Page 91 of Shadowed Sins: Nitro

"Let him try."

"You don't understand. Everyone I've ever—he kills them. Or worse."

"I'm not everyone." I reach over, take her hand. "And he's a dead man walking. When the time comes, I'll hold him down while you take him apart. But tonight wasn't the time."

She turns to look at me, and something shifts in her expression. "You stopped me."

"You stopped me from gambling. We're even."

"I was going to blow our entire operation."

"And I was about to bet mission funds on race odds." I squeeze her hand. "We're both fucked up, Mira. That's why we work."

She's quiet for another mile, then: "Take the next exit."

"Where are we going?"

"Operational preparation." Her voice carries that controlled tone that means she's planning something. "Somewhere public. Somewhere neither of us can do something stupid."

"Mira—"

"Santa Monica Pier. Take the 10 West."

"The pier? That's forty minutes away."

"Exactly. Public enough that I can't kill anyone. No real gambling to tempt you." She's regaining control, turning the chaos into something tactical. "We need to decompress before tomorrow's operation."

"By playing carnival games?"

"By being somewhere normal people go. Doing normal things." Her laugh is dark. "Or at least pretending we know how."

twenty-two

Mira

The Audi's tires squeal as Jax takes the Santa Monica exit too fast. My shoulder slams into the door and I taste copper where I've bitten my tongue.

"This was your solution? Carnival games?" My voice emerges breathless, not authoritative. Thirty minutes ago I was frozen at the gala, staring at Alexei across the room while every muscle in my body screamed to put him in the ground. Jax's hand on my wrist was the only thing that stopped me.

"You went completely still when you saw him." His knuckles are white on the wheel, dress shirt from the gala untucked and wrinkled, bow tie hanging loose around his neck. "Like a predator spotting prey. If I hadn't grabbed you—"

"I would have handled it professionally."

"You would have blown our cover trying to kill him in a room full of witnesses." He yanks the wheel into the pier parking lot, killing the engine with unnecessary force. "And I almost went straight to the high-stakes poker room when I saw those players heading upstairs."

The silence that follows weighs heavy. We both almost gave in to our obsessions tonight. We both pulled each other back from the edge.

"So your solution is the pier." My fingers find the bruise on my throat from the Observatory, hidden beneath my dress collar. Still tender from last night when he fucked me against the telescope while the stars blurred overhead.

"I need to do something with my hands that isn't cards or you." But the way his eyes track my fingers touching his mark says exactly what he wants his hands doing.

"The pier closes in an hour."

"Then we better hurry." He's out of the car before I finish speaking, that manic energy crackling off him like electricity after a near-miss. "Come on, Mira. Let me show you what normal people do for fun."

Neither of us knows what normal means. But the alternative is going back to the safe house and pretending we don't want to tear each other apart.

The Santa Monica Pier assaults my senses immediately. Screaming teenagers, flashing lights, the sticky-sweet smell of funnel cake mixing with ocean salt. Families are filtering out as the later crowd arrives—couples looking for shadows, groups of drunk college kids taking over the spaces children just vacated.