by AJ Wyatt
He leaned down pressed his lips against mine. His kiss was firm, and his tongue slid easily between my lips. I couldn't take much more. The build was overwhelming.
Then he stopped.
“Not yet,” he whispered.
I watched him slide down to his knees until his perfect face was right between my legs. Seeing him like that, gorgeous features, it was almost more than I could stand.
His powerful arms circled around me to catch my forearms and hold them. He had me propped up on his shoulders so he could move me however he liked, and then his lips began kissing at my soft mound. His tongue brushed across my clit, sending a throb all the way up my spine that made me shake all over. I would have fallen right off his desk if he hadn’t held me in that iron grip.
A crackle in my earpiece.
“—Rayne—“
Not now, Trib. Jesus, not right now.
“—lost cameras—something’s wrong—” silence, then, “—coming for you—”
Talon’s mouth suddenly stopped, and he stood again. He moved to unzip his pants.
“You’ll be begging me to let you cum before I’m done,” he said. “We’ll see who’s on their knees when this is over.”
I was a little dazed, and the ache between my legs at being brought so close twice and then frustrated was…not unpleasant, but also not the best for thinking straight. Somewhere in my big girl brain, the alarms were going off.
I was facing the windows, and that's the only reason I saw them. Someone staked out on the balcony across the way, and the flash of light reflecting from the scope of a high-powered rifle. I kicked off the desk and dropped low, kicking Talon's legs out from under him. He crashed to the floor just in time.
“What the hell is wrong with y—”
The window exploded. Glass flew everywhere. I grabbed Talon by the wrist and dragged him under the desk, then kicked the desk over so it gave us cover. It crashed to the floor in a flurry of smashed glass and bent steel, the whole frame struggling to hold up a shitload of marble.
Bullets hit the stone but didn't penetrate through the inch of solid rock. So that was the good news. The bad news was that Trib wasn't online to walk me out, so we'd be leaving blind. And only a very rough group of people could jam the signals in an entire building like that.
Either the Wolfpack was done toying with me, or someone had brought in mercenaries.
"Stay on your belly and crawl for the door," I told Talon as I slipped the tiny pistol from my handbag. "Move fast, and whatever you do, don't come up off the floor. If you hear shots or bullets start hitting things around you, do not freeze. You keep crawling until you’re at the elevator. Do you understand?”
Talon was wide-eyed.
“Is that a gun?”
“Barely,” I said. “Now move!”
Talon looked at me for a moment, and his eyes seemed to say, Can I really trust you? Evidently, he decided the answer was yes because he took a deep breath and started crawling. I looked down at the little .22 in my hand. Five bullets. Not enough to even provide actual cover.
I hiked my dress up to my hips so I could move freely and dove for the doorway. I tucked and rolled into the hall without losing my momentum. The hall was empty except for Talon, who was grunting along on his belly, making fantastic progress for someone who hadn’t crawled since childhood.
Probably not the sort of rug burns he was hoping for tonight.
No more glass shattered.
Whoever they were, they'd shot their shot in Talon's office and moved on. I didn't like that much because it's exactly what I would have done. Between the exterior windows, the inner windows of the hallway, and the high wind between buildings, there's no way you'd hit anything. Too much interference.
So where are they going?
I ran, keeping myself hunched over, past Talon to the end of the hall. I dropped again before the lobby and scanned to make sure it was clear. It didn’t look like anyone had been up here. I crossed to the executive elevator and hit the button.
My guess is that they’d be waiting in the parking garage. Talon had needed a keycard to make the elevator move.
“Trib?” I said. “Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
I sat with my back to the elevator doors as a cold thought crept into my head.
“Talon!” I called. He was almost to the lobby.
“Yes?" He growled at me. I didn't know why he was grumpy with me. It’s not like this was my fault.
“I need you to think real hard, okay? The executive elevator. Does it return to the bottom floor automatically, or does it stay where it last stopped?”
“Why does that matter?” His breath was ragged from crawling so far.
“Because I need to know if there’s a bunch of people in it who are going to kill us.”
He froze and closed his eyes.
“It always stays where it last stopped,” he said finally. “It should be ready for us, you just need the key card.”
He started to get to his feet, but I cried out, "No! Keep crawling. You're better safe than sorry."
"You got to run," he said, glaring at me. "Crawling like this is…difficult right now, you know? It chafes.”
“Please,” I said. “If I can run with my pussy dripping down my leg, you can crawl across your own cock.”
He looked mutinous, but he threw me the keycard and kept crawling.
I tapped it and hit the button again.
The elevator dinged, and I shot to my feet and spun to point my pistol straight through the tiny crack as the doors opened. If someone was on the other side, I'd put a bullet between their eyes.
The doors opened, and I cleared the corners and went in. Somewhere behind me, a window exploded, and a round ricocheted off the elevator.
Huh. Someone found a new position.
I kept the doors open with my leg as Talon crawled in beside me.
“This is going great,” I said. “You’re going to make it out of this just fine. And when we get somewhere safe, we’ll get you something to rub on your dick burns.”
Talon laughed a little hysterically as the tension bled out of him.
“There is something so, so wrong with you,” he said. “I like it.”
I pulled my leg out of the elevator door, and it shut.
“There’s probably a bunch of people at the bottom who are going to try and kill us,” I said. “I don’t want you to worry. I just want you to be aware.”
“Cool. I’ll just not worry then,” he said, dripping with sarcasm.
“How do you smell so good?” I said.
He pulled me close and kissed me. When it was done, he lay back against the elevator wall and said, "Just in case I don't get another chance."
“Don’t talk like that. You’ll be fine,” I said. “See that corner where the buttons are?”
“Yes.”
“That’s your new home. That’s where you live. You won’t get shot there.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got this.”
Talon got into position. He was so broad-shouldered it was hard for him to fit. He still looked incredible. I was glad he never got a shirt on. He really should never wear one.
“Rayne,” he said, “What if we held up inside the elevator? Hit the fire alarm and just waited for the authorities to come? Isn’t that safer?”
It’s adorable that he thought the fire alarm wasn’t cut. No phone, including cells, would work in this building until whoever was trying to kill us stopped jamming them. And they’d be standing over our dead bodies first.
"Trust me, the inside of an elevator is a real bad spot to wait. They'd just go up a floor and drop a grenade in. If we went back up, they'd cut the cables and drop us, and then when the emergency brakes stopped us, they'd—"
“Go one floor up and drop a grenade in?” He asked.
“You got it. The only way out of this is forward.”
The elevator dinged, and I aimed out
where the doors were about to open.
Five shots, and then we’d be sitting ducks.
The doors opened. I saw three of them in tactical gear, rifles ready to raise and fire before the door was even open an inch. Why weren't they shooting yet?
I figured it out a second later. An asshole on the side of the elevator popped up in front of me and did the softest underhand toss of a grenade I'd ever seen. The adrenaline made it so the only thing I could hear was my heartbeat in my ears.
Without thinking, Talon slapped the grenade back out of the elevator like he was playing a game of volleyball with his country club pals.
I leaned over and tapped the Door Close button as the screams outside intensified.
The boom shook the elevator. Something bit into my right arm that burned, and my ears rang. Talon had dived in front of me, his arms around me at the last moment. The smell of fresh explosive burned my nostrils.
“Nice work,” I said.
“Did I just…touch a hand grenade?” He asked.
“Like a fucking champ. Now let’s go.”
The door opened.
Grenade tossing guy was dead. Like bad dead.
The dead guy’s rifle lay right at my feet. I used my heel to kick it close and then got up and started shooting. Three of them went down before they knew what hit them. The rounds were powerful enough to go through a car lengthwise, so all the Beamers and the Mercedes in the world weren’t going to save those assholes.
Two more tried to return fire and ate bullets instead. I crouched low and looked for feet beneath the cars, and when I spotted them, I shot through the cars and dropped those guys too. They hunkered down after that or found hiding places behind the concrete pillars, the jerks.
I wasn’t going to let them off that easily.
Staying close to the wall, I went to the dead guy's body and started digging around. He had two magazines and three more grenades on him, one of the murder kind, and two smoke grenades. I popped the smoke and tossed them out, letting the entire alcove around the elevator fill with noxious green clouds.
"It'll burn your lungs, but you can still breathe," I told Talon. "It's not like tear gas."
“This is insane,” Talon replied. He was clearly in shock, walking behind me like we were on a date or something. “Those people are dead,” he said, pointing at the wreckage I’d created.
I put my finger to my lips so he'd stay quiet and used gestures to explain our next move.
I go first. You follow.
He nodded.
I moved low and fast, getting us to the fire escape stairs as fast as possible. The breeze was already clearing the smoke, so I pulled the pin on the murder grenade and counted: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, before throwing it behind the concrete pillars where I figured they’d be hiding.
One of them scrambled after the grenade, and I shot him. Then, we made for the stairs, me dragging Talon behind, as the grenade blew and screams echoed behind us.
6
I busted out the window of an old Suburban and hot-wired it. Then, I gassed it and squealed away as fast as the old junker would go, not wanting to give their sniper a chance to get to us. Whoever they were, we left them in the dust.
“Where’s Vice?” I said. “They’ll be trying to kill him too.”
“Let them,” Talon said. “The world would be better off.”
It’s a good thing I wasn’t asking you, jerk.
"I've got his location," Trib's voice filled my earpiece, and relief washed over me. "It's off a back alley near downtown. Must be some kind of club."
When people think of Dallas, they think of big hats, cowboy boots, and maybe an old soap opera. They don’t picture places like Axis Allure, a club whose neon sign lit up the alleyway entrance, promising A night you won’t forget! The pulse-pounding beat reverberated in my chest before I even got to the door.
Talon, still shirtless, took one look at the place and said, “I don’t think so.”
“I’m not leaving you out here alone,” I told him.
“As the CEO of Osborne Energy, I can’t be seen in a place like this, and certainly not dressed like this. And don’t for one second think I’m going to forget what just happened. You and I are going to have a very serious conversation, very soon."
It was hard not to laugh at this shirtless beefcake looking, honestly, exactly like he should be going to a place like Axis Allure, but the set of his jaw and the growl of his voice told me there’d be no moving him.
How long could it possibly take to extract Vice and get back to the stolen car? But my assassin senses told me that if a crew of killers showed up at Osborne, they could show up here too. And that meant Talon could be captured or killed, not to mention what might happen to the people at Axis whose only crime was having a good time and a bloodstream packed to the rafters with Molly.
Fuck it.
“If you’re the kind of man who would let a woman walk into a dangerous place alone, then I guess I misjudged you.”
He turned about three shades redder, and his jaw set even harder. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to crack some of his perfect teeth. I stalked ahead to the door and heard his footsteps behind me. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t smiling.
Gregorovich could probably take a few lessons from me.
The guys at the door were serious heavies, dressed in perfect black suits. They were armed and guessing from their stances and haircuts. They were probably well trained. The tall, burly one was obviously the leader.
“We’re full up,” he told me.
Talon walked up beside me.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
Burly looked Talon up and down, and then his brow furrowed. I could see the mental muscles working in there. Finally, he unlatched the velvet rope and sent us in, minus eighty bucks I had to liberate from my wallet.
“Seriously?” I shot Talon a look.
“Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot my wallet while I was crawling a half-mile down the damn hall, and everyone was trying to kill me.”
It didn't take more than two seconds to find Vice because everyone was crowded around him.
Axis Allure was clothing optional, so the dance floor was full of half-naked men and women, flaunting perfect abs and bouncing breasts, covered in sweat and whatever else. Their bodies smoothly flowed over one another as people found what felt good at the moment. Hands got lost in the front of jeans, and fingers caressed between legs. I pushed my way through, past a woman who was moaning as her neck got licked by two very gorgeous men.
I should get out more.
"Hello, little mouse," a voice purred beside me.
Vice had left his throne at the head of the club and made his way to my side while I was definitely not distracted by what three men were doing with a delighted-looking woman in one of the darker corners.
“I need you to come with m—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Vice said. A wildly joyful grin spread across his face as he watched his brother, shirtless, struggling to get to us. It was no wonder. A piece of man candy-like that would pull in a lot of attention. Most of which Talon seemed to begrudgingly accept.
A flash of jealousy flooded through my gut. I took Vice by the wrist and dragged him back to where Talon was surrounded by nearly naked women pawing at him.
“Excuse me, coming through,” I said.
When I got them both together, the heat of the crowd went up about four notches. Suddenly they realized there were two of them and things got very tight. A woman tried to shove me out of the way and lost her balance after I kicked her foot out from under her.
“Watch your step,” I said, “the floor is slippery.”
It took some doing, and I might have knocked a few people down, but I got them both out the door together and herded the twins to the car.
“A team came for Talon at Osborne Energy,” I told Vice. I gave him a rundown of what happened, minus the part where Talon’s face was buried between my legs, which was still tingl
ing in a way that made sitting uncomfortable. He exchanged a brief glance with his brother.
“Hmmm,” was all he said.
“We’re heading to home base,” I said. “I hope it’s clean when we get there.”
Talon and Vice looked confused, but the comment wasn’t meant for them anyway.
"Rayne," Trib said. "There's so much shit here. I mean, your whole bed is guns and underwear. What's your ETA?"
“Ten minutes.”
I heard a little yelp on the other end, and the connection died. Back at the dorm, I was sure Trib was grabbing everything that looked like contraband and shoving it…somewhere. It was a small room, so I hoped she was able to get it done. Especially the giant board. They definitely couldn't see that. Their own photos were on it, after all.
Seeing Talon in the rearview and Vice sitting in the passenger seat, it was hard to imagine either committing a murder. Talon could be an uptight jerk, but I could only imagine the pressure he was under, trying to hang on to his company. Vice was nice to me, but he was also chaotic. An enigma. Who knew what was going on in his head? But neither of them gave me the vibe of a killer.
And now someone was trying to kill them before I could get my answers. I wasn’t about to let that happen.
If I wanted to know the truth about why my father was murdered and who was responsible, I’d need to keep them alive long enough to get the information.
I ditched the Suburban a few blocks from the college, and we walked the rest of the way. Talon stayed on one side of me and Vice on the other. They both looked away, so their eyes never had to meet. A kind of wild energy seemed to pass between them. Not quite hate, but a powerful contempt.
As we tromped up the stairs to the dorm, I wondered how long they’d been like this. They were like magnets at opposite poles, pushing each other away as much as possible.
What had happened between them to make them this way?
