Page 35 of Corrupt Desires

Wasting no time, I tug Emilia with me and roll backward off the bed, cushioning the fall for her. The moment I roll us both off the bed, I hear the bullet smash the glass of the window and slam into my pillow, feathers flying in the air. Emilia lets out a startled scream.

“James! What’s going on?” Emilia demands, eyes wide and skin flushed.

“Stay down, Emilia. They have a shooter, and I don’t know where the fuck they are.”

Hearing shouting from my phone, I pick it up and listen to Franklin. “There is one man in the house, James. I repeat, there is one in there with you!”

“Fuck. Emilia, take the phone. I’m going to grab my gun in the nightstand. I want you to stay down and listen to Franklin.”

“Al diablo con eso! Their death is owed to me!”

“Now is not the time, Emilia.”

“No, it’s the perfect time, James. I’m probably a better shot than you anyway.”

Wearing nothing but what god gave her, Emilia makes her way around the bed on all fours, staying beneath the window as she goes. Finally reaching the nightstand, she pulls out her gun, takes off the safety, and pulls the slide back ensuring there’s one in the chamber.

I grab my own gun from the nightstand, as well as two shirts for us both. I quickly snatch up the phone from Emilia and ask Franklin where they are.

“Kayden’s two men just made their way in the back door, James. Don’t shoot them. Keep an eye out for a skull patch on their chest.”

I quickly relay the information to Emilia, and a nod of her head is the only sign that she heard me.

“James, the sniper’s been neutralized. You just have the one man in the house now.”

“Understood. Emilia, no sniper.” I reply as I hang up the phone.

Relief washes across her face before it’s replaced by a cold vengeance. I have never seen anyone’s eyes so cold in my entire life, not even Kayden’s can compare. Hanging up the phone, I pull my T-shirt over my head.

“Let’s get this over with, then,” she replies, standing up in all her naked glory. Fuck, if her armed and naked isn’t the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.

Making my way over to Emilia, I lay a hand on her shoulder, assuring her of my presence before she peeks her head down one side of the hall, then the other. Not wanting any of Kayden’s men or the Romanis to see my woman naked, I hand her the shirt that I grabbed from my nightstand. She rolls her eyes but obliges.

“It’s clear, we should move,” she says, already making her way into the hall and checking each room as she goes.

“Emilia, let me go first,” I say, moving past her to place myself in front of her. I’ll be damned if someone gets to her and harms a single hair on her head. No, they’ll have to go through me first.

Clearing the first half of the upstairs, we make our way toward the other end of the hall. As we do so, we see Kayden’s men at the bottom of the stairs, recognizable only by the skull patch on their chest. They motion that they are going to make their way up, so we proceed down the hall.

Before I can make it two steps, I see a figure pop out from one of my spare bedrooms, and the wall beside my head starts raining debris as the guy just barely misses every one of his shots. Emilia ducks into a room on the left, and I step into the room on my right. I put my fingers to my lips as I look at Emilia, urging her to be quiet.

I can hear the barely there footsteps of the man making his way down the hall. Before I can swing out, gunfire erupts from the direction of the stairs; Kayden’s men must have come around and seen an opportunity. Hearing a grunt after one of the shots, I know the attacker must have gotten hit. Once the gunfire stops, I peek out into the hall just in time to see him dive into the room Emilia is currently occupying.

Panicking, I lunge across the hall, barely taking in the destruction that is scattered around the hallway. Wildly looking around the bedroom, I see a trail of blood that leads behind the bed. As I glance around, I see Emilia poke her head out of the attached bathroom, signaling me toward the bed. I motion for Emilia to stay put, and the answering look is all fire and brimstone. If I were a lesser man, I’d be cowering under her glare.

But that’s not me, so I make my way further into the bedroom, slowly creeping around the bed. Before I can get completely around, I hear a gunshot go off, and my body jerks backward. I see the man lying on the ground in his own blood, his hand raised with his gun pointed at me. Fuck, if that didn’t fucking hurt like hell. I get off a shot that lands in his shoulder before I falter backward, slamming into the wall behind me.

I watch, almost in slow motion, as Emilia exits the bathroom, her eyes connecting with mine and widening momentarily before she comes around the bed like a fallen angel and lays two shots into the man before he even has time to train his gun on her. One shot is dead center in his chest, and the other between the eyes.

My vision starts to dim around the edges as I watch Emilia make her way over to me.

“Puta mierda! You just had to go and get shot, huh,cabrón?” (Fucking shit.) Emilia slaps my cheek repeatedly, and I swear it’s like I’m hearing her through a tunnel. Her touch barely registers on my skin. Pain lances through me as she puts pressure on my wound. It feels like she dug her fingers into my body as the pain stabs through me. Looking down, I see dark blood running over her fingers as she tries to stop the bleeding. It’s too much, though.

“Stay with me, James. Don’t you fucking die on me.”

“An ambulance is on the way, ma’am,” says a gruff voice somewhere out of the corner of my eye. I turn my head enough to see the shadowy figures in the doorway, rifles lowered, and the momentary panic I felt welling up dissipates as I remember Kayden’s men were in the house.

“Emilia…” I try so hard to push out the words I want to say, but my mouth won’t move when I tell it to.

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