But Lucien didn’t answer. He blinked once, then released his grip on Morgan’s wrist. Aurelio didn’t have time to react before his brother slammed his fist into his face.
Morgan jumped out of the way as Lucien followed the wild swing by slamming his huge, naked body into his brother’s, toppling them both to the marble with a flat thud. They struggled madly, Aurelio cursing and shouting, Lucien eerily silent except for several hoarse grunts as he tried to get his hands around his bigger brother’s neck while being punched and wrestled. She sagged to her knees against the wood console, terrified, trying to work up the nerve to make a run for it. All she saw was flailing huge limbs and acres of bare, toned flesh and the occasional flash of a heavy, swinging male member. She had the insane urge to laugh.
At that exact moment, Xander crashed through the door.
When he caught sight of Morgan cowering and bloody against the console, staring up at him with huge, terrified eyes and a bruise blooming garish blue and purple across her cheek, Xander experienced a flood of rage so overwhelming he literally lost his mind.
With a roar so fierce it pulled the two fighting males up short and fractured the oval mirror above the console into a web of splintered glass, he bared his teeth, unsheathed his knives, and lunged at them.
He hit the bigger one first. His charge was so powerful it knocked them both off their feet. They flew through the air and landed on top of the glass coffee table in the living room, which shattered into a million pieces with a hideous crash. The male beneath him grunted in pain but wrapped his arms around Xander’s back with such force he thought his spine might be crushed. They rolled over the broken glass together and slammed against the sofa, which was shoved back several feet by the impact.
He heard Morgan screaming something but was too focused on the fight to make it out. His arms were trapped in the male’s vise grip; his weight pinned him to the floor. He was wedged against the sofa, but none of that mattered. In a swift, practiced move, he thrust up with his dagger and sank it deep into his opponent’s side. The male arched back, howling, and gave Xander perfect, unobstructed access to his throat.
Xander took the opportunity and slashed his other dagger straight across his carotid artery.
Blood sprayed out in a huge red arc, splattering his face, his chest, the floor. The male rolled to his back, clutching his throat and writhing, and Xander freed himself from beneath him and leapt to his feet, ready to fight the other one. He whirled around to find him standing only a few feet away, shaking in rage, his black eyes wild.
“He was mine,” he hissed, curling his hands to fists.
Xander frowned. It almost sounded as if he was mad at him for killing the other one first. He didn’t have time to figure it out because the male lunged at him like a madman, snarling and swinging. Xander waited in a crouch for him to get near enough; then, in a blindingly fast move practiced hundreds of times, he stepped swiftly aside, used the other’s forward momentum against him, and shoved the male so hard from behind he stumbled right into the half of the glass terrace slider that hadn’t already been destroyed.
The huge male hit it face-first. It shattered like a bomb.
Arms flailing, he went flying through a field of razor-sharp, glinting glass and landed on his chest with an ugly smack against the pink marbled terrace. He lay there stunned while shards of glass drifted down all around him, catching the light like diamond flakes. With adrenaline roaring through his veins Xander leapt across the room, landed in a crouch beside the male, withdrew a dagger from his boot, and sank it deep between the bones of the male’s neck, severing his spinal cord.
He jerked then exhaled in a sputter. On the marble beneath his body, blood began to pool.
Breathing hard, Xander noticed a sharp pain in his abdomen, blooming with heat. He stood and looked down at himself and was amazed to find a widening circle of blood seeping through the front of his shirt.
“Xander.”
Morgan’s voice jerked him back to reality. He turned. She stood in the suite’s foyer, shaking, leaning against the wood console for support. Her beautiful face was nearly white.
“Are you hurt?” He fought a sudden wave of dizziness. Instinct made him reach around to his back, where he discovered a thick, jagged piece of glass sticking out at an angle from his shirt. He touched it and it sent a wave of pain shooting through his body. A hot rush of liquid spilled over his skin and pooled around the waist of his pants.
The table. He’d hit the coffee table, he’d rolled in the broken glass—
“Are you hurt?” he said again, harsher this time, taking a step over the blood-splattered ivory carpet toward Morgan.
“No.” Her gaze flickered down to his waist. He put a hand over his abdomen and felt his own blood seep hot and thick between his fingers. A tiny sliver of glass pricked the tip of his finger.
Christ. It went all the way through. He’d seen enough knife wounds to know that a perforated bowel was not going to be pretty. And he was bleeding like a stuck pig, which meant there was a distinct possibility one of the abdominal arteries had been compromised. If he had any chance of survival, he needed help.
Fast.
“Listen to me very carefully, Morgan,” he said, his tongue strangely numb. “I want you to get my cell phone from the leather case on the desk and call the first number on the speed dial. No one will speak when it’s answered, but tell them you’re with me, and I’m hurt. When they ask for it, the password is Esperanza.”
He felt both hot and cold, and sweat had bloomed over his chest. He took another step toward her and almost stumbled. She jerked forward with both hands out and crossed the room.
“Say you understand. Say it, Morgan.”
“You’re bleeding.” Her voice cracked. “Here, sit on the couch. Let me take a look.”
She guided him to the couch, and without protest, he let her. With pain now radiating out from the wound in throbbing hot spikes, he held perfectly still as she quickly unbuttoned his shirt and smoothed it over his shoulders, then pulled it off his body. She knelt next to him and touched his side, probing, her fingers featherlight on his bare skin. Her movements were careful, almost reverent, and he realized she was taking care to avoid hurting him.
She didn’t want to hurt him.
That thought gave him as much pain as the blade of glass embedded in his body. He closed his eyes, concentrated on his breathing, and let the deep, warm scent of her skin wash over him.
Not bad. This wasn’t a bad way to die. Here, with her, with her scent in his nose and her fingers soft on his skin. Of the thousand ways he’d imagined his death, one as pleasant as this had never been included.
“It’s clean, but I won’t lie—it’s bad,” she said. “I’m not going to remove it because that will only make it worse.” He smiled, wondering how she knew that. “Do you think you can lie on your side?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her, and when she looked up into his face he saw not fear or panic but something cool and detached that looked worryingly close to calculation. It froze his heart to stone in his chest. And that’s when he realized she wasn’t going to call anyone for help. She was going to let him bleed out here on the wheat-and-ivory striped silk sofa, and then take her freedom once and for all.
And really, could he blame her?
The room tilted. He didn’t have much time.
“I want you to know I understand,” he murmured. His gaze roved over her face, memorizing the perfect planes and angles, the plush lips, the dark arch of her brows. She pulled back, blinking, and he caught her hand. “I know this is something you need to do, and I understand. And...I don’t blame you.”
She frowned at him. “You don’t blame me for what, exactly?”
“For letting me die.”
As her eyes widened, he lifted his hand to her cheek and traced a finger down the curve of her cheekbone.
Satin. Perfect.
He smiled at her. Then he slumped down onto the sofa’s plus
h cushions and passed out.
The wave of emotion that hit Morgan was so overwhelming she had to take a moment to breathe against it because she was afraid she’d pass out like Xander just had.
Anger. Shame. Sadness. Regret. Outrage. Disappointment. All of it flooded her at once.
He’d saved her life. And then he’d insulted her. Again.
He thought she was a liar—that much was abundantly clear. She’d already given him her word she wouldn’t run away, but obviously that held no water. He also thought she was low enough to leave him there to bleed out on the couch after he’d risked his own life to save hers. And the way he’d looked at her at the church after he’d kissed her to break the link with the man in white—that had hurt more than she liked to admit.
Because she’d liked that kiss. She’d been lost in it. With his lips on hers, she’d felt something she hadn’t felt in years: connection. Real and warm and illuminating, like someone had turned the lights on in a room kept always dark.
But he’d only been doing his job. The disgusted look on his face after she’d broken away was clear evidence of that.
All of this was only his job, she reminded herself, gazing around the wrecked room. If she died on his watch, he’d be held responsible. It was nothing more than that, and that was as it should be, but she couldn’t seem to get her heart on board. It ached, it throbbed, and she didn’t want to know why. She really didn’t.
Still shaking, she rose to her feet and found the cell phone in Xander’s bag, right where he’d said it would be. It was hard to dial the number because her hands were trembling and slippery with Xander’s blood, but she did it. She lifted the phone to her ear and listened.
It was picked up on the second ring but not answered, just as he’d said. Only silence greeted her on the other end. She didn’t even hear anyone breathing.
Her voice came low and tremulous. “Xander told me to call this number. He’s hurt, and he told me to call—”
“We have your coordinates,” came the clipped response. It was a male voice, brusque and gravelly, with no discernible accent. “What is the password?”
“Esperanza,” she whispered.
Silence again. Then: “Do not move from your current location.”
“Please hurry—”
The line went dead.
She dropped the phone on the desk and went back to Xander. He looked so massive and male on that dainty sofa, so overpowering and at the same time oddly peaceful with his closed eyes, his deep, heavy breathing. Like a napping bull.
A beautiful, half-naked, bloody, napping bull, with a chest full of hatch marks.
She picked up the shirt she’d removed from him and pressed it softly against the oozing wound on his abdomen. He jerked, moaning.
“Shhhh,” she murmured. “I need to keep pressure on it. To help stop the bleeding. I’m sorry. I’m sorry if it hurts. And I’m going to stay right here with you. I won’t leave you.”
He muttered something that sounded like the password she’d just whispered into the phone, then sank back into unconsciousness.
“They’re not coming.”
It was Celian who finally said aloud what everyone had been thinking for the past thirty minutes, and true to his nature, his voice was stone-cold. He was the largest of the group at almost six foot eight and 280 pounds of solid muscle, and about as cuddly as a shark. He was dressed, as they all were, in one of the many sets of spare clothes kept tucked away in nooks and crannies all over Rome for occasions such as this, when escape as Vapor was necessary and their leathers and weapons were abandoned. This latest cache had been retrieved from the bell tower of an abandoned fourth-century church.
“Let’s wait another five minutes,” said Constantine, flicking a glance at Celian’s hard face. They all knew what failure meant and that the brunt of the punishment would fall to the first-in-command. And for failing to return with either one of their intended targets, the consequences would be very bad.
Lix growled an agreement, and Demetrius—known to the Bellatorum simply as D—remained characteristically silent. Ironically named after a Greek orator who died in the first century BC, D often went days at a time without speaking a word. In addition to his menacing silence, his head was shaved, he sported several eyebrow piercings and sinister neck tattoos, and he was prone to outbursts of unprovoked violence. Though all the Bellatorum—the warriors—were feared by their people, he was downright dreaded.
Celian glanced up at the deep blue bowl of sky visible in small slices through the windows ringed around the upper few feet of the stone ceiling. Above the ancient subterranean church whose rooftop rose just a few feet above street level, stars were beginning to wink to life. “No sense putting it off,” he said, practical as ever. “The longer we wait, the worse it will be when he finally hears it.”
He pushed off the crumbling Doric column he’d been leaning on, walked across the worn stone floor, and disappeared through a hidden door behind the altar. Lix, Constantine, and D shared a look, then followed.
The corridor they entered was barely more than shoulder-wide and so low in some places they had to duck their heads. It was chilly and damp and near black, but they had lived here for so many years they were accustomed to the temperature and didn’t need lights to guide the way. They walked in silence for more than ten minutes, descending farther into the earth as they followed the main corridor and its worn, winding stairs. Other corridors yawned open and snaked away into darkness as they passed. None of them glanced up to admire the age-worn frescoes of gods and vineyards and cherubs at play on the rough ceiling above; none paid heed to the empty hollows where centuries ago bodies had been wrapped in linen and lain to rest. Except for the scuffs of their boots on the dusty tufa, it was quiet as a crypt. And just as cheerful.
“Over forty catacombs beneath Rome, and we have to get stuck in the one that smells like feet,” muttered Lix, bringing up the rear.
“It’s the biggest one, Felix,” said Constantine, knowing Lix would hate hearing his given name and hoping to divert another one of his legendary diatribes about the smell of the catacombs where the Bellatorum and the soldier class of Legiones lived and trained. The Optimates, the Electi, and the Servorum—the aristocracy, the chosen females of the King’s harem, and the servant castes—lived in nearby catacombs that were accessed by a series of connected tunnels they’d dug themselves. All the catacombs had been deserted for centuries, and many were still undiscovered by the outside world. “And thank Horus for it, because I’m going to have to go somewhere far away to get away from your constant complaining. You’re like an old woman.”
“Watch yourself, beauty queen,” shot back Lix, taking the bait. “Or I’ll torch that shoe collection you’ve got. What are you up to now, about ten thousand pair? And are all those hair products really necessary? You could start your own salon.”
Constantine snorted and tossed his head, sending glossy jet hair spilling over his shoulder. He was, by all accounts, the most beautiful male of the kingdom. Some said he was even more beautiful than the principessa Eliana herself. Females swooned over him, and he took great advantage of it, but he had unswerving loyalty to his brothers and was always the first to put himself in harm’s way for one of them. Which was lucky for him, or else jealousy would have most likely made everyone hate his guts.
“At least I bathe,” said Constantine, taking a loud and pointed sniff in Lix’s direction.
“And you smell like a damn rose garden! Is that perfume?”
“Put a sock in it, ladies,” growled Celian over his shoulder. “Unless one of you wants to be the one to explain our situation to the King.”
That silenced them. No one ever wanted to be the bearer of bad news to Dominus. There was only a fifty-fifty chance your tongue would stay attached.
A few more minutes of walking through the silent underground labyrinth, and finally they arrived.
The corridor opened abruptly into a vast, soaring space decorated like the
keep of a Gothic castle. There were no windows in this place, but there were Egyptian statues and ancestral portraits and beeswax candles in iron braziers dripping wax to the stone floor. There was chunky wood furniture and Persian rugs and a long table with carved high-back chairs that seated thirty. Red velvet sofas lined one wall; shining suits of armor flanked a massive glass case of antique weaponry.
In the center of the room sat an elaborate throne of dark wood with clawed feet and crimson cushions. Its back curved up to a high, sharp point, atop which perched a grinning human skull, cocked askew on a spike.
Upon the throne sat a man. He was large yet lithe and dressed in snowy white, as always, which contrasted with the burnished honey-bronze shade of his skin. From his neck hung a golden talisman on a chain: the Eye of Horus, symbol of the ancient Egyptian god of war and vengeance. Dominus believed himself the reincarnation of Horus, and all the warriors had the symbol branded on their left shoulders when they were indoctrinated into the Bellatorum.
“Gentlemen,” said the King. His deep voice carried easily over the distance between them. “How fare you?”
“Well, sire.” Celian bowed his head. The others, lining up beside him, followed suit and remained silent.
“Well?” Dominus repeated in a questioning tone. In turn, the warriors each felt the sharp, fleeting sting of the King’s gaze upon them. “Indeed?”
Celian lifted his head and met his master’s gaze. “We four are well, sire,” he equivocated, “but as for Aurelio and Lucien, I cannot say. They did not return to the rendezvous point as agreed.”
All the candles in the chamber sputtered in a sudden cold breeze. Celian felt his brothers beside him tense and concentrated on keeping his own body relaxed, his breathing regular. The King thrived on fear and sensed it like a snake senses a mouse. If he hadn’t seen otherwise for himself, he’d have thought the King’s tongue was forked.
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