Savage Love (Savage Trilogy #3) - Lisa Renee Jones

CHAPTER ONE

Savage

The graveyard is a haze of mist and shadows, the night silent but for the chirping of crickets. I stand with the tombstone of my mother beside me and my enemy holding a blade to Candace’s throat—the woman I love, the only woman I’ve ever wanted to call my wife. I’m sure he believes killing Candace with that blade is poetic justice, payback for me slitting his wife’s throat. His wife was going to kill a child. She deserved what she got.

I don’t regret the decision to kill her and Candace will not pay for her death.

I could play games with Wes, another person would, and likely play the negotiation game, but I am not another person nor is he bluffing or buying time. He’s going to kill her. That’s the only reality I require to decide on my action. He moves his head to the side of hers and dares to show me his face. A second later, the blade in my hand is in his forehead. Candace falls forward on her hands and knees, and I’m already behind her, standing over him. I’ve learned the hard way never to assume a man is dead, and in this case, that would have been a foolish assumption at that. Wes isn’t dead. Even with that blade in his forehead, he grabs my calf. Since we’re being all grabby, I make a grab, too, for the blade in his forehead. I pull it out and shove it into his heart. Now he’s fucking dead. But just to be certain, I grind it and twist it, finishing the job before I pull the blade out, wipe it on his shirt, and shove it in my belt for easy access.

Urgent to have eyes on Candace, I twist around to find her pushing to her feet, her dark hair wild around her face, the wind gusting so damn hard it all but blows her away. I’m there before she’s fully straightened, righting her footing and catching her wrist before I step into her, the feel of her body next to mine, blessed relief. I’m not thinking about her watching me kill Wes right now. I’m thinking about how close she came to him killing her.

My hand comes down on the back of her head. “Tell me you’re okay,” I order, our faces close. “I need to hear the words.”

“Now I am,” she promises, her breath warm on my lips. “Because of you.”

My mouth closes down on her mouth in a desperate need to taste her, my tongue sweeping long and deep, my hand on her back molding her closer. Her arms slide around me, her curves melding into me and God, for minutes there, I thought I’d never feel her like this again. She moans softly, a delicate sound that undoes me and not in the more primal way it normally would. It reminds me that yes, she is tough. She is a fighter. But, in one slice of a well-skilled hand on a blade, and Wes’s hand was skilled, she would have been gone. And he’s not the only one that would see her dead if I don’t see them dead first.

“We need to move now,” I murmur, tearing my lips from hers, my hand closing around her hand.

She gives a quick nod, but her understanding isn’t enough to make me let go of her. I’m never letting her go again and I can’t get her to New York, where I have layers of protection available, soon enough. Pulling her tight to my side, I lead her back to my mother’s grave. Kneeling, I take her down to the ground with me, keeping her within arm’s reach. Candace grabs the flashlight she’d dropped when attacked and holds it for me, an action that might seem small, but isn’t. She almost died minutes ago. She’s not crying. She’s not shaking, in fact, her hand is steady. She’s not freaking out. She’s in fight mode, I sense that in her, and I fucking love her more in this moment than ever, when I already loved her with all that I am. I lean over and kiss her before I grab the blade that killed that buzzard Wes, and use it to dig for the data drive I hid here and pull it from the dirt.

“Oh, thank God,” Candace murmurs. “Please let that be what we need.”

“I didn’t hide it if it wasn’t worth saving,” I promise her, hoping like hell it really is what we