27. Chapter 27
Chapter 27
N az had been worried he’d be hard all the time now that he knew what sex could be like. He woke up limp and sated, Meg still curled around him, and his brain seemed to tell him to fuck off with its silence. None of his memories swirled or threatened.
He’d slept in again, but Meg had remained with him. His body might feel wrecked, but hers was, too. They’d wrecked each other.
The thought sent a hum of warmth through him. Not the tingling kind. No, it was more of what he’d been feeling for days—happiness and peace and joy.
He pressed his lips to her forehead. Concentrating, he moved them softly against her, kissing her for real.
Meg slowly pulled away. Her eyes seemed to glimmer, and she blinked rapidly. “Good morning,” she said, rising toward his forehead and returning the kiss. She stretched after, and her lips twisted. “I need a shower.” The bed dipped as she scooted toward the edge. Her hair slid in a wave around her when she turned her head. “Shower with me?”
His dick didn’t twitch or stir in the shower. He enjoyed the way Meg’s eyes closed and her face relaxed while he washed her hair.
He’d forgotten to be careful about his bandages, and they were soaked when the shower was over. Meg helped him change them, and nerves tightened in her face when she stared at the slow leakage and the reddish flesh around the wound.
“It’s not healing right, is it?” she asked.
The wound ached more that morning, but it’d been aching for days.
Naz shrugged, reaching for the ointment he’d found the first day. As he slathered the edges of the wound, his skin was hot to the touch, mainly on the stomach side. Probably infected. His back was healing slightly better.
Even after the shower, his skin felt a little clammy, especially around his neck and head. Naz tried to think about what he could do about the infection, but his mind felt sluggish.
Meg helped him rebandage the wound. “I think you should rest today. Maybe get back into bed?”
Naz hesitated. It already looked to be about midday, but he would fall asleep again if he lay down. He should check the perimeter first.
“Please?” Meg wasn’t smiling, and her forehead wrinkled.
Naz’s fingers reached out, trying to smooth the creases there.
She leaned into his touch, her hand bracing on his bare chest.
“Please?” she repeated. “I don’t see the cartel attacking during the day, even if they find us.”
It would be better to have a clearer head. His body was telling him to sleep.
Naz nodded in agreement.
“I’ll make you something to eat, then crawl in with you. We can just snuggle all day in bed. How does that sound?”
It sounded amazing to him. He pressed his lips against her forehead before he pulled away, moving back into the bedroom. He didn’t like being naked, so he reached for the shorts he’d discarded the night before, dragging them on.
To his surprise, Meg slipped the black shirt she liked to wear over his head.
“I want you comfortable. And this way, it’ll smell like you more.” Her lips tried for a smile, but the expression faded before it formed.
Naz crawled back into bed. He fell asleep before Meg joined him.
When he opened his eyes next, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Meg’s head was on his shoulder, her arm slung around his neck. She hadn’t bothered getting dressed, and she lay naked beside him.
The plastic cup he’d begun to think of as his sat on the dresser near his gun, the oatmeal she’d made for him hours before likely cold and gross.
Naz felt less groggy, but he was sweating like a pig. A chill mixed with the likely fever. He couldn’t protect Meg like this. He needed to contact Ramiro, who’d been sending threatening messages all week. Ramiro was pissed, but he’d still help.
Trying to untangle from Meg woke her. Her naked body stretched as her eyes opened, focusing on his. “Feeling any better?” she asked.
Her worry made his chest tight. She cared if he died. The reminder added to the ache.
“Meg.” His hand reached out, trailing over her bottom lip like she often did to him.
Her pupils dilated. Her lips kissed his finger before she pushed it away.
“Don’t try to distract me. You were sweating all afternoon.” She sat up, her hands tugging the blanket over him. “You didn’t wake up when I shook you either. That’s not like you. I’m worried. I think your fever is getting worse.”
Naz nodded in agreement, reaching for his phone. Ramiro knew doctors.
Somewhere in the house, something slammed hard enough for the sound to carry to the bedroom. A crash and the sound of splintering wood followed.
Naz grabbed his gun instead of the phone; his eyes locked on Meg’s, but adrenaline made it too difficult to say anything. He bolted out of the bedroom and down the hall.
They were already inside. Naz didn’t recognize them, but he didn’t have to. Someway, somehow, the cartel had found them.
It had only been a matter of time.
Instead of shooting the men who were already inside, he focused on those still coming through the door, wanting to make them reconsider. They jerked back out of sight to avoid the bullets.
The man who had made it farthest in reached him, and Naz smashed his gun into his face. The man cried out, flinching back, and Naz shot the one just behind him before the third was on him, slamming him into the wall hard enough for his mind to swirl.
Naz managed to shoot toward the collapsed front door, barely avoiding a punch to the face. The glancing blow set his ear ringing. A second punch hit the wall where he’d been, sending a picture crashing.
The first man had blood running down his face from his broken nose and looked pissed about it as he grabbed for Naz’s gun. Naz blew his finger off, the scream from the man satisfying.
The other guy punched him in the stomach. He didn’t punch as hard as Rocks had, but he didn’t need to when it landed that close to Naz’s infected wound. Dots danced in front of his eyes. He forced his torso not to curl, kicking out to give himself a moment to breathe through it.
Another man was entering through the front door. Naz shot him, too, but then the closest one grabbed his gun hand and slammed it against the cornered edge of the wall where the hall ended, making Naz’s next bullet go wide.
Naz dropped the gun. Voices laughed at him in his head, making it harder to concentrate. No. He couldn’t have an episode. There were too many of them, and he needed to think, not just react.
He headbutted the asshole in retaliation, absorbing his cry of pain to steady himself. The man flailed for his nose and gave Naz a view of the other guy on the ground. The man’s hand that still had all his fingers shook, his gun weaving in his grip.
Naz lurched forward, kicking it before the man could pull the trigger. The bullet meant for him rushed down the hall to slam through the door of the room he’d shared with Meg.
Her scream flooded his veins with ice.
“Meg!” he cried, starting toward the room, but the headbutted jerk had recovered enough to slam him into the wall again.
The voices in his mind told him he had already failed. She was already dead.
He jabbed the cartel member in the throat, straining to hear anything over his thudding heart and the man’s strangled cries.
Meg’s shout cut through the bullshit in his head. “Don’t worry about me!”
Naz dropped for his gun, rolling into the man scrabbling at his neck and bringing him down to the floor with him. He shot him from that angle, the bullet tearing up through the man’s chin and spraying the wall behind him with blood and brain matter.
The last man on the ground brought his wobbling gun back around to Naz, squeezing the trigger again. It skimmed close enough to Naz’s head to cause pain to explode in his ear, adding to the ringing.
His vision dimmed, making his kick wild, but the man lost his grip on the gun.
Naz lifted his own, but he shot past the man, sinking a bullet into the chest of another cartel member breaching the door. The body slumped over as Naz tried to blink and focus.
The man’s hand almost made it to his gun. Naz blew a finger off that one, too, before shooting him in the goddamn face.
He emptied his last four bullets toward the front door. Another cartel member took three to the chest, and the fourth slammed into the shoulder of the guy behind him. That asshole jerked back, out of sight again.
Naz dropped his empty gun, rolling to grab the one covered in the man’s blood instead. He shot toward the front door, nearly emptying the gun. He didn’t hit anyone, but it gave him a minute to catch his breath.
His fucking ear hurt like a bitch, whatever was left of it. All he could hear from that side was the laughter of the voices in his head. His infected wound was also aching with pain, making him dizzy.
Down the hall, the door to their room started to open.
“Meg, no!” Naz called, pushing to his feet.
The door froze, still mostly shut. He couldn’t see her. He wanted to see her one last time, but it was better this way. She was safer.
“Ignacio Tores!”
He had no idea who had shouted his name, but if they were shouting inside, that meant they weren’t coming in themselves.
“Get out here and we’ll let the girl live!”
Naz stared at the bodies bleeding into the carpet as the taunting in his head quieted.
“Don’t go!” Meg begged through the bedroom door.
He really wished he could have seen her again. He held her image in his mind, the one of her body curled into his as she smiled into his neck. The memory of her giggle filled his mind, bringing both the calm he needed and a twisting inside his chest.
Movement near the busted-in door had him shooting, but he didn’t think he hit anyone, just made them more cautious again. He dropped the second emptied gun.
Crouching near the body with the blown-out head increased the ache in his side. He tucked the gun he found into his waistband, suddenly glad for the too-tight shorts, and found another on the next body. A quick scan of the corpses didn’t show any signs of movement.
There were probably more guns, but the cartel members outside would expect him to delay. Quicker was better. He’d take more of them out if he was quick.
“Please don’t go,” Meg said. The door to the bedroom started to open again.
“Love you, Meg,” Naz said, not looking back as he ran for the busted front door.
He heard a scream behind him, one that echoed in his mind. The usual taunting voices shut up, as if shocked into silence by his recklessness.
Naz tried to shoot the man in the suit first. He was probably the one who had shouted, the one in charge.
The suited asshole dragged the man next to him in front of him, letting him take the bullet instead.
Naz kept moving, kept shooting.
He’d been right. They hadn’t expected him to be so quick.
But there were a shit ton of them. A good dozen on top of those he’d already killed inside. A few of them managed to shoot, but Naz jumped into the middle of them, letting a couple of their cartel members take the bullets meant for him.
His borrowed gun clicked. He was out of bullets, but he’d expected it. He dropped the gun, grabbed the closest man, and used him as a shield while pulling the other gun from his waistband.
It was a mistake. Not because he was shot; the man’s body worked fine as a shield. But he should have released him before the dead weight toppled back, dragging him to the ground.
He got two more shots off before someone kicked his gun away, his arm throbbing in pain from the move. The barrel of a gun was all he could see, not the person behind it.
He didn’t want to die. He couldn’t, not before he got them all. Not before Meg was safe.
He batted the gun to the side, fire blazing along his arm, and the too-close shot made his head ring again.
“Don’t kill him!” the man in the suit shouted. “He deserves more pain than that.”
Naz scrambled for the gun, trying to wrestle it away, but then the first kick found him. They kicked right into his inflamed side. Pain took over.
It wasn’t just one kick. Naz tried to curl into himself, but the pain kept coming. His side melted from the throbbing fury it had become. His ribs felt like they had collapsed. He tried to protect his head, but his bloody ear had become a target.
The voices were back, but they weren’t taking over. They weren’t dragging him into that blind, violent place of his episodes. No, they were laughing at him.
The world swooped, dimming the edges in a different kind of gray. He didn’t even know when they stopped kicking him. His breath wheezed as he dragged air through his nose, saliva dripping from between his lips.
An arm wrapped around his neck, using the leverage to lift his torso off the ground.
Naz opened his eyes.
He recognized the person whose cheek they pushed into the ground near him. Seb’s face was bruised and bloody, but his dark eyes were as direct as they’d always been. His arm lay at an odd angle beside him. There was no sneering smile this time.
“Sorry, Naz,” Seb said. He got a kick for his apology.
A hand gripped Naz’s saliva-streaked jaw, dragging his chin up.
The man in the suit was familiar, and not just because he reminded Naz of Julio. It was the man from the club. The one who had fucked Meg.
The older cartel leader glared down at Naz. “It’s bad enough you killed my nephew, but to steal from me?”
Meg didn’t belong to anyone. He hadn’t stolen shit. Naz tried to shake his head, but the arm around his neck tightened, choking him.
“Where the fuck are my drugs?” Julio’s uncle asked.
The drugs. The biggest delivery of drugs Julio had ever been trusted with. It made sense that they were there about that, but Naz had left the pile of drugs in the warehouse.
Seb was no longer looking at him.
Movement dragged Naz’s attention past the men in front of him, back toward the house. Meg cried out as she was shoved forward, falling to her knees in the driveway.
“Look what I found,” the man who had pushed her down taunted. Blood soaked his shirt and dripped down his arm.
One of the men he’d shot inside must not have been dead. Naz should have capped them before he left.
He should have done so much more.
Flowery material fluttered around Meg’s legs. She’d put on one of the dresses from the closet. Meg hated dresses. Somehow it was worse that Meg was going to die in a dress.
“There’s that sweet piece of ass.” Julio’s uncle moved away from him. Then, in a bark to his men, he commanded, “Strip her.”
Naz threw his elbow back, trying to get to her. Whoever held him grunted and squeezed but didn’t let go. When Naz scrabbled at the arm, fingers dug into his bloody side, making his vision dim.
There were still half a dozen men left. A couple of them went to help as Meg fought the one who had dragged her out of the house.
Meg was crying, sobbing with fear as she lashed out.
“You said you’d let the girl live,” Seb said, disgust in his voice.
“Oh, we’re not going to kill her.” Julio’s uncle stared down at Naz, but Naz couldn’t look away from Meg. The dress ripped, its pieces fluttering around her.
“She’s a good fuck. Worth more alive. I’m not going to let her enjoy it this time, though.” He pointed a gun at Naz. “Tell me where my drugs are, and I’ll kill you so you don’t have to watch what we do to her.”
“We.” They were all going to do it. Meg’s worst nightmare, and they were going to make Naz watch. The voices in his head taunted him with his failure.
“He can’t fucking talk!” Seb shouted.
“Shut him up.”
The sound of flesh on flesh was dim as Naz choked and thrashed.
Meg’s beautiful breasts were on display, her arms held wide as they forced her to the ground.
Julio’s uncle wore a smug smile. “I’m going to pound her raw ass so hard, you’ll have to listen to her beg me to stop. I’m going to—”
You beg me so good. The way you do makes me want to fuck you even harder.
The voices in his head drowned out what the man was saying. Naz’s vision bled to black as the world disappeared.