Don't Break This Kiss (Top Shelf Romance Book 5)

by Jessica Hawkins

  And I have an audience. A big fucking audience for my big fucking feelings. My stomach pretty much falls through the floor. “Oh. Um. Later is fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. It can wait.” Because as much as I like his friends, there’s no way I’m vowing my eternal love to him under these conditions. Especially with them all in such a comedic mood. Nope. Not going to happen. The coward in me rises, once again victorious. Ugh.

  Suddenly, there’s the pop pop pop of gunfire.

  The window where Thom was standing shatters. He’s already in motion. His arm swings out to tackle me, taking us both to the ground. Holy hell.

  “Confirmed contact, I know,” he responds to whoever is talking to him through the earpiece. “Tell me you’ve got eyes on them…multiple hostiles. Roger that.”

  He quiets and listens, his body half on top of mine and his arm around me tight. From overhead comes the sound of Crow returning fire. And from one of the kitchen windows facing the waterfront, Fox does the same. Bear is outside somewhere, no doubt doing his part. But it would sure as hell seem they’ve got us surrounded.

  “Crawl toward the stairs on your elbows and knees, babe,” says Thom, picking up a rifle. “Stay low. I want you in the basement with the bulletproof vest on now. Go.”

  Shards of glass cut into my arms through my long-sleeved T-shirt, but I do my best to ignore them and hustle my ass out of there. The thought of leaving Thom sucks. I 100 percent hate it. However, I follow orders like a good recruit/fiancée.

  As I crawl along there’s more blasts and bangs and other assorted noises from various weapons coming from both inside and outside the house. People are damn well shooting at us. Again. And it’s way worse than the time in the hotel room. It deafening, like hail is pelting the house or we’re caught up in a tornado or something. People are actually trying to wipe us off the face of the earth and I’m terrified they’re going to succeed. My blood is pounding in my ears, adrenaline pouring through my body. But we are not going to die. Everything is going to be fine. At least, I really fucking hope so.

  My hope lasts exactly until the wall next to me explodes.

  I’m flung across the room screaming, dust and rocks raining down. At least when I land, I hit the back of a sofa first and it sort of cushions my fall. Though everything hurts like hell anyway. There’s also a bell or something ringing in my ears. Holy shit. This is insane.

  “Thom?” I slowly rise just a little. Just enough to look around the room. “Oh God, please be alive!”

  A hand reaches out of the dust storm, urging me back down. Blood drips from the side of his face where shrapnel or something cut him, but otherwise he seems all right. “Babe, it’s okay. Are you hurt?”

  “I love you.”

  The man doesn’t even blink. “I know. But are you hurt?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” I cough up a lung or two as the air slowly clears. His dismissal of my mind-bogglingly big statement would be weird if we weren’t fighting for our lives, so I let it slide. “Did they launch a rocket at us?”

  “Rocket-propelled grenade, yes.”

  “Are you injured?”

  “Just bruised like you. But there’s a hole in the wall now, so I’d really appreciate if you got your gorgeous ass downstairs pronto.” He pauses, watching said hole. Someone’s obviously talking to him via the ear thingy again. “On it, Crow. Bear is on his way in.”

  Sure enough, the gunfire outside intensifies as Bear comes limping in through the kitchen door. Fox swiftly moves to position an upended table in front of the entrance, using the available rubble to lock it into place. Assuming I’m going to do as told, Thom takes cover beside the new hole in the wall, leaning out to fire at bad guys every so often.

  And I could run and hide as instructed. Or I could actually be helpful. I try to dart to my feet, but it’s more like a zombie-style stagger over to where Bear and Fox are positioned behind the central granite kitchen island. Blood is dribbling out of a wound in Bear’s calf, another wetting the sleeve of his black T-shirt. They’re barely visible in the low lighting.

  “Hey, Betty,” says Bear, busy reloading a pistol. “Shouldn’t you be in the basement? Wolf is going to freak if he finds out you’re still up here.”

  Out of nowhere, someone grabs a handful of my hair. My head swivels around hard, and Fox’s face is just inches away, her eyes drilling into mine. First one, then the other, as if she could look straight into my skull or my soul, or something.

  “She’s clear for duty. We need all the help we can get.” She turns back to the firefight. “First-aid kit, by the door.”

  “On it,” I say, scrabbling over on all fours through the dust and the glass to retrieve it.

  “She shouldn’t be here,” Bear grumbles as I crawl back over to him.

  “I said she’s clear,” Fox snaps. “You keep your eyes on our six, and let her get that bleeding under control.”

  “I’m going to need you to stop moving,” I order. The cut on his arm is deep, but not too long. More like a stab wound. “Do I just wrap this?”

  “Yep. There’ll be clotting gauze in there too. Let’s get my arm under control, then we’ll wrap the bullet wound in my calf.” Bear’s doing as he’s told, his eyes fixed on the windows to our side and the door behind us, gun cradled in his hands.

  I fossick through the box until I come up with the goods. There’re some bacterial wipes too. I clean the wound on his arm as best I can but the blood is flowing fast. Too fast.

  Bear glances down. Amazingly, he smiles, looking almost relieved. Maybe the fact that my face isn’t currently being painted with his life’s blood at least means the bullet that went through his leg didn’t hit a vein or artery or whatever. Or maybe he just likes being horribly injured. I don’t know. People are weird. Either way, he rests the gun in his lap and takes some thick squares of dressing, holding them onto the front and back of his calf while I deal with his arm.

  “Go for it,” he says. “Nice and tight.”

  “Okay.” I take a deep breath, trying to keep my cool. Honest to God, my heart’s beating so hard I think my ribs are about to break. I place the gauze over the wound and start wrapping a bandage around it with the other hand. Given the situation, my lack of any actual medical skills is evident. The cut does, however, get bound.

  “Good job. Now grab one of the bandage rolls out of there.” Bear nods toward the first-aid kit. “Bullet went straight through so we’re just going to wrap it up tight to slow down blood flow, same as you did with my arm. I’ll keep the gauze in place as much as I can.”

  It’s awkward. The floor beside him is slippery from blood, and bullets are flying over our heads. Crockery, glass, and chunks of plaster and dust from the wall are all around us. There’s nothing I can do about how bad my hands are shaking, so I just ignore them as best I can. Try to tune out the loud blasts and sounds of war. There’s no time to be terrified. No time for sweating and panting and shaking, though I’m doing all three anyway.

  “How many are out there?” I ask.

  “Enough.”

  Crow comes racing out of the library. It’s the room with the old spiral staircase leading up to the widow’s walk. Guess it got too dangerous up top. He’s abandoned his sniper rifle already. Without hesitation, he takes up position across from Thom, drawing a pistol from a holster on his thigh.

  It doesn’t particularly surprise me when Helene appears at my side with a rifle and a bag in one hand, and my bulletproof vest in the other. There’s no real point in either of us hiding down in the basement. Archie’s coming at us with everything he’s got. Everyone needs to be up here helping if we’re to stand a chance of coming out of this alive. Even if it’s just wrapping wounds and shooting in the bad guys’ general direction.

  “You forgot this.” She drops the vest beside me.

  “Thanks.”

  Carefully, Helene raises her head just enough to check on the view out the kitchen window. “There’re dea
d bodies all over my lawn.”

  “There’s also a hole in your living room wall,” I say.

  “Whatever will the neighbors think? Make that bandage tighter, Betty.” She watches my hands closely, finally shaking her head once more at the chaos all around us. The woman is calm with a touch of irritated. Like someone interrupted her tea party or something. “Not that I’m surprised by all this. Archie always did have a habit of taking things too far. Not a subtle bone in his body. Also, he’s afraid of us. We’ve proven rather difficult to kill up until now.”

  An explosion shakes the left side of the house where the bedrooms are. Thankfully, all the windows were boarded earlier. Another roar comes from the same direction a moment later. Guess the claymores are doing their job.

  How a neighbor hasn’t heard and called the local police, I have no idea. Perhaps the cops will scare off the attackers. A girl can only hope. But the most likely scenario is Archie and his gang killing innocent people before concentrating on attacking us once again.

  “Sounds like a few someones tried to approach through one of your rose gardens.” Bear smiles. Even in the low lighting, his face is pale from blood loss and pain. “Good work surrounding the house with thorny things, by the way. Always useful for slowing people down.”

  Helene just nods, checking over her rifle. The bag she brought up with her is full of weaponry. You can’t say the woman didn’t come prepared. The bang of various pistols is overtaken by the ongoing bark of the submachine gun Fox is wielding. It’s loud as all hell. Makes it almost impossible to hear a damn thing apart from a long, suspended tone in my ears.

  “Okay, all finished.” I have to almost shout for Bear to hear, even though he’s right beside me.

  Bear pulls himself up into a crouch, immediately putting weight on the leg. Testing it, I guess. He grimaces, then nods. We’re done here.

  I wipe my bloody hands on my jeans before struggling into the vest. At least a small percentage of me is now bulletproof. Truth is, it’s no easier being in a firefight for a second time than it was the first time. All of the noise and action and fear of death are as bad as they ever were. God, I hope we don’t all die. A metallic taste fills my mouth, dust and gunpowder everywhere.

  “Time to get back to work,” says Bear. “Pick a position that covers you with as much wall as possible and keep your heads down whenever you’re not shooting.”

  Then, with those words of wisdom, he’s gone.

  “Betty, follow me,” yells Helene over the sounds of war, crawling toward the kitchen door with its shattered glass and upended kitchen table blocking half of the view and providing us with cover. As per Bear’s instructions, there’s solid wall on either side of the entrance for us to also hide behind and Fox is alone holding off this side of the house. The woman has chosen well. “You take the other side. We can cover for each other when we have to reload.”

  It’s also a solid plan, which is more than I have to offer. I summon up the will to peek around the wall, taking in the back garden.

  For a moment, it’s hard to make out anything in the fading light, until a muzzle flashes like a tiny firefly in the dark, bullets whining around me. More adrenaline floods my system, the fight-or-flight mechanism setting off all my internal alarms. I want to huddle into a ball and hide. Hell, I want to run. But I refuse to give in to the fear.

  Still, I’m back behind the bricks before any thought of shooting even crosses my mind. The gun’s shaking in my hands. But we have to win this. Everything has to be all right. And while I know logically Thom can look after himself, not being able to see him scares the crap out of me. He has to be okay. I’m not up for dealing with anything else.

  I focus on keeping my elbows steady. A trick an old florist once taught me on my first day of real paid work, when my hands were shaking from nerves. Different stakes back then, but it worked then, and it works now. A bit, at least. Enough for me to lean out and fire a volley of shots in the general direction of the muzzle flash. There’s no time for guilt or any of that bullshit. If I kill someone, so be it; they came at me first.

  Helene and I take turns shooting at anything moving out in the twilight. Not sure I hit any actual people; my aim isn’t that great. But we have to be slowing them down, at least.

  As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I can see she wasn’t lying about all the bodies littering her lawn. With all of the rose bushes and ornate hedges, it’s like a garden party gone wrong. Psychotically so. Archie apparently brought a small army with him, and bit by bit we’re mowing them down. In the gray-and-violet sky, the first star twinkles. With something so everyday ordinary in sight, it’s hard to keep a grip on how we all got into this mess.

  We don’t bother to reload. Instead, we grab fresh weapons out of her bag of tricks sitting between us.

  Fox dives for the floor. “Fire in the—”

  The whole building shakes once again and all three of us hit the ground. Everything becomes smoke-filled chaos. More rocket-propelled things must be coming at us, because there’s a hole where the kitchen window used to be and the cupboards behind us are now on fire. It’s not a big fire—yet, but still…we’re now in a war zone.

  Ever so slowly, Fox pulls herself up off the floor. Glass has slashed her cheek; dust coats her dark hair. “Fuck a duck.”

  “I’ll put out the fire,” I yell, after getting my coughing under control. Fox and Helene are the better shots, so me dealing with the flames makes sense.

  Helene nods and gets back into position with a huge, shiny revolver. The sort of thing you’d see in a Western. Though, honestly, I think even John Wayne would be wary of something this size.

  “I hate to make it personal, but these people are seriously starting to piss me off.” Moving somewhat slower now, Fox grits her teeth and draws the pistol attached to her thigh. There’s no stopping. No time to rest, let alone recuperate. “Scorpion is going to pay for this shit if she’s still alive.”

  A small fire extinguisher hangs on the wall by the stove. Helene really did think of everything. Though, bulletproof glass would have been nice. Of all the things to skimp on. If we make it out of this in one piece, I’ll have words with her about it for certain.

  I try to keep my head down, but this fire isn’t going to put itself out. So I reach up, angling the nozzle at the flames. Safe to say Helene’s expensive cabinetry is screwed. Same goes for all the fancy plates and crystal that have been blown to smithereens.

  And it’s while I’m thinking these truly useless, stupid thoughts that two somethings hammer me in the back—making me gasp. My whole rib cage clenches up. Next comes a red-hot line of fire slicing across my upper arm. The extinguisher falls from my suddenly numb hands and all I can do is try and breathe through the pain. It’s excruciating.

  “Get down!” shouts Fox.

  Excellent advice. If about five seconds too late.

  My ass hits the floor, my hand covering the bloody trail the bullet left across my arm. Ohmanholyfuckingcrap. I squeeze my eyes shut for a second, taking a moment. At least the red stuff isn’t gushing. It just hurts like hell. Also, I think a rib might be broken, care of the bullets hitting the back of my vest, because every breath is pure agony.

  In movies, when people get shot, they just tough it out. What utter and complete bullshit. My body is shaking and tears are streaming down my face. Still, at least I got the fire extinguished. The cabinet is just a smoking mess of foam and carnage. Too bad I’m crying and ruining my badass status.

  “I’ve had about enough of this nonsense,” snarls Helene, setting down the revolver and pulling out her cell. Next, she shoves the first-aid box in my general direction, scowling heavily. Like I got shot on purpose or something.

  The noise of various weapons going off seems to have calmed some. Not a lot, but a little. Instead of a constant barrage, it’s more of an intermittent rain of violence. Hopefully the bad guys are running out of people to throw at us. That would be nice.

  Meanwhile, the pain is so bad,
I kind of want to yell for Thom. But I grab the first-aid kit and find those antiseptic wipes Bear used on his wound. The best I can do is dab at the injury with my teeth gritted.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire!” Once the command is acknowledged, Helene holds her cell up to her ear, taking a deep breath. “Archie…let’s talk.”

  “This is a mistake,” mutters Thom, soon after.

  Helene, of course, takes no notice.

  “Using yourself as bait is unwise.”

  “I heard you the first time, Wolf. The decision’s made. Do stop harping on about it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ve lived a good life, giving most of it to this organization. If I have to make the final sacrifice to save it and take this abhorrent bastard out in the process, then I’ll count it a victory.” She sighs heavily. “Besides, I don’t see any of us getting out of here any other way. We have no idea how many people he’s brought with him or how well they’re equipped. What we do know is that we’re going to run out of ammunition, not to mention people to fire the weapons, in the near future. At least this way, there’s a chance.”

  No one disagrees. It’s more than a little scary.

  “I always rather wondered what it would be like to be on the front lines, actually tackling these sort of situations head-on.” Her smile is grim. “Think I’ve handled myself rather well, given everything.”

  “Yes, ma’am, you have.” He passes her something, and she slips it into her right hand. It’s too small for me to see, but he doesn’t look happy about any of this. Not one bit.

  We don’t have an actual white flag to wave around, but at least temporary truce talks are about to happen. The kitchen doorway has been cleared, open for one and all. Or for Archie and some of his people. And they walk in like they own the place. The head douche canoe is wearing a striped three-piece suit. To a gunfight. Jesus fucking Christ. He has glossy black hair and a thin, pallid face. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was a banker or stockbroker.