by L. D. Rose
“Did you put sunblock on?” he teased, a whiff of coconut tickling his nose as he scooted closer to her.
“SPF 100.” She finished the last nibbles of the apple’s core and tossed it in the small trash bag. She was going to fly through the dozen in no time. “Just in case.”
“Better safe than sorry, I guess.” Although after their romp last night, she definitely wouldn’t need it. He brushed her freshly dyed locks over her shoulder and pressed his lips to her skin, tasting a thin film of cocoa butter. Coconut, peanut, and cocoa butter.
Damn, the struggle was real.
“Oh, look, here it comes!” As soon as she said it, Dax felt that visceral tug, and she must’ve too, since the fine hairs on her arms stood at attention. His lips curved at the joy on her face as she pointed at the horizon with anticipation. “And what a perfect day for it.”
She was right. The skyline had warmed with a red-orange blush, bordered by the deep sapphire of a fading night. A few clouds etched the sky, fluffy and saturated with the palette of dawn, refining the already resplendent landscape. A hush descended over the forest around them, the birds silent and motionless, the world awaiting another morning with bated breath.
Even Cindy remained still, her midnight gaze rapt by the vista, a flawless sculpture in nature’s gallery. Dax watched as the sun’s golden light slanted across her face, setting the corona of her red hair ablaze, a fiery phoenix rising from the ashes.
Sensing him staring at her, she glanced back and laughed, a sweet, melodic sound. “What are you doing?” She indicated the emerging ball of fire on the horizon. “You’re missing it.”
“I’m not missing anything,” he said, taking her hand and threading her fingers with his. “I’m seeing exactly what I came for.”
Her throat worked, her lips parting as the galaxies of her eyes shimmered with a love that only intensified each day. Over the past few months, she’d grown stronger, both physically and mentally, adjusting to her new life with a progress he’d never expected. Even his brothers were learning to trust her, especially after the tremendous amount of intel she’d already given Rome, and she was constantly there for them when they needed her.
In their little world outside of the city, she flourished, a flower whose petals would never be plucked, a rose that would never die.
Not in this garden.
“My fierce, valiant Knight.” Her dulcet words exuded seduction and just a hint of humor, her smile absolutely radiant. “What did I tell you about looking at me like that?”
“Get used to it, princess.” He grabbed the nape of her neck and dragged her to him, unable to rein in his desire any longer. “Because I’ll never stop.”
Their lips collided, tongues entwining as she crawled onto his lap with the same feverish passion. And as he turned up the heat, burying his face in her neck, a car horn blared like an air raid siren in the serene quiet.
Nearly springing apart, Cindy snatched the butter knife and Dax instinctively shielded her body with his, bracing for the attack.
But it never came, and as she looked up, her lips parting with disbelief, Dax half-turned with a murderous growl, ready to ream out whichever one of his brothers decided to interrupt them this time.
The last thing he expected to see was a 1965 Mako Corvette—his Mako Corvette—roll to a stop on the distant road behind them.
Holy shit.
The sleek car’s fresh paint and smooth chassis glittered in the rising sun, as pristine as the day he bought it. Kayne, that fucking crazy bastard, leapt out of the driver’s seat and pumped his fist in the air with the enthusiasm of a goddamn leprechaun who just discovered his pot of gold. “Impeccable timing, Elsa!”
Dax’s jaw dropped, lungs deflating like balloons as shock bowled him over. “Kayne?”
Cindy wriggled in his lap, snaring his attention, and she held his face with both hands, kissing his gaping mouth with a knowing grin. “Go get him. He’s been dying to show you.”
Dax’s grip tightened on her hips, his heart filled to bursting. “You knew about this?”
She nodded and pushed to her feet, taking him with her. “C’mon, Frosty. Don’t keep him waiting.”
But Kayne waited impatiently, rubbing his hands together with barely contained excitement as they strode over to him, hand-in-hand. Dax gawked at the spotless piece of machinery, utterly stupefied and unable to believe his eyes.
“It’s deadly, isn’t it?” Kayne made a show of displaying the car to him, stroking the Mako’s glossy roof and patting its angular backside. “Or at least, as deadly as I could make it. Boyo, you do not want to know what I had to do for these parts—”
Dax didn’t give him time to finish, seizing him in the bear hug of all bear hugs before Kayne could say another word. The Shamrock embraced him with the same fervor, a tension unfurling in the Trinity leader that Dax had no clue he even carried.
“You did this for me?” Dax could hardly voice the question.
Drawing back, Kayne clapped his shoulder with a shine in his grass green eyes. “We did.” He motioned to Cindy, clearing his throat. “She came up with the idea.”
Dax looked at her and she squeezed his hand, planting a kiss on his recently tattooed knuckles, firing another shot of warmth into his brimming heart.
“And, well, after a lot of sneaky phone calls and sketchy cross-country travel, the fellas and I finally managed to put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” Kayne added with a grin. “Everyone was involved. Your brothers and mine.”
Everyone? Dax didn’t know what to say, gaze darting from him, to Cindy, then the car, rendered totally speechless.
“Speaking of your brothers, they’re all expecting us back at that ridiculous mansion you call a compound.” Kayne popped open the trunk, revealing two kegs of Guinness from the newly upholstered space. “And I brought the black stuff, the real black stuff. None of that bottled garbage you all drink.”
Dax barked out a laugh. “You do realize it’s six AM, right?”
“Six AM, shmix AM.” Kayne waved the comment away with a scowl. “Fuck it. When the world is going to hell in a hand basket, you might as well make it a party on the way down.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Cindy chimed in, eliciting another round of laughter.
“Now that’s the spirit, lass.” Kayne opened the passenger’s side door for her with his classic chivalrous bent. “Your carriage awaits.”
She clasped her hands together with an elated grin, hopping into the car and strapping on her seatbelt while Kayne tossed Dax the keys. Dax looked down at the clean metal slivers in his palm, unable to grasp how this was happening and why he even deserved this.
“C’mon, lad.” Kayne ushered him into the driver’s seat. “You can cry about it later.”
Dax shoved at him playfully before climbing in to the scent of rich leather and new car. When he pushed the key into the ignition, the Mako rumbling to life with its resonant purr, Dax thought he might actually weep from the beauty of it.
“If that doesn’t jerk your knob, I don’t know what does,” Kayne hollered, slapping the roof as Dax rolled down the window. Cindy leveled a comical glare at the Irishman and he grinned his roguish grin.
“Except for you, of course, love. I’m sure you give Dax great—”
“All right, that’s enough.” Dax made a cut-throat gesture, his cheeks hurting from smiling so hard. “What about you? How are you getting back?”
“Oh, well, you know.” The Shamrock braced an arm on the Mako’s hood and puckered his lips, releasing an ear-piercing whistle that pealed in every direction. Within moments, a motor amplified in the distance, roaring louder as it approached, and a black Ducati Panigale zipped into view, arcing around the bend and easing to a halt beside its rider.
Kayne waggled his brows and Dax bubble
d up with laughter while Cindy let out her own whoop of approval. “Frosty, I’d like to introduce you to the General of my crotch-rocket army, Guinny.”
“Christ, you are unbelievable.” Dax shook his head as Kayne palmed the helmet latched to the motorcycle’s seat and mounted the bike, revving the motor with an obnoxious flare.
Pulling on the brain bucket, he popped the visor and gave them a two-fingered salute. “Race you there!”
Then he was off, zooming down the road like a missile.
Dax turned to Cindy, chuckling softly. “And everyone says I’m crazy.”
“You’re both on par.” She leaned over to kiss his cheek and grabbed the strap of his seatbelt, snapping it on for him. “Don’t forget this.” She grinned and he laughed.
Raising a hand to caress her beautiful face, he traced her lips with his thumb, her black diamond eyes alight with happiness. “Thank you. For this. For everything.”
“Looks like this fairytale has a happy ending,” she murmured.
He couldn’t love her more.
“That it does.” Dropping the clutch, he shifted gears, revving the engine with his own obnoxious flare as they drove off into the new day.
That it does.
And now for a sneak peek at the next installment in the Order of the Senary series, FURIOUS ANGELS:
Alarms screamed across the premises in a banshee wail of impending doom.
Kasen ran as fast as his legs would carry him, disheveled and half-dressed in his boxers and a tank top. He didn’t even know why he attempted to snooze in his suite anymore—the siren was bound to summon him the instant he shut his eyes.
Not only had dawn just graced them with her presence, he hadn’t slept in almost three days.
Scaling the open loading dock of the medical sub-building, Kasen bolted into the trauma bay to find two of his brothers working frantically to keep a human family alive. The noise was tremendous, between the alarms and the cries of pain and sorrow, peppered with the clipped commands and low murmurs of his brothers’ voices.
By the amount of blood splattered all over the floor, they didn’t have much time left.
Ignoring the visceral tug in his gut and the throb in his gums, Kasen aimed for the closest stretcher, but Dax raised a bloodied arm and shook his head, motioning to the next cubby over. His brother’s cobalt eyes were iced over with rage, his expression haunted as he covered up a big, male body in a red-soaked sheet. A limp hand dangled off the gurney, blood dripping from its pale fingertips, the soles of workman’s boots protruding from the end of the bed.
Another one drained and dead.
Kasen cursed and whipped open the next curtain to reveal a squirming child with his rapidly deteriorating mother beside him. The humans lay on separate stretchers that had been pushed together, and the child clung to his mother like a lifeline, shrieking from the top of his lungs. Kaj pressed a soiled T-shirt against the wound in the woman’s throat, trying his best not to choke her yet apply enough pressure to staunch the bleeding. More blood oozed from a puncture wound along the right side of her abdomen, and Kaj had futilely tried to pack it with hemostatic combat gauze.
“Thank fucking God,” his brother exclaimed, welcoming Kasen with open relief as he rescinded control of the situation. The kid screamed louder, gawking up at Kaj with such profound terror, Kasen was sure the boy would never recover from it. Any human would be petrified of the monstrous Celt with feline eyes, especially a child, no matter if he’d saved them.
“Get him out of here.” Kasen grabbed hold of the T-shirt clamped to the woman’s throat. Maybe the leeches hadn’t nicked her carotid if she was still alive. “Hurry.”
“I got him,” Dax cut in, gripping the kid by the waist and hauling him out of the gurney. The child’s wails intensified, hunching all of their shoulders at the ear-splitting sound, his little hands forming desperate claws and his sneakers striking everything in their path.
Jesus. He couldn’t have been older than five.
“Make sure he isn’t hurt,” Kasen snapped, noting the kid’s gashes and bloodied clothes. His mother weakly reached for her son with a shaking hand, her limb petering out before flopping back onto the sheets.
And at that moment, it occurred to Kasen that she wasn’t moving the right side of her body.
“Fuck,” Dax growled with regret, dragging the thrashing child away into the cubby opposite his dead father.
“Rome should be here any second.” Kaj attempted reassurance but failed. No matter what their eldest brother did, that boy was going to be scarred for life.
No amount of brainwashing could erase this.
Pushing the now empty stretcher away to make more room, Kasen channeled out the noise and focused on the woman. His hand warmed her cold, clammy skin as he cupped the unharmed side of her neck, her pulse thready as she gulped under his touch. Kaj took her limp hand in a gesture of comfort, and her fingers barely twitched, her eyes symmetrically widening as she looked up at them wildly while her lower right face continued its heartrending droop.
She opened her mouth, closed it, trying to form words she couldn’t voice.
Shit. “Keep her awake,” Kasen murmured as the grim reality of the trauma bay collapsed around him and a flurry of information flooded his senses.
Her vitals were clearly crashing because half of her blood volume was gone, her limbs ice-cold since her body had abandoned her extremities to circuit what was left to her fragile vital organs. She had an extensive liver laceration and a perforated right colon from a stab wound the size of a chef’s knife. Her carotid had definitely been scored from a ragged bite wound, and even though Kaj had applied enough pressure to form an unstable clot, parts of it had embolized to her brain and resulted in a near complete left-sided middle cerebral artery stroke.
She was a breath away from death, tangled in a web of darkness.
“Kase, why isn’t she moving?” Kaj’s timbre was an ocean away. “Lady, can you squeeze my hand?”
“What happened?” Kasen asked numbly, still assessing the internal chaos. Her jugular was in tatters. She’d been beaten repeatedly.
She’d been raped.
“During our sweep through Queens, we ran into a few leeches lurking around a tenement,” Kaj spilled. “Took the bastards out, but not in time, and we found her like this.”
“How long ago?”
“An hour, at least. We tried to make it back as quickly as we could.”
Kasen didn’t take his attention off her for a second. “It’s okay,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if he was consoling his brother, the dying woman in his arms, or himself. He tapped into his chi, warmth blooming from the center of him and racing toward his hands. The thin, coppery-tinged air began to buzz as he summoned forth his power, and the woman gasped harshly. “It’s okay.”
The kid let out a deafening screech from the adjacent cubby.
“Kase, tell me why she isn’t moving.” Kaj, panicked now.
“She had a stroke.”
“What?”
Kasen spared his brother a glance, Kaj’s eyes blazing like chartreuse flame, his mouth an ‘O’ of horror. “Are you fucking serious? Did I do this?”
“No.” The monster who’d ripped into her did. “Just calm down, all right? She needs blood. O positive. Get a central line in her, two if you can.”
His brother didn’t hesitate, hitting the mini-fridge and pulling two units from their precious stash of donor blood. Yanking open the drawers, Kaj searched for the necessary paraphernalia to start her IVs, and dumped the items onto the crash cart.
“Groin, femoral access, either side or both,” Kasen ordered and Kaj nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
Kasen hated to make his brother assist, but no matter what they did for her, she would die without blood
.
Concentrating on her fluttering heartbeat, Kasen’s world narrowed down to the stranger before him. He took a deep breath and she mimicked him, their bodies syncing to one another as he braced himself for the pain.
And when it slammed into him like a ninety-mile-per-hour fastball, Kasen swung back with his energy at full force.
The current in the air amplified as he dove into that web of darkness, half-paralyzed like she was, crashing through the suffocating net of death. He reached out blindly with his left hand—his dominant hand, thank God—fighting past the agony echoing from every corner of his body as he latched on to the tattered rope of human life. Sweat popped from his pores as he wrenched back on the cord, gritting his teeth from the incredible burden of mortality. Desperately trying to haul her back up over the cliff, the rope briefly slipped through his fingers as she slung precariously over the edge of oblivion.
But Kasen dug his heels in the proverbial ground, even as the chasm threatened to swallow them both in its gaping maw.
When Kaj finally struck gold, the candy red mixture of blood and saline flowing into her like a river, the weight of her life eased as Kasen slowly reeled her in, palm raw and chafed. He followed the stream of blood first, heading straight for her carotid, healing the tear and unplugging the occlusion—the biggest threat to her life. Then he perfused her oxygen-deprived brain—and his own in the process—restoring the loss of function and decreasing the edema.
Working his way down, her complex liver laceration was next, and he reknitted the network of damage, sensing it in his own belly; a healing warmth alleviating the terrible pain. He sealed the rent in her colon and spread his feelers outward, seeking the rest of her injuries.
The last thing he expected was for the rope to suddenly snap like a rubber band stretched too far.
Her blood pressure tanked, halting his course through her body, and the writhing muscle of her heart went haywire, the erratic rhythm desynchronizing and sending him whiplashing back to reality.