Page 101 of Caution to the Wind

Maybe because they seemed like such a perfect symbol of Axe-Man’s dichotomy, the artist and the savage. I wondered, briefly, if that’s why they called him Axe-Mannow. It suited him, and even though I hated the idea of never calling him Henning again, I liked that he’d chosen that as his new moniker.

Mostly, though, I was obsessed with his hands because they were so fucking sexy.

The rest of the pages were sketches of those hands on my body. Wrapped around my throat in a slight chokehold. Pressed too hard into my hips so they left faint bruises. Filling up the space between my thighs that ached for him just thinking about it.

I tossed my pencil to the bedspread and face-planted in my sketchbook. Happily, I didn’t have a deadline looming, but my editor still liked to see progress on my next project every few weeks, and so far, I had nothing (appropriate) to show her.

A knock on the door stirred me out of my fevered restlessness.

I rolled off the hard mattress, landing on the balls of my feet and grabbing my tactical blade from the bedside table simultaneously. I wasn’t expecting any visitors, and I’d learned the hard way not to open the door to strangers over the years without a weapon at the ready.

When I pulled the door open with the chain still attached, I saw Jiang Kuan smoking a cigarette and leaning against the balustrade. The sodium lights cast his steeply angled cheekbones in vivid yellow, the hollow beneath in black. He looked like ajiangshi, the Chinese equivalent of a zombie-vampire hybrid. Something monstrous and dead inside wrapped in a dangerously pretty package.

I should have known better than to let him in, but that option had been taken from me long ago.

“Mui mui, aren’t you going to let me in?” he asked after a moment, stepping forward to blow smoke through the crack in the door directly into my face.

I scowled at both his rudeness and persistence in calling meMui mui, a term of endearment that meant both little sister and girlfriend. Still, I closed the door in his face to unlock the chain before opening it again, dragging him into the room by the collar of his shirt. If one of The Fallen MC saw him at my door, I thought they might shoot me first and ask questions later, given my reputation.

Jiang allowed himself to be pulled into the room and then pushed down onto the first bed, the one I used as a desk and couch. When I plucked the cigarette from his mouth, he didn’t even protest as I stomped to the bathroom to put it out in the sink and then throw the butt away.

When I returned, he was lounged back on one elbow, looking through my sketches. He had long, elegant fingers meant to play the piano or stitch silk, yet they were used predominately for torture and the odd murder.

“Your next book should be erotic,” he suggested, pushing the image of Axe-Man’s huge hands palming my backside toward me over the duvet.

I perched my butt on the dresser, crossed my arms, and cocked a brow at him. “Can you forgive a girl for being a little horny? My boyfriend is gay, so I don’t even reap the benefits of being in a committed relationship.”

Jiang didn’t smile at me, but mirth was hidden in those dark eyes as he blinked at me with faux boredom. He didn’t particularly like to be reminded of his homosexuality even though it was his natural state. Years of bigoted talk amongst the triad members and Kasper killing his boyfriend eight years ago had left him in a strange limbo state. He was only attracted to men and refused to date a woman in any real sense, but he was forced to appease Kasper or else face the consequences, which were, quite honestly, dire.

So he used me.

I’d been playing at being Jiang’s girlfriend for the past five years.

Not out of the goodness of my heart but because we had a deal.

Gwaan hai.

I scratched his back, and he scratched mine. It had started out as a business deal, but over the years, I’d come to reluctantly care for Jiang. The truth was, other than Old Dragon, he was my only constant. Years of public dates in fancy Vancouver restaurants and showing up on his arm at charity events had led to real conversations about who we were and what we wanted out of life. Even though we both knew we weren’t the kind of people to ever get what we actually wanted.

I felt for him and related to him in a lot of ways. He couldn’t be who he wanted to be, couldn’t be with someone he truly wanted to be with, and that was a kind of hopelessness I felt echoed in my own heart.

More than that, I owed him a lot. He’d helped me get out of the hellhole Florent had banished me to, sent my work into the right hands to secure my first publishing deal, and saved me from feeling desperately alone. We relied on each other and even loved each other in our own ways.

“Why are you here?” I asked him. “I told you I couldn’t have you showing up.”

He gave me a long look and then shrugged one shoulder as he went back to looking at my art. “Kasper asked about you last night. He mentioned we hadn’t seen you around in a while and that it was high time I put a ring on your finger.”

“You know that’s never going to happen,” I reminded him. “I draw the line at marriage. Especially when you haven’t exactly been holding up your end of the deal lately.”

His end of the deal.

Finding out who killed Kate and getting me access to them.

I knew who’d done it. Jiang had discovered the truth from Kasper one night three years ago.

The White Snake, the Dragon Head of the Red Dragons triad.

A man who had emerged in Vancouver some sixteen years ago as an unknown and quickly united the various tongs in Chinatown under the united front of the Red Dragons. He’d reigned uncontested in the city until Kasper and Jiang had moved in from the east.