Page 160

This guy had a set of brass ones, she’d give him that.

“I’m not interested, Skinner.”

She moved to take her hand back, to shove off and just head for her truck, but a spider’s touch became a grip. A yank. He snapped her to him, her shoulders colliding with his chest. Then the railing was in her ribs and his hands were pinning hers down to the top of it, stretched out on either side.

“Yes you are.” His voice was a rasp at her ear and set all her fine hairs standing on end. “I can smell it on you. I know exactly what you’re interested in.” He pressed in at her back, and there was most certainly an erect cock wedging against her tailbone. “And it ain’t pretty smiles and blue eyes back there.”

“I said, fuck off!”

Buckeye bent a knee and stomped her boot sole onto his right shin. The enforcer swore and made a grab for her hair, but the elbow of her freed right arm arced up and back, connecting with flesh and bone. It didn’t crunch how she’d hoped, but it did cause a satisfying grunt of pain, and now the rest of her was loose to spin around.

The screen door creaked open and a second imposing figure stepped out of the house, only feet away. Skinner had a hand to his nose and murder in dark eyes, but the other man stepped toward them.

“The woman told you to fuck off,” said August. “Or you wanna fight both of us? Looks like she’s doin’ a damn fine job already.”

Skinner looked from August to Buckeye and back again. Ends of his hair had fallen in disarray over his forehead. He straightened and glared poison at both of them.

“Y’all two better not come back here alone,” he said. “Neither one of you.” He strode off around the side of the porch, perhaps to enter the house again from the back.

Buckeye let out a long breath. The remaining man approached, cautious.

“You all right?”

She eyed the house as though the spurned Skinner would come storming back out of it, vengeful. It was paranoia, though. The man was a sleaze and a coward, but he wasn’t an idiot. Any sort of incident at The Rose, and the Lustful would be demanding his enforcer bands. He wasn’t going to jeopardize a hard-won job like that.

“I’ll live,” she answered at last, leaning her backside up against the rail and folding her arms over her chest.

As August came near, he chuckled. “I, uh … I came out here to tell you … you ain’t as bad a dancer as you think. But it sounds like to me you’ve had about enough compliments from men for one night.”

She could tell he was trying to diffuse the riotous tension in the air under the porch, but Buckeye just didn’t have it in her to be polite anymore. Compliments? Hell, men altogether. Should have never accepted the invitation to go inside in the first place.

“You been real nice, August,” she said, beginning her excuses as he joined her at the rail, “and I did have a good time dancing. Haven’t done that in a long time.” Buckeye gave him a tired smile. “I just … don’t think I know how to handle people. Even if they’re polite and fun.” She hoped it was a graceful and civil enough way to make her excuses and get to the truck.

The smile he gave her back was its own kind of sad. The blond man shook his head. “I’m real sorry, Bucks.”

She looked over at him in the dim light. Squinted.

“For what?”

A flash of motion.

Pain, needle sharp, in the side of her neck.

“This.”

Something was inside her. Thin. Precise. Spreading.

She wanted to screech, to bolt, but her eyes rolled back.

Arms caught her as she slid to the ground, which melted before she got there.

The stars she saw were not in the Milky Way.

Deliver Me From Evil

Buckeye’s feet were on the ground, but something dull was cutting under her arms. Her body slumped forward, and the inside of her mouth tasted like dusty upholstery. Moonlight showed her earth and rocks instead of wood or carpet under her shoes.

Metal clanked somewhere close in front of her and she groaned, a thick sound, her tongue filling the back of her throat. The tightness across her chest was her shirt: something held her upright with it.