by Riley Storm
“Khove!” she yelped, somehow still holding her gun. “What the hell were you thinking?” Unimpressed, she rolled off him into a crouch and popped up to return fire as the criminals unloaded against the wooden wall.
“I was thinking,” he groaned as she ducked back down. “That we need to keep going. Like, now.”
“What are you talking about? They’re getting away!” she shouted at him, moving to pursue them back through the kitchen.
Khove got to his feet, ignoring the shouts from the criminals as they found their unconscious friend and dragged him after them.
“No time. Out the front door,” he rumbled, bodily grabbing the detective up and moving for the street exit.
“We have to go after them!” she protested, struggling.
It was useless. She might as well have been trying to bend steel bars. Khove had her locked up, and he stumbled toward the exit.
“Bomb,” he growled, holding her in front of him, shielding her as he kicked open the locked front doors. “They were setting up a—”
The world exploded around them.
17
One moment, she was being carried out the front door unwillingly by Khove, the next, sailing through the air surrounded by shards of glass, wood, bits of cinderblock and more. A burst of fire reached out and slapped them down into the front windshield of a parked car on the other side of the street.
Rachel groaned, her entire body aching. A tremendous ringing in her ears drowned out any sound. Slipping off the car, she stood on wobbly feet, staring at the remains of the restaurant as flames licked at the roof through the blown-out windows, a thunderous inferno raging at the heart of the building.
It was an inferno she would have been incinerated in, if it weren’t for Khove. He had saved her life. Twice—in a span of seconds. The world spun and Rachel slipped to the ground, pain from dozens of injuries overwhelming her brain and sending her spiraling into a blissful darkness that reached up to hug her like an old friend.
“Rachel!”
She blinked awake, realizing she could hear her own name being called.
A huge figure loomed over her, mostly shadow, his outline visible against the flames raging behind him.
“Rachel, are you okay?”
His voice was faint, like she was hearing him through earplugs. Reaching up, she tried to remove them, but there was nothing there.
“It’s the explosion,” the figure said. “Your hearing should return, but there’s nothing you can do about it.”
She nodded. “Ow. That hurt. I’ve never landed on a windshield before.”
Khove shook his head. “You still haven’t. That was me you landed on,” he said with a wry smile, helping her to her feet. “It just felt that hard because of my muscles,” he joked.
Rachel laughed, the shaking igniting a dozen protests from her body, and she winced.
“Are you hurt?” Khove asked, looking her over even as she shook her head.
“I’m fine. Nothing serious,” she said, grabbing his hand and holding it when he tried to take it back. “Thanks to you, I’m okay.”
“All in a day’s work.” Then he drew himself up tall, puffing out his already impressive chest to new proportions. “See,” he chortled happily. “Bodyguard.”
Rachel groaned. “I’m never going to hear the end of that. Am I?”
In the distance, sirens flared to life. Fire and EMS would be there soon.
“Any signs of the perps?” she asked.
“Um, no. I, uh, I was a bit too busy to go after them,” Khove admitted, sounding genuinely sheepish. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry!” she gasped. “How are you sorry? If it wasn’t for you, that bomb would have killed us both.”
Khove didn’t respond.
Suddenly, she yelped and spun him around as her memory came crashing back. “Khove! Your back. The bullets. You’re hurt!”
She looked over his back, terrified he was somehow only standing because of adrenaline. The bomb had fried her brain there for a bit, drawing her focus to that, and away from the fact that he’d leapt in front of the hail of bullets. There was no way he hadn’t been hit.
Try as she might though, looking through the tattered remnants of his shirt where the bomb had blasted at it, she couldn’t find anything but half a dozen ugly bruises.
“You didn’t get shot?” she asked incredulously. “How is that possible?”
Khove shrugged. “I’m fine, trust me,” he said, turning and taking her hands, preventing her from inspecting him any further. “Trust me, I’m fine.”
Rachel was shaking. “The bomb. The bullets. You jumped off a two-story building with me in your arms. Khove, what’s going on?” she asked, looking up at him, his eyes glowing in the firelight.
It was then that she realized he brought a hand up to her face, holding it steady, its thumb brushing against her cheek.
“Khove,” she whispered, suddenly feeling very, very small in his arms. “Khove, what’s going on?”
“I’m a bodyguard, remember?” He looked down at her, the fierceness of his words reflected upon his face. “I protect people.”
She shook her head, trying to look away, but his fingers stiffened, holding her grip.
“You barely know me,” she said in a loud whisper to ensure she was heard above the flames roaring across the street.
To her surprise, Khove looked embarrassed, but still didn’t look away.
“I feel like I’ve known you a lot longer than I have,” he admitted. “If you know what I mean.”
She lifted her head skyward, looking up past the smoke at the faint twinkle of stars visible in the night sky. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I do.”
Khove drew her closer, and she relished the sense of security he could provide her, even now. As a police officer, she often felt safer than perhaps others did, but with Khove it was…a different sort of safe. Impossible to describe. There was trust there.
“You still could have died though,” she reminded him.
“It’s something I’m prepared to do if my job requires it,” he said quietly.
Rachel jerked, but nodded. “I understand.”
And she did. No officer wanted to die on the job. That was why they trained hard and relied on one another for backup. But if it came down to her, or an innocent civilian, Rachel knew what her choice would be. It had always been that way. It was just who she was, and that part of her recognized a kindred soul in Khove.
“Thank you for protecting me,” she said, leaning her cheek into Khove’s palm, ignoring the dirt on it.
“Just doing my job,” he said with a wink.
Rachel giggled. It wasn’t a laugh. This was much more feminine. And vulnerable.
“So I’m not special then?” she teased.
Khove shook his head ruefully. “You’re very special,” he growled, bringing up his other hand, which she was shocked to find was intertwined with her own. How had she not noticed that?
“Oh, yeah?”
He nodded and drifted a little closer. “Yeah.”
Rachel shivered. This time, it wasn’t from the cold, or from their near brush with death. Those were things in the distant past. She knew that once the medics arrived, and they were split apart, reality would come crashing back in like a load of bricks.
For now though, there was nothing but her and Khove, and the stunning realization that somehow, amidst the mess that was the past twenty-four hours, something inexplicable had formed between them. Rachel still wasn’t sure how whatever it was had wormed its way past her defenses, leaving her wide open to such a development, but as Khove tilted her head back and her lips parted in the tiniest of ways, she couldn’t deny that it had.
Then he covered her mouth with his and she forgot all about guns, explosions, bad guys and the fire raging fifty feet away. There was nothing but Khove. The flames were nothing compared to the heat that blasted at her from within his chest, reaching out and drawing her inward.
Rach
el melted like a candle, falling deep into the kiss. Their lips parted and it grew more intense. Hands pushed through hair, arms gripped tighter, and abruptly the ground disappeared from beneath her feet as he lifted her into the air like she was a feather.
Sometime later, he lowered her down. The tips of her boots pushed aside debris as she returned to solid ground, her brain still soaring among the clouds as she looked up into circles of silver-gray.
Khove opened his mouth to say something, but the first firetruck arrived on the scene in a blaze of sirens and thunderous horns. Firefighters deployed from its interior, one of them rushing over to the pair.
Reality returned sharply and Rachel inhaled as pain jabbed its icy tendrils deep into her body.
“Easy there,” the firefighter said. “Just take it easy. Are you okay?”
“Nothing serious,” she said, allowing Khove and the fireman to lower her to the ground.
“What happened?”
Khove started speaking, outlining the details, the bomb. Rachel just sort of stared, watching his mouth move, remembering what it had been like to kiss him. The soft scrape of his stubble against her skin. The power in his arms as he’d held her aloft. The barely-concealed urgency in both of their bodies.
Something had happened there. But what? And what about the rest? How was he unharmed? Rachel frowned, trying to think even as her brain turned to mush.
“Khove,” she said, tugging on his collar.
The huge stranger bent over her. “What is it?” he asked as the fireman returned to the truck to grab something for her.
“You owe me some answers,” she said, giving him her fiercest stare.
“I know,” he whispered.
Then blackness reached out and claimed her at last.
18
“Khove. Why are you brooding?”
“I’m not brooding,” he grumbled, looking out the rain-streaked window as buildings passed by.
“So the dark look to your eyes and the constant unfocused stare out the window are just what then? Resting bitch face?”
Khove shook his head, the humor not penetrating the gloomy cloud that had settled around his head. How could he laugh at a time like this anyway? There was no humor in the situation.
“Seriously? Are you going to have this much of a downer for the rest of the day?”
He didn’t respond. How could he? There wasn’t much to say. It was all fairly self-evident, and he was surprised that Rachel hadn’t seen it all yet. After all, it was plain as day to Khove that he was the one responsible for all her injuries. His failure, anyway.
Rachel had awoken in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, having only been unconscious for a few minutes at most. The medics had tried to keep him from coming along in the same vehicle as her, but when Khove had stood up and dared them to stop him, they’d caved.
Once there, it had been a fight to keep Rachel in their care. Both Khove and the nurses were insistent she stay the night for observation. After her initial protests had died down, she’d fallen asleep fairly quickly, as he’d expected she would. The lack of sleep and constant work, combined with what the two of them had been through, had left her drained. As soon as the adrenaline faded, she was out like a light.
Khove had stayed there with her, in her room, awkwardly slumped against the chair. He’d slept fitfully, his worries and guilt growing darker the longer he sat there and looked at her beautiful face peacefully resting.
There were cuts everywhere, and bruises now starting to form. Not all of them were from the blast either. Some of them, especially a welt on her ribcage, were from Khove, when he’d tackled her out of the way of the bullets. Knowing that he’d inflicted this on her, that he hadn’t been able to get her out of the way of the blast in time, ground away at him.
He was a bodyguard, dammit! A protector. That was his role. He should have found a way to go in the building first, or to get Rachel to understand that he should have been the one confronting the goons. He could have taken all three of them out without issue. With a bit of grumbling and a little more effort, Khove could have even ensured they lived through the experience.
Instead, he’d blindly gone along, and the detective had been hurt because of it. Because of him. Part of Khove was well aware that she’d not suffered any serious injuries because of him. Not even any stitches had been necessary, but it didn’t matter. Even one scratch was too much, and Rachel was covered in them.
The bruises on his back pulsed with pain, a reminder that he hadn’t exactly escaped unscathed either. If he hadn’t been there, things would have been much worse. It was all well and good to know that, but it didn’t change his current demeanor. Not as he was beginning to realize there was something forming between the two of them. A partnership that neither had seen coming.
“Khove.”
He blinked as Rachel said his name sharply. Here it comes, he thought. She’s finally going to tell me that I need to do a better job. That she doesn’t want to work together anymore.
After all, if he could barely protect her from Korred’s human minions, what was he going to do when the crazed magi unleashed his Fae servants, or if the two of them ever encountered Korred himself? What then?
“Khove!”
He looked over at Rachel. “Yes?”
“What are you brooding about?”
He growled to himself. “It’s my fault.”
Her eyebrows went up, then she focused back on the road—Khove hadn’t even bothered trying to tell her she wasn’t alright to drive after she’d been discharged. He wasn’t that crazy.
“What’s your fault?”
“Your injuries,” he said matter-of-factly. How could she not understand that?
To his complete amazement, Rachel didn’t nod and agree with him. She didn’t try and tell him he did the best he could. Instead, she started to laugh. In his face. After a moment, she pulled off to the side of the road and continued to shake.
“This fucking hurts,” she complained through the tears, holding her stomach as her face turned red. “Ow. Ow. Please, don’t make me laugh, okay?”
He frowned. “That wasn’t supposed to be funny.”
“No?” she asked, sitting up straight abruptly, eyes blazing with blue fire. “Then what the hell was it supposed to be, Khove? A fucking pity party?”
Her sudden coarse language and fury pushed Khove back against the door as he recoiled in confusion. What was going on here?
“Don’t you dare blame yourself for what happened to me,” she snapped. “I was doing my job. The job that I swore to do. Sometimes, shit like this—” she gestured at the cuts and bandages. “Sometimes, it happens. That is the risk I take to do my job on a daily basis, and I will not have you demean the herculean effort you put in to save me. If it wasn’t for your quick thinking and actions, I would be back in that building. In pieces!” she roared.
“But—”
“You took bullets for me. Or almost did,” she continued, managing to restrain herself, albeit barely, by the looks of it. “I still don’t know how they didn’t hit you. Then you put yourself between me and the blast. And then you took the brunt of the landing on the car as well. Don’t think my memory hasn’t reminded me of that, now I can think it over.”
He shook his head. It hadn’t happened like that at all.
“Now you’re going to sit there and look for pity from me? No. Suck it up, accept that shit happens, and let’s… move… on… Understood?” she barked. “I know the risks of my job. I would have done the same for you.”
There was a long pause.
“I don’t think you could lift me,” he mumbled.
Rachel snorted. “Maybe not,” she admitted. “But I would have tried.”
She sighed, reached over and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I am eternally grateful for what you did last night, Khove. You saved my life. If I have to choose between that, and a few dozen scrapes and bruises? What do you think I’m going to choose?”
He shrugged.
“What more could I have asked of you, Khove? Seriously.”
“I should have stopped them,” he said fiercely. “I could have stopped them. Without anyone dying, or getting hurt. Well, they might have gotten hurt,” he amended.
Rachel stared at him. “What are you talking about? How?”
He just shook his head and tapped the GPS screen of the car, plugging in a destination.
“Khove?”
“Go there,” he said, half lost in his own thoughts.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, though she did pull back out onto the road, glancing at the display to see her next turn.
“You wanted to know what more you could ask of me,” he said quietly. “And its answers.”
“Huh?”
“You have questions,” he said, staring straight ahead. “Now I’m going to give you answers. I owe you that much, at least.”
This was a crazy idea. Absolutely crazy. Why was he even contemplating this course of action?
Because she deserves to know. To understand just what she’s working with as a partner.
This way, Khove could ensure that she never put herself in a dangerous situation again, when she could just send him. He’d spent a good amount of the night thinking this over, and it wasn’t quite as rash as it may appear to Rachel, but that didn’t matter.
They drove on in silence, making their way past the outskirts of town and heading deep into the country.
“Are we going where I think we’re going?” Rachel asked after twenty minutes or so had gone by.
“Probably.”
“Right. Can you elaborate on why?” she asked.
“Trust,” he said. “You told me partnerships were built on trust. On knowing that one has the other’s back. So now, I’m trusting you with something that very few have been trusted with.”
Rachel tapped the steering wheel. “Does this relate to our case?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Not directly at least, but it will help you to understand the tools you have at your disposal, and so that in the future you’re prepared for what we encounter. I can’t have you freezing up on me. Not if we’re going to handle this ourselves.”
