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White hot rage flashed behind his eyes, the image of someone hurting her — someone putting their hands on her — making him want to stand and shoot blindly at anyone and everyone who might be between them.
His need to get to her, to feel her safe in his arms, was overwhelming, but he didn’t have enough ammunition left for his liking and that meant getting his hands on one of their guns. It only took him a second to decide on a strategy,
He aimed his body in the general direction of the man closest to him and dove for the ground, hoping to find the man’s feet. Another burst of gunfire erupted behind him, a bullet biting into his back as his arms closed around someone’s legs.
Then they were on the ground, fighting for dominance, Damian all too aware of the ticking clock under Aria on the terrace.
* * *
Her scream was futile, nothing but a series of muffled sounds emerging behind the hand clamped firmly over her mouth. She tried kicking her legs, but they came up against a body so solidly built it was like trying to kick down a giant oak. The arms around her were immovable, their progress toward the edge of the patio inevitable.
Her heart clutched in her chest as more gunfire sounded from the house. Damian was somewhere in there, and although she didn’t know how many men had come for them, she knew they were outnumbered.
Knew he was outnumbered.
The gunfire fell silent, and she heard s scuffling on the floor of the house followed by the sound of wet flesh and grunting, somebody obviously fighting. She kicked harder, desperate to get to Damian even as she had no idea how she would help him.
“Stop it, bitch.”
The voice behind her was guttural and accented. She was relieved to feel the arm around her chest loosen, but her relief was short-lived when she felt something being clipped around her chest, the sound of metal clicking into place followed by more metal dropping near her feet.
She looked down in time to see a giant hook attached to the railing of the terrace.
The man holding her was going to rappel over the side of the cliff.
And he was going to take her with him.
* * *
Damian had finally managedto get on top of the man. He wanted nothing more than to punch the man into oblivion, to pulverize his face until he stopped breathing.
But Aria was out there. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew she was in danger.
It was all the incentive he needed to quell his instinct to kill the man under him with his bare hands. He put a bullet in the man instead, then took his gun and stood, warm blood leaking across his back from the hit he’d taken earlier.
The time for sneaking and crouching was over. One man was dead and one was busy with Aria. That meant there were only two left.
Two to one in a house he knew like the back of his hand? He would take those odds.
He stood and aimed at the man by the stairs, saw him fall by the light of his gunfire, watched him topple backward as another bullet burrowed into Damian’s skin, this time into his bicep.
He turned his gun on the man near the kitchen and kept moving toward him as he fired. He had a glimpse of a dark beard and black eyes as the man’s body ricocheted off the counter and onto the ground.
Then he was stalking toward the terrace and the woman who had, against all odds, come to own him.
* * *
Aria washelpless as she was hauled over the railing. She understood now that she was clipped to the man behind her, that he was going to take her away from Damian by way of the cliff face and that there was nothing she could do about it. Even if she managed to unclip herself — a long shot at best — she would fall to her death.
She went still, trying to think of something — anything — she could do to help Damian get to her.
She shouted his name, hoping he would find her in the darkness.
* * *
Her voice torethrough the night, the fear and panic in it ripping through him like a machete. He raised his gun, but it was too difficult to see, too difficult to sort Aria from the hulking mass behind her, pulling her over the edge of the terrace.
At first he thought the man was going to jump, kill them both.
