by Angel Payne
“No!” Her friend moaned it while clutching the meager pillow. “No. Not here. Not now!”
The last of her scream was devoured—by a blast that left the walls shaking and Brynn’s ears clanging. She pressed herself over Zoe as smoke billowed into the room, smelling horrible, stinging her throat.
“Ay!” Zoe yelled.
Burt the guard fell, downed by a single gunshot.
“Holy crap.” Brynn gulped.
The second guard toppled, taken down the same way.
Through the smoke, Brynn watched Garrett and Zeke tackle the third guard. They thwicked him into plastic cuffs before ordering him back onto his knees. Bursting into the room behind them were Kellan, Tait, and Shay, guns brandished, warrior glares blazing.
“Here!” The word fell from Brynn on a desperate shout. She coughed from the effort of drawing air to get it out. “Over here! Shay!”
“Shay?” Zoe jolted up, invigorated now that her baby’s “kicking” had abated. With the sheen across her face and breaths whooshing in and out, she wasn’t fooling anyone about what was really going on. Maybe she’d listen to her husband, once he—
“Dancer?” He swept her up into his arms, crushing her close, frantically kissing her hair, neck, cheeks. Once his mouth found hers, it was time to cue the swelling Hollywood soundtrack again. Despite the chaos, Brynn swooned a little inside at the epic passion of their kiss.
Until Zoe stiffened. Crumpled. Fell to the bed once more, a taut scream pouring out of her.
“What the fuck?”
So much for Shay buying a clue.
Brynn whipped toward the next-best hope for Bommer brother logic. “She’s in labor,” she told Tait. “We need to get her out of here. Now!”
Tait’s scowl, copied nearly feature-for-feature by Kellan, wasn’t the answer she’d hoped for. He glanced at his little brother and Zoe as if hoping Brynn’s assertion wasn’t true. A hard exhalation left him. “At the moment, that is much easier said than done.”
Kellan nodded. “Adler’s booby-trapped the building. The second we breached the hallway, steel doors dropped behind us. There’s also a set blocking the route to the front door.”
Another form materialized from the gloom. Her heart turned over at the sight of a scowling, grit-covered Rhett. Though his eyes nearly matched the smoke as they caught sight of her, nothing else about his face was gentle or reassuring. The next moment, they all learned why. “That’s not the worst of it.” He swung his gaze back toward the corridor. “If I’m reading the control panel right, he’s rigged the whole room to blow in ten minutes.”
Brynn blinked. “This whole room?”
Shay lurched to his feet, eyes more fierce than one of the animals his blood was spliced with. “Not an option.”
Rhett grunted. “Want to tell me something I don’t know?”
“So why the fuck aren’t you doing something? Christ, Lange! My wife’s in labor!”
Tait planted a hand to the center of Shay’s chest. “And you’re not doing her or your child any good with the melodrama.”
Shay snarled. “He’s the goddamn tech specialist—”
“And you’re not helping him focus!”
Rhett dropped his head, but not before Brynn took in every tormented twist of his noble face. He thrived on being a hero the way other people needed air and water. Shay’s agony, while justified, was tearing him apart. She yearned to run to him—and confess her love to him. If only nine minutes remained of her life, she wanted to spend every one of them declaring how deeply his and Reb’s devotion, passion, and patience had changed her, to the very bindings of her heart.
“It’s not a matter of focusing,” he finally confessed. “I can’t just go into the panel and cut the red wire or the blue wire. Adler’s system is on an auto cut. If the sequence gets started and the box is popped, the explosives will fire right away.”
Tait scrubbed a hand over his grimy face. “So we have either nine minutes or thirty seconds.”
As he finished the bleak prognosis, all their comm links squawked. The sound echoed in Brynn’s ear too, making her jump. In the chaos since she’d exited the bathroom, she forgotten about her audio bud. The voice that filled the link, husky and thick with odds-be-damned resolve, seared her belly with dread—and wrenched her heart with love.
“Double-Oh…I’ve got this.”
In front of her, Rhett’s head snapped up. His mouth was contorted—and his eyes were wide with terrible knowledge. He scared the living shit out of her even before shouting, “The fuck you do!”
“Tell everyone to get back. Way back.”
“No! Goddammit it, Rebel!”
But everyone shot to action, anyhow. Tait, Kellan, and Shay helped Zoe, yanking the bed to its side to shield them. Garrett and Zeke towed their prisoner and hunkered against the wall too. Brynn rushed the other way, reaching out.
“Rhett?”
He grabbed her in return, clutching her so close that her breath punched out, shaky and shocked. Just as abruptly, he shoved her away. “Brynna, what the hell? Get down!”
“Why? What’s—”
“He’s going to try and blow the hall door. But all the explosives he has left…it’s all too much fire power.” He fell to his knees, jerking her down with him. “He won’t have time to try and figure it out. He’s just going to use too much and—”
“And what?” She seized his face, forcing him to lock gazes with her. Though she hated every dark, awful light she confronted in his eyes, she peered deeper—hoping to find a single shred of hope. “And what, Rhett?”
Her answer came in the form of a deafening explosion from the hall.
Literally, a deafening explosion.
By the time she pushed through the ringing in her ears and the pounding in her blood, she realized that she was standing. No…walking. Then running. No, that wasn’t right, either. She was attempting to run, urged on by Kellan. Somehow, he’d latched onto her elbow. He was also yelling things at her.
Come on.
Move, Brynn. You have to move.
Run. Run. Run.
But the world was a bowl of Jell-O. A giant, smoke-flavored gelatin, through which she tried to force her feet with terrible, painful steps. I’m trying. The words reverberated in her head as if she’d spoken them but Kell didn’t let up on the pressure, just kept pulling her toward—
What?
She finally understood. There was a knife in the gelatin. Kell wanted her to get to the knife. No…
it was…
light.
It penetrated at strange angles, cutting through the dark one way then the next as different figures crossed the acrid-smelling corridor.
Shadows. There were so many shadows. With her hearing still so jacked up, she couldn’t discern which were real and which weren’t. In one, she found the tatters of her purse. Real. As she jerked Kell to a stop in order to pick it up, her gaze rolled to the next—which held another strange shape.
A head.
Homer Adler’s head. Severed…somehow. Blown off by the blast? Hacked away before or after? Did she care?
She screamed. At least her head vibrated as if she did.
Kellan, thank God, jerked her back to her feet, and farther away—
Until another shadow moved. This time, prompting her to throw down her purse, shove away Kellan, and deny anything else existed—even time.
The shadow surrendered a man.
The Viking of a man she loved.
Steps ragged. Dirty face tracked with tears. Arms stretched up and out…carrying the limp body of the other man she loved.
Chapter Nineteen
‡
THEY WERE OUT, thank fuck. Free. Then running as fast as they could, through the fence Rebel had severed with that first grenade launch, into the wide field beyond. With burning legs and raging lungs, Rhett pushed himself faster. Torqued himself to the edge of cardio resistance, in order to get as far away from the next detonation that rocked the twilight a
ir, exploding more birds out of the trees, and turning the sky more orange than the sunset toward the west.
Thankfully, the ground dipped a little. The nine of them dropped into the crevice, breathing hard, anxiously eyeing their wake.
“Holy crap,” Kellan panted.
“Holy shit,” Tait seconded.
“Holy fuck!” Zoe screamed.
Shay, having never left her side, murmured words of encouragement that did little to ease the tension in the air. Though emergency truck sirens wailed in the distance, Kellan and Zeke went elbows-up against the berm, sighting the horizon through their guns in case any of Adler’s goons decided to play hero and give them pursuit. Tait had joined his brother, attending to Zoe.
That left Garrett and Brynn to join Rhett—at the side of the man he’d laid in the grass as if he were suddenly handling sheer glass.
“Moon.” He touched fingers to Rebel’s face with the same hesitant care.
Rebel didn’t move.
He pressed in harder.
“Moon.”
He lifted his hand, brushing the distinct black waves back from that noble French forehead. They were covered in so much soot, they now looked gray. Shit. The Cajun bastard was going to be just as hot as an old man as he was now.
You will grow old, damn it. Prove it to me now. Prove it, and laugh in my face all you want to about it.
Garrett leaned in. Rhett snarled at him, and at the hand he extended toward Rebel’s carotid. “Get away.” He glared at Garrett’s hand, making it clear he was ready to bite it off if he had to. A little blood and flesh would blend fine to the stew of agony boiling in his gut.
Garrett froze but didn’t back off. “Double-Oh. Let me help.”
“You can help by backing the hell off, Hawk. Are you fucking listening to me?” He lunged out, hovering over Reb like an overprotective wolf, until a soft, quivering hand scraped against his scalp.
“Rhett.” Brynn’s husky whisper shook as erratically as her fingers. “Let him help. We—we need to know—if—”
Her high gasp sliced it into a hundred shaky slivers. Each one of those blades gashed at him, too. He hated his own breath. Hated himself for sitting here, whole and alive, while—
No. Not whole.
He clutched Brynn’s hand in, smashing it against his face. He framed Reb’s face the same way. “Cold. He’s so cold.” It tumbled out of him on one of those hated breaths as Garrett checked for vitals…and was ominously silent about what he found. Or hadn’t found.
No.
No.
“Why is he so fucking cold?” He blurted it because he refused to hear anything else. Even Zoe’s new shriek was a relief. Like the bastard he was, he secretly thanked her for it. Anything was better than the silence of Garrett’s readings…than the stillness of his friend’s body.
No. Not his friend.
His love.
“Moon.” Another damn breath he was taking, instead. Another ragged sigh in its wake. Another moment of living on because of what this man had done for him…added to a list that numbered in the thousands. No. To fucking infinity. How was the gift of love quantified? Measured? Marked? It couldn’t be.
It could only be symbolized.
With a kiss, soft and pleading. Why are you still so cold?
It could only be shown.
With an embrace, pressing a pounding heart to a still chest. Don’t give up.
It could only be whispered.
With words that emanated from places of truth…deep in the soul.
“Come back, damn it. I love you.”
Chapter Twenty
‡
TEARS BLURRING HER eyes, Brynna reached again for Rhett.
Garrett slid to let her get closer, but on the way, let her see the dismal truth of what he’d found during his brief check of Rebel’s vitals. The sorrow in the man’s light blue eyes was like an ice pick into her heart. Her vision quivered.
Rhett snatched her in tighter. Tighter. Yanked her so hard, her torso was enveloped between his and Rebel’s. The heartbeat against her left ear was a raging tattoo of grief. The heartbeat against her right…
was barely there.
But she squeezed her eyes shut and clung to both the beats…for as long as God would allow.
And clung.
And clung.
Even as the night wind kicked higher. Even as the sirens shrilled nearer. And yes, even as Zoe’s screams lengthened. Brynn knew, without even doubting, that Zoe understood why she was here and not over there. Her friend wasn’t alone. Zo had both Shay and Tait, helping her ride the contractions that would soon bring a new life to the world.
As Rhett and she said goodbye to another.
The tears thickened, welling from chasms in her so deep, she couldn’t fathom the bottom. Maybe they had none. It was certainly possible, given how the sobs followed, stealing breath, draining thought, demanding surrender. She had no choice. She set them all free, gladly offering them as sacrifice to the last mortal moments she’d have with these two beautiful, brave, amazing men. And she told them so, by giving them the most precious gift she could think of.
“Thank you…for everything. For all of it…my Sirs.”
God gave her the best reward for it, too. A few more heartbeats. A few more.
Then a sparse rasp from just above her. “You’re welcome, little peach.”
And then, as if the wind itself brought it, “You’re welcome, ma belle minette.”
Rhett and she jerked up so sharply, they collided heads. But she knew her lesson now. Pain at the hands of these two was the very best pain of all. “Oh my God.” She swiped impatiently at the tears now, despite the jubilant well they overflowed from. Blurred vision wasn’t going to do. She needed to see him clearly—to confirm that the reality wasn’t just a trick of her mind or a fluke of the wind.
No trick. As she raised up, soot-covered lashes lifted off her pirate’s carved, dirt-covered cheeks. But blazing out from the dirt, orbs the color of Caribbean lagoons shined at her then Rhett.
“Oh my fucking God.” Rhett’s burst embellished her words with brutal, joyful force. A smile shining past his tears, he dropped another kiss directly on Rebel’s lips. Immediately after, he jerked his head at Brynn, commanding her to do the same. Rebel’s mouth moved eagerly beneath hers, tasting smoky and sweaty—and perfect.
Rhett punctuated off their kiss by landing a punch to Rebel’s shoulder. “Shit clot,” he growled. “Don’t you ever fucking do that again.”
Rebel attempted a laugh but had to stop at a parched cough. “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled. “I love you, too.”
* * *
FOUR MONTHS LATER, she replayed that moment in her mind for at least the millionth time. Cherished its warmth in her heart even as she tugged her thick sweater close, battling the chill that seemed a perpetual resident in her bones now. No matter how hard she tried, her body wasn’t accepting the message that it was August first in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Just as her heart hadn’t accepted that life had to go on without the two men she loved.
She’d stayed in Austin for another week, switching shifts in the hospital with Rhett, making sure that one of them was at Rebel’s side through every minute of his recovery. The Cajun had saved his own life by setting enough of a timer on the explosives that he could dive into the bathroom for cover, resulting in a broken arm, a hell of a lot of bruises, and a whopper of a concussion, the main reason why it was necessary for the doctors to hold him for a few days longer.
That extra time was just what the guys had needed. Brynn had looked on, heart swelling, as their connection and devotion to each other grew by the day. When Rebel was finally discharged, Rhett held his hand all the way to the car.
Neither of them were the wiser to how deeply she’d fallen for them.
It was how things had to remain. How things would remain.
They had each other now. They had their team now. She had been nothing more than a pleasant add-on to the packa
ge for a while—one Rebel had even fought at first. She could carry no illusions about mattering more than she had, or ever would.
And there was the cloud that wouldn’t leave the skies of her world. That rained a chill on her even now, as she enviously watched a bunch of women enter the lobby of The Wynn in their skimpiest cocktail finery. Their Louboutins and Jimmy Choos made luxurious taps on the marble floors; their jewelry looked like wearable stars even in the vestibule’s muted lighting. They were on the arms of dashing men in designer suits, laughing with seductive smiles. No doubt, they were all heading out for the massive preview party sponsored by the city’s newest high-roller resort, The Nyte. The membership-only hotel was opening soon, and besides the gleaming rise of its tower over the skyline, nobody knew much about what it would offer. Grand opening staff members were only allowed to release one public statement: We’ll be the best.
Fleetingly, she wondered if The Nyte would be casting for an in-house show.
Agonizingly, she realized that she didn’t care.
She’d just looked through the UNLV courses being offered for September, confirming that if she bit the bullet and attended school full-time, she’d complete her psychology coursework by Christmas. After that, she’d be ready for her internship. She was both invigorated and terrified—a combination of emotions she could’ve processed better, if she just gave in to her growing craving for a hard spanking—but facing her submissiveness wasn’t the same as trusting someone with it. She just wasn’t…there…yet.
Who the hell was she kidding?
She’d never be there with anyone but Rhett and Rebel for a very long time. Perhaps not ever. And she was fine with that.
She had to be.
“Brynna.”
She pushed down the tears, plastered a smile to her lips, and looked up. As her gaze hit the handsome face of the man who’d invited her to lunch, it stunned her that the smile wasn’t as tough to sustain as she thought.
“Well, Dan Colton, as I live and breathe.” She teased it while standing to hug the guy she once thought she’d spend forever with. Dan was a hunk in anyone’s book, despite the burn scars down his right cheek that also denoted him as a hero. The rest of his face was all chiseled model perfection, topped by delicious Dijon waves that were cut in the latest masculine trend. And damn, could those broad shoulders fill out a designer suit.
