The Alpha Bodyguards Books #4-6

Chapter Forty-Two

T hree hours .

Three hours of goddamn hell.

She hadn’t spoken to me. Despite what Collins said, she wasn’t okay. I’d wanted to call her a hundred fucking times over the past three hours as we drove back to Miami from Key West, but I didn’t need to have a damn phone conversation with her.

I needed to see her.

I was in such a goddamn rush to get to her, I didn’t even let Luna pause to get my truck. I’d called Preston and asked for another fucking favor.

“I understand that, Mr. Loic,” Luna spoke into his cell. “But your daughter requested to not be brought to your residence.”

Loic, the fucker, had called Luna five times during the drive back, demanding to have his daughter returned to him like she was a piece of property.

Luna repeated what he’d said four other times. “After I’ve spoken with her, I’ll call you. That’s the best I can do, Mr. Loic. She’s a legal adult.” He listened a beat. “As soon as I can, I will. Goodbye.” He hung up. “No wonder the chica didn’t want to go back to that.”

I didn’t say shit, and neither did the kid in the back seat.

My leg bounced as Luna pulled off the highway and cut east toward the office building that housed Luna and Associates.

“I’m talking to her first,” I warned. And if she gave me her words, I made a promise to myself I was quitting smoking.

Luna didn’t argue. His cell rang and he answered it through the SUV’s Bluetooth. “Luna.”

“Boss.” Tyler’s cheerful voice came through the speakers. “You’re all set. The footage from the marina is scrubbed. Anything else you need tonight?”

“No, gracias. Head home.”

“Copy that.” Tyler hung up.

“So that’s it?” the kid asked from the back seat. “I’m good?”

Luna pulled in to the garage at L and A and parked. “You’re all good.”

I didn’t wait to hear the kid’s response. I was out of the SUV and striding toward the elevator. My trigger finger twitching, jonesing for a fucking cigarette, I hit the call button with the side of my fist.

The door opened and the kid called out to me.

“Hey, Ty! Wait up.”

Ignoring him, I stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the fourth floor where Collins had reported he’d dumped her in the client apartment next to Mercy and Nash.

“Let him go,” Luna told the kid.

The elevator door slid shut, and I paced as I asked myself the same damn question I’d asked for three hours. Why wasn’t she talking? Why wasn’t she fucking talking?

She’d made me a promise.

Everyone else could fuck off, but she was supposed to give me her words, and goddamn it, I wanted them. I didn’t deserve them, but I wanted them and I was gonna find out what the fuck was going on.

The elevator doors opened, and I strode down the hall. I didn’t pause, I didn’t knock, I didn’t consider for a single fucking second that she might not want to see me, because I wanted to see her.

I needed to see her.

Scanning my key card against the security lock for the apartment, I threw the door open and stormed in before slamming it shut behind me.

My eyes landed on her and I almost dropped to my knees, but I was so goddamn angry at her for breaking her promise to me that I barked words at her. “Why aren’t you speaking?”

Still wearing that black dress from the club that I now hated because of everything it represented, she stood from the couch, but she didn’t say shit.

“ Speak ,” I ordered.

“About?” she quietly asked.

A brick ton of weight lifted off my chest, and I stopped myself a pace in front of her. “ Goddamn it , woman. Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again.”

“Do what?” she asked, monotone.

“You know what,” I accused.

“I do not.”

“You made me a promise,” I reminded her.

Her chest rose with a sharp inhale as her stoic facade started to crack. “I did not.”

I called her on her bullshit. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

Beautiful, poised, her throat moved with a swallow, and her voice dropped. “You.”

“Me,” I reiterated. “The man you promised to give your words too.”

Her face fell and her eyes welled. “This hurts,” she whispered.

Reaching for her, I sank my hands into her hair and tried like hell to be honorable. “Say no.”

“Yes,” she barely whispered as a tear slid down her cheek.

“Say no to me,” I growled, no longer strong enough to walk away from her. “Two letters, Ludeviene. Fucking say it. N-O.”

Beaten, kidnapped and thrown over the side of a boat, she still held my crazed gaze and defied me. “Yes.”

I slammed my mouth over hers.

Insane,unrelenting impotent rage, ten years in the Marines, and the goddamn loop of her body lying on the floor of the SUV deadly still—all that noise stopped, and it was just her.

Only her.

This woman stole what was left of my sanity and turned it inside out. Ten seconds ago, I couldn’t fucking breathe. Dante was dead. Addis was dead. They all were fucking dead. I’d pulled that trigger over and over, and I was covered in the goddamn victory of their blood, but I still hadn’t been able to fucking breathe .

But the second my tongue sank in to her mouth, I was high. So goddamn high it didn’t touch a single one of my revenge kills.

For years I’d been pulling that trigger, trying to right every wrong for every one of my fallen brothers. Their lives had been ripped away from them, but I was still standing, and I thought that was my goddamn purpose. But every shot I’d fired only fueled a beast I couldn’t fucking beat. Insatiable and relentless, haunting my every waking moment, my only peace had been the one ounce of control I’d had over that trigger.

Now that control was gone.

It’d been gone the second I’d laid eyes on her.

I swept my tongue deeper into my new drug and pressed my hard cock against her sweet body. Then I tried, one last time, to be fucking honorable.

Pulling back, I warned her. “I’ll fucking destroy you. Tell me no while you still have a chance.”

“You saved me.”

“I’ll ruin you,” I roared. “You don’t understand who I am.” Not by a long shot.

“I am aware.”

“Are you?” I snapped. “Do you fucking know I kill for sport because it’s the only goddamn thing that quiets the shit in my head?”

She didn’t flinch.

I upped the ante.

“Do you know that taking a life no longer brings the fucking air to my lungs that I need to goddamn breathe?” Gutting myself, I laid it all at her feet, every vile, crude word. “I’m a strung-out junkie, and my new fix is your tight cunt.”

She didn’t even blink.

Impotent rage lit the fuse of my goddamn vulnerability, and I was dangerously close to going over the edge, but I still kept going. I still fucking tried. For her I goddamn tried . “You don’t want me,” I growled. “Save yourself and fucking say it. Tell me to walk away.” Motherfucking say it . “I’m no good for you.”

She didn’t

She goddamn didn’t .

She turned around, bent over the fucking kitchen table like she was made for me, then she looked over her shoulder and decimated my heart. “Stay.”

A roar, half defeat, half relief and all fucking fear split from my chest, and I was on her.

I didn’t remember getting my dick in my hand. I wasn’t conscious of ripping my own damn boxers down her ass. I wasn’t even a man.

I was a goddamn animal.

Until I shoved into her body and took my first full breath since Collins had carried her limp body away from me.

“Ludeviene,” I rasped.