Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tate
“It was too easy. It was too bloody easy.” Fran looks around the room as if expecting someone to jump out at us at any moment.
“Fran.” I speak to her gently, aware that she may be experiencing some sort of trauma.
She’s shivering, her arms wrapped around herself, and when I reach for her, she shrinks away.
“Love, not sure how you can call a bloody fuckin’ ambush like we just did too easy.
” Jesus, Keenan and his Clan came in droves, heavily armed and ready for war.
The carnage around us bears testament to that.
She shakes her head. “No, that’s not it,” she says, then she gives me a watery smile. “I’m super impressed, by the way, don’t misunderstand. I mean, you guys did an awesome job.”
Did she get a head injury?
“But it isn’t that,” she says. “There’s something else going on, I know it. I can’t prove it yet, but you’ll see.” She winces. “I just hope that it all comes right in the end.”
What the bloody hell is she talking about?
“I’m sure we can—” a sudden, deafening explosion sounds behind me. Instinctively, I drag both Islan and Fran to the floor, as another explosion sounds. Parts of the ceiling fall, the walls crumbling around us, when I feel heat at my back.
“It’s on fire! Oh my God, the warehouse is on fire!
” Fran screams. Flames billow from behind her as she rolls for cover.
I can hear Keenan nearby, and Lachlan. Someone’s shouting orders, but it’s hard to hear anything amidst the chaos.
I look blindly around for an exit, anything at all, but can’t bloody find one.
“Stay low!” Fran shouts. “Stay low to the ground.”
Islan and I crawl, side by side, looking for a way out, when there’s another explosion nearby and hot flames lick at us, barring our exit.
“Christ!” Fran screams, her voice choked. “There’s no way out!”
Smoke fills the air, my eyes burning from it. I try to draw in breath, but my lungs are constricted, and I can’t seem to move beyond this thick, pungent wall of smoke and flame.
“Get out!” Keenan shouts. “Whole bloody warehouse is going down!”
Figures they’d fight with fire, with a warehouse stocked with books. But who’s behind this?
“This way!” Fran shouts. “Follow me!”
She crawls through a pile of rubble to the left, and Islan and I follow behind her. Then I see it. An open doorway, the door blown straight off its hinges.
“There!” Fran shouts. “Right there!” She turns to face me as another explosion goes off right beside us. Flames leap up around us, and in a split second, I see a large beam from the ceiling engulfed in flames, teetering right above Fran.
“Fran! Watch out.” I dive for her, knocking her to the ground, just as the enormous, flame-riddled beam topples. Fran shrieks, something hits the back of my head, and my world goes dark.
Mumbled words, fingers entwined with mine. A kiss to my cheek and a soft touch.
Dreams, nightmares, devastation, and pain.
A cool cloth. A soft, velvety voice. Fingers in my hair, brushing it off my forehead.
Words from a familiar voice I can’t place. Crying. Islan? Fran.
And then one morning, I wake, my eyes so heavy I can barely open them. They feel as if they’ve been glued in place, and it angers me I can’t do the simplest task of opening my bloody eyes.
Finally, one. The lid feels heavy and sandpapery, my vision blurred. I settle for just one eye open as the other seems too difficult. I see a pretty little lassie bent over my bed, and realize she’s holding my hand.
“Fran?” My voice is rough and ragged, but it gets her attention. Her head whips up, her eyes bright.
“Oh my God,” she whispers. “You’re awake.”
I close my eye and release a pained chuckle. “Barely.”
“But I’ll take it. Oh my God, Tate, I’ll take it.”
I lift her fingers to my mouth and give her a weak kiss.
“What happened?”
And she tells me everything, while my eyes are still closed. I nod so she knows I’m listening.
She tells me there was an explosion and a massive fire at the warehouse. I shake my head, still not able to open my eyes.
“Survivors?”
“Nearly everyone,” she says quietly. “Keenan lost one of his newer recruits. The Welsh were taken into Keenan’s custody, but I believe rumor has it they’re presumed dead.” She leans in. “They aren’t dead, but Keenan felt it convenient to allow that rumor to circulate for now.”
I nod. I’d have done the same. I don’t bother to ask her how she knows all this. By now I’ve gathered that she has her methods.
I sigh and shake my head.
“Islan?”
“She’s fine,” she says vehemently. Her voice lowers. “And I know Keenan brought her man in for questioning.”
Her man.
Bloody hell, do I have questions.
“Where am I?”
“Keenan’s private rooms, his private doctor taking care of you.”
I nod. “Sebastian.”
“Aye.”
She squeezes my hand, and her eyes grow moist. “Thought we lost you, Tate. You were hurt so badly.”
I look down at my body, half-expecting to find it mangled and bruised, but all I see is bandages and an IV.
“Was I? How am I now?”
For some reason, that makes her giggle. “You’re bloody perfect now.”
I give her a teasing smile.
“Not sure I’d go that far.”
She leans in. “You saved my life.”
I grin at her. “Guess you owe me dinner, then.”
That makes her laugh, and my heart squeezes at the sight of her beautiful eyes dancing at me.
I close my eyes, suddenly tired and worn. “You still my wife?” I ask, squeezing one eye open to watch the way her face lights up.
“Aye. You can’t get rid of me that easily.” She sighs. “I’m still investigating things, Tate. Things I’ll tell you all about when it’s time.”
I nod, tired, so bloody tired, as she fills me in. I can’t speak very well, but I can follow along.
After the ambush, the Welsh set the building on fire. They didn’t even care they had their own men in there, it seems they were only trying to bait us.
“They used the warehouse as a setup,” she says.
“Seems they thought they could pin the blame for everything on me, that I was an easy target. But what they don’t know is, I saw beyond what they were doing.
Beyond it all.” She gives me a wry smile.
“I haven’t spent years researching all of you blokes for bloody nothing. ”
I smile, my eyes still closed. “Course not. Now what?”
“Now, we get you out of this bloody bed and healthy again, and then we move on to step two.”
“Which is?”
“Negotiations with Interpol.”
That makes me open my eyes back up. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”
She sighs and squeezes my hand. “You’ll see. But you have to trust me. Can you trust me?”
Didn’t I ask her the very same question once?
She peers into my eyes, sincerity written on every one of her features.
“Ah, love. Of course I trust you. You’ve earned it by now, haven’t you?”
She leans in and kisses my cheek. “I hope so,” she whispers. “And I promise you, promise you, I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t. I know it.”
We stay at Keenan’s, and it takes a few days to recover. I’m on the phone with Leith and Mac daily, finding out what else they know, what happens next.
Interpol hasn’t made a move.
“They will,” Fran promises. “Trust me.”
Every day, she’s on her computer or phone, taking notes, asking questions. She asked me to trust her, so I bloody well will.
She’s so preoccupied with the chase, with gathering intel, she barely eats or talks to me. I give her freedom to do it, but after some time she needs to take a break.
On the fourth day of my release from the hospital, she goes to answer the phone, but I grab her wrist.
“Not so fast.”
She gives me a teasing look. “Please unhand me, sir. I have work to do.”
My pulse races, and I tug her over to me. “You’ve got bloody work to do that involves your mouth and my cock.”
She rolls her eyes, but I can tell she’s pleased. “Oh, so romantic.”
“There’s more where that comes from.”
I’m a lucky bloke, though, because she doesn’t need to be asked twice. The next thing I know, she’s straddling me, her full breasts nearly up to my damn nose.
“Well, hello.”
“Hello,” she says with a giggle. “Something I can do for you?”
I roll over with her beneath me, ignoring the flare of pain in my back and side. I sustained a head injury, but nothing was broken.
I bend my mouth to hers and capture her lips with mine. She melts into me, her arms coming around my neck as if to scramble for purchase. I gently part her legs with my knee, bringing one hand between her thighs while I kiss her again.
God, it feels good to hold her like this again. It feels so good to have the blood thrumming in my veins, her soft, supple body beneath mine.
“I fucking love you,” I whisper. “I love you, Fran Cowen.”
“And I love you,” she replies, her voice pitching off into a moan when I tug down her panties and glide my fingers between her legs. “But it’ll take a while for that name to seem like it fits me.”
“Fits you just fine,” I say with a groan. “Jesus, you’re wet, love. I want to taste you.”
“My good sir,” she says in that way of hers that makes my heart twist. “You don’t mean to seduce me so soon after we’ve taken vows?”
“I very much intend on doing just that.”
“If you insist,” she whispers.
Moments later, I’m on the floor in front of her, her legs draped over my shoulders, and I’m breathing heavily between her thighs as she pants and writhes. I tease and suckle, taste and worship, until she’s keening with pleasure and on the cusp of coming.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I warn her. “Not until I tell you you’re allowed.”
“Or what?” she asks, her eyes flashing.
I shrug. “You have to ask? I’ll punish you, of course.”
She shivers and moans, and it looks like she’s trying so hard to do what I tell her. I take the opportunity to thrust two of my fingers in her, pumping as I work her clit with my tongue.
“Tate! No, it’s too much,” she moans. I slap her thigh, good and hard, to warn her. She’d better not disobey me. That only makes her moan even more.
“Tate, pllllease,” she begs.
“What do you want, baby?”
“I want to come?”
“Just like this on my mouth? Is that a question?”
“No. I mean yeeesss.”