Page 57 of Under Pressure

“I should ask the same, but I already know the answer.” Delta snarled, a rage rising inside him—thinking about everything the man had done. “I know what you’ve been up to.”

Hunter smirked, as if it was all a joke.

“Having fun with the scientists, huh?” Delta grilled, raising his pistol, steadily aiming it at Hunter’s forehead across the expanse. “How much do they pay you for getting rid of the evidence?”

“Fuck you.”

“So, how far into your doxycycline cycle are you? Two weeks? Three?” Delta quizzed, trying to gauge how bad it was. “Once they finish with you, ever worry they’ll kill you off, too?”

Hunter let out a low laugh, but Delta knew it was a stunt. His head was twitching—the question clearly irking him.

Mission-focused, Delta turned to his true purpose.

“Stay away from Kendra,” Delta growled, “or you’ll be a dead man.”

“You came all this way just to waste your breath?” Hunter roared back, that ferocious look on his face. “I’m doing this—all this—for her. She’ll understand.”

“Yeah—how’s that?”

“She needs a real man”—Hunter lunged halfway across the roof, stopping short of Delta—“and that’s going to be me. The scientists have a solution for everything.”

“You’re fucking delusional.” Delta expanded his back, flexing. It was damn clear that Hunter was desperate.

Hunter sneered, looking down at Delta’s gun. Delta held strong, ready to go. With both he and Hunter carrying, it was a question of who was going to shoot first. Delta wasn’t going to hesitate. He couldn’t have another monster walking the streets.

Then Hunter spoke words that Delta hated because he knew how true they’d been.

“You are nothing but poison. You torture her, winding her around your finger until she gets so twisted up that she chokes.”

“Are you pretending to care?” Delta spat, finding himself beginning to circle the man on the rooftop, looking for the best angle to slay him. “She doesn’t want you.”

The comment only enraged an obviously already-triggered Hunter, who released a loud rumble from his mouth, but neither he nor Hunter could move any closer with pistols out and aimed at each other. It was a stand-off.

Hunter bellowed, “Mark my words—when this is over, she’ll be with me.”

Delta stopped dead in his tracks, staring Hunter down. He should have known it would have led to this. The idea of Hunter’s possessive hands getting around Kendra’s neck flashed before Delta’s eyes and drove him to insanity. That eerie icy-hot feeling filled his veins and he just saw red.

Out of control, Delta’s jaw tensed, his shoulders and arms fired and he lunged forward, seizing Hunter by the neck. Hunter’s pistol clattered to the ground as he fought back, clawing at Delta’s wrists, breaking the exposed skin between Delta’s glove and sleeve.

“What the f—?” Hunter yelped, but Delta’s choking grip lifted him off the ground.

Overpowering him easily, Delta held the man up and close to his own face, his menacing tone issuing a threat not to be ignored. A cool trickle of blood down ran down his wrist where Hunter had dug his nails into him.

“You can’t hurt me, and I won’t let you hurt her.” Delta’s voice was dark and earthy—demanding attention and obedience.

Hunter coughed out, grasping at his neck, “I know what’s in your blood. I know what they did to you—” But his words stopped quickly, as did his airflow.

The sleeves of his sweater falling down his arms exposed Delta’s icy-hot veins pulsing furiously as he held Hunter’s throat, suffocating the man. A woman’s voice called to him in the background, telling him he had to let go.

But Delta’s own fury had taken over his awareness, far worse than any doxycycline-induced hallucination. He was determined and enraged, and hell would have to freeze the fuck over before he would let anyone hurt Kendra. That eerie feeling had consumed his whole body, to the point that he couldn’t stop himself anymore.

Hunter, not getting in any more air, was turning shades of blue. He was dying.

And that was when Delta realized he’d lost control. There was always that thing inside him that he couldn’t handle when pushed too far.

All he could hear was a woman’s voice screaming to stop. “Please, God—please, no.”

Delta shook out of it. She’d brought him back to his senses. He released his grip on Hunter, blinking rapidly as he realized what the hell he was about to do. Hunter crashed to the ground, sucking in air, trying to breathe.

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