Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet - Darynda Jones Page 0,119
my own eyes. Reyes’s body lay next to me. Before I could make sense of any of it, I awakened to my previous surroundings with a startled gasp, like I had never been outside my own body, like I had not just seen it from a great distance. I looked down at Reyes.
He curled into himself, his breaths hard and shallow.
“Reyes!” I shouted, scrambling toward him and trying to find the wound to put pressure on it. A bullet had ripped through his chest. Even the son of Satan wouldn’t walk away after an injury like that.
We heard sirens in the distance, and he struggled to his knees.
“Get me … into the shadows.” He nodded toward a trash bin. “Behind that Dumpster.”
“You need an ambulance.”
“No.” Anger hit me like a wall of fire. He grabbed my shirt with a bloodied hand and jerked me forward. “I’m not going back, and you’re not sending me there.” He pushed and fell onto his hands, trying to catch his breath. It reminded me so much of the very first time I saw him, when I was in high school and he was fighting for air beside a Dumpster after being beaten. I’d let him down then. I did nothing to save him, and his life took a definite turn for the worse. I would not let that happen again.
I touched his shoulder, forgetting that he was more wolf than canine, more panther than cat. There was nothing domestic about Reyes Farrow. He could turn in a heartbeat, had proved it a dozen times. But when he did turn on me, when he rocketed from prey to predator, my shock was complete.
He struck so fast, his movements were nothing more than a dark blur. I was vertical one moment and horizontal the next. And he was on top of me, his body rock hard, unbending, unyielding. He leaned into me until his mouth—his sensual mouth that had only recently sent shivers of passion thundering through me—hovered at my ear. The warmth of his blood spread over my chest and shoulders and pooled in the divot at the base of my throat, and I wondered how much longer he’d live. Surely no one could survive that much blood loss. Not even a supernatural being. He sent a thigh between my legs, parting them for a better fit.
“I told you,” he said, his voice like a low growl, rippling through me in white-hot waves. “Don’t—” One hand wrapped around my neck as his mouth nuzzled my ear. “—ever—” The other slid up my shirt, the pleasure of his touch leaving heat trails in its wake. “—pity—” His h*ps pushed my legs farther apart; my hands cupped them in reflex. “—me.” His mouth crushed mine, the kiss raw and needy. I wrapped my arms around his waist, then sent one over his steel bu**ocks, pulling him into me, wanting him inside. Despite our situation. Despite our circumstances.
Only Reyes Farrow could do this to me. Could make me beg for him, no matter the setting. No matter how dire the predicament. And he knew it. He knew exactly what he did to me.
I felt a smile behind his kiss a microsecond before he lifted off me and vanished into the dark. A rush of cold took the place of the heat that had blanketed me. I dropped my arms to the ground. Closed my eyes. Breathed. A whimper sounded beside me. Artemis lay in the distance, watching. Every few seconds, she’d inch closer, crawling on her stomach. Then she’d stop and focus on something in the distance, pretending not to notice me.
One of the men woke up then, his movements slow and lethargic as he rubbed his head, the back of his neck. He tried to make sense of his surroundings, but couldn’t seem to manage it. No telling where he was from. Two lay dead, and three others lay unconscious still as the first patrol car skidded to a halt in the parking lot. Right in front of the Englishman’s body. And on a building top down the street, they’d find another body, that of a blond biker who was almost a sniper in the Marines, who’d wanted to serve his country but now robbed banks and tried to snipe people.
I covered my eyes with my arms. I didn’t care what kind of connections I had, no way was I getting out of this unscathed. This could even put Uncle Bob in the spotlight if he tried