay steady for. She looked at that face and didn’t say another word about locks or apartments or alarm systems. She let him get her to the couch. Let Milo take the wrist with quick, competent hands. Watched Jace the entire time, unfinished business plain on her face.

“Sprained, not broken.” Milo worked fast, efficient for once instead of running commentary. “You’ll hate me in about six hours when the adrenaline wears off.” He glanced at her cheek, already cleaned, already closing. “Won’t scar. Small mercies.”

“Good to know my modeling career survives.”