Page 222 of New Storm Rising
Crunch!
“—nng!”
Thud! Wham! Thud!
The next few minutes went by in a red-tinted haze. By the time I awoke from my fit of icy rage, the three goons lay sprawled on the ground unconscious. Or maybe dead. In all honesty, I did not particularly care which. Slowly, I turned around—only to watch as my wife’s eyes widened at the sight of me.
All right, maybe I hadn’t quite managed to dispel my rage yet.
Taking a deep breath, I relaxed my fists. My entire figure. My everything. Then, with two long strides, I crossed the distance between me and her, and enveloped her in my arms with crushing force.
“Are you all right?!”
“Hey!” she wheezed. Why was she wheezing? Was she hurt?
“Y-you can stop suffocating me now!”
Oh right. That was why.
Well, as my mother used to say: there is no such thing as a too-tight hug.
To tell the truth, I had never agreed with her on that before, but now…
My grip tightened. She was here. She was in my arms. She was safe. That was all that mattered now.
“Mnnfff…Mr Ambrose…please…”
I felt something prod my side. Her finger? Hm…maybe I should relax my grip just a tiny bit?
No. Not yet.
A moment later, however, her panicked voice pulled me from my contemplation of spouse proximity and embrace pressure.
“Hey! You’re bleeding!”
Dismissively, I glanced down at my side, where some blood was leaking through my clothes. That would be expensive to clean out of my tailcoat. “It’s only a scratch.”
“In what?! Your carotid artery?”
“Very amusing, Mrs Ambrose. But you did not answer my question yet. Are. You. All. Right?”
My tone of voice must have touched something inside her because, a moment later, she looked up from the scratch she was fussing over and looked me in the eyes for the first time since we had been separated. Those eyes of hers…so warm. So gentle. With all my might, I resisted the urge to crush her against my chest again.
Standing up on her tiptoes, she placed a swift kiss at the corner of my mouth. “Yes. Yes, I’m perfectly all right.”
I held her gaze for a long moment—then nodded, and finally released her from my embrace. Taking another deep breath, I stepped away and straightened my lapels.
“Adequate. Now…” Squaring my shoulders, I fixed my gaze on the exit. The exit beyond which, somewhere far away, were the two people who were responsible for all of this. “Let’s deal with the mastermind of tonight’s excitement, shall we?”
A smile flickered into existence on my wife’s face. The same kind of smile I had once seen on a great white shark at dinnertime. I had never really been one for smiles, but…this one was beautiful.
Then let’s make sure it stays on her face, shall we?
“You.” Turning towards the three prone men who, apparently, weren’t quite dead. At least not yet. Taking a step forward, I fixed them with the most arctic stare I could manage. “Stay there, or I will make certain you regret it!”
“Err…” My lady wife cleared her throat. “I think they’re still unconscious, Sir.”
“Then they will definitely stay where they are, will they not?”
