Disclaimer: this is the last time I will ever write one of these godforsaken - ha, somehow I find it wrong god and forsaken co-exist in the same sentence- I will ever write one of these things. The characters belong to Cassandra Clare. That means the whole lot of them. Their words though, they belong to me.

Nichi does too.

You will meet him in this chapter.

Thanks to reviewers: LOVERGIRL, I love that you love this. Because I kinda love writing it. RitzaHerondale, I like them as murderers as well. And of course AnnaW14, Your insight forever helps me and my writing. Thanks.

Haven't editited yet but WHATEVER- Enjoy-sincerely

"Trust," Clary found herself murmuring as Jace stepped away and opened the door. "Now trust I agree is complicated." She followed him into the upstairs hallway. All the rooms were hovering in the loft Clary'd seen earlier and as they descended the stairs to the dimly-lit living room Clary couldn't help but pause at the view of the sunset before her.

"So, Red," Jace looked back at her but still walked in a straight line showing unimaginable grace. "What's your story?"

"My story?" she asked incredulously. Just a minute ago he didn't want her in his house, now he wanted her story?

He chuckled, the sound nipping at her nerves, sending tingles down her legs and up her arms, pooling somewhere within her. "Why do you want to kill people?" he restated.

"Shouldn't you be asking who it is I want to kill?" She fired back, answering a question with another. He did this often, she noticed, but she'd also noticed he hated it when she did so. She abruptly decided she liked making him mad.

He smirked, the chuckle from earlier lingering beneath his golden irises, like it was a caged dove. "I was trying to ease into the subject, Sparky, make you more comfortable." His tone implied this was not at all his intentions. "But now that we're on topic, who is it that you would like to viciously murder."

"No one anybody important would miss." the memories of what they did to her mother seeped into her words, giving it a spiteful bite. And her glare would burn a whole through the living room floor if it could.

"Vague answers bother me." he announced, as if she needed him to tell her. She smiled deviously, a smirk smothering her grin.

"That's why I give them."

He paused without turning back and looking at her, his hand on the doorknob of the only door Clary had seen downstairs. He was tensed with a high-strung vibe, and his breathing was deep and rough. She didn't know what she did to him, but she knew that she enjoyed seeing him so flustered.

Stick to the plan, Clarissa.

Learn...but tempt.

The perfect combination.

This would have to be the temptation part of the lesson, if it was even happening now, Clary truthfully had no idea where he was taking her and she liked the mystery. She placed a feather-light touch of her hand on his back, where it had been before. She liked the feeling of his ratcheting spine, hitching with his breaths. She liked how this soft spot between his shoulder blades told her everything.

"Are you all right?" her voice sounded sweet and high to her ears, almost like a flute. She never knew she could talk like that. "Your breathing seems to have sped up."

Jace whirled around, a flash of meshed colours and blurs of hair and nose and eyes. He backed up a little further, so she didn't come in contact with him. "How much did you actually get out?" His eyes were searching and wide. She'd have said he looked confused had she not known his cool manor. "Any schooling? Friends, boyfriends?"

She settled back on her heels, not noticing her perch on her toes until it was gone. "No. I was almost always home. I'd leave to get my F-him food, and to go and return from the liquor store."

"That's it?" He inquired.

She nodded. "That is it." For a minute only silence was past between the unlikely pair, gold intertwining with green as he looked for something in her eyes. He was always seeking something, Clary realized.

Then let him find whatever he's looking for.

Make him think it's you.

That would be trust in its purity.

But what was he looking for? That was the real question. "Are you training me or not?" she asked, as he had not made a move to direct her anywhere, and he had not actually answered her in the bedroom

For someone who hates vague answers he sure gave them a lot.

Jace seemed to snap from his haze. "Uh- yah, yah. It's just in here, the training room. C'mon." He opened the door and Clary stepped forward into what could only be the start of her future.

Now why did her future always have to be so goddamned dingy.

Blue mats were piled in corners hazardously, a dull light bulb hung from a string in the ceiling. A few punching bags were hanging from wires along the far wall, a target standing beside them and a cut dummy skewered with a metal pole was loosing its innards all over the rough concrete floor. In the middle of the small confined room was a large carpet, looking almost sponge-like. Clary grimaced.

"I thought someone who owned a pent-house would be able to afford...ah...more efficient...reliable equipment." she warily eyed a seemingly bent dagger, the metal conformed into a twist and the dummy beside it resembling a shaved then slaughtered sheep, wool spilling from its barely connected throat.

Jace scowled, the only sign of his embarrassment was the sheepish rub on the back of his neck. "Listen- I'm being gracious enough to train you-" she cut him off.

"Not to mention you are a highly qualified assassin." she continued to complain.

He carried on as if she never spoke. "And I practice my skills mostly at the Lightwood's compound anyways, so show a little respect, all right?" He paused as the door slammed shut and encased them in the dismal space. The air was yellow with florescent light. "And I'm not an assassin!"

"Right," Clary gingerly stepped into the room, trying to take in her surrounding best she could. "No, you just kill people and make money doing it."

"I'm a- a... paid vigilante!" He walked over to a length roped that had snaked its way around the rafters hanging just above Clary's highest jumping height. When he reached the curl Jace tugged and the coil fell down to the ground with a thud. At her skeptical look he reprimanded himself. "Okay...so a highly paid, violent...liquidator?"

Clary didn't even decide to when suddenly her laugh filled the dusty air. She hadn't laughed-really laughed- in so long that the sound was foreign to her. The thought almost brought tears to her eyes, that her life was so depressing she didn't recognise her laugh. That was something people were recognised for. Their laugh. Their smile. Without those things-what was she.

Nobody?

Her heart twisted in a painful ache.

"Right, right," she replied sarcastically in attempt to hide her sadness. "So highly paid liquidators own penthouses?"

Jace smirked as he walked up to her. This was not the harsh man that spoke to her for the last day or two- how long had it been since she first met him? He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans before retorting. "You forgot the violent part- and this isn't the penthouse dear. I don't want to attract attention,highly paid violent liquidators don't usually brag about their riches. Buying a penthouse would be doing just that." He smiled a huge, bar-fighter's grin. A joking boyish, sexy rugged one. "That's your first lesson of assassin-try."

She couldn't help the smile overcoming her lips, his truly was contagious. "Is that even a word?"

He shrugged and placed delicate hands on her shoulders. "Who cares?" was his whisper before pulling her towards the center of the room. Just before they reached the mat Jace stopped. "Wait," his arm shot out to stop her movement. He whistled and Clary could help but find that the way he pursed his lips was sexy- very sexy.

She was so focused on his lips that she screeched when a cat trotted onto the mat. Jace smiled faintly. "This is Nichi. He is a cat."

"So I see," Clary's lip curled in disgust. She hated cats. Her father once brought one home- a stray- and it had attacked her relentlessly, a scar from its claws still marking her knee.

Nichi waltzed over, strutting like a model, stuck up and snobby like most pampered cats are. It had these big blue eyes and beige hair, black around its eyes in circles resembling the likes of a raccoon. It was extremely furry and fat, fat, fat. He stopped before Clarissa, her pale toes almost brushing his paws, when it looked up and she swore it stared directly into her eyes. Clary felt her head rear back as the cat tensed then yet out a little cry, not a yowl, but a cry. She swore it would attack her. It had to. Cats always did- god she hated cats.

And then it turned belly up and stuck all four legs in the air.

Clary just stared dumbfounded.

It stared back. Its tongue darted out and slid up its nose popping back into its mouth.

"Wha-?" she breathed before Jace picked Nichi up and threw him out the door.

She let out a sound of disgust. "Ugh," she almost gagged. "I hate, hate, hate, like exceedingly detest, cats!"

She watched as Jace tensed and his face hardened into the one he'd had on before entering the room. The mysterious, sexy, hard-lined, planes and angles, profile guy with the cocky eyes and pirate smile.

Great job Clarissa.

You insulted his cat!

What a way to appeal to his interests!

And as Jace motioned for them to begin she realized she hadn't even noticed that just for a minute there, he was real. Almost happy. Normal.

And so was she.

Sweat poured by the bucket-load down her forehead as yet another dagger clattered to the floor underneath the target, having already completed the seeming routine of hitting the wooden target and bouncing off. Her hair- which had been knotted behind her head in haste was falling apart, strands attaching themselves to her temples like leeches. She let out an exasperated breath.

Why wouldn't it just stick!

In anger Clary cranked her arm back, having replaced the knife with another, and hammered the blasted thing towards the wall blindly in rage. It flew in violent circles, blade over handle, until-of course- it missed the target completely. Seeing as the backboard in which the target was nailed to was the wall, the knife hurdled towards it and lodged its infinitesimal tip into the surface, before clattering down noisily and bringing a chunk of the wall with it.

A chunk of the concrete wall.

She blew a piece of straggly hair from her eyes as Jace clapped slow and mocking behind her, his voice appearing like a disembodied spirit's. "Now if you could actually hit your enemy's you would quite literally cut straight through their hearts."

Clary relaxed enough to turn and glare at her new-found tough-love trainer. She watched as he unlatched himself from where he was formerly lounging against the wall, and began to stroll lethargically over.

Seriously. Lounging against a wall! It wasn't fair: the things this man could do with his body.

Clary quite literally- for lack of better words- wanted to see exactly what he could do.

She wanted to see it happening to her.

Concentrate...the thought lagged with her sense of rationality.

"Here" Clary found herself pulling out of her mind for the umpteenth time in the last hour, the fantasies in her head just too tempting to resist. She really did try to pay attention but she was too attracted to the godly being before her. That's what this had to be. Attraction. Every move he made sent shivers or tingles to strange places, all coiling back 'round to pool in a place Clary didn't know she had, deep within her.

And what was more distracting than being sweaty in a small room with a Commanding Sexy And Slightly Dangerous Assassin Jace.

When he moved closer, until their was centimeters-no mere millimeters between them- Clary knew.

It was being in close proximity to a Commanding Sexy And Slightly Dangerous Assassin Jace while being sweaty. That was ten times worse. And so many times better.

"You have to clench your muscles," he started with instructions again. Clary moved into her offensive position and bunched the muscles in her legs together, but it was extremely uncomfortable when Jace was that close. And he moved even closer. Snaking his arm around her waist she felt his left hand radiating heat against her abdomen, but the inferno it set off when placed against her body was nothing to compare. She shivered, almost shuddered, and didn't even pretend to hope that Jace hadn't felt it.

In fact, she thought he might have like it.

"Keep your core tight," his whisper was breathy in her ear and it was all she could hear past the thundering silence that seemed to encase them. It was as if the world around them was asleep. As if it was gone entirely. His other hand stretched upward and Clary thought he was going to adjust her grip on the knife, but instead it sprawled across her collar bones. His small, baby finger landed just slightly brushing against the swell of her chest, something that made her breathing accelerate and the blood gush through her ears. His breath was deep and rough in her ear- this contact so new yet so old to her. "Keep your torso straight and flat. Shoulders pushed back, sturdy."

She did this and his hand slipped a little farther down her chest, ring finger where his pinky once was.

Why does that seem so intimate? Why is this so stimulating.

"Back straight," his voice was so gravelly that she had to close her eyes just to regain focus. She straightened her back and heard his voice hitch as his hand slipped even lower. "Ke-ep your core tight. Sturdiness is key." She could feel his warmth just teasing her back and smelt the mint on his breath. It made her press back unconsciously, earning a shudder and a muffled groan. She felt Jace's perfect Adam's Apple bob against her hair as he arc his head enough to see the target. This movement made his hand slip further down her waist, dipping just under the waist-band of her newly acquired leggings. "Tight...tight is good." he whispered low and seductively in her ear.

Clary didn't know enough about sex to determine the innuendo but she couldn't take it anymore. With a sharp breath she released the tension built up inside her by swinging her arm forwards and releasing the dagger with a vigorous whip.

She didn't even look to see where it was her knife landed in the target before turning to face the man driving her to her breaking point. He was so close to her, so unbearably close, and she bowed her head just slightly so she could take in the scent of his cologne, the sturdiness of his chest.

Sturdiness is key...

Jace let out an amazed breath. "You hit it directly in the middle, Red," she looked up at him and found him watching the target, a look of indifference plastered against his face. If it wasn't for his erratic heartbeat she would have actually felt rejected.

Focus...the thought seemed to taper like the last- overshadowed by lust.

Clary gazed at him as he slowly gave in and lowered his eyes as well. She wasn't that much shorter than him. Almost a perfect amount. Her nose was at his lips. Those smooth, plush lips tilted at just the right angle and filled perfectly. Just the right size to fit softly against her own. Clary had never kissed anyone before but she'd watched it thousands of times and it didn't seem that hard. Just a tilt upwards and a silky...press...to his...

A shrill sound cut off her thought and the pair broke away form each other as if broken from a trance, Clary stumbling just slightly.

"Damn technology" she muttered beneath her breath as Jace ran off to find his phone- the cause of the shrieking, jingling alarm. She heard his faint murmuring filtering beneath the door. The old training room felt so big with the absence of Jace now that he wasn't there anymore.

His ego must have taken up half of it.

She caught a few words still. "Job...not now...guest...that much...Carlin. But he was su...wasn't Alec goin... Alright! Fine! I'm coming." The last part was louder, meaning he was returning and Jace burst through the door, hair ruffled and hastily pulling a jacket on. "Hurry, Red, you're coming with me." He winked slyly at her.

"Let's put those new skills to use."

So, so, so sorry if this was boring.

Tell me if you liked the fluff-or should this stay away from the fluffy banter.I mean this Jace is supposed to be dangerous & sexy right? Idk...please tell me :S I was aiming for a softer side too...

So Question: What do you think the cat will have to do with the story? Nichi is not just some random cat. He has a part.

Thanks for reading, following, favouriting. I was wondering if we could get 5 reviews because that's been like the average, but I know you guys are awesome and whoever is reading is amazing anyways.

Thanks!Lovestory112.