Jace pushed Clary back onto the couch. "Say that again." he groaned as he moved a hot tongue down her neck, biting and nipping. She moaned in ecstasy, from both his kisses and the silence in her mind.

"Say...what..." she panted out as she tugged on his shirt. It came up and over his head in one swift movement, before he was back to kissing her. She moaned again thrusting up against the bulge in his jeans.

"That you want me to fuck you, Red. Say it again." God the way he growled in her ear,...

"Fuck me, Jace, like I'm a one night stand. Like I'm a girl you'd meet at a bar." Clary pulled his face from her neck and looked into his eyes. "Fuck me like I was never a virgin." He moaned and leaned back to rip her shirt off of her. She was naked underneath, had been all day and her nipples hardened in the cold and pleasure of his actions. Jace buried his face in her chest and kissed at the underside of her breasts.

"Beautiful," she heard him murmur. "Goddamn perfect." A shiver ran down her spine from a different kind of pleasure. She'd never been called pretty let alone perfect. The influx of emotion started another whirlwind of thoughts.

Did he love her was he doing this out of love does he want her oh god he loves her doesn't he can she trust him?

"Shut up..." she whimpered and snaked a hand through her hair, pulling just enough so pain shot through her skull. The thoughts scattered in its wake.

"What baby?" Jace murmured from her flat stomach. She remembered out of nowhere that she hadn't eaten anything today.

"Nothing, take your pants off" she sat up and flicked the button of his jeans.

His smirk cleared everything but lust from his body. "Yes Ma'am" he mocked a salute and chucked the jeans across the room. God he was huge, you could see him even through his dark grey briefs. She bent her head down and made sure he felt her breath on him before settling a slow, long lick along his covered length. Jace's hips jerked and a groan erupted from his mouth. He flipped her onto her back again, passing a hand down her sweaty body before shedding his underwear too. It hurt a little when he first entered her, sore from the night before, but Clary welcomed the pain. She was completely normal as his hips gyrated against her, pushing her further into the couch. A woman in the heat of passion, like any other woman in New York. She dug her nails into the sweat-slickened skin of his back, relished in the movement of his muscles beneath his skin.

He was the perfect one.

With a cry she came unexpectedly around him, himself following shortly after. Jace's lips ever-so-gently caressed her own before they collapsed on the carpet beside the couch.

Clary almost cried. He relieved her of that hell, of her own now 'normal' mind. He was her medicine. When she was Jace's, taken by him, she was completely his. She didn't even have room to be her own in those moments. And so she was free.

"The men I want kill..." she interrupted the thick but comfortable silence around them. "They're...they killed my mother."

His head cracked towards her and she propped her chin on his chest. Her eyes flickered from his own to the carpet beneath them. "My mom was...well a glorified prostitute really. My dad used her to get cocaine and money from his friends. She had 7 regulars that showed up and, I don't know, they were the worst. They came and beat her and did unspeakable things to her. She killed herself..." Clary paused and looked back at Jace as she made patterns on the skin of sternum. "And before you ask if she was murdered, if I'm deluding myself, I'm not. I found her...I cleaned it up." Clary looked away again.

Jace stroked a hand thorugh her hair, snagging on knots in a few places but soothing all the less. She closed her eyes. "I didn't love her. I couldn't have, really. She might have been a good mom if her time was consumed by being beat and raped, the poor woman. After she died, my father tried for years to get me to be like her. I'll never forget the way those 7 regulars would look at me as I got older..." Jace tensed beneath her and curled his arm closer around her side. She felt so protected that tears welled in her eyes. "That's who I want to kill. The regulars. Because they killed the mother I could have had, and they wanted to do the same to me."

Jace looked down at her, this something in his eyes that made the tear fall down her cheek. He leaned down and kissed it away. There was a significant silence between them, respect hanging in the air, before Jace broke it with a sigh.

"I was around 10 when my parents died."

Clary's head shot up and stared holes in Jaces profile. He just stared at the ceiling. Not only was the response so startling and sad, but it was so quiet, so insecure that Clary wanted to curl his head into her chest and hug him until he could never feel sadness again.

"They weren't great, my dad runned the mafia in downtown New York, my mom was a immigrant from Italy that worked as a sex-slave before my dad picked her up. But they were parents, you know? Real ones that cooked me soup when I was sick. My mom was the sweetest person in the world...sometimes I can still feel her arms around me..." he sucked in a wavering breath. "They were murdered in front of me...the kind of murder that scars you when you just hear about it. I'm not saying I had it worse than you, Red, but I know what its like to feel alone. God," he sighed, his eyes a million years away. "I know that feeling better that the back of my hand. But it dulls. It gets better...you'll find something, someone to live for."

Clary propped her chin on her palms. Her smile was weak as she tilted Jace's face towards her with a single finger. "I'm not lonely, Jace," his brow furrowed, "I'm insane."

He chuckled. "That you are, baby. That you are."

But it was not a joke. She was she was she was

insane.

Clary stitched her eyelids together and shook the thoughts from her head. "Where were you today?" One slipped out her lips as they fled from her brain.

Jace's sigh ruffled the top of her hair. " Just checking out something at the Lightwood's."

His tone was flat. Monotonous.

He'slyinglyinglyinglyign why is he lying is he lying why would he lie he doesn't love her does he he's going to kill her does he hate her?

Clary could at least agree on one answer. He was lying.

What else was he lying about?

That morning

When Jace left the house the image of Clary in his button down lingered in his mind before he shook it from his skull. No more. If she was who he thought she was then they could be no more. Never. He would never be able to caress her skin, heal her bruises, stifle her moans with his palm as he made her come-

"Stop..." he murmured to himself as he slid into the seat of his black Camaro. His cars were his treasure, his babies. The purr of the engine when the sprung to life was equivalent to the sound of an orgasm...sounds weird but he never denied that he was one weird motherfucker. Jace surveyed the streets as he weaved into the more populated district of New York. Times Square was just around the corner from where he was currently stuck in traffic, and his building was just a peak in the cityline before him. He hoped he was wrong. Hoped that Clary was just a coincidence.

Because he liked her, goddamnit. He liked her and he didn't want to let her go yet. He was intrigued by her. And that was rare enough to want to save.

As he pulled into the parking lot of the 60 story business fucking tower he fought the urge to bite his nails. He wasn't nervous. Not over a girl, or her possibly horrible and even more intriguing past. Nope, not at all.

The secretaries flirted with him the minute he stepped off the elevator, a number scrawled on a sticky note making it way into his front pocket, coincidentally. The little blond that giggled and scurried from him after he glanced at her wandering hand was just another surrpressed 30 year old that needed to get laid.

Not by him.

He knew what a woman felt like without her inhibitions. Maybe that's why he liked Clary...she wasn't like anyone he'd ever meant.

She was like a girl version of him.

As the familiar oak doors of his boss swung open Jace sauntered into the office. "I need to ask you a question" Jace was always straight to the point. The white feathered head of the man appeared as he turned in his old leather chair. Obsidian eyes stared into Jace's gold ones.

"And what's that?" his voice rasped out, sounding like it'd been slipped through a grater before spilling from his lips. That's what smoking does to you kiddos!

"Did we ever find out how Valentine died?"

Boss's eyes lit dangerously. Boss was mad. woops. "I've already told you that that bastard was killed by his insolent daughter, the stupid bitch. He was the key to getting in with Carlin," obsidian eyes flared as a fist shook the desk. "He was Carlin's top dealer, and I had to start over with all those other idiots to catch up with the investigation, why the fuck do you suddenly care?"

Because he thought he had her stashed in his apartment.

"What does she look like?" Jace steam-rolled over his Boss' statement. Boss was even more mad.

"A short little red heart with freckles and nice ass" he growled out from between his gritted teeth, "now why the fuck do you care?"

"It's just that...the cops are after her now, or at least the person on the news fits the description, she was involved in that double homicide." Jace managed to think up. Thank god. "I suspected she was the culprit of Valentine's murder, it was in the same area and time, and I didn't know if we should get to her first, kill her ya know?"

A flash as the white-haired man turned to face Jace. "NO!" Jace was startled at the appalled expression on his face. He cleared his throat. "I mean, no. We don't want her dead. She-she could know something about Carlin, and we should keep her alive. If you're bored and looking for a mission, don't kill her, capture her." There was something in those black orbs that made Jace uncomfortable, an unsettling evil that he'd never encountered before with his boss. And so Jace stayed silent. " I want her alive. Hell" The black-eyed man's voice dropped to a murmur, "I want her, period."

Jace nodded in relief, ignoring the possessive tone to the statement. No killing for now. Which means sex. Hopefully. "Sure thing, boss, see ya later I guess."

The old leather chair spun back around to face the view of the cityscape. "Oh and Jace," it was a disembodied voice as Jace turned back around.

"Yes?"

"Make sure the Lightwoods know not to touch the girl. If you're all taking on this project I don't want any of them laying a finger on her. That's my job." Now that the relief of not having to kill Clary had passed, Jace finally heard the words coming from the man's mouth. And he didn't like them. Rage filled Jace at the thought of his slimy bosses fingers on Clary. Only Jace could touch her.

She was his.

For now, at least.

"Sure thing, Jonathon," Jace grit out with barely concealed rage. "I'll see you later boss."

What Jace didn't see was the grin that passed on Jonathon's face as he sat in the old chair, face lit by the sun and the hopes of finally getting the girl that haunted his memories.