“Um…”
Daring to pull my gaze away from the door, I stared wide-eyed at the FBI agent crouched next to me in the dark. “What do you mean ‘um’? Don’t you have a plan?”
“Honestly? Not really.”
Samson’s growling voice silenced the snide comment that hung on the tip of my tongue. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” He was still outside, but he wouldn’t stay there for long.
“Let me go out there,” I blurted, not even aware of what I was saying until the words left my lips. “I can lead him away.”
“No way.”
Turning to face Holbrook in the darkness, anxiety creasing my brow and filling my eyes with unshed tears, I tried to make him see reason. “He’s here for me. He’s not going to stop until I face him. You have to let me go.”
“That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, shaking his head, though I knew he could see the sense in my words from the resigned slump of his shoulders. “Riley, he’ll kill you.”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t you care?”
“I’m tired, Darius,” I confessed, looking away so I didn’t have to see the disappointment in his eyes. “I’m tired of running and being afraid. I’ve been hiding for so long, and I don’t want to hide anymore.”
“Well, I sure as hell am not going to let you go out there alone,” Holbrook said, resettling the mantle of white knight around his shoulders. I even thought I saw him puff out his chest a little, and couldn’t help smiling.
Clasping his hand, I squeezed his fingers. “Thanks.”
Moving the dresser back away from the door we stood silent and still for several moments, afraid to open the door even though we both knew that we couldn’t hide out in the bedroom forever.
“Wait,” I said, closing my hand over his as he reached for the door knob.
“What is it?”
Lifting my other hand to his face, I traced my fingers over the slope of his cheek, running them back into his hair to pull his lips down to mine. Power crackled between us, lifting my hair off my shoulders and stealing my breath away. I could have sworn that tiny green forks of lightning leapt from the ends of my hair, but the heated press of his lips against mine erased all thoughts from my mind.
When we broke apart, we were both breathless and flushed, and despite the imminent danger lurking just outside, sharing a soppy grin.
The creak of the door opening sounded loud in the silence, causing me to wince and hold my breath. Holbrook insisted on going first, his gun held at the ready as he crept out into the hallway, motioning for me to wait until he was sure the coast was clear.
We already know he’s here, that’s kinda the point.
Still, for once I opted to hang back as Holbrook instructed, only moving out of the bedroom when he waved me forward.
“Where is he?” I asked, not bothering to whisper. Samson’s acute hearing would pick up my words no matter how quietly I spoke.
As if in answer to my question, Samson chose that moment to burst through the back door in a shower of shattering glass and splintered wood. The pale yellow door, with the tiny hand painted daisies around the window, hung askew from the twisted hinges. He loomed in the doorway, the same hideous mix of man and wolf that I had seen in my dream, and for a brief moment I was transported back to the soul-freezing fear I had experienced when I felt my life seeping out between my fingers.
Holbrook’s involuntary jerk at my side drew me out of my memories, slamming me back into reality. Before I could even shout at him to shoot the son of a bitch he was already firing, the thunderous cracks of the gun rending the air and making my ears ring. If it hadn’t been for the whole fearing-for-my-life thing, I might have been impressed by his skills, but as good as he was, Samson was faster. The wolfman moved in a blur as if the laws of physics didn’t apply to him.
In the blink of an eye, he had crossed the room, and knocked the gun from Holbrook’s hand with one massive paw as if it were insignificant as a water pistol. The eddying air buffeted me with his passage, ruffling my hair as he passed close. Too close. Struggling to track his movements, I watched Samson move back into the kitchen, returning to the same spot where he’d started.
Risking a glance at Holbrook, I saw the gun lying on the floor between his feet and his bandaged hand cradling the other, his face contorted in pain.
“You okay?”
“I think my finger’s broken,” he replied, his voice muffled by the lingering buzz in my ears.
“You’re just gonna have to suck it up, cupcake,” I said a little harsher than I intended, but we had other, more dangerous things to contend with for the moment.
Drawing in a deep breath, he rolled his neck and resettled his shoulders, once again donning the mask of all-around badass.
Damn that man is sexy.