me. Look. At. Me.” Daphne’s desperate voice has me turning my head and Skirt is clawing at my hands, trying to make me let go of him. My eyes seek sanctuary, finding her blue eyes staring back at me. Even through her fear, even through her pain, she’s giving me her strength. “He is family,” she says again.
I tighten my grip around his neck and Skirt’s face morphs into my Uncle’s. All I see is him sneering back at me, hating me, judging me, making me look at him in women’s clothing. I see a man that touched me, used me, hated me, hit me, burned me.
I hate the man in front of me.
I want him to die.
“Look at me,” Daphne is on the other side of the cage, gripping the fence, and coming eye to eye with me, hoping to calm me. “Look at me, Comet.”
I force myself to look at Daphne, not that my mind is helping me realize that I’m not with my Uncle, but my heart is guiding me. My Uncle’s face is staring at me too when I look at her, but one thing powers through the haze, one thing that has never happened before.
Her blue eyes.
When I see them, my Uncle’s face fades away, and the glasses appear on her face, her red pouted lips have my mouth watering and my cock hard.
“There you are,” she whispers, pushing her fingers through the gaps of the fence. “There’s my Comet.”
I reach my free hand out to touch her, and when our fingers glide together, I’m taken back to the bookstore when I grabbed the book from her hand. Daphne.
I let go of Skirt, and he falls to the ground, gasping, choking, and coughing. He rubs his throat, then crawls to the side of the fence and leans against it. “I thought ye were going to kill me.”
“I thought I was too,” I answer honestly and his eyes round for a minute. “You have her to thank for your life.” I step forward and lean against the fence, wrapping her fingers around mine. “Thank you. I love you, Daphne. I fucking love you.” I can’t stop the words flowing out of my mouth as I regulate my breathing, trying to come back down from the adrenaline rush.
“I love you too,” she says, just as the lights go out and the metal of the garage door clanks, showing a dozen flashlights.
“Vegas Police Department!”
“FBI!”
I don’t give a fuck about the law, but what I do care about is why I can’t feel Daphne’s fingers anymore.
“Daphne?” I call out her name in the dark. “Daphne!” I shout.
“Fuck, we need to get out of this ring before they find us!” Skirt whispers as he pulls me away from the fence.
“No, I’m not leaving her. Daphne!” the lights come back on and it’s too late for me and Skirt. We have red lasers pointed at us that are attached to rifles.
“Get on your hands and knees! Now, drop the brass knuckles.”
“Okay, okay,” Skirt says, holding his hands up in the air to show we are innocent.
Jokes on him.
I’m anything but innocent, and I don’t see Daphne, which breaks that little bit of sanity that was left in me. I dive to the left, sliding against the dirt, and grab the gun from that Andrew tried to kill Daphne with, aim, and fire.
I expect them to fire back and I feel a blazing heat in my thigh. It’s a flesh wound. I aim the gun at each cop and fire. I have ten rounds left and ten cops.
I can’t miss.
They drop like flies. Skirt army crawls through blood and dead bodies, grabs one of the swords, and stick it through the fence, gutting a cop where he stands, but not before he can get one last shot in, piercing me right in the shoulder. The gun drops from my hand and it’s the most pain I’ve ever felt.
I can’t feel my arm.
I try to flex my fingers, to grip the gun, but they don’t move. They are paralyzed.
Still, it doesn’t compare to the fear gripping thought that Daphne is injured. “Daphne?” I try to call out, but the searing pain grips my vocal cords.
“Aye, Tongue? Ye, okay? Yer fine. Yer going to be fine. Fuck, that’s a lot of blood. I don’t know if it’s yours or the rest of the dead bodies.”
“Daphne,” I wheeze and dig my nails into his forearm. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find her!”
“No time, Tongue. We have