Wild Man

by Kristen Ashley

  I righted and started grappling for the gun.

  It sucked. He was old but he still was a match for me. Shit. I needed to do more kickboxing.

  Our fight forced off another round, the gun pointed up with our arms as I pushed with all my weight and strength to keep him in the wall while at the same time keeping the gun pointed away.

  Then I realized I wasn’t making any noise.

  So I started shouting, screaming, shrieking. I didn’t even know what I was shrieking. It might not have been words. It might have been nothing but noise but no one could mistake the fear in it. No one could. Anyone hearing it would call the cops.

  I hoped.

  “Shut up,” he demanded.

  “Fuck you!” I screeched.

  “Shut up!” he screamed and that was when I realized I should have paid attention to his left hand as well as his right for he clocked me right on the jaw.

  Pain radiated from my jaw up through my skull and my head and body jerked to the side but luckily I kept hold of his gun arm.

  Then I started shrieking again but I learned quickly. When he tried to punch me again, I ducked and he missed. His momentum took him sideways and I pushed forward, wedging him at an awkward position, both arms to the side.

  “Fuckin’ bitch! Fuckin’ cunt!” he yelled, struggling, trying to right his body.

  I kept pressing my weight into him as hard as I could, having trouble keeping him turned to the side, still screeching as loud as I could. I moved my hand down toward the gun, curling it around his, shoving my finger into the trigger.

  “Fuckin’ bitch! Fuckin’, fuckin’ cunt!” he shouted, his struggles intensifying.

  I wasn’t going to be able to hold him long.

  I pressed the trigger.

  Bam!

  Bam!

  Bam!

  Over and over as I pushed him into the wall and he fought back until the clip was spent. No more bullets.

  Thank God.

  I instantly let him go, turned, and started to run.

  He caught me by my hair, yanking me back. Pain. God, so much fucking pain exuding from my scalp. My neck wrenched and I cried out in agony.

  He got close, his leg swiping both mine out from under me and I fell hard to my hip.

  Then he was on me.

  I started shrieking again, shrieking and fighting, pushing, kicking out with my legs, scratching. My fingernails scored down his face, blood oozing instantly from the three wounds I cut in his flesh. He reared back reflexively and I shot up with him. Planting a foot, I rolled him to his back.

  At this point, maybe I should have got up and run.

  But I didn’t.

  I sat up to straddling him and hit him hard, as hard as I could. Fist balled, I punched him in the face.

  He grunted in pain and his head shot to the side when I did.

  And he didn’t right it before I punched him again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Then I wrapped my hands around his neck and squeezed.

  “You fucking dick,” I whispered as I squeezed. His hands at my wrists trying to pull mine away, I put my entire body weight into my arms. Everything I had in me I transferred to my fingers and I… squeezed… hard. “You fucking, fucking dick.” His body bucked, his feet kicked out, trying to push me off but I kept my focus, kept my place, and kept squeezing. “You took Bree’s beautiful future. You are not gonna take mine.”

  I squeezed harder.

  He started gagging.

  I kept squeezing.

  I watched his face turn purple as his mouth started opening and closing. His body stopped bucking and started jerking.

  I kept squeezing.

  I didn’t hear the front door crash open and I didn’t hear the pounding boots of men’s feet on floorboards.

  I just kept squeezing.

  Then I wasn’t straddling him anymore. I was up and my back was plastered to a hard male body. My wrists captured and wrapped around the front of me and lips came to my ear as I watched my attacker suck in air, hands to his throat as a tall, dark-haired man with a badge at his belt stood pointing a gun down at him.

  “You’re safe,” those lips whispered in my ear. “I’m Hawk, Gwen’s man, and you’re safe, Tess.”

  My body, tense and wired, stayed that way for long moments and then it sagged in his arms, my legs going clean out from under me but he held me up and he held me close against his solid warmth.

  “You’re safe, Tess,” he whispered again in my ear.

  I nodded mutely, my eyes on the dark-haired man who was using his boot to kick my attacker to his stomach. He crouched down, knee in his back, pulling cuffs out of a holder on the belt of his jeans, yanking my attacker’s hands behind him and cuffing them.

  I started trembling.

  Hawk, Gwen’s man, arms went tighter.

  The dark-haired man muttered a harsh, “Do not fuckin’ move,” to the man on the floor. He stood, pulled a phone out of his back pocket, hit buttons, and put it to his ear. Then his warm but intense and alert dark brown eyes came to me. He did a top-to-toe. They shifted up to Hawk, then back to me. Then he said into his phone, “Yeah, it’s Lawson. We got her. She’s unharmed. Tell Slim.”

  We got her. She’s unharmed. Tell Slim.

  That’s when I started crying.

  EPILOGUE

  He Got His Wish

  THE ALARM WENT off.

  It was music, Tim McGraw, and Brock heard Tess murmur sleepily, “What on earth?”

  He grinned before he even opened his eyes.

  She shifted away from him but before she could touch the button to turn off the music, he opened his eyes, caught her about the waist, and pulled her back into his body.

  She rolled in his arm and tipped her green eyes up to him, her light brown hair with its blonde highlights tousled and partly in her face.

  “Who’s that?” she asked, lifting a hand to shift the soft tendrils out of her eyes.

  “Tim McGraw,” he answered, understanding her question and knowing she had no fucking clue who Tim McGraw was. He’d spent more than a year introducing her to his music and she spent more than a year mostly ignoring these efforts.

  The music started to get louder.

  He watched her eyes narrow and it wasn’t because she didn’t have her glasses.

  “How’d that get on my player?”

  “I put it there.”

  “You—” she began, but he rolled into her so his body was on her soft, sweet one and he dipped his face close to hers.

  “Baby,” he whispered, “it’s my birthday. I’m not wakin’ up to Fiona Apple.”

  “Fiona wasn’t in the scheduled mix,” she informed him.

  “Or Tori Amos,” he added.

  “She wasn’t either.”

  “Or Sarah McLachlan.”

  “Her either.”

  “Or Paula Cole.”

  She snapped her mouth shut.

  Yeah, there it was, and Paula fucking Cole was definitely not scheduled for his birthday.

  He felt his body start shaking and he heard Tim McGraw start to get louder.

  He controlled his humor, dipped his face closer, and again reminded her, “It’s my birthday.”

  “I need to turn off the music.”

  “Yeah, you can do that after you start my birthday right.”

  “It’s getting louder.”

  She wasn’t wrong. It was getting louder.

  “Tess,” he growled as he pressed his body into hers. She bit her lip and then the door flew open.

  His head jerked back and he watched Joel and Rex walk in just as they had last year, just as Tess organized for him, her, and Joel to walk into Rex’s room two days later with his cake and for them with Rex to walk into Joel’s room four days after that with his.

  Joel was carrying a beautifully decorated birthday cake, undoubtedly carrot, his favorite, that held an abundance of tall, thin, b
lue candles, all of them lit.

  They were sing-shouting “Happy Birthday to You” over Tim McGraw and smiling like idiots.

  He looked down at Tess who was grinning up at him, not like an idiot. Her eyes were warm, her face was soft, and her smile was sweet.

  All Tess.

  He grinned back, bent his neck, and touched his mouth to hers then he rolled off his wife onto a forearm in the bed. She rolled to the alarm, turning off Tim McGraw at around the time Rex and Joey were standing by the bed and drawing out “Happy Birthday dear Daaaaaaaad,” to which Tess sat up in the bed and joined them for the last four words.

  Joel shoved the cake forward and demanded, “Blow out the candles and make a wish.”

  Brock “Slim” Lucas looked at his oldest son, his eyes moved to his youngest son, and then they slid to his wife.

  And when his eyes hit her shining ones he realized he had not one thing to wish for. Not one. There was nothing he wanted.

  He had it all right there.

  Except one thing.

  So he leaned over Tess, silently made his wish, and blew out the candles.

  She hooted and clapped.

  Rex stated, “So freaking cool! Just like last year! Cake for breakfast three days this week!”

  Joel, having shot up in the last year, now well taller than Tess and definitely a boy-man only a week away from his fourteenth birthday, turned on his bare foot and started marching to the door, declaring, “I’ll get plates.”

  Rex, also having grown, though nowhere near as much as his brother, still he was taller than Tess and nearly twelve, therefore maintaining boy status but only just, followed him, announcing, “I’ll get the milk.”

  Tess threw back the covers and decreed, “I’ll start the coffee.”

  He let her feet hit the floor before his arm curled around her waist again. He pulled her back into the bed and rolled over her.

  Before she could say a word, he took his birthday kiss. He made it long, he did it hard, and it was wet.

  When he lifted his head and saw her eyes slightly dazed but mostly happy and still shining, he got his wish.

  * * *

  Brock walked up to the door that was opening before he got there. When he arrived, he jerked up his chin to the older man. The man tipped his down and stepped aside.

  Brock stepped in.

  The man closed the door and turned to him.

  “Would you like coffee?” he asked, like he always asked.

  Brock shook his head like he always shook his head, shoved his hand in his overcoat, pulled the envelope out of the inside pocket, and handed it to the man.

  Donald Heller took it. He didn’t even try to hide his eagerness when he instantly opened the folded-in flap and pulled out the pictures.

  He never tried to hide his eagerness.

  Head bent, he studied the snapshots of Tess with Joey, Rex, and his family at Christmas. Tess decorating a cake in the back of her new bakery. Tess standing in their kitchen, phone to her ear, laughing at something Elvira was saying. Tess in an ass-to-heels, knees-to-chest squat, her arm around Ellie’s waist, her head bent to listen to what Ellie was whispering in her ear, her body hidden by Ellie’s exceptionally girlie, pink flower girl dress.

  And he stopped at the last and studied it for a long time.

  It was a picture of Tess standing next to him in a classy ivory dress that hugged her rounded figure and skimmed her knees. Her hair was twisted in a sophisticated knot at the back of her head. Her feet were encased in a pair of high-heeled, fuck-me shoes, one hand holding a bouquet which was a mixture of bloodred and bright pink roses, the other arm wrapped around his back. Rex was to her back left, Ellie standing to her front left. Joel was to Brock’s back right, Levi at Joey’s side with Dylan and Grady in front of them. Martha was standing at Rex and Tess’s sides. Family and friends were scrunched all around behind the front crew.

  The best part about the picture, to Brock’s way of thinking, was the twinkling diamond you could only just see on Tess’s ring finger, which was curled around the ivory-ribbon-wrapped long stems of her bouquet. That huge-ass diamond sitting on top of a very wide, very brilliant gold band that, only minutes before, Brock had slid on her finger. A band that matched a wider, no less brilliant one that Brock now wore that, that day, she had slid on his.

  And, of course, another best part were those fuck-me shoes. An invitation he’d accepted approximately five hours after the picture was taken.

  And, lastly, the fact that her smile was wide, her beautiful white teeth showing, her eyes shining because she was laughing.

  Donald Heller studied that photo for a long time.

  Then, head still bent to the photo, he whispered, “She looks happy.”

  “She is,” Brock confirmed and Heller’s head came up.

  Brock didn’t come often but he came regularly. He did this because the man in front of him loved Tess. He also did it because the man in front of him sired an asshole but the last act his asshole son perpetrated on this earth was trying to keep Brock’s Tess from harm.

  Damian Heller had picked apart the bones of Brock Lucas’s life and in doing so, Damian Heller had learned about Josiah Burkett. And Damian Heller had had the means to keep an eye on Burkett and an ear. He knew Burkett was planning revenge. He should have told Brock and, if not Brock, then the cops. But if he did, he couldn’t play out his knight-in-shining-armor act.

  Even so, he went down so Tess wouldn’t. He was an asshole, his play was foolish, and he could have caused Tess the harm he wanted to shield her from, but Brock couldn’t deny his going down was worth something.

  There was no way he was going to try and talk Tess into letting this man and the demons he didn’t want to hold for her but couldn’t avoid back into her life. A life Brock took pains to keep demon free, an effort that had, for nearly a year, succeeded and he’d do just about anything to make certain that streak continued.

  But he owed this man the knowledge those pictures shared.

  “Vegas?” Donald Heller asked.

  “Yep,” Brock answered.

  “When?”

  “Late last month.”

  He looked down again at the photo and then up at Brock.

  “Her mother and sister made it,” he noted.

  “Everyone did,” Brock replied.

  And everyone did. It had been a fucking blast, wild, two days of family fun during the day and then Kalie, Kellie, Joel, and Rex looked after the kids and it was two days of drunken adult fun at night. Then they had the wedding, after which they ate, drank, danced, and laughed themselves sick and the next morning everyone left. Brock’s mom had looked after Joey and Rex while Brock and Tess stayed in Vegas and had four days of adult one-on-one fun, the first two of which they had without leaving their hotel room.

  Definitely wild. Definitely a blast.

  Perfect.

  Heller looked back down at the photo and then again at Brock.

  “You have good-looking sons,” he remarked.

  Brock didn’t thank him for telling him something he knew.

  Instead, he informed him, “They love her.”

  “Hard not to love Tess,” he whispered.

  That was the damned truth.

  Then he asked the last question he always asked before Brock left.

  “Can I keep these?”

  And Brock gave him the answer he always gave.

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded.

  Brock nodded back.

  He opened the door and Brock went through it, turning as Donald Heller murmured, “Until next time.”

  Brock jerked up his chin and walked to his truck.

  * * *

  Brock crouched in the wet grass. They’d had a relatively warm winter, a couple of snows, nothing that really stuck and when it did it didn’t stay for too long.

  Tess loved it.

  The boys hated it.

  Brock didn’t care either way.

  He shoved his hand into hi
s inside overcoat pocket and pulled out the photo, another copy of the one that fascinated Donald Heller. A photo that, blown up, was framed and sitting pride of place on the shelves in their family’s living room.

  He reached out and set it at the base of the gravestone.

  “Shoulda been there, Dad,” he whispered to the gleaming marble.

  The marble had no reply.

  * * *

  “Shit,” he heard Mitch Lawson say and his head came up to look across their desks to his partner.

  If someone told Brock two years ago that he’d be partnered with Mitch Lawson, he would have laughed, or possibly growled.

  Lawson was involved in the situation with Hawk Delgado and his now-wife Gwen. Lawson had a thing for Gwen then. He had another thing going now, a much better thing, a thing that had been a pain in his ass to win, but then again, most things worth winning were worth a pain in the ass to win them. But back then, Lawson had also not been happy with the plays Brock made that put him into contact with Hawk and Gwen Delgado.

  But, like many cops, Mitch heard that Brock’s woman was in the hands of a sick, dangerous man bent on revenge and, like many cops, he’d dropped everything to hunt for her.

  Sharp as a tack, something that was good to have in a partner, Mitch contacted Delgado, a man who had more money and more resources but less strictures than the DPD, and they searched together. It was intel that Brock had handed over that took them to her.

  Burkett wasn’t stupid. It was not where Brock had found him years ago after what he did to Bree. But it was information Brock found when he was hunting him. A house kept in the family but for some reason unused. Bree’s great-aunt’s house, Burkett’s mother’s house where he grew up.

  Luck or good instinct, it didn’t matter which, sent Delgado and Lawson there first when the information Brock gave started making the rounds. This meant they got to her quick. This meant she’d only been in the hands of a madman for less than an hour before she was safe.

  After it was done, Lawson told him Tess had taken care of the situation herself before they arrived. Although Burkett was old, this surprised Brock but not as much as it alarmed him. This was because Burkett was armed and very willing to use his weapon and he’d demonstrated this to Tess. Still, somehow she did it and outside of getting clocked on the jaw, which caused her a few days of pain and brought up some swelling and minor bruising, she miraculously did it without getting hurt.