Page 5 of Unraveled Love

“I’ll fill you in. Right now, I need you to tell her she’s okay with me.”

“Addi?” Jaxon’s voice, directed at me. It was rough and scary as hell, but God, my name in his terrifying voice was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.

“Jax—”

“You’re good. Go with Luca. We’ll be there soon. Okay?”

Tears burned my eyes, wetting them.

I nodded. A sob wrenched my throat, painful. “Okay.”

“Where?” Jaxon barked again.

One word—it was heaven.

“We’re twenty minutes out. Easton will tell you where.”

He hung up then, and my eyes widened. This guy had some serious balls if he’d hang up on Jaxon.

Standing, he held out his hand. “Now will you come with me?”

Slowly stretching my arm and my shoulder for the first time in what felt like days, I lifted my hand and placed it in his.

His warmth suffused my skin and made me shiver. He pulled me to standing, but as soon as I was on my feet, my legs collapsed.

“I got you.” Before I could try standing again, he lifted me into his arms, one at the small of my back, another behind my knees. He cradled me in his grasp, and I clung to his shoulders. “Relax,” he murmured, and it was said so gently it almost scared me as much as his scowl.

Still, it was comforting. “Thank you.” My voice was raspy, and I found myself clinging and burrowing into him. “Thank you.”

He said nothing, but he moved with the ease of a man used to carrying well over a hundred pounds. “Close your eyes.”

He said it to protect me, but still I didn’t. I needed to see the man he’d killed, the man who’d held a gun to my head and yanked my hair until I cried out. I needed to have the reality. I glanced down and saw his booted feet, scuffed and worn black military-looking boots. Black jeans. And then a pool of blood from beneath his hips. His stomach.

Luca had shot him twice.

Both had hit their mark. The cement turned red with the thick blood pouring from him.

“Was he alone?” I asked, pushing through the sting in my throat.

“No. Close your eyes.”

There’d be more. More death.

I didn’t know if it made me evil or soulless, but I tipped my head back and stared at Luca’s chin. Dark scruff lined his jaw up to dark, midnight eyes. Maybe because it was dark in there. He was as dark as everyone else I’d seen, but there was life in him.

“Thank you,” I whispered again, feeling all those emotions tear through me so hard my body trembled in his hold.

“Close your eyes, Addi. We’ll get you safe soon.”

I did what he said, and as my body continued to shiver, his hold on me tightened.

The next thing I knew I was in a black SUV, pulling up to a hotel, around a corner into a back alley.

“The drugs they gave you will make you groggy and sleepy for a while.”

“Where are we?”

“Outside Philadelphia. We’re taking you up to a suite through a private entrance. Shawn and Jaxon should be here soon.”

---