Brutally Beautiful (21 page)

His lips smiled against the flesh of my thigh, wet fingers slid across smooth lips and dampened skin. “Then I can’t wait to introduce you to the rest of my body.”

Tugging him up by his hair, we heard the low murmur of voices and the shuffling of footsteps just outside the door.  Bree’s voice called out my name, as Kade slipped my undies and pant leg over my ankle, softly yanking them up my leg. 

“You okay?” Kade whispered against my temple.

“If I say no, will you stay in here and introduce me to your other parts?”

Chuckling, lips brushing past my ear, “Fuck, Lainey.  I want to taste you coming again.  Next time, I’m going to bury myself in you and I want to hear my name on your lips when you come.”

I was too stunned to realize he called out to Bree right after that, my body was still trembling and in between my thighs was a tingling throb that drummed the rhythm of Kade’s name, and my panties were damp from the most intense orgasm I’d ever felt.

Blinding bright light made me squeeze my eyes shut as soon as the closet door swung open.  Knowing giggles flooded from Bree’s lips when she noticed how disheveled Kade and I looked, but thank God, she had the manners not to say anything.  I leaned my back against the closet door, trying to adjust my eyes to the light, but my head still seemed foggy.

Dylan and Bree were explaining how they got rid of Fran; at least I think that’s what they were saying.  The only sounds that reached my ears were the recollections of Kade’s heavy breathing and soft guttural moans.  It took every ounce of restraint I had not to drag him back into the closet with me.

Kade’s eyes were wide, too.  He looked ravaged; stunned.  His eyes locked on mine and I was utterly swept up in Kade, in his eyes, drowning, drowning, not hearing or seeing anyone else in the room. I wanted to drown in him.  I wanted to feel every inch of that look against my skin. I wanted to touch every last part of him. I wanted to make him call out
my
name.

Standing there in the office with Bree and Dylan still talking about Fran, I felt faint, surreal.

Still feeling his kiss burn against my lips, I covered them with trembling fingers.  His voice, deep and husky, still echoing in my mind.  Nobody ever kissed me like that, with force, with need, with fucking power.  Nobody ever paralyzed me with one single look.   Some nameless undiscovered organ in my body had opened and Kade Grayson was pouring himself inside me, seeping into my flesh, my veins, my cells, taking over my body.  I was torn between wanting him to and not.

This man pierced my soul with his eyes. I feared he was seeing too much in me, peeling open my skin to try to find all the secrets within.  However, the truth still remained that I wanted his lips on me, I haven’t been kissed well in ages.  I hadn’t felt wanted and excited about a man in forever.  I knew I shouldn’t want him.  He was wrong for me.  He was someone I could never be real with.  Shit…I’d never be able to be real with anyone for the rest of my life, would I?

Bree and Dylan ended their sentences and walked out.  I wondered vaguely what was said, but I was too Kade-induced to care.

 “Kade?”   I walked closer to him.  The only response was his eyes following me.  “Kade?” I whispered.  “Talk to me.”

“I can’t control myself when I’m around you.”  He stepped closer to me, face leaning down into mine, hovering over me, “You don’t make me crazy, you make me feel sane.  Don’t ask me to stay away from you.  I’ve been doing that for too many weeks now. I feel like I’ve been stealing from myself something I've been starving to have.  And it’s you.”  Damp sweaty hands cupped my face, “What happened in that closet is going to happen again, and again, and a-fucking-gain, Lainey.  It’s never going to end.”  He pressed his cheek against mine, the stubble of his unshaven face sent prickles of heat across my skin.  The hands cupping my face shifted, and slid over my breasts and down my stomach.  “This, Lainey,” he growled cupping in between my thigh, squeezing hard and releasing, “is mine.  And, I’m yours.  All of me.  Destroy me, Lainey.”

He shuffled backward, and walked out of the office, leaving me…breathless.

Oh, my God
…I was smiling.

The Kade-coma didn’t release me from its tight grasp until late afternoon.  We spent the day cleaning, me demonstrating to everyone how to sterilize and scrub the hell out of things, and everyone moaning and groaning about me being an anal-retentive crazy clean freak.  Well, everyone but Kade.  Kade understood and scrubbed harder than I did, and I know this sounds sick, but it made my muscles clench and pool with want.

As night settled, and darkened the skies outside the bar windows, four men came in, a handful of regulars, and one of them, Bobby, dropped a few quarters into the old jukebox.  Without looking, I could hear the familiar jingle jangle of the coins clinking against the sides of the metal as they slid in.  It was so quiet in the bar that I heard the clicks of the buttons as his fingers chose the numbers to the songs, and soon after, the first guitar strums of
Paint It Black
by the
Rolling Stones
drifted eerily to my ears.

Bree, Dylan, Kade, and I, were sitting behind the bar on our small booth. Bree sat next to me, the smell of lemons, limes and thick dark beer erased the clean sent of disinfectant, and I missed its calming sterile scent. I’d been staring down at the little square napkin I’d been unknowingly folding into one of those origami animals and thinking about the heat of Kade’s lips on mine, when I felt Bree shift to stand.  She walked over to the group of four men as Dylan made his way to the other end of the bar.  My stomach did a flip knowing Kade and I was alone at the table and just out of the view of everybody and my hands stilled their movements.

My heart rate sped up when the small cushion I sat on shifted under more weight next to me.  The warmth of Kade’s arm brushed against my skin and the slight touch made my body tremble.  Leaning in closer, he brushed his knuckles along my jaw, immediately making my eyes meet his.  So many thoughts were said between us in that stare, so many secrets were shared, so many strings were pulled that I lost myself a little drowning in those eyes.

“You’re going to leave, aren’t you?” he whispered.

“Why would you ask that?”

“You haven’t looked at me all afternoon. Your eyes are constantly on the door, and you look ready to run…Please stay…I didn’t mean to scare you before…” Intense.

“Kade, I’m not scared of you.  There’s just…”

An explosive gritty crack rocked through the bar, a bright flash of light and the sizzling sounds of showering sparks and broken glass shattered out across the room, landing at my feet, and the music died instantly.

Even if I had never heard a gunshot before, it was not one of those sounds that you could mistake this close, but I knew for sure with every heartbeat what it was.  That explosive sound that could deafen for minutes after, the slow motion of events right after, as chaos prepared its introduction. My heart thudded hard and all my muscles tightened into fight mode.  For a half of a second, the room stilled and everything was bathed in thick silence.  The smell of burning wires and acid filled my nose.

“Now that I have all you redneck’s attention, where can I find Samantha Matthews,” the gritty voice said, and I felt it in every cell in my body. 
This was it
. Game over.  I’d been found.  My muscles tensed. Would he kill me quickly or drag me back home and kill me slowly in front of a live audience? 

I still wore the stains of my decisions in slight white scars and discoloring on my skin.  The strong feelings that I once had for my husband were locked in a small hidden box, and once that gunshot rang out, once the knowledge that his heart still beat somewhere, the lid of that box popped right open.  My past exploded like warfare before my eyes. The feelings that I once had of love and comfort were twisted into hate and fear. 

Holding Kade’s wide stare, anguish tore through me.  God, please don’t let him kill me in front of Kade.
Please
, don’t do this to him again. I slid down onto the floor, crawled in front of the safe, and focused on turning the lock without being heard, or missing a damn number.  Kade’s eyes pleaded with me. His hands grabbed after me to stay. His body slid across mine to protect me.  My heart surged in my chest.  Tearing my gaze away from Kade, I focused on the lock to the safe.

“I’m gonna repeat the question one more time.  Where the fuck is Samantha Matthews?” The voice wasn’t familiar, the son-of-a-bitch must have paid someone to hunt me down.  I dialed the lock to the safe.  Right 12.  Left 27… as Kade’s tense muscles hovered over my body mumbling low, just above a breath, in one of those horror movie singsong whispers… “
2 exits. 5 windows.  4 customers.  1 waitress.  1 brother.  1 Lainey.  1 shooter.  How many guns…”
His hands gripped the flesh on my arms protectively as my heart was pounding through my chest. 
Oh, God, he was losing it
.

The safe’s door bounced open and I grabbed for Dylan’s gun.  I knew it was there, and I knew it was usually loaded. All I had to do was click the magazine into place and pray the gunman didn’t hear.  Slipping the safety off, I tried to get out from under Kade’s arms.

“Don’t know anybody by the name of Samantha Matthews,” Dylan’s voice said. 
Oh, God, Dylan shut the hell up
.  I could see him at the other end of the bar, both hands raised, face probably looking into the end of the barrel of a gun, his fingers trembling.

“I’ll just get her to come out then,” the voice laughed dryly, as two more flashes of light and sound exploded from his gun. 

Behind the bar, a mere ten feet from me, Dylan dropped instantly. 

Jumping up, gun raised, I braced myself for impact.  “Drop the gun,” I said.  From the corner of my eye, I saw George, one of the regulars standing next to Bobby, with his gun already raised right at the shooter’s head.

I adjusted the aim of my gun a few inches to the right until it lined up flawlessly to the shooters forehead, knowing perfectly well George was about to pull his trigger.  Another shot ripped through the bar and the shooter collapsed. Shit, it was
Deputy
George and
Deputy
Bobby, as a matter of fact, all four regulars were cops.  The four men moved in sync, two surrounding the shooter’s body, the other two going out to see who else was around. 

Bree screamed Dylan’s name, then mine.  It was crushing to hear the primal sound of her heart breaking as she crawled to get to him.  I recognized how scared and freaked she truly was. It was the same way when they told her about Michael. She looked at me then as she looked at me the day they found his body. 
Please help me
.  I didn’t realize it until then that she’d fallen in love with Dylan.  I nodded to her with watery eyes. 

Kade reached Dylan first and slumped down mumbling next to him.  Bree slid next to us hiccupping and sobbing.  “He’s still breathing.  Please help him.  I can’t do this again.  I can’t.  I can’t live through another Michael, Sam.” Her tears spilled, cascading waterfalls of sorrow.  Desperation.

“Bree, get the car and bring me my bag.  Olaes is there.  Get Olaes.  Bring it all,” I said.

Kade was breathing heavily next to me, whispering, “Who the fuck is
Elias
? Is he a doctor?”

Dylan’s eyes looked into mine; fear and surprise.  “What?  What’s going…what the
fu
…” His eyes scanned his body, registering the blood.  “Oh, God…oh, God…I don’t want to die.”  His eyes shifted to Kade.  “Kade, I…I don’t want to die.”  Sweat started falling from his brow.

Tearing his shirt off, I scanned the wounds. Hunger and anger bubbled in my chest. Two bullets split through his skin.  Slipping my hands beneath his back, I searched, no exit wound on his back, one ‘
through and through
’ on his right arm. I was not worried about his arm, because it wasn’t a life-threatening hit, but the one in his torso could be. 
It could be
.  The scent of fear and metal stung at my nose and the guttural sob that ripped from Kade’s throat was like a steel vise that wrenched around my chest, squeezing so hard I gasped for breath.  I had to stop them, to calm them before their panic spread like frost against glass, freezing and paralyzing them both.  I had to stop them from making everything worse.  My hand shot out to Kade. I laid my bloodied fingers against his cheek and his eyes snapped to mine.  I’ve done this before.  “It feels like you can’t breathe,
but you can
.  It feels like you’ll never get through this,
but you will
.”  My own breathing regulated and I offered him an encouraging smile.  “Kade,” I said evenly. I slammed my hands down hard on both of Dylan’s wounds, applying as mush pressure as I could.  “Dylan is doing great.  Let’s keep him talking and thinking about other things and we’re going to get him some help. 
Trust me
.”

I could hear the men in the background of the bar. They had a cruiser and ambulance on the way.  However, the hospital was at least a twenty-minute drive from there. 

Dylan wasn’t going to make that.  My throat thickened as visions of granite headstones stood like soldiers in a field of dead pressed up against the sky.  I pressed the weight of my body against his punctures, smiling…calmly…always show them calmness…always be the comforting voice in the middle of madness.

Bree was next to me in a flash of panting sobs and cold winds, holding my aid bag.  She had the zipper open and a torn Olaes pack in her hand before I could even ask her. 

“What…What…What is that?” Dylan was asking.

“This is a tourniquet that’s going to save your life, sweetheart.  This is called an Olaes Modular Bandage.” 
Calm him. Talk to him
.  “It’s named after a very brave soldier.”

“I…I…don’t want to…to die,” Dylan pleaded.  His words sank in my belly, chilling my bones.

“Not on my watch you won’t,” I answered, wrapping and pressing, sealing and praying.  It wasn’t even a battlefield. This was not his fault. We should have never stayed here. These people were innocent.  Innocent and bleeding, spilling and splattering crimson sunsets across the floor.