Page 17 of Deadly Aloha
Bones shattered and limbs crumpled. They reached for weapons, but many were not fast enough. I manipulated their joints, bent body parts that were not meant to be twisted. Those who came at my back were met with bullets from either Tangaloa or Rory. The hallway we were in provided little room for them to maneuver, but I was not limited by such trivial things as walls and doors.
Weapons came at me. Blades, one chain, and many bullets. That was the problem with guns. They were not made for close-quarter combat. If they’d gotten to me when I was at the door, they could have killed me. That had been my mistake five years ago, and if not for Jameson’s timely intervention, it would have proved fatal. But Virgil’s distraction of the boats exploding forced the Bloody Scorpions’ attention to divide. They did not see me coming with their backs turned.
Hot crimson caked my skin like war paint. I heard the screams of the women, but I did not take my eyes off my enemy.
That is, until I sawhim. The fucking bastard who put his hands all over her. He wasn’t as tall as me. With dark hair and dark eyes, his light complexion looked pale and pasty. Like many of his brethren, he was wearing too much clothing for the hot climate. Boots, heavy jeans, a long-sleeve shirt. He would have been sweating long before Virgil rigged the boats to explode.
I delivered a killing blow to the man in front of me, his lower jaw completely dislocating from his skull from the single contactof my bare heel. I was running before gravity pulled him to the floor. I ignored everything else, my vision entirely focused on my quarry. I was precision, a hunter amongst a sea of prey.
My knee collided with his ribs. His gun flew from his hand as he fought for balance. We were at the end of the hall. I had no idea how many had fallen or how many were left, nor did I care. Kanoa, Tangaloa, Rory, the twins, and Virgil could handle everyone else. This fucking bastard had touched mywahine. He would not earn a quick death from me.
He tried to swipe at me with his right hand, and I snapped his fingers. The fingers of the hand that touched Lu. Glass shattered behind me. I felt some of it imbed into my back, but the pain did not register.
His elbow went next. The joint snapped and tendons fractured as the lower half of his arm dangled, completely useless. The bastard’s cries of agony were a symphony of dynamic power and harmony to my ears. I should have recorded it so I could listen to the tones every day for the rest of my life.
I was not strong enough to rip his entire arm from his body, but a foot to his knee dropped him down to the concrete flooring where I was able to wrap my knee around his neck, using his body weight as leverage to tear his shoulder to shreds from the inside out. It would have been so easy to snap his neck with my thighs, but I wanted more of his pain. He owed it to me.
Instead, I lowered my body weight, grabbing his torso between my knees and twisting. The noise of the fight within the confined space echoed too loudly for me to hear the satisfyingpopof his hips. I felt it, though, and I reveled in satisfaction.
I flipped him mid-air, letting him fall gracelessly to the hard concrete onto his stomach. Fisting his hair, I forced him up onto his knees. His one arm entirely useless and his hips struggling to hold up the weight of his torso.
I placed my lips right up to his ear, feeling the warmth of his black leather cut against my bare chest. His breath came in jagged, harsh gasps, his pain a palpable entity surrounding him. “You touched mywahine,” I told him in a cool, almost relaxed tone. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Lifting him by his hair, I slammed his knees down onto the ungiving concrete below us, shattering the bones. I did not release my hold on his hair. Noticing the glass door to the rear of the building was directly in front of me, I started walking forward, dragging the bloody Bloody Scorpion behind me. Some of his bones were protruding from his skin, blood dribbling from his mouth, nose, and one ear.
Outside in the yard was chaos. Roughly a third of the remaining Bloody Scorpions had run outside to check on the explosion. The twins had torn through them like tissue paper. Tetrodotoxin was extremely potent, and could be lethal if enough of it got into the blood stream. From the flood light overhead, I could see that most of the Bloody Scorpions were not dead as they lay on the blacktop. They were paralyzed, and struggling to breathe as their bodies slowly shut down.
There was no sign of Virgil, but both twins were sitting on a log piling of the dock. Neither was wearing their gloves anymore. They stood in unison when they saw me dragging the Bloody Scorpion from the building, but they did not approach. Instead, they watched in silence as I made the journey down to the dark, ebbing waves.
When the water was just below my ankles, I dropped the Bloody Scorpion. His broken body fell face first into the rising waves. As the flood tide came back, his face submerged. He struggled to move, but merely wiggled helplessly like a worm. He gasped for air when the water receded. Again and again, the tide came, pulled by the moon. I stared up at the night sky, taking solace in the unfailing reliability that was my ocean.
I don’t know how long I stood there. Long enough that the spluttering at my feet ceased and Pele rested once more.
That is, until the manifestation of Ku, god of rage and war, came charging out of the storage facility in a blaze of glorious fury.
I turned, my feet still planted firmly in the sand. I smiled at her, taking in everything that had changed in the past four years since she’d left me. From her longer hair to her new lingerie, she was still a sight to behold. It took me a moment to realize her rage wasn’t aimed at the dead man at my feet, but atme.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Aloiki? You ruinedeverything!”
I blinked.I was not entirely sure what I anticipated our reunion to be like, but after saving her life, I expected some form of gratitude. Not hostility.
I stepped away from the body at my feet, not caring in the slightest if the tides took him.
“Lu, I?—”
“Don’t you ‘Lu’ me,” she snapped as I drew near. “You selfish asshole! Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?”
By Laka, she was beautiful. I’d never forgotten, but it was like I’d forced myself not to remember. She was tall, nearly five-eight, with long black hair, a lean waist with wide hips. Fuck, I loved her tits. They were a C-cup, and the perfect handful. I used to tie her to my bed and worship them for hours.
When I started my porn business, Lu and I had starred in lead roles. Back then, I didn’t have employees. Not like I didtoday. Merely that I had certain friends who I invited over to fuck my girl with me while on camera.
She had been magnificent then, but was even more so now. Standing here, staring at her, drenched in the blood of my enemies, I became rock hard.
Lu put her hands on her hips. She was completely unfazed that she was standing nearly naked in her bra and panties at the edge of a storage yard while men gasped their last breaths around her. I loved that about her. It used to drive me batshit crazy, how narrow-focused she could be, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why. Right now, all I could think was how incredible she was.
Then I blinked, realizing what she’d just said. Anger replaced the love-fog that had taken over my brain. In three quick strides, I was directly in front of her, nose to nose. She didn’t back down. If anything, her dark eyes narrowed even more at my nearness. I certainly hadn’t expected her to come running into my arms in typical Hollywood slow-motion, but was a fucking ‘mahalo’ too much to ask?
“What the fuck did you expect me to do, Lu? And what the fuck are you evendoinghere? Why aren’t you on the Mainland?”
