have spotted me right away. I took the few steps down into the paved driveway with my hands lifted.
The first sign of movement coming from the tree line was Arjen. He was taking the same walk I had when I went to get Tash from the Haitians. He appeared to have been in training with a bunch of navy seals wearing black tactical gear from head to toe.
He was walking through the valley of death where any flick of a finger could have ended his life. Corvel’s men were spread out everywhere, some prone on the ground, atop the buildings, and some even in the trees. The thick tension of the situation had me sucking in quick breaths and my heart beating so hard it vibrated my whole body.
An automatic weapon was strapped to the front of Arjen’s chest, aimed down, but his hand was poised to lift and shoot if he had to. We were meeting at the far end of the driveway with the front door to our backs.
Arjen stopped a few feet in front of me. His eyes scanning, checking for injuries.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. Not yet,” I replied.
I couldn’t accuse him of not taking our marriage vows seriously because death was most assuredly about to cause us to part. We stood facing each other in a land mine of charged weapons.
“I’m so sorry, Arjen. I fucked up. I should have waited on that highway like you asked me to.”
He reached out and cupped my cheek.
“At least I get to see you, touch you. To tell you how I feel about you.”
He swallowed, edging closer so that our bodies touched. Our eyes were deadlocked on each other’s and every emotion we’d attempted to suppress through our relationship was released in the exchange.
“You want to know why I started calling you Love?”
I nodded, my emotions and my ravaged nerves had rendered me speechless.
“The day of our wedding, when I first unveiled you, the first word to pop into my head was, lovely. The rest of that night, each time I turned away and put you back in my sights, all I kept thinking was how lovely you were. So, when I addressed you, your name got replaced with that word. It was me slipping and calling you what I was thinking, so when I said it and tried to stop myself, it came out, love.”
My damn tear ducts were wide open today as tears stung my eyes, filling them with water.
“Arjen,” I attempted to speak past the lump in my throat. “That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”
I fell into his arms after he swiveled his weapon so that it was at his back. I gripped him around the neck with all the strength I had as my body melded into the front of his.
“I stopped seeing you with my eyes a long time ago,” he whispered into my ear. “I see you with my heart now. I love you, Mecca.” His words had ripped my emotions wide open and his tight embraced was all that held me together.
For the first time, I didn’t care about a tear slipping down my cheek. “I love you too, so much,” I whispered against his neck. He eased us apart, swiping a delicate thumb through a runaway tear before our lips met.
He drew me in so tightly I could hardly breathe. The depth of his affection radiated and sank deep, breathing life into the connection that had revealed itself to us the day we met. His lips were at my ears again.
“I’m angry at you, wife. How could you go riding off into the jaws of death without taking me along with you? How could you leave me, knowing I would raise hell to find you? How could you, Mecca, when you should know by now that I love you more than any damn thing in this Godforsaken world?”
I eased back and stared at him, but he pulled me back in, his arms encircling and locking me in his hold. His words had touched me down to my very soul, giving me a spiritual caress that warmed my body. His voice broke me out of the joyful trance he had induced.
“This may seem like an unusual question, but why aren’t we dead yet?”
Like me, he must have been expecting the searing hotness of led that I anticipated. Together, we were two of the most powerful people in the criminal world. Our deaths could crumble two empires. There was so much adrenaline flowing