The little bit of grip he’d gotten on me went slack, and blood gurgled in his throat.
As I turned to look at the criminal, I lifted the gun with my other hand and fired a few shots high, knowing Wells would be low.
A bullet whizzed past my head, so close I felt the tear of skin across my cheek and smelled the burning of my skin.
I kept moving, ignoring the almost fatal hit, and turned to stare at the man trying to hit me from behind. “Real men don’t sneak up on other men,” I said, twisting the blade and making the man’s eyes go black with pain.
Roughly, I jerked it out, and the man fell to my feet, convulsing and bleeding out.
Spinning back toward my comrade, Wells, I searched the darkness for him. “Wells!” I said, rough, wanting to be sure he was still okay. I’d thought he was dead when I burst in here. I thought I was recovering a body, not rescuing a friend.
He made a sound, causing me to step forward.
“I wouldn’t if I were you.” A heavily accented voice rang out.
The sound of a match dragging against something rough was accentuated by the bright burst of a flame. A pathetic excuse for a human being stood there holding it, illuminating the shack with an orange glow. Shadows flickered, and the man grinned as though this were some kind of twisted haunted house and not a battle zone.
Wells was lying at the man’s feet, hogtied and beaten. But he was breathing. He was alive.
That was the only thing that mattered.
“Good to see you, buddy.” No, technically, I shouldn’t show any emotion at all. Emotion was weakness, and the man holding the match would like that, but I didn’t give a flying fuck.
The man with the match reared back and kicked Wells in the back. He coughed and curled inward, but otherwise didn’t make a sound.
What happened next was done in a matter of two seconds, but my God, it felt like ten minutes. In every single nuance of those seconds, I felt everything and saw everything tenfold.
The man who kicked him looked at me and smiled, laughter bubbling out between his lips. A bullet from my gun burst out, barreling straight through the space between us. The man wasn’t surprised. A knowing, almost arrogant look crossed behind his eyes, and in that nanosecond, I realized my mistake.
“No!” I roared, the word dragging out and echoing around me like I was under a ton of water.
Instead of running backward to the door, I went forward toward my brother, but it was too late.
The bullet slammed into the asshole, and the match in his hand fell, landing on Wells, who immediately burst into flames.
Oh God, he screamed. The sound of my friend shrieking as his entire body whooshed into a gigantic flame was blood curdling.
I hovered near him, scooping up sand from the floor and tossing it on him as if that would somehow put out the flames.
The terrorist I killed lay nearby, eyes open, looking at me with a smile still etched on his dead face.
This is your fault. His eyes laughed. You shot me, and now your friend burns.
“Wells!” I screamed.
The wails of my friend distorted, his voice becoming someone else’s entirely.
“Alex!” Sabrina screamed. “Alex, it hurts. It hurts so bad. Please help me!”
Newfound horror burned through me, and I bellowed like a beast in the middle of a kill. “Sabrina!” I lunged toward her as she burned. I could see her face perfectly, begging me for help.
I leapt onto the body, flame singeing me and melting my skin. I used my body to try and put out the flames swallowing her alive.
The pain… Dear mother of mercy, the pain.
“Alex!”
* * *
A knee slammed up into my nuts, making my body recoil. The pain brought out reality, something I very quickly discovered was much worse than the dream I’d just been suffering through.
I was in bed, Sabrina beneath me, sporting a wild look in her eyes. The gasps and uneven way she dragged in air was like ice-cold water over my head.
“Jesus!” I swore, horrified. My hands were around her neck, my large body pinning her down.
I was attacking her. A woman I’d die to protect, a woman who so trustingly gave herself to me just a little while ago…
I could have killed her.
Launching off the bed, I fell onto the ground, landing with a thud against the floor. Leaping onto my feet in one swift, fluid movement, I hovered near the bed, but at a distance.
I could have killed her.
“Sabrina. Sabrina, baby,” I prayed roughly. “How bad is it?” I paced, rubbing a hand over my head. “How bad did I hurt you?”
She was sitting up now, her knees drawn in to her chest, arms wrapped around them. She wasn’t crying, but there were tears on her face. Her breathing was still ragged, and I was so fucking scared.
“I’m calling an ambulance.” I decided and rushed around the bed to where my cell lay on the nightstand.
“No,” she said, her voice hoarse.
I ignored her and lit up the phone.
“Alex, no,” she said, a little more audible this time.
“You can’t breathe, for fuck sake!” I roared. “I probably crushed your windpipe.” I made a desperate sound. If she wasn’t okay, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
Sabrina rose onto her knees and swiped the phone from my hand. “I’m fine,” she said, moving back onto the bed, keeping the phone.
“No, you aren’t.” I paced away, this time pinning both hands around the back of my neck. “I was having a nightmare, shit from my past…”
“I know.”
I stopped pacing and looked at her. “What did I say to you? Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I know it was a dream. You would never hurt me.” Her voice was still hoarse. I bet her neck was going to be bruised.
A tortured sound ripped out of me, and I rushed to flip on the lamp. Both of us recoiled when light flooded the dark room, but I blinked and forced my eyes to adjust.
She was shielding her eyes with her hand, and her hair was over her shoulders.
I stayed back, my hands shaking. “Let me see.”
“What?”
“Let me see what I did to you!” I yelled.
“Alex.” Her voice was soft and forgiving. I hated it. I didn’t deserve that tone.
I didn’t deserve to have her in my bed. This was exactly why Mercer didn’t want me anywhere near her. This was exactly why I left without a good-bye three years ago.
I was damaged goods. So filled with ice any trigger sent me subzero.
I might want her. My God, how I wanted her, but it didn’t matter. What I needed was exactly what I had before she showed up here. I needed to live alone in the mountains with my family and nothing else. I couldn’t handle the kind of love I felt for her. It made me volatile. It made me dangerous.
I was better off alone, having one-night stands with snow bunnies who meant nothing to me. I couldn’t hurt those women. I couldn’t kill them.
I shouldn’t have slept with her. I shouldn’t have let the emotion from earlier tonight prey on the soft spot I felt for her.
Hell. It wasn’t just a soft spot. My entire heart was a giant sinkhole that gave way to her.
I loved her with every fiber of my being. Which was exactly why I should have known better than this.
The endurance I felt in that kiss before was just a wish. Just a trick my heart was playing to get me to surrender. And I did.
Now just fucking look what I’d done.
We couldn’t endure this. Sabrina could not endure me.
Sabrina
Watching him skitter away from the bed, deeper into the shadows of the bedroom, nearly broke my heart.
This was bad.
Bad for him. I mean, yes, it sort of scared the shit out of me when I tried to wake him and he tackled me. Some definite alarm skittered over my spine when his hands slipped around my throat to squeeze and the look on his face was unrecogniz
able.
Even still, I trusted him.
You know why?
Because though I was scared in those few moments, I wasn’t scared of him. I knew what Alex was capable of. It was the same thing Daniel was capable of. They were hardwired different. Trained to react before they thought.
I knew Alex wouldn’t admit it, but he probably had some PTSD going on from everything he experienced. There were many nights I’d heard my brother scream out in his sleep. There were also many nights I’d heard him pace the floor because his demons kept him awake.
These men—Alex—had seen and done things that most men never would. I would be far more afraid of him if those things didn’t affect him as they did now.
I might not have ever lived it, and I might not have those haunting nightmares that never fully allowed my past to rest, but I could still try and understand. And maybe it was that non-experience I spoke of that made it easier for me to forgive him than he could himself.
The fear for me had been instant, the same anyone would feel when being physically pinned down and threatened. But that fear abated quickly. I called his name, and when that didn’t work, I kneed him in the nuts. As soon as he realized what he was doing, he stopped. It wasn’t as if he knew exactly what he was doing and continued.
Daniel warned me about this kind of thing many years ago. When he started to notice the looks his military friends would give me, and I guess when he started to realize I was becoming more woman than kid sister.
He was adamant I not become involved with anyone in his field of work, but even so, he used every opportunity he had to tell me what to expect (or more likely try to scare me) if I did. Dreams like this weren’t uncommon. How could they be?
These men were trained so acutely their bodies reacted the instant they felt or saw any kind of hairy situation. Sometimes their minds couldn’t distinguish between wake and sleep.
I actually was grateful for that kind of reaction. I knew it had kept my brother alive more than once. Sometimes the threat wasn’t always a dream. Sometimes these men almost died by attack in their sleep.
Regardless, I knew better than to move over Alex and try to wake and soothe him. I should have gotten out of bed and woken him from a distance. It was one of the reasons Daniel slept with a lock on his bedroom door.
I didn’t get out of bed. I reacted with my heart before my head had a chance to get involved. I regretted it now, only because Alex would torture himself for this maybe forever.
“I mean it, Sabrina. I want to see your neck. I want to see the bruises,” he intoned, bleakness and danger warring within his tone.
I sighed, pushed aside the covers, and slipped out of the bed. The indrawn breath across the room reminded me I was naked. My hand closed around his flannel, and I tugged it on, buttoning it as I went.
“What are you doing?” he asked, watching me. I could feel the tension in his body, feel the wariness waft off him as I walked across the room.
He moved back a step, and my heart hurt a little, but I continued, knowing this wasn’t something I could just hug away. The bathroom light flipped on, and I blinked against it. The tile was cold against my bare feet, but I held in the grimace because I worried he would think it was from pain he caused.
Going to the mirror, I snatched a hair tie off the counter and pulled my hair up into a loose, lopsided bun on the top of my head. When that was done, I grabbed the collar of the flannel and spread it out, revealing my neck.
“See,” I told him. “No bruises.”
“What?” he asked, stepping into the doorway.
Gazing at him through the bathroom mirror, I nodded. “You didn’t leave any bruises, Alex. You let go almost as fast as you grabbed on.”
“Turn around.”
I did as he requested, rotating so I could look at him through my own eyes and not the mirror. He gestured for me to lift my chin, so I did, holding the collar wide so he could see.
He came closer, walking tentatively. Still, the distance between us was at least arm’s length, and I wanted to tell him to come closer.
“See?” I whispered. “It’s okay.”
“Your skin is red,” he replied, harsh.
“I’m fine.” I insisted, trying for a smile. “Hell, your nuts probably hurt worse than my neck.”
He didn’t think it was funny. Not even a little.
“You think it’s funny you had to knee me in the sack to get me off you?” He spoke low. The dead calm in his voice and filling his eyes made me shiver. “I could have killed you.”
I gasped and lunged forward. “No!”
He moved back, eluding my touch.
“Alex! You would never do that.”
He laughed, and it was unlike any laugh I’d heard from him before. I felt like, for the first time ever, I was seeing a glimpse of the man my brother and his friends called Ice.
“You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
I swallowed. “I’m not afraid of you.”
His eyes moved over me from my head all the way to my toes. “We fell asleep,” he said, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “Not that it really matters. How’s your head?”
Who gave a rat’s ass about my head? “It’s fine.” I allowed. “How’s yours?”
He didn’t even answer, as if he thought the state of his health was so trivial it didn’t require a response. “I never should have let this happen.”
“My head injury is not your fault. That dream was—”
“This!” he yelled, gesturing between us and then at his shirt on my body. “I never should have slept with you. It was wrong. So fucking wrong.”
My spine stiffened. He regretted sleeping with me? Well, that hurt. Having his hands on my neck didn’t. But those words? Those hurt most of all.
“Don’t say that,” I replied, sounding weak and defeated.
“I’m going out on the couch. Stay back here.” He started away, then stopped but didn’t turn back.
He was leaving, just like that?
“I know you killed that man earlier tonight,” I burst out, making his feet stop again. I wanted him to see, to realize I knew who he was.
I loved him anyway.
Even from across the room, his back to me, I heard his intake of breath. “You saw?”
“I didn’t see you do it, but I know what happened when you went over there. I know you sent me with Liam so you could get rid of the body and the truck.”
He spun, his eyes flaring with anger and life. Seeing those emotions made me feel one hundred times better because that frigid, hollow look he’d been sporting before was gone.
“Then what are you doing on my bed right now?” His arms flung out into the air. “What are you thinking, letting me touch you?”
Well. Maybe telling him I didn’t care he killed that man wasn’t such a good idea. My shoulders slumped. I had to get through to him. This time couldn’t be like three years ago.
“I’m not thinking right now, Alex. I’m feeling.” I pressed my palm flat against my chest, trying to quell the ache there. Hoping to God he might feel it, too. “Thinking is hardly an option when you’re in the same room with me. All I can do is feel. All I can do is want.”
The anger was gone from his voice when he finally spoke. “You’re too good for me.”
It wasn’t just my emotions I was feeling right then. It was his, too. He wanted me. He wanted me so much it was palpable, but he was trying to do what he thought was right.
“If that was true, you would have taken my virginity three years ago and told my brother to go to hell.”
He groaned. “You have no idea how much it tortures me that I wasn’t your first. Your only.”
“You are my only.” I promised. “What we did over there…” I pointed to the bed. “I’ve never felt that with anyone else. Ever.”
“That can’t happen again.” He turned and left the room, walking so silently and leaving the room so empty if I was any less of a woman, I would have thought the room had a
lways been empty.
I went after him, the bottom of my bare feet slapping against the floor, making a ruckus so he would be sure I was still there.
He was standing near the window, looking out into the dark, empty yard.
“You regret sleeping with me?” I couldn’t keep the hurt from my voice.
Alex’s large hand hit the wall in front of him, and all his weight seemed to be suspended against that one arm. His head hung low. I pictured him gazing at his feet as he stood.
“I could never regret any moment I’ve spent with you,” he answered, making my heart flutter then beat a little bit stronger.
Unfortunately, he kept talking.
“That doesn’t change anything. Your brother was right about me, Brina. I’m toxic to you. He asked me to protect you, and that’s what I’m going to do. From everything and anyone who could hurt you. Including me.”
“No.” I denied, stepping farther into the room. The comforting crackle of the fireplace wasn’t so comforting in the moment. “I know you, Alex. I know you could never hurt me like that.”
“I already have.”
“Why are you doing this?” I yelled, feeling him getting further and further away. “After everything that happened, after tonight…” I was getting angry, and I welcomed the anger. It was a hell of a lot better than the splintering hurt.
He spun, regarding me with a stranger’s eyes. “You think you know me? You don’t have a clue.”
“No?” I challenged, taking a step closer. “Tell me.”
“The last time I killed, the time before tonight, it wasn’t just one bad guy. Or even two bad guys. It was a massacre. I killed an entire village. I did it without any hesitation.” He stared at me as he spoke, that pale, emotionless look dropping like a veil over his already piercing eyes. “There’s a switch inside me I can flip… I do it so easily it’s terrifying. One minute I’m just me, Alex. And the next? He’s completely gone, immune to any kind of humanity at all.”
“Ice,” I whispered.
Slowly, he nodded. “Ice. It’s how I got my name.”
Subzero (BearPaw Resort Book 4) Page 17