Page 70 of Secrets and S'mores
“Hey, I heard you needed a rescue,” Onyx says with a grin.
“Are you kidding me?” I cry, launching myself at him.
He hoists me up, my legs hooking around his hips as I bury my face into the crook of his neck. The world falls away as I breathe in his scent. I thought I would never get to touch him again.
Far too soon, he lets me go. Standing back, I gaze at him in wonder. He looks perfect, all visible wounds healed.
Terror grips me. I can’t go through seeing him almost die again. “Why did you come back? What were you thinking?” I whisper.
“I was thinking I couldn’t live without you,” he says before he tugs me forward and captures my lips with his.
The dull darkness of the last few days falls away, my body coming to life again. Energy surges in every cell of my body. I kiss him like he’s my oxygen and I’ll die if we stop or even slow for a second.
“Now’s not the time!” Cedar hisses.
He releases me. “As much as I love this, and love you, we need to go.” Without wasting another second, he grabs my hand and leads me toward the kitchen.
“We need to hurry,” Cedar says, taking up the rear and scanning behind us as we rush through my house.
“How did you manage this?” I hiss.
“A lot of wolfsbane and calling in favors,” Cedar says.
“Zephyr was the distraction. We followed his group in,” Onyx explains, pausing at the back door and peeking out. “Looks clear.”
“And the explosion?”
“Drones and fireworks,” he says with a grin.
Two guards lay unconscious between the house and the tree line. As we pass, Onyx kicks one in the leg and mutters, “Oops, motherfucker.”
“Hurry, they’re just up ahead,” Cedar snaps, keeping pace behind us. Jasper’s black car idles on the access road, just out of view of the main compound.
Marigold stands by the passenger side, a crossbow peeking over her shoulder. “Come on, you guys!”
Onyx wrenches the door open, pushing my head down as I leap in. The twins pile in behind me and Onyx pulls me up in his lap as he slides across the bench seat. I have no complaints. In fact, it’s not close enough. I want to burrow into his skin.
Jasper sits in the driver's seat, another gun in his lap. “Hey!” he greets me, before turning the steering wheel and feeding gas to the engine.
The car spits pebbles with a sound like rain as he peels out and drives northward. Marigold’s arm reaches across the center console to grip his thigh, her expression tense as she stares past us out the back window.
We hit the freeway and Jasper speeds, increasing the miles between us and the pack as quickly as possible. After twenty minutes or so, he eases off to the speed limit. We are all breathing easierand even smiling.
“Alright, I’d say that went pretty well,” Marigold says, leaning her head back against the headrest.
“Much more successful than my first attempt,” Onyx says, nuzzling against my temple.
“I can’t believe you guys came for me.”
“We weren’t going to leave you there,” Cedar says plainly, like it was the most obvious fact in the world.
“Why? I left on my own, and then…” I trail off, unable to verbalize what Onyx went through because of me.
“We heard shit hit the fan,” Onyx says, kissing my shoulder.
“I suppose that’s accurate,” I say, my mind whirling through everything that has happened and what to tell him. Jerking upright, I glance at Jasper. “Do you know what happened to Mom?”
“She’s recouping at Ironcrest,” he says calmly. “But that’s not where we are going.”
