Page 37 of Desire Him

“Leave, Sammi,” Draven chants. “Fucking leave right fucking now.”

“Not until you tell me why,” Sammi says. Draven curses.

“Why what?”

“Why do you have to kill their women?” Sammi answers.

“Take a right here,” Wayne tells Logan. Logan swings into the alley and parks the car in front of the building that has Sammi’s little dot on it from Wayne’s phone. While they climb out of the car quickly, Jim says, “Because they have wronged me. The entire pack is guilty of their crimes, and they will pay for it with lives.”

Everyone but Becca peels off their clothes. Wayne hangs up the phone. He doesn’t need it anymore. If they hurry, they can reach Sammi and the girls before anything happens.

“Wayne, you follow me,” Logan orders. “Draven, you circle around the building and come in the back. I don’t want Jim escaping.”

Wayne nods, and they start changing into shifter form.

Val watches Jim’s steady hand as the gun is pointed at Sammi’s head. For some odd reason, she won’t leave, and an even odder observation is that she seems to be on their side. Val doesn’t know what to make of it. She was told that all rogues were bad. Well, this one doesn’t have clean hands, but she’s trying to get out of this lifestyle, so that’s points on her side. But she’s willing to stand at the end of a gun for them? Why? What are Eme and Val to her?

“Sir,” one of the silent guys says. He got a message on his phone and looked at it for a moment before he interrupted whatever is going on between Sammi and Jim.

“What?” Jim barks.

The guy snaps to attention and turns his phone to face Jim. “Someone is in the building.”

Val whips her head to look at Eme, who stares right back at her. Clearly, this someone who is in the building isn’t meant to be there, or he wouldn’t have informed Jim.

Could it be Logan? How did he find them? Val prays that it’s him, but she won’t get her hopes up. It could literally be anyone. It could be a rival rogue – if there is such a thing.

She squashes her hope down before it has a chance to grow.

Jim curses and lowers his weapon. “Get out of here,” he tells the three of them.

“What about you?” the guy asks, pocketing his phone and moving toward the door.

Jim shoos them with his gun hand. “I have my own plans.” He turns to Val and Eme, a sneer on his face. Val’s heart skips a beat when he grins wickedly at her. “This one is going with me.”

Shit, Val thinks. If she leaves here with Jim, there’s a chance she’ll never walk away alive. As soon as they leave the building and get to somewhere Jim thinks is safe, he’ll kill her because he’ll have no use for her.

“No!” Eme yells. She struggles against her bindings. “Leave her alone, you bastard!”

Jim ignores her, tucks his gun into his pants, and moves to untie Val’s wrists. When he’s finished, he gets rid of the ropes around her ankles. He tugs her upright, and Val struggles against his grip. He pulls out his gun and tips it to the side of her head. “Stop fighting me, or I’ll blow your fucking brains out,” he growls in her ear.

Eme continues to scream and curse at him as he takes her from the room. The other three are already gone, having heeded Jim’s orders. They clearly didn’t want to be around for whatever was coming their way.

Jim starts taking her down dark hallways. She was right about the hallways being cramped. Pressed against his stomach as she walks forward, steered by Jim, they’re having a hard time not bumping into the walls. She realizes this has to be a factory or something.

“Jim, you don’t have to do this,” she pleads with him as they bend a corner. “You can let me go and escape yourself. It'll only make your escape slower.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” he hisses. “Don’t you think I know who is here?”

Val sucks in a breath. So he thinks that whoever is here is Logan. The hope returns to Val, and she wants more than anything to get out of Jim’s way.

“I’m getting out of here alive, and you’re my ticket out,” Jim continues.

Just as he finishes his sentence, they come to a fork in the hallway. And waiting for them in the right hallway is a growling wolf. She recognizes the red wolf immediately as Draven. She’d know his scent anywhere, just like anyone from their pack.

Jim presses the gun closer to Val’s temple. The cold metal and pressure bites into her skin. “Stay back,” Jim orders. “I swear to god I will kill her.”

Draven growls deeply but doesn’t move. Jim starts backing them into the left hallway, but then Val is shoved forward, and several things happen at once. Jim falls on top of her, and the gun clatters to the ground and skids to a halt by Draven’s front paws. Jim rolls over, and another wolf pounces on top of him. The wolf is black, and she sucks in a breath as she scoots back as far as she can so that she doesn’t get in the way of Wayne attacking Jim.