Peter had come to a standstill, ignoring the two officers’ attempts to move him along. His pale skin turned red and mottled as Shane’s voice rose, but even when Peter’s expression twisted into something ugly and dark—something that, under other circumstances, would have scared Shane—he still couldn’t seem to stop.
“I was a fool to stay with you as long as I did. To believe your lies and let you jerk me around the way you did. That wasn’t love. You don’t know what the word means, Peter. I love Brandon. He’s the only reason I’m here, and I hope to God this is the last time I ever see you. ”
“This is all Brandon Byrne’s fault,” Peter hissed, the barely suppressed rage in his voice breaking into Shane’s diatribe. “He’s brainwashed you, hasn’t he, baby? He’s ruined our love, Shane. He’s ruined you! But I told him he’d never have you.”
And then Peter lurched toward him, and everything seemed to happen at once.
Chapter 24
Brandon
The moment Peter opened his mouth, Brandon had gotten a bad feeling, his Spidey-senses going into overdrive. When Peter finally made a move, so did Brandon, his instincts taking over without conscious thought.
But then everything went to hell.
The slight form of Officer Matsoukas was in his way, and she moved, too… but too slowly. Brandon’s feet tangled with hers, and they both went down. Matsoukas’s head hit the floor with an alarming crack, and her falling body knocked Peter into the officer on his other side. Thankfully, pushing him farther away from Shane.
“Move, Shane,” Brandon snapped, lurching to his feet.
Officer Armstrong stumbled away when Matsoukas inadvertently pushed Peter into him, but he caught his balance quickly, his training taking over. He ordered Peter to cease and desist, pulling his weapon out and training it on Peter with a steady hand.
Every single one of Brandon’s priorities narrowed down to just one: getting between Shane and the gun.
Confusion and mayhem erupted, moving outward in a visible wave as the people around them reacted to the gun. Matsoukas still wasn’t moving, and Armstrong backed away from Peter, his movements hampered by the chaos as he shouted commands that were almost lost in the escalating noise of the crowd around them. A part of Brandon was aware that everything was happening at once, but his senses were in overdrive, sharpened by adrenaline and laser-focused by his fear for Shane.
“Get down, Shane,” he ordered, panic blossoming in his chest as Shane remained frozen.
Logically, Brandon knew that only seconds had passed, but logic wasn’t what he was operating on. He needed to know that Shane was safe… now.
“Get down!” Armstrong repeated, directing the command at Peter.
Instead of obeying, Peter lunged for Armstrong—for Armstrong’s gun—moving like someone on PCP, or like someone with nothing left to lose.
Moving like a psychopath.
Brandon instantly switched trajectories. Peter getting his hands on that gun would be far, far worse than the simple chaos-and-confusion-induced ricochet Brandon had initially feared.
He lunged over the still-prone form of Officer Matsoukas, going for the kind of full-body tackle he hadn’t used since high school football, but, just as he moved, Armstrong fired.
Peter twisted away from the shot, spinning toward Shane just as the crack of the gun ripped through the air. It was deafening, so loud that Brandon felt it physically, as if the sound wave had slammed into his chest and stolen all the air from his lungs.
And then, somehow, he was on his ass, sprawled on top of Officer Matsoukas again. Shane would hate it if he caught her flu. He had to… move. But he couldn’t breathe. His chest was on fire, and no matter how hard he tried to suck in air, it felt like trying to pull a bowling ball through a straw. Impossible.
“Brandon.”
Shane’s voice. Brandon blinked, turning to look even though his head felt like some invisible force was trying to keep it from moving. Shane was sprinting toward him, but that meant that Shane was sprinting toward Peter, too.
“Get back,” Brandon tried to say, but still… no… fucking… air.
And it was too late. Peter grabbed him, looping his cuffed wrists around Shane’s throat and instantly making Brandon’s world screech to a nauseating halt. Peter’s face was next to Shane’s ear, and Brandon could see his lips moving, spewing venom and spittle as he tightened the chokehold around Shane’s neck.
Shane’s eyes found Brandon’s, widening with fear as his hands scrabbled ineffectively against Peter’s.
One.
Two.
A clinical, detached part of Brandon’s brain that he hadn’t known existed started ticking off seconds as a list of terrifying facts crowded into his mind.
Pressure on the carotid arteries for less than ten seconds could cause unconsciousness.
He rolled off Officer Matsoukas’s body, his hand slipping on the cold floor. Blood?
Three.
Four.
Brandon forced his uncooperative body to move through sheer force of will, gulping for air through the fire that still engulfed his chest.
Five.
Six.
It took thirty-three pounds of pressure to completely close off the windpipe.
He shoved his hand under Officer Matsoukas’s jacket and found her weapon, pulling it out and removing the safety in the same, smooth motion he used to roll and take aim.
Seven.
Eight.
Strangulation would lead to brain death in as little as four minutes.
The gun slipped in his hands—more blood—and, as he watched in horror, Shane’s gorgeous, dark, life-filled eyes rolled up in his head. His body slumped in Peter’s arms, and Peter laughed, his eyes locked on Brandon’s and his lips forming a word that Brandon couldn’t hear over the pounding of his own heart.
Peter jerked his arms back, tightening the grip he still had on Shane’s neck, and Brandon steadied his hand… breathed out… and fired.
Chapter 25
Brandon
Waiting for Shane to open his eyes were the longest minutes of Brandon’s life. He took a breath, biting back a groan as it sent a stabbing pain through his chest, and willed Shane to wake up. Airport security had arrived sometime in the last few minutes and Officer Matsoukas had finally regained consciousness, thank God, but Brandon knew for sure that somebody, somewhere, was buying him time.
Maybe Officer Armstrong, to make up for shooting him?
Brandon had discharged a weapon in the line of duty, though, and even if he’d technically been off duty, this reprieve with Shane wasn’t going to last. In a few minutes—once someone figured out why he was bleeding so much—he would probably get stuck in endless hours of debriefing about that.
But, right now, none of that mattered.
Someone had pulled Peter’s body off Shane, and, although Brandon couldn’t remember crossing the space between them, he’d made it there somehow and had gathered Shane into his arms. Breathing, but unconscious. And duty or not, there was simply no way he was leaving until he knew for sure that Shane would be okay.
And then, finally, Shane’s eyelids started to flutter… and Brandon started to cry. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened—ever?—but he figured it was justified.
Forever just wouldn’t have counted if Shane wasn’t a part of it.
Shane opened his eyes, coughing. “You’re not dead,” he said after a minute, sounding like an eighty-five-year-old smoker. One of his hands went to his own throat and the other skimmed over Brandon’s blood-soaked shirt, and even though he looked terrible, Brandon had never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
“Nope,” he said, feeling like his smile was going to split his face in half.
Honestly, he felt like he’d been run over by a Mack truck, and he wasn’t quite sure why exactly he wasn’t dead, but all of that could get sorted out later. At the moment, he didn’t care about any detail other than the ones having to do with
the man in his arms.
“I missed you, honey,” he said, not sure if he was talking about the month they’d just spent apart or the last few minutes. He only knew he never wanted to have to say it again.
Shane sat up, grimacing with the effort, and wiped the tears from Brandon’s cheeks with shaking hands.
“That’s supposed to be my job,” Brandon joked, hugging Shane against him even though it hurt like hell and got blood all over Shane’s shirt.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll get another chance later,” Shane croaked, his own eyes starting to spill over, even though he was smiling, too. “But, trust me, Brandon. Right now these are happy tears.”
Brandon started laughing. He didn’t want to think about the fact that he’d just killed a man yet, or what the burning pain in his chest meant, or how it felt to see the imprint of Peter’s fingers on Shane’s neck. Nothing should have been good in that moment, except… everything was.
Shane had woken up, and Brandon hadn’t died, and nothing else mattered, because they were together.
“Mine are happy tears too, honey,” he said. “Believe me, mine are too.”
And, regardless of everything else, it was true.
Epilogue
Shane - One Year Later
Shane opened his eyes slowly, wanting to savor the moment. He’d just woken up the same way he had for every one of the last 362 days: happy. And, even though he was getting used to it—maybe even addicted to it—he still didn’t take it for granted.
He was exactly where he wanted to be, pressed against Brandon’s hard, almost-too-warm body. The slow, steady beat of Brandon’s heart was a reassuring rhythm under his palm, and Shane let his eyes drift closed again, taking a moment like he always did to count his blessings as he brushed his hand over Brandon’s chest.
He traced the familiar contours of the red scars that were slowly fading, letting his fingers play over the comforting weight of the necklace he’d given Brandon the year before. The sudden, hot prick of tears behind his eyes caught him off-guard, and he dashed them away quickly, happy that Brandon wasn’t awake to see them.
It had taken Shane a long time to stop replaying all the terrifying “what ifs” in his mind—all the little things that could have gone wrong and stolen his forever from him that day—but he finally had. Still, there were times when how close he’d come to losing the one person who mattered more than anyone blindsided him all over again.
He dipped his finger into the divot that the bullet had made when it had glanced off the steel casing that surrounded the heart-shaped amber pendant. Shane still didn’t understand how it was possible. When he’d said so, Mel had gone on and on, determined to figure it out with diagrams drawn on napkins and theories full of things like angles of trajectory and vector equations and the geometric stress properties of steel. In the end, though—even though she used words like “statistical improbability” and “incalculable odds”—he was pretty sure she’d come to the same conclusion that he had.
Love had saved Brandon, protected him when he’d needed it most.
The amber heart inside the steel hadn’t even cracked, and, even though the deflected bullet had gouged a deep trail through Brandon’s previously smooth chest and the force of the impact had cracked his rib, as far as Shane was concerned, the whole thing was the kind of miracle that put everything else into perspective. He could have lost Brandon, and the fact that he hadn’t was something he woke up grateful for every day.
He wasn’t going to take a single one of them for granted… ever.
“Love you, honey,” Brandon said, his voice gravelly with sleep as his eyes opened lazily. They were always the first words out of his mouth, and—just like every day—they filled Shane’s heart to overflowing.
“Love you, too,” he said, still toying with the dented steel as he smiled at his favorite person in the world. “Do you remember what day it is?”
Brandon smiled. “Luis hasn’t let me forget it. He’s been trying to convince me for weeks that if you didn’t wake up to a room full of chocolate and roses, you’d leave me.”
Shane snort-laughed, not even caring that it was unsexy. “Oh, God. Please tell me you don’t take his advice.”
“You know me better than that,” Brandon said, rubbing slow circles into Shane’s bare back. “I told him you’d only leave me if you actually did wake up to something like that.”
“Mm-hmm,” Shane lied. “That would do it.”
Brandon laughed, pulling him close enough to kiss.
“Morning breath.”
“I don’t care.”
“You always say that.”
“Because I never care.”
“Well, I care.”
Brandon grinned. “You suck at lying.”
Shane tried to think of a snappy comeback, but all he could do was smile stupidly at the man he loved. He was fully and forever smitten, and he really couldn’t imagine a more perfect moment. Brandon had the day off, Shane was all caught up on his jewelry orders, there was nothing to stop them from having a lazy morning in bed, and it was Valentine’s Day—
“Oh, shoot,” he said as he remembered, rolling out of bed.
Well, trying to, at least. The minute he moved, Brandon’s arm snapped out and wrapped around his waist, pulling him back before he’d made it more than a few inches.
“Stay,” Brandon said, breathing the word against the back of Shane’s neck as he molded his body against him. “I’m not done saying good morning yet, honey.”
Shane laughed breathlessly, trying to wiggle out of the playful grip.
Sort of trying, anyway.
Okay, maybe not really trying that hard, after all.
“I’ve got to… get up… Brandon…” he said, already forgetting why as Brandon’s hands slid up his sides and wrapped around his chest, pulling Shane’s back more snugly against Brandon’s front.
“I’m already up,” Brandon said, rocking his hips against Shane’s ass to prove it as his mouth started to do delicious things to the back of Shane’s neck.
“This is definitely better than waking up to chocolate and flowers,” Shane said, tilting his head to give Brandon better access as he arched back against him.
Brandon laughed, rolling Shane over so that he was stretched out on his stomach. He ran a hand down the curve of Shane’s spine before settling on top of him, pinning him to the mattress.
“Did I ever tell you what a pretty back you have?” he asked, making Shane giggle.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And you’re gorgeous. It’s not my fault you don’t know it.”
Shane sighed happily. So it was going to be one of those mornings, was it? He could feel the heavy weight of Brandon’s thick cock growing against his ass, and Brandon kept showering him with silly compliments when he wasn’t using his mouth for other things. The kisses he planted on Shane’s neck and back started out lazy and slow, but got progressively hotter as they both started to get into it.
“You should let me roll over,” Shane said, digging his fingers into the mattress as Brandon’s weight held him down for the best possible kind of torture.
“No,” Brandon said. Shane could feel the curve of his smile against his skin. “I like you like this.”
“I like me like this, too,” Shane said, moaning as Brandon rolled his hips. Brandon’s cock was slick with precum, and the way he kept sliding it against him, rubbing it through the hot line of Shane’s crease, over and over, was making it hard to concentrate. “But I can do… I can, um…”
Shane moaned, forgetting what he’d been trying to say. But he definitely wanted to do something. Suck. Fuck. Oh, God, anything more than the slowly escalating torture that was getting him really, really close to begging.
“You don’t have to do anything, Shane,” Brandon said, his breath starting to come in hard little gusts as he braced himself above Shane and ran a hand down his back, palming his cheeks and spreading him open as he continued to rock against
him. “Just let me take care of you.”
“Brandon,” Shane panted, pushing his ass up higher in the air. The slick head of Brandon’s cock kept slipping over his hole, rubbing against the sensitive opening until he wanted to scream. “Please… God, you’re… I need… ”
Brandon laughed, shifting his weight off Shane and kneeling between his legs. “I love it when you can’t handle complete sentences, honey,” he said, pulling Shane’s hips up in the air and spreading him open again with one of those big, strong hands. “It’s so sexy.”
“Nnnnnnggghhhhhh,” was all Shane managed, burying his face in the pillow as Brandon dipped his head down to press his tongue against Shane’s entrance.
Brandon’s tongue was a miracle.
Magic.
Most definitely a blessing worth counting. Especially when he did… that.
“Oh, God,” Shane gasped, feeling his thighs start to shake. “Bran… Bran… Brandon.”
“Mmmm,” Brandon said, the vibration just about making him come undone.
He wanted Brandon inside him, though. Needed it.
“Please,” Shane panted, hoping Brandon would use his superpowers to fill in the rest of the sentence.
“You ready, honey?” Brandon asked, surging up over his body and pushing him flat against the mattress again.
Ready? Oh… yeah. He was so ready.
Beyond ready.
Feeling a little desperate, actually.
He looked back over his shoulder, unable to stop himself from thrusting against the mattress for a little friction. “Brandon, are you going to make me start begging?”
Brandon gave him a wicked grin as he lubed up. “Start?” he teased. “Oh, I think we’re beyond that.”
Shane wanted to laugh, but Brandon was right, because it came out more like pleasepleaseplease. And then, when Brandon finally pushed the head of his cock just inside Shane’s entrance—breaching the tight ring of muscle and giving him a hint of the delicious, familiar burn that promised all sorts of carnal delights in his immediate future—Shane lost all track of the things that tumbled out of his mouth.
Be Loved (At Last, The Beloved Series Book 3) Page 23
