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Whirling around, Evander was the target. Not dead, not shot in the head like the other guy, instead, he’d got a gut shot. The Manzani son slumped against the depth of the wall at the top of the stairs, cradling the blood seeping between his fingers.
“A shot there, without medical help, is one hundred percent fatal,” Conn said, coming up beside her, concentrating on the shocked, angry, and God knew what else, Evander. Her lover’s arm rose again, this time to take aim at Evander’s remaining lackey’s head. “Lady’s choice. What do you want, Macushla? We let him bleed out slow or scurry into the dark for help?”
Life or death. The choice was before her. Evander “Vex” Manzani was vulnerable, in the perfect spot to pull the plug. To end his pursuit of her for good. How many times had she wished for that? Thought about what she’d do, how free she’d be, if he just vanished?
Without giving an answer, she took a steadying breath and walked away. Going into the bedroom, she went to the meter of bare wall between the closet and Conn’s nightstand.
A snap from Connel’s home language broke the air. A few seconds passed and then he was there, by the bathroom, looking at her. As he scrutinized her through the shadows, she reversed until her spine met the wall. Did he see judgment? Read fear? Lifting her hand, she beckoned to him.
Stalking over, his hands landed on the wall at either side of her head, gun still in his grip. He bent his knees to align their eyes.
“Macushla—”
Her fingertips met his lips. How could she feel all he made her feel without shattering into a million pieces? How did she contain it? Her toes left the floor to slide around his calf, rising higher, higher until he caught the back of her knee and coiled it around his hip. She boosted the other up for him to catch as she freed his cock and then he was inside her.
Exactly what she needed. Bliss came with an exhale that pushed her head against the wall. Her body bowed, pressing closer to his, aching with a deep need. Loving him was bigger than her, than them.
Yelping and gasping, she didn’t hide the intensity of what he made her feel. He thrust into her while she levered herself with a grip on his shoulders, his neck, his hair. There wasn’t enough room in her body for the desperate delight exploding within her.
Connel McDade was her everything. Nothing more or less. Whether he said the words or not—at least, whether he said them in the language she spoke or not—he put her above everything else.
A rumbling growl in his throat built until it became a roar of climax that almost matched hers.
And he stayed there, within her, breathing hard, the fog of humidity between them closed in another kiss.
“Let him live,” she whispered on his lips. “Mo Grá. Because I want to keep you.”
If they killed the youngest Manzani son, they’d be next. She’d take it if it fell on her, but him? Connel? The blood in her veins, the air she breathed, the universe. Without him, the world would cease to be. She wouldn’t stand it.
They’d made their point.
THIRTY-FIVE
FROM WHAT SHE’D HEARD, Evander was carried out by his goon. The other guy, the body, she wasn’t sure what happened to that. Conn’s conversation with Niall was in their mother tongue.
Movement and voices seemed endless and then, in a single heartbeat, silence.
Calm came with it. Seated alone in the center of their bed, time ebbed and flowed, washing over her, cleaning away any glimmer of regret or uncertainty.
Without a sound, Conn materialized in the bedroom, coming to a stop at the end of the bed. One beat. Two.
“Need a drink?” he asked from the back of his throat. “A ride out of here?”
Something about him was different… or maybe it was something about her. Whatever it was, the change lingered on the tip of her tongue, she just couldn’t pinpoint it.
“Cushla Machree—”
“I need my man,” she said, tilting her head. “Why the distance, baby?”
Dropping to the bed, he came to her, scooping his hand across the side of her head, sweeping her hair into a fist that locked at the back of her skull as his kiss crashed against hers. Forced onto her back, she clung to him, whimpering, pleading, grateful for all he was and that they’d found each other.
He ripped his mouth away. “I won’t apologize.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” she panted. “You don’t say the words, but I feel your heart, Mo Grá.” Killing for her, again, and inflicting a potentially fatal wound on a man for thinking about touching her, how could she not? “I want you to love me like that.”
Just as she’d said about him wanting her. The depth of that passion, its potency, was a blessing, a gift. One she didn’t feel worthy of.
“I’d have killed the worm,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Him near you—”
