Rapture's Edge

36

His nostrils flared at that. His eyes, dancing with barely repressed glee only moments before, turned murderous. “I saved your life today,” he said, his voice very low in his throat. “If I wanted to see you dead, I would have left you at that prison and let The Hunt have you. And who do you think fixed those damn bullet holes in you? The tooth fairy?”

Her hand flew to the bandage on her hip, hidden beneath the boxers. The Hunt? A flicker of emotion pinched her stomach—confusion? doubt?—but it was quickly eaten by anger.

“Clever. Pretend to save me from your own gang to gain my trust, keep me alive just long enough to find out where the others are, and then kill me. You’re even craftier than Silas said. I can’t believe I ever trusted you!”

And with that, the missing puzzle piece clicked into place.

“He told you it was me,” D said, incredulous. “That son of a b***h told you I killed your father, didn’t he?”

Eliana’s dark eyes flared hot, and two spots of pink appeared high on her cheeks. She sucked in a breath and then shouted, “No one had to tell me anything because I saw it with my own eyes, you bastard! You, the gun, my father lying dead on the floor with a hole in his head!”

She backed a step away, her breath ragged, her legs bent as if she would leap at him at any moment.

D stood ready for her move, every nerve and muscle throbbing with the effort it took to restrain himself from lunging at her, crushing her to his chest, crushing his lips to hers. “You saw nothing,” he said between clenched teeth. “I was holding a gun, that was all. And then you ran away before you let me explain—”

She made the tiniest move, her muscles coiled to spring, and, tired of the cat and mouse and dagger game, he was instantly there to catch her. He reached out and grasped her wrist. With a gasp, she tried to yank free, but his grip was too strong and she dropped the blade. Struggling wildly, she ended up losing her footing and executing an ungainly back flop onto the box spring mattress, where she bounced once, then recovered her equilibrium and kicked out sharply with a leg.

But again he was too fast for her. D caught her ankle in his other hand and wrestled her, bucking and screaming, down to the mattress.

“Murderer!” Eliana shrieked in his face, all pretense of control vanished, wriggling and hissing beneath him like a snake. “Liar! Traitor!”

“Listen to me!” he shouted as she thrashed, spewing obscenities and hitting him with her free hand. She landed a hard punch to the side of his skull, and he grunted as fireworks exploded behind his eye. Damn—she was a hell of a lot stronger than she looked. And vicious as a wildcat, too; she raked her nails down his cheek, and he felt blood, hot and wet, drip from his jaw.

“I’ll kill you!” she screamed. “I swear on my dead father I’ll kill you!”

He dropped his full weight on her chest, pinning her, and then grabbed her other wrist and pushed both her arms to the mattress above her head.

“Dammit, listen!” D shouted, shoving his face right up against hers.

She shrank back into the mattress with a shocked little gasp and froze. Their noses were touching. Their bodies were pressed full together. They stared at each other, eye to eye, breathing hard, muscles rigid.

And then, oh and then…

Second by second, inch by inch, on a deep, cellular level, D became aware of Eliana.

Her breathing, ragged. Her heartbeat, pounding wildly against his chest. The blood rushing through her veins. The heat of her skin. Her body beneath him, soft and warm, overwhelming his senses.

All the little details of her—so vivid in his memory but now here, here—came flooding back to cripple him with a tidal wave of emotion so overpowering he momentarily lost the capacity for speech.

“It wasn’t me,” he finally whispered hoarsely, staring deep into her eyes. “I swear on my life, on the life of my brothers, on everything I hold sacred, it wasn’t me.”

“Who…who was it then?” She was whispering now, too, as though she’d felt the change in him, which she probably had. Her eyes blistered him, and he thought there might have been a tiny, tiny glimmer of hope there.

Constantine. It was on the tip of his tongue, it was right there. He sucked in a breath…

And couldn’t say it. He simply could never turn on his brother whom he’d sworn to protect with his own life, not even to try and convince the woman he loved he wasn’t the murdering bastard she thought him. Caught between love and duty, the agony of divided loyalty was crushing, and it kept him silent.

The little glimmer of hope in her eyes winked out. It was replaced by fury and withering hatred. “You better kill me now, because the minute you let me go I’m going to cut off your balls and make myself a nice new pair of earrings.” She smirked at him. “A very small pair.”

“d**k jokes? Really?” he snapped, feeling as neutered as she threatened him to be. She’d never actually seen his balls, but he didn’t enjoy having his manhood called into question. Perversely, it made him want to strip just to prove her wrong.

“Get off me!”

“I’m not going anywhere until you take that back!”

“Kill me, or get off me!”

“Take it back!”