Page 53 of Man of Lies

That was all it took.

Silas caught my mouth in a deep, relentless kiss, prying my lips apart and slipping his tongue between them, feeding me his taste. Then he eased up just enough for me to take from him, stealing the heat of his tongue, blending what was his and what was mine until there was no difference.

When he finally pulled back, it was only to let me breathe. His thumb stayed at the hinge of my jaw, his breath warm on my lips.

“Well?”

I licked my lips, chasing the lingering heat of him, and drew a breath that did nothing to steady my hammering heart. My mouth was open before I’d even decided what to say, but before I could speak, the crunch of distant tires caught my attention.

Silas tensed—not much, just a subtle squaring of his shoulders to better cover me—and subtly turned his head to glance over his shoulder.

A vehicle eased into the shadows on the far side of the empty lot. It was large, maybe a truck or an SUV, but I only caught a faint impression of the driver behind the sudden glare of a set of super-bright high beams that blasted us head-on. I threw up a hand against the blinding glare?—

Pop.

For half a second, my brain refused to place the sound. It sounded like fireworks. A flicker of memory:smoke curling over the cane fields, the sky lighting up in bursts of red and gold, the sulfur smell of gunpowder as Ben and I threw back our heads and laughed?—

As if he’d been shoved from behind, Silas’s body suddenly slammed into mine. He let out a sharp hiss, and before I could react, his arm hooked around my neck and a boot swept my legs out from under me. I barely had time to register the ground rushing up before I hit the ground. Silas followed me down, throwing his weight on top of me. One hand pressed my head down, damn near grinding my face into the gravel while he shielded me with his whole body.

Bullets struck the building where he’d been standing, raining chips of brick dust on our heads.

“Stay down.”Silas’s breath was hot against my ear.

He shifted, a solid wall of muscle on top of me, and a gun appeared like magic in his hand. I’d been too busy eating gravel to catch him reaching for it. Guns were Dominic’s domain, whether the rest of us liked it or not, so I didn’t recognize themake or model. But I knew a semi-automatic, black and chrome and deadly under the spill of neon, when I saw one.

Felons couldn’t carry. I knew that, and Silas sure as hell did too, but the law didn’t seem to matter much with bullets slamming into the ground and pinging against the building where we’d been standing seconds ago.

Silas was breathing like he was in pain, short gasps between clenched teeth, but his focus was locked on the vehicle lighting us up. His eyes narrowed as he lifted the weapon to take a shot.

Something struck the ground an inch from my skull, sending up a violent spray of gravel that bit into my cheek. My body seized on instinct. I was dead. I couldn’t breathe, so I must be dead, but my fingers twitched toward my head just to double-check.

“Fuck!”Silas’s voice was all grit and fury, and before I could react, he tucked me tight against his chest and twisted. The world flipped, a sick rush of momentum pulling my stomach into my throat as he rolled, taking me with him seconds before another round of gunfire tore through the space where we’d been lying.

We were sitting ducks, but more gunfire didn’t follow, only the roar of a V-8 engine burning rubber. For several long moments, the only sounds were the sharp ringing in my skull and the rasp of Silas’s breath against the back of my neck. He was still shielding me, but the night had gone quiet. The vehicle was already disappearing down the highway, taillights swallowed by the dark stretch of asphalt leading out of town.

It took me a second to pull in a full breath. Another to let it out. The stink of burnt gunpowder hung thick in the air. Gravel wasdigging into my back, and I shifted—or tried. Silas was rigid and motionless like a weighted blanket on top of me.

That’s when I felt it. Wetness. It wasn’t sweat, and it sure as hell wasn’t just the sticky humidity clinging to our skin. It was warmer and thicker, spreading between us where our bodies met and soaking into my shirt.

My stomach sank.

“Silas,” I said urgently. “Move.”

There was a beat of hesitation that told me he already knew what I’d just figured out. I shoved at his shoulder, hard enough to rock him, and he let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. Thin and strained, but real laughter. That was a good sign. But when he finally shifted, pushing up just enough to put some space between us, I felt the drag of wet fabric peeling away from my side.

Dark fabric. Darker stain. His shirt was soaked with blood, but it wasn’t mine.

It was his.

Chapter Twenty-Three

MASON

The phone wasin my hand before I’d made a conscious decision to reach for it. Except for the ragged pace of Silas’s breathing, the lot was dead silent. Even the crickets were quiet. Silas was bleeding, slumped against the building as if he just needed a second to catch his breath, but the darkness couldn’t hide the slick, wet sheen soaking through his shirt, or the way his fingers were pressed against his side, as if sheer force of will alone could keep the blood inside him.

I had 911 pulled up and my thumb hovering over the call button when his hand shot out and clamped around my wrist.

“No.”

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