Savage Alpha (Alpha 8)

by Carole Mortimer

  “Don’t treat me like an idiot!” Todd’s calm had gone now, his body tensed and ready to pounce. “There’s no going back from the fact I’ve already killed two people, and now I’m about to kill you.” He raised the knife in his hand.

  Oh God, where was Jonas?

  Seth?

  Anyone?

  Chapter 14

  “Lily? Open this fucking door and let me in!” Jonas turned the handle and gave the door a shake as he heard voices inside her dressing room. “Lily?” He gave Seth a desperate glance.

  “I’ll go and talk to the manager, see if he has another key to this room.” Seth placed a hand on his arm. “She’ll be okay, Jonas,” he assured him before hurrying away.

  “Lily!” Jonas gave the locked door another rattle. “Answer me, damn it!”

  “Sounds as if your boyfriend is getting a little agitated,” Todd mocked.

  Except Jonas wasn’t Lily’s boyfriend.

  But if she got out of here alive—and that was a big if!—she wasn’t going to run away from her feelings for Jonas anymore. She intended to face them, and him, head-on. He liked her well enough to go to bed with her, to make love with, and if that was all he had to give, then she’d take it.

  That decision made, she straightened her back determinedly. Knowing Jonas was on the other side of that door gave her courage. “My boyfriend, his friends, and my brothers are all going to kick your ass once we’re out of here.”

  “I thought I’d made it clear neither of us is going to leave this room alive.” Todd eyed her with pity.

  “Lily, who’s in there with you?” Jonas demanded through the locked door.

  “It’s—” Todd’s free hand over Lily’s mouth stopped her from actually saying his name, the other hand pressing the knife against her throat.

  Which was all Lily needed to make her move.

  She put her brothers’ training in self-defense into action as she jerked her head back sharply, knowing she had hit her target when she heard the sickening crunch of Todd Shaw’s nose breaking and his pained gasp.

  She took advantage of the loosening of Todd’s arm about her throat to grab hold of his wrist and twist. He let out another yell of pain as the knife fell from his limp fingers.

  Lily kicked back, catching Todd in the kneecap before turning to bring her own knee up, aiming for his face as he bent over.

  “You fucking bitch!” He had straightened too quickly. Blood poured from his broken nose as he grabbed her beneath her bent knee before she could make further contact, throwing her off-balance so that she stumbled. Lily cried out as Todd pushed back and her head made painful contact with the wall, rendering her temporarily dazed.

  “Lily!” Jonas shouted again from the hallway.

  “Jonas,” even to her own ears, her voice sounded weak, barely audible.

  “Fuck! Lily?”

  She gave a gasp as there was a loud thud, followed by a crashing sound as the door splintered and snapped open, the lock having broken under the force of Jonas’s powerful body hitting the other side of the door.

  Jonas took in the situation at a glance. Todd stood menacingly over Lily, with blood pouring from what looked to be a broken nose. Lily appeared dazed as she slumped against the wall.

  Shaw’s bleeding nose and the knife lying at Lily’s feet told their own story. One where Lily had put herself in danger when she was forced to disarm Todd.

  A red haze filled Jonas’s vision as he could too easily imagine that knife plunging into Lily, ending her life, forever wiping out the sass and challenge in those beautiful blue-green eyes and leaving a gaping hole in his life where she should have been.

  Jonas reacted instinctively, that rage now all he could see and feel as he plowed into Todd, knocking the other man to the ground before straddling him and pummeling him repeatedly with his clenched fists.

  “Stop now, Jonas.”

  Several pairs of hands tried to pull him off the other man, but Jonas resisted and kept on punching, unconcerned about his own bleeding knuckles.

  “Jonas, you can stop now,” Lily spoke softly, her hand a gentle touch on his arm. “You can stop now,” she repeated huskily as he turned to look at her with unfocused eyes.

  Which was when Jonas became aware of all the other people in the room: Seth and Gabriel, along with the rest of the Knight brothers, and Liam with a cloth pressed against the back of his head where he had been struck from behind, as well as the police inspector from last week and several of his uniformed men.

  Jonas moved off the battered man before standing and stepping away, leaving it to the police to drag Shaw back up onto his feet before placing him in handcuffs.

  “I’m going to need statements from all of you,” the police inspector informed them. One of his men bagged the knife from the floor before he and two other police constables escorted Shaw from the room.

  “I believe the situation speaks for itself.” Gabriel was the one to answer coldly.

  “I’ll still going to need those statements,” the police inspector insisted.

  “Tomorrow.” Gabriel was just as unyielding. “My sister has been through enough for one evening.”

  Lily gasped. “The play…”

  “Is being canceled even as we speak,” the police inspector informed them.

  Tears blurred Lily’s vision. “He killed them. Charlie and Evan. Todd killed them both. He was going to kill me too. He was also my stalker.” She was shaking so badly now, her legs were threatening to buckle beneath her.

  Jonas’s eyes narrowed as he took in Lily’s appearance. She looked on the point of collapse. “Okay, that’s enough for one evening.” He stepped forward to put one arm about Lily’s shoulders and the other beneath her knees before lifting her up against his chest. “Miss Knight will answer all your questions tomorrow, Inspector. Right now she needs to leave. With me,” he added.

  “Jonas—”

  “She leaves with me.” His narrowed gaze challenged Gabriel to continue with his protest.

  The other man looked at him searchingly for several long seconds before glancing down at his sister. Lily’s head lay against Jonas’s shoulder; her eyes were closed. Gabriel nodded. “Take everyone else’s statements tonight by all means, but she leaves with him,” he told the police inspector.

  “Miss Knight?” the inspector prompted.

  Lily roused herself enough to open her eyelids and look at the police inspector. “I want to leave with Jonas,” she confirmed huskily.

  No one else offered a word of protest as Jonas carried her out of the room, down the hallway, and out the back door of the theater.

  “Where are you taking me?” Lily prompted wearily as Jonas drove the SUV through the lamp-lit streets of London.

  “Larchwood.”

  Lily heaved a sigh of relief as she leaned back against the headrest. “You do know that I wouldn’t normally allow you to just take charge like this?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Your poor hands!” Lily groaned as she looked at Jonas’s bleeding knuckles where he tightly gripped the steering wheel.

  “You should see the other guy,” he attempted to joke.

  Lily had seen the other guy, and as far as she was concerned, Todd Shaw deserved every cut and bruise—and broken nose—that now adorned his previously boyishly handsome face.

  “I don’t think I’m the only one to have inflicted injury on him,” Jonas drawled as he recalled the blood flowing down Todd Shaw’s face and the way he had favored his left leg as the police took him away.

  She nodded. “I managed to get in a head-butt and a kick before he tried to knock me out by banging my head against the wall.”

  Jonas straightened. “You do realize you deserve another spanking for trying to deal with him on your own.”

  “Really?”

  “Except you’d probably enjoy it too much.” He scowled. “What the fuck did you think you were doing, antagonizing Shaw like that?”

  “I had every confidence my h
ero would save me.”

  “Me?”

  “You,” she confirmed. “I just thought I’d put in a few kicks of my own while I was waiting. Todd is totally insane, I’m afraid.” She went on to explain the other man’s warped reasoning behind his actions.

  Jonas nodded. “It sounds as if he’ll be placed in an asylum on suicide watch rather than a prison. Unfortunately.”

  The horror of being alone with Todd loomed less immediate to Lily the farther they drove away from London. After her near-death experience, it felt good to be able to look at Jonas again. To be with him again.

  He smelled wonderful. That woodsy aroma that was totally Jonas, along with a heavy musk that made her body ache and her head swirl. The fact that she was here, on her way to his house in the woods with him, must surely mean that he felt something for her, even if it was only his protective instinct kicking in. She could work with that.

  “I’ve missed you,” she told him huskily.

  The SUV swerved to the left as Jonas briefly lost concentration. He righted the vehicle again before glancing across at her.

  “Did you miss me too?” she prompted.

  “Could we save this conversation for when we get to my house?”

  “I don’t know, can we?”

  Jonas gave a heavy sigh before he admitted, “I missed you too.”

  “Good.” Lily was satisfied with that.

  For now…

  “I can walk, you know,” she protested a short time later. Jonas had parked the SUV and then insisted on carrying her the half mile through the woods to his house. The snow had melted in the last week, but it had left the trail slippery in places.

  “This is quicker,” he dismissed. Not only was he carrying Lily, but as she didn’t have a coat of her own, he had also wrapped that black leather duster around her to protect her from the worst of the icy chill in the air. He seemed impervious to that cold in just his T-shirt and jeans.

  “Are we in a hurry?” she prompted curiously, her arms curved about the back of his neck.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  A smile curved Jonas’s lips as he glanced down at her. “Don’t tell me you’re finally at a loss for words?”

  “I’m sure I can think of something to say, if you think it’s necessary?”

  “It’s not.” He shook his head. “Almost there,” he added with satisfaction.

  Lily felt herself trembling again. Not that bone-shaking trauma of being alone with a cold-blooded killer like Todd Shaw, but with the anticipation of being alone again with Jonas. The man she loved.

  Jonas didn’t put her down once they were inside his house. Instead, he carried on, walking through the open-plan sitting room and down the corridor to his darkened bedroom.

  Lily looked up at him uncertainly as he placed her on the bed. “Jonas?”

  “You need a hot bath and then bed.” He didn’t look at her face as he sat on the side of the bed and began to unwrap her from the leather duster.

  “In that order?”

  Jonas’s gaze was guarded as he glanced at her. “Not necessarily.”

  Lily moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “In that case, bed first.”

  Jonas drew in a sharp breath as he straightened. “You scared the shit out of me earlier. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes.”

  Jonas knew this was one of those moments of truth that came only once in a lifetime. Sometimes not even that. If he fucked this up now— “I thought you weren’t going to come out of that room alive once I realized what was going on. I walked away from you last week because—I realized I’m in love with you, and it terrified the life out of me.” That hadn’t been as difficult to say as he’d thought it would. “I love you,” he said again. “I am in love with you.” Amazing, the more he said it, the easier it got.

  “I heard you the first time.” Lily moved up on her knees on the bed in front of him, eyes glowing in the light from the hallway as she curled her arms about his neck. “You love me?”

  “Yes.” His arms moved about her possessively.

  Her heart soared in her chest. “I love you too, Jonas.”

  “You do?” His arms tightened about her.

  “Oh yes.”

  “You love me?”

  “I really do.” She nodded. “But I thought—I believed I was only an obligation to you. A debt to be repaid.”

  “Damn Seth,” he growled. “No, that’s unfair. I let you believe that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was easier. Because it made you leave. Because then I didn’t have to admit I’m in love with you.”

  Her hands cupped the sides of his face. “I love you so much, Jonas. This last week without you has been…well, it’s been just horrible.”

  “Horrible?” he teased, eyes gleaming.

  “Ever heard of the understatement—” Lily next words were cut off as Jonas took possession of her mouth and commenced kissing her, thoroughly, passionately.

  Kissing led to caressing. Caressing led to stroking. Stroking led to—

  “Wow,” Lily breathed in glowing satisfaction when she finally managed to catch her breath.

  The two of them were completely naked on the bed, bodies entwined. Jonas’s cock was still buried deep inside her as he rolled onto his back and took her with him.

  Lily stretched naked along the muscular length of his body and smiled down at him, happier at this moment than she’d ever been in her life. Jonas loved her.

  “Marry me.”

  Her eyes widened. “Marry you?”

  Uncertainty flickered in those dark blue eyes. “Unless you would rather not.”

  Lily had no doubts she had Jonas’s stick-up-their-ass English family to blame for that uncertainty, for making Jonas feel less because of his Native American heritage. “I would be honored to be your wife, Jonas. I never thought—I didn’t think you were the marrying kind.”

  “I’m not,” he acknowledged dryly. “Except when it comes to you. This past week without you has been the longest, loneliest time I’ve ever known, as if each hour was a day, each day a week. I never want to feel that way ever again. I want—need you with me, Lily, to know you’re my wife. That I’m your husband. For us to be together. Always.”

  “Even if it means you get four brothers-in-law who are just like you?” she teased softly.

  He grimaced. “Even then.”

  “Then my answer is yes.” She beamed down at him, her happiness glowing in her eyes. “Oh God, yes, please, Jonas.”

  Everything else could be worked out later. For now, all that was important was their love for each other. That they were going to be married and spend the rest of their lives together.

  Chapter 15

  “Nervous?”

  “Nope.” Why would Jonas be nervous about the best day of his life?

  The second-best day. The very best day was when Lily told him she loved him as much as he loved her, and she had agreed to marry him.

  Six weeks later, he was sitting at the front of the church, Seth beside him as his best man, with three of Lily’s brothers acting as ushers. Gabriel was giving Lily away, of course, and any minute now, the church doors were going to open and Lily would be standing there, ready to walk down the aisle and become Jonas’s wife. Life didn’t get any better than this.

  “No, I’m not in the least nervous,” he repeated with absolutely certainty.

  “You shouldn’t be. Lily is a lovely lady.” Seth squeezed his shoulder supportively, no doubt as eager to see his own wife again. Diane was acting as Lily’s maid of honor.

  The weeks since Shaw’s arrest had been sad ones as well as happy.

  Attending Charlie Driscoll’s funeral at Lily’s side.

  Then Evan Butler’s.

  Todd Shaw had never reached a courtroom, having been placed indefinitely in a secure mental facility after psychiatrists diagnosed him as being a psychopath
capable of killing again without mercy.

  Jonas had asked Gabriel’s permission to marry Lily. That had been Lily’s idea, not Jonas’s. He could well have done without seeing that look of glee on his future brother-in-law’s face. But the look of joy on Lily’s face afterward had been worth even that.

  Lily wanted a simple and quiet wedding, and that was exactly what they were having. Family, Lily’s closest friends, and the men and women Jonas worked with at Grayson Security and Knight Security. In a strange twist of fate, those two companies had now become one, Dair Grayson having sold out to the Knight brothers after deciding he had lost so many of his men to marriage that Grayson Security was no longer viable. Jonas worked for Knight Security now, but only in a consulting capacity.

  It wasn’t as if he needed the money.

  Jonas had been left a small fortune by his maternal great-grandfather upon the man’s death ten years ago, but it was money Jonas seldom touched, apart from the purchase of Larchwood Forest. Money he never talked about either, although Lily knew about it now, obviously. The two of them shared everything. Love. Laughter. Happiness.

  Jonas had told Lily how he had only met his great-grandfather once, when the old man had made it clear he had loved his granddaughter dearly, and he didn’t echo his son’s and daughter-in-law’s feelings in regard to Jonas’s Native American heritage.

  Now, ironically, it was that family money which was allowing Jonas to live the life with Lily that he so much wanted, had hungered for without even being aware he did.

  There were also several members of his own family present.

  Lily had insisted on sending invitations to his grandparents, along with his great-uncles, uncles, and aunts. His grandparents hadn’t even acknowledged the invitation, but to Jonas’s surprise, several second cousins had seen the wedding invitations sent to their parents, and they and their children had contacted him to ask if they could attend. It was more than Jonas had ever hoped for and wouldn’t have happened without Lily’s encouragement.