Chapter 11 Declan
ELEVEN
declan
“Stay down, Marlowe,” I growl, crouching low before creeping toward the window to look outside.
But she starts to get up. I shove her back down, catching sight of a red laser light on the wall just as another bullet tears into the room. I need to lower the blinds and shut the fucking curtains, but I can’t get close enough. I stay on the floor, pressing down on Marlowe, heart thumping.
The bullets came from a sniper rifle, maybe across from us or a floor above on the building opposite.
Whoever it is knows how to use the weapon, but isn’t highly skilled. I know it’s not a professional hit since both of us are targets prime for shooting. But they’re still close. And if they’re waiting for another chance to take us out, I want to make it as difficult as I can by covering the window.
They could just shoot up the place, but the couple of shots fired will have already caught attention. A sea of gunfire is just asking to be caught.
“Stay the fuck down. I don’t want you killed,” I whisper against her ear, her body trembling beneath me.
“I’m still tied up.”
She brings her hands to me, and I curse my libido because I had the tie loose enough to start, but in her struggle, she tightened it. I waste precious seconds by reaching into my jacket and pulling out my switchblade before slicing through the fine silk. “Stay here, close to the sofa, okay?”
I pull out my gun and crawl to the window.
“Be careful.”
Her voice wavers, so I open my phone and toss it to her. “Call my brother Torin, tell him what’s going on.”
Tor, Cal, and Seamus are all too far away.
Though Torin’s the closest, having taken Harry home and being tasked with bringing Lucie and the kids home.
The other two are in Brighton Beach dealing with a client.
But as long as one of them knows what’s happening, I’ll get backup.
And as long as Molly’s got something to do, maybe she won’t panic. As much.
The gunman’s waiting. For a movement. An opportunity.
I need to see across to the other building, work out what floor and roughly what apartment the shots came from.
The peal of distant sirens slices into the air.
I look around at the knickknacks already on display in the living room part of the suite.
I saw something earlier when I checked the place out.
My eyes scour the place. There. I grab the antique opera glasses.
I don’t have a rifle, and there’s no way a bullet from a handgun will reach the other building, but maybe I can scare the would-be sniper, or even catch a glimpse of who it is.
I lower the blinds as a bullet rips a hole through them. Then I tug the linen curtains shut.
From the edge of the window, I nudge them out of the way, the blood beating steady in my ears as I slide the corner of the curtain aside.
Another bullet slams into the wall to my right, narrowly missing me. But I’m in a tricky corner. I guess he was saving those shots, waiting for the sight or shape of a target—one of us—to take down.
I use the glasses to find the glint of his gun. There. I spot him, the small figure in a window across the way. After counting the floors and number of windows across, I squeeze off a few retaliatory shots.
“What’s happening?” Marlowe rasps.
Behind me, I feel rather than see her rise up and inch toward me. I turn, lunge, and push Marlowe down, right as a bullet zooms through the air where her head would have been.
I roll her to the wall under the curtain and window.
One more shot slams into the room, this time hitting the couch.
Fury burns in my chest. I glare at her, trying hard not to let the sweet delight of her flesh beneath mine light me up and get my libido going.
“Do you have a death wish?” I hiss.
She slips her hand down to my cock, stroking me like some maniac wasn’t just trying to kill us.
It’s a flashbang of memory. Of how she was back when we’d make out in the club, of how she’d turn to pure molten need in my hand when I’d finger fuck her against a wall with others around us.
There was a thrill in that, not only for her, but for me, because I shouldn’t have done that—not when I was on a mission.
It suddenly hits me how she writhed beneath me under that truck in Queens, her fingers trying to play me like an instrument, how she spread her legs for me in the car, moments from us being chased and shot.
I joked in my head how she got off on the thrill of danger, but I think now she really does.
What’s worse, so do I.
I want to fling that curtain open, tear down the blinds, and fuck her right here as bullets rain down around us.
To prove my point, I push a hand into her dance pants, under the edge of her leotard and stroke over the wet roughness of the tights pressed against her.
She is wearing panties, thin, so fucking thin they might as well not be there, and I rub up to her clit, circling it, drawing out her moan. Her fingers tighten on my cock and my breath hitches.
Pleasure zings through me as she squeezes my tip.
And it takes strength, real award-winning strength, not to fuck her right here and now.
This is crazy.
We are beyond fucking crazy.
I’m aware there’s something wrong with me, wanting her over stopping whoever’s trying to use us as target practice, but I really don’t care. That’s the effect she has on me.
“Christ, Molly…” I take in a sharp breath, trying to get my thoughts in order. Whoever it is can’t see in, but they can clearly pick up movement. No other bullets mean shit. I need to get us out of here. “Do you want to die?”
“Let me think,” she snaps. “Are you going to follow me into the great beyond?”
My heart lights up as I lower my head. “If it’s tasting all your sweet delights again, you better fucking believe it.”
She rolls up into me, making my fingers drag along her pussy. “Freak.”
I bite her ear and press up into her slit. “Wanton temptress.”
But I pull my hand free from her and twist out of her grip before flopping onto my back. I clamp a hand on her again because I don’t fucking trust her not to get up again.
“What did my brother say?”
“Nothing. He didn’t answer.”
I nod and feel her up, but she doesn’t have my phone or hers on her.
This place has been half set up by her Da, hence the little dancer shrine, along with some of her awards.
There’s a big frilly canopy bed that set very un-princess thoughts off in me, along with an ensuite, a guest room, bathroom, and a steel door with five locks that might make the caretakers at Fort Knox drool.
Once I’m out that door, no one’s getting in. “Crawl into your bathroom. I’ll be back.”
She glares at me. “But—”
“Do it.” I roll onto my raised arm, and with the other, take her by the throat, squeezing just enough to show I mean business. And her gaze gets fever bright.
Whatever that fever is that infects her bounces straight to me because I just want to squeeze a little tighter, drag her up, back her into the wall and kiss her, touch her, and fuck her.
I want to tie her up and leave her there, stripped naked and left waiting for me.
And I want to deliver a perfect flesh-searing spanking that makes her drip and quiver on the razor edge between pleasure and pain.
“Or?”
The challenge in her tone’s almost impossible to ignore.
“Or you won’t like the consequences.”
“Maybe I will.”
“You might,” I murmur, her blood pounding under the fingers resting on her throat, “right up until Mr. Trigger Happy gets lucky.”
Her whole being jerks.
“I don’t want to waste time tying you up, but I will if that’s the only way to keep you in that fucking bathroom. You’ll be a sitting duck, but…”
“I’ll do it.”
I release her and she crawls away.
Maybe I should tie her up, just in case, but she’s safe now, and barring any menacing snipers scaling the building and getting past the bars her da had put in, no one’s breaking through the door once I lock it.
I can pick locks with the best of them, and this door would slow me right down to a backward crawl without an actual key.
I throw a cushion at the window, and it explodes into feathers.
And then I dash across the room, grabbing my phone and hers from the table where she left them.
I check that the keys are in my wallet and the gun is in its holster.
I undo the locks and run down the stairs, the sirens getting louder as they approach. I’m about to dart across the street as the door opens and an average-sized person appears dressed in jeans, a hoodie, and a baseball cap—uniform of the sly criminal.
I start to chase the shooter when the scent of Carroll’s cigarettes wafts under my nose.
I only know two people who smoke those cigarettes here in the States.
Sirens get louder.
The pounding in my bones tells me to take off after the shooter, but instinct makes me stay where I am. I turn.
He leans against the wall of the building, cigarette butts at his feet, one boot kicked back against the brick as his blue eyes hit me.
But the streak of silver in the black curls doesn’t belong to Cal.
It’s my cousin Roark.
“The pigs are almost here,” he says with a slow smile that flirts with his eyes but doesn’t quite reach them. “My advice would be to take your lass and move her fast, like nothing happened. Before they do a door-to-door search.”
“If they do that.” No deaths or reports from a victim might mean no investigation. But he’s right. We need to get far away from here.
“Looked into your dead cop back in Queens, too. No one’s been reported missing, though. None of the bodies were moved from the truckyard, either. And there was no badge to be found.”
What the fuck? Who was the cop? What the hell was he doing there?
Shit, having Roark go down to the scene was supposed to get me answers, not generate more fucking questions.
“Did Tor tell you to come here?”