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Agony tore across his face. “It’s okay,” he whispered, his thumb gently skimming the back of my hand. “You’re safe now. You’re safe with me.”
Safe…
Flashes of memories assaulted me. Darkness and danger. Lazarus’s face filled with rage as he drove that knife into my captor. I closed my eyes once more. Blood…and death. And under it all…Hale waited.
My body clenched and my heart stuttered. The faintbeep…beep…beepof the machine grew frantic.
“Hey…hey now,” Lazarus grunted.
The bed shifted, dipping hard with his weight. I was in his arms once more, pulled against his hard chest, his hard, warm,beautifulchest.
“I’ll die if I go back to him.” The words tore free like they were somehow part of me…part of me I wanted out.I opened my eyes as Lazarus pulled away.
“Iwilldie if you send me back to Hale.” I insisted as I met his gaze. I wanted thatsavage secretinside meout. I wanted it ripped from my body like the sick, gnarled tumor it was.
“Iwill die if you go back to him,” Lazarus answered.
Just like that. Simple. No demands. Just a statement of fact. Hope trembled inside me as he brushed strands of hair from my face. I didn’t care where I was, didn’t carewhoI was, not when he was here.
And when he leaned down and brushed his lips across mine, tears slipped free.
There was no one else for me.
No one except for Lazarus, who bent to kiss me.
I'd thought I’d die in that filthy apartment, die from those blows to my stomach. My hand splayed onto my belly at the memory as Lazarus’s kiss deepened, taking just a little more. My senses were divided between the low ache in my belly and the warmth of his mouth.
Giving…always giving.
And I was an empty well, desperate to be filled by him.By all of him.I lifted my hands and slid them around his neck. He broke the kiss and instead, tucked his head against mine, drawing us in until we sheltered in each other’s breaths. “I’m so sorry, Kat” he whispered. “Sorry, I couldn’t find you sooner. Sorry, you were taken at all.”
We came for your boyfriend…but fuck, we’ll just take you instead.
Those words swam to the surface as the slick trail of tears slipped free.
I understood now how loyalty worked. The kind of loyalty that protected with their life. The kind of loyalty that loved like no other.Logan. Freddy.Brothers, a family built on love.
And now me…
“I love you,” I whispered. “Lazarus, I love you.”
The earth stood still for me.
Tilted.
Trembling.
Waiting for him.
He pulled away and for a heartbeat, I was too terrified to look into his eyes, too scared at what I might find. What if his loyalty was different somehow, what if it wasn’tthis?
“You love me?” Confusion flared for a second as those black pupils expanded.
I swallowed the fear and nodded. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
His smile was hard and fast, stretching wide, taking the focus from the haunted expression in his eyes. He gave a tiny bark of laughter. “That’s good…no, that's a fucking relief,”he chuckled, and then in an instant, he froze, the laughter dying away. He was all serious now,deadly serious.“Because I love you. I love you so much it fucking scares me. I love you so much I’d fucking die without you.”
The tears came harder as I smiled, carving a steady line down my cheeks to drip from the edge of my jaw.
