Page 41 of Darkest Kiss

Bullseye. A shape drops past the broken window. A drone, with something mounted to it, bounces uselessly off the ground. My eyes widen when I see Rian pull a weapon and shoot it once more, to be sure.

“Fuck,” I gasp. It was firing at us.

The drone was just the appetizer, though. The main course comes through the door behind the bar. Three men in dark clothes, moving fast, with guns up. Shit shit shit. I point at them. Rian is hardly looking at me, but he gives me a tight nod.

Of course they came up through the floors. Why did I beg Rian to come to this stupid restaurant?

I see them in pieces, between Rian's arm and the overturned table, dark figures moving fast, guns pointed at us. The King bodyguards meet them with the crack of gunfire. The entire roof teems with guards and attackers; I glance at the floor and see our waiter huddled under a table nearby, his head shielded by his hands.

Before I can call to the waiter, tell him to pull one of the thick tables down to better protect himself, Rian shifts off me. He moves up into a crouch, his gun glinting in the sunlight.

I'm looking right at him when the first attacker comes around the ruined table. Rian shoots him through the throat without an ounce of hesitation. The second guy gets close enough to touch and Rian seems to take that personally. He takes the gun out of the guy's hand, breaks a bone in it that makes it dangle uselessly, and shoots him. All business. Rian puts him on the floor permanently in about two seconds.

The last one coming toward him, he watches patiently, almost bored. Then Rian ends his life so efficiently that I finally understand, all the way down to my core, what I should have understood from the beginning.

He isn't a man who hurts people because he has to. He's good at it, the way a surgeon is good, the way my mother was good with a knife and an orange. It should horrify me.

But right now, doesn’t. Three men died trying to get to me. But nothing gets through Rian. He told me that while lying in my calm room and I half believed it.

Now I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

"Up." He takes my arm and helps me to my feet, his eyes assessing the situation. "Now. With me. Behind me."

I don't argue. We move along the floor toward the elevator while the bodyguards hold the roof. As quickly as it started, it seems to be petering off.

We're almost inside the elevator when Rian makes a sound, short and bitten off, and stumbles half a step. I see the dark patch spreading on his upper arm.

“Fuck.” He looks down, then grits his teeth. “Come on. Quickly.”

"You're hit." I make a grab for him.

"Please, Noemi." He shoves me into the elevator, follows, and slams his palm against a panel. The door slides closed and I hear several thunks. "It's an arm. I have another one."

“Are you okay?” I ask. My eyes are glued to the spreading dark spot on his shirt.

“I’ll be better when you’re secure.” He pops open an invisible panel and hits a button, then a second control. A heavy mechanical sound runs through the shaft, a series of locks engaging somewhere above us.

"Sealing the roof access," he explains. He's got his phone out, blood running to his wrist. Jesus.

Rian’s making a call as calmly as a man ordering takeout, while bleeding heavily. "It's me. Roof's compromised, aerial assault, none down on our side, at least three on theirs. I'm taking her to the vault. Get me the doc and gather whoever is close enough to mount a response." A pause. "I'm fine." Another pause, shorter and harder. "I said I'm fine, Ransom. I need to go."

As soon as he hangs up, he presses another button and the elevator drops. I grip the railing we fly down past the penthouse, the lobby, the parking levels. When doors open again to cool concrete, I wonder what level we’re on. A sub-basement of a sub-basement, maybe.

The second we step inside, I lose my grip on whatever held me together up on the roof.

"You're bleeding," I say. My voice climbs. "You're bleeding a lot, you got shot, someone shot you, there were men coming from a helicopter. Rian, there was a drone–"

There's blood on my sleeve, I realize. And shit, more of it is dribbling sluggishly from the hole in Rian's arm. I should be fully panicking by now. But somehow, the thought my brain chooses to surface, fully formed, is that I never got to use the bathroom. That's it.

Forty minutes of fine dining, a near-death experience coupled with an assassination attempt, and all I can think about is how I have to pee.

"Breathe." He lowers himself into a chair, grimacing, finally letting the pain show now there's a wall between us and the world. "Is that your blood? It’d better not be."

"It’s yours, you lunatic." I grit my teeth.

“Good.” His eyes glitter. “No one else’s blood touches your skin.”

“You’re such a caveman.” I wave a finger in his face. “If you die from a wound you got while protecting me, I’ll reanimate your corpse so I can kill you again.”