Chapter 50
CHAPTER 50
CLOVER
M y eyelids were so heavy, but my body felt weightless as a pair of soft lips peppered my forehead, my nose, my cheeks with kisses.
“You don’t have to fight anymore. Neither of us does. It’s okay.”
The voice was as familiar as my own, but it didn’t belong to Damien. It was slightly softer but just as sweet. It made my heart just as fluttery, my smile just as wide. I basked in the timbre of it, let it warm my face like the first rays of sun after a long winter.
Those lips touched mine briefly, and the only thing that kept me from missing them when they left was his voice.
“I’m comin’ with ya, angel. Ya understand?”
I nodded even though I didn’t understand. I didn’t need to. All I needed was this.
“I’m not lettin’ you go. I’ll never fuckin’ let go.”
His voice broke as he lifted my hand and pressed a kiss to my ring finger, and my eyes shot open in horror.
“No.” I was dizzy and weak, disconnected from my body. It felt like I was drifting away from it somehow. Away from him. I wanted to cling to him tighter, and maybe I was, but I couldn’t feel my hands.
I heard men laughing and speaking in Russian.
I smelled sawdust.
And I saw blood.
So. Much. Blood.
It gushed out of my leg in bright blue spurts, a fountain of starlight that seeped and spread around us.
And somewhere, far away, a countdown had begun.
Looking up, I drank in a face I’d only seen in my dreams … and in a photograph I kept in my pocket. But I almost didn’t recognize him through his agony. His haunting gray eyes were squeezed shut, his loose black curls had been shaved off, and his mouth grimaced as his silent wail echoed in my ears.
“Knife,” I whispered, wanting him to fight for us. Wanting him to fix whatever was happening.
But as the countdown continued, his pain only grew. I saw the moment it became unbearable. The subtle smoothing of his features as a decision was made.
And I felt the same sense of peace wash over me when I realized what I needed to do.
Reaching for his ankle, Kellen and I locked eyes as my hand wrapped around the handle of his boot knife and his wrapped around mine.
Then, as the light pooling around us began to swell and pulse, enveloping us in a serene blue embrace, Kellen smiled in understanding.
This time, things would be different.
This time, we’d throw that knife. Together.
“One.”
It felt like the dream had started over.
The heavy eyelids. The weightless body. The gentle lips pressed against mine.
But it was real. I could tell by the things that weren’t familiar. The scent of my lover’s clothes. The muffled staccato of two dozen machine guns firing at once. The sensation of being wet from the knees down.
Wrapping my arms around Damian’s body, I smiled against his worried mouth and kissed him back as a euphoric, tingly river of relief rushed into my extremities—further proof that I was not, in fact, dying.
But the way Damien’s body responded heated that river, turning it into a lava flow.
My name was an answered prayer on his lips as he unleashed all of his worry, his fear, and his anguish on my welcoming mouth before tearing himself away to look out the window and assess the situation.
Whatever he saw must have satisfied his fear because, soon, his attention was back on me, his hands roaming from my face to my throat to my head to my heart. It was as if he needed confirmation that it was still beating. And it was. My pulse pounded beneath his palm, every swell of blood pressing harder against the surface, trying to get closer to him.
And I felt that same pulsing sensation between my legs, where Damien’s body was pressed against mine. Thick and hard and needy. He rocked against me in desperate, involuntary thrusts, and his tongue mirrored that movement, filling me, but not enough. It would never be enough.
My blood was on fire as I tore at Damien’s belt, freeing him as he pulled my shoes, leggings, and underwear off in seconds flat.
And then he was everywhere. There wasn’t a part of me that Damien wasn’t touching, filling, flooding with love. The river of emotion inside of me overflowed, pouring down the sides of my face as my body stretched and my heart swelled, full to bursting with the enormity of the moment, of this man, of my awe and admiration and gratitude for him.
My awareness contracted until all I could feel were the places where we touched. All I could hear was our breathing, our bodies colliding. All I could taste was his love, his relief. And I wanted to live in that liminal space forever—the place between waking and dreaming, where I had him all to myself. Where the outside world couldn’t touch us and time didn’t exist.
But time did exist, and it was racing. I felt it in every surge of blood, every punishing thrust, every ragged breath and broken moan.
I cried out as he pushed me closer to the brink, mourning the loss of our connection before it was even over. I didn’t want to come. I didn’t want to ever feel less whole, less overwhelmingly complete, than I did with him inside of me. But our bodies had gone rogue. We’d become desperate, ravenous, frenzied things—clawing and biting, growling and crying.
I tasted Damien’s tears on my tongue as he drove into me harder, felt his agony and ecstasy as he stiffened and swelled inside of me. And when his teeth clamped down on my bottom lip and he filled me to my breaking point, I tilted my hips and took even more. His pain was my pleasure, my undoing. I wanted every drop, wanted to suck it from his body until he was free of it. Until it was mine. Claiming his mouth, I whimpered through my orgasm as I clenched and convulsed around his throbbing cock, greedily swallowing every spurt of hot cum and bitter relief that he poured into me.
There were no words exchanged. Only tears and kisses and—when I finally found the courage to open my eyes—long, lingering glances that filled me with joy.
Lifting me up so that I was straddling his lap, Damien wrapped his arms around my waist and buried his face in my neck.
I cradled his head and stroked his hair as I finally allowed myself to look out the window and take in our surroundings.
We were sitting on the floor of a helicopter on the top of a tall building, and outside the window, in a river of blood, lay five male bodies and a still-smoking cigar.
Alexi’s corpse was gruesome. He must have been shot at least a hundred times. There was almost nothing left of his head, and his body oozed blood from so many holes that it resembled a weeping sponge. I couldn’t look.
Kneeling beside Damien, I kept my eyes on his profile while he stared directly into the pulpy void that had once been his father’s face.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, gently rubbing his back. “I know you hated him, but that doesn’t make losing your last parent any easier. Trust me, I know.”
Damien returned my gaze with sorrowful eyes, and I immediately regretted my words. He took full responsibility for my family’s deaths. I shouldn’t have brought it up.
“And I’m sorry that I couldn’t explain what was happening,” I added, changing the subject. “I didn’t expect to be unconscious while it all went down.”
Damien’s dark eyebrows shot up. “You knew about this?”
I smiled a little too brightly. “It was my idea. I brought the laptop from the cathedral here and gave it to Paul. He speaks Russian, so he was able to operate the drone software.”
Damien’s mouth fell open. “Paul’s alive?”
I nodded, plucking the lit cigar off the ground. “He and Jack were hiding out in Merchant’s Arch when I came to find you.”
“Wait. Jack’s alive too?” His gray eyes glistened as he hung on my every word.
“She’s in rough shape,” I said, brushing the dirt off the cigar. “Two gunshot wounds and probably some broken ribs, but they were wearing body armor, so they’re gonna be okay.”
Damien sighed with his entire body. “I saw them get shot. I … I thought …”
“It’s okay.” I smiled, cupping his face with my free hand. “They’re okay.”
Nodding as he struggled to process that information, Damien took the cigar out of my hand and inhaled a mouthful of smoke, releasing it along with the grief that had been weighing on his shoulders.
“So, Paul figured out how to unlock the laptop?”
“No … I, em, went and found the key.”
Damien side-eyed me as he took another drag.
There was no good way to say it, so I reached into the pocket of Kellen’s jacket and pulled out a finger wrapped in a blood-stained paper towel.
“Holy shite.” Damien choked out a cloud of smoke. “Where’d ya get that?”
“The hospital,” I said, sticking it back in my pocket. “I tried every finger on six dead soldiers before I found the right one.”
Damien shook his head at me in speechless awe, and a tingly rush of pride warmed my cheeks. Accepting the cigar in his hand, I took a long puff and allowed myself to enjoy that tiny moment. To savor Damien’s admiration and the flavors of vanilla and spice and a sweet, earthy cedar on my tongue.
“Paul used the laptop to call all the drones in the city to Merchant’s Arch. Then, when I screamed, it activated all of them at once. He let them target me for the countdown to confuse Alexi, but when it came time to shoot, he switched the target from me to”—I couldn’t bring myself to look at the bodies next to us—“them.”
Damien’s gaze drifted to the bloodbath on the roof, and he held out his hand, silently asking for the cigar.
I passed it over as I watched his thoughts darken.
“I did it again,” he said, exhaling a cloud of vanilla-scented smoke. “I fucking failed.”
“You what?”
“I had one job, Clover. With everyone distracted by the drones, I coulda grabbed the sergeant’s gun when I took you out of his arms. I coulda killed Alexi right then and there, and I fuckin’ didn’t. My entire life had been leadin’ up to that moment, and when I had the opportunity, I fuckin’ choked. Again.” He glanced at me with bitter tears in his eyes as he shook his head and took another drag.
“Killing Alexi was never your job,” I said, plucking the cigar from his frowning mouth and planting mine there instead. The flavor of vanilla custard cream danced at the edges of my consciousness as I pulled away, licking my lips with a smile.
“Never my job? It was my fuckin’ life’s purpose,” he argued.
“No, it wasn’t.” I stamped the cigar out and held his tortured stare, speaking slowly to make sure that my next three words hit their mark. “It was ours.”
Damien’s face paled as I kissed his parted lips again.
“You were never meant to do this on your own,” I said, cupping his cheek. “If I’ve learned anything over the past two weeks, it’s that we only survive … when we stay together. We only succeed … when we do it together.”
I gestured toward the massacre that I was too squeamish to look at. “If you’d shot Alexi, there were four other men on this roof who woulda killed you on the spot. You did the right thing, Damien. You protected me.” I beamed, pressing my forehead to his. “And I protected you.”
Pulling me into his arms, Damien kissed me with a combination of reverence and relief that was so powerful it bathed the back of my eyelids in a blinding blue light. It filled me from the tips of my toes to the top of my head, and when he pulled away, my body tingled in every place he had ever touched—both in this life and the last.
“You jump, I jump.” He smirked, and for the first time in days, I knew everything was going to be okay.
I just didn’t know how.
“Damien?” I swallowed. “How are we gonna get down from here without being captured?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he said, pursing his lips in contemplation, “and I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”
“Why not?”
He sat me down on the roof next to him and, with one last kiss, walked over to a camera on a tripod a few meters away.
Switching it on, Damien took a few steps back and smoothed his hands down the front of his military uniform before running his fingers through his dark hair. His posture stiffened. His stare went cold. And before me stood a man who was destined for greatness. I’d never seen Damien at his strongest. He’d been injured since the day I’d pulled him out of the sea. Seeing him standing in his full power, healthy and nearly healed, was a religious experience.
“Hello.” He spoke in English using his natural Irish accent rather than the fake Russian one he’d used on TV the day before. “This is Lenin Abramov, vice president of the Russian Federation and son of President Alexi Abramov.”
Damien repeated his greeting in Russian.
“Less than an hour ago, my father was slain by Irish rebel forces. Based on the order of succession, which was amended yesterday during my appointment to the position of vice president, I stand before you … as the new president of the Russian Federation.”
Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.