The man stayed where he was—for a split second.
The next thing she knew he’d grabbed hold of her, spun her around, and slammed her up against the damp cold bricks of the nightclub. As his huge body pressed into her back, she was very aware of that smell of him—which, considering things were going bad, bad, bad, she should not have noticed, much less approved of.
“Get off me,” she snarled.
With a yank against the hold on her arms, she tried to get her gun out. Or at the knife at her waist. Or to the pepper spray in her back pocket. Worse came to worst, she was going to bite the back of his hand and then take a course of PEP in case he was HIV-positive.
Baring her teeth, she went for—
The bullet sizzled past the top of her head, somehow charting a course that avoided both her skull and his jawline. And then there was a pinging sound as the slug hit something metal—and immediately, there was another pop! Pop! Poppoppoppoppop—
“I swear to God,” the deep voice in her ear muttered, “if you bite me, I’m going to toss you back out there and you can get plugged full of holes.”
Rio twisted her head and looked down the narrow chute between the walk-ups across the way and the club they were up against.
One of the shooters was using the blacked-out Charger he was parked in as cover. Not the worst idea given the size of its big block engine—and the fact that liquid gasoline didn’t actually explode. But he’d better keep his noggin down.
That safety glass was no better than a paper napkin—
The shattering of the windshield was spectacular, the spidering cracks virus’ing out from a pinpoint hole in the glass.
The immediate blaring horn suggested that someone was taking a little nap in the driver’s seat. But she didn’t have time to figure out who had done the job.
Her body moved without her giving any commands to her arms and legs.
Then again, luggage didn’t animate itself.
It was carried.
She was a human female, Lucan thought as he picked up the woman he’d been told to meet and carted her farther away from the shooting.
When the appointment had been made, he’d assumed that Rio was a male, and the fact that the “he” was actually a “she” was a goddamned inconvenience. In an exchange of bullets, he’d have let a male die, but it seemed, well, rude, or at the least ungentlemanly, not to save the fairer sex—
“Ow!” he barked.
As that Charger was put into gear, and its set of four rubber grabbers tried to claw into the damp asphalt, his damsel in distress squirmed around, grabbed his nuts, and cranked down on his hey-that’s-personals like she wanted him to sing something from Saturday Night Fever for her.
Instantly incapacitated, he let go of the woman and went bull rider, sinking into his knees around an invisible saddle—and thankfully, the grip was released. While Lucan blinked his eyes clear and tried to stand up straight, the woman shoved herself off of him, backing away—
Right into the path of the screeching muscle car with its pixelated safety glass, probably dead driver, and copilot who was apparently remaining under the dash while he or she steered an escape.
“No!” Lucan yelled.
The image of the woman wheeling around to face the car and getting spotlit by yellow running lights was going to stay with him forever: Her eyes popping open, her short dark hair a helmet that would do nothing to protect her skull, her reflexes not enough to save her.
She was hit fair and square, right in the legs, her body tumbling up onto the hood, her somersaults taking her in a roundabout over the busted windshield and across the roof and down the trunk: Hands, boots, hands, boots, her dark head the fulcrum around which the momentum carried her torso and spun her limbs.
The geometry was pretty damn clear. She was going to end up hitting the pavement on a headfirst landing—
Lucan sprang forward, putting all his strength into the surge, and just as he got in range, gravity won out over her forward motion, and her tender flesh started to fall with her skull leading the way—
He went airborne, throwing his body parallel to the pavement because it was his only chance to get there in time. With the wind in his ears, the stink of car exhaust and burnt rubber in his nose, and a pounding in his chest, he flew . . . flew . . . flew . . .
Like he was a bird instead of a wolven.
He grabbed whatever he could of the woman, locking his arms around her and rolling in midair so that his back and not her brains took the impact of their combined weights. As they began their joined descent, he tightened his left arm, and leveled the gun in his right to the shadows just beyond the fire escape.
The shooter there was still focused on the Charger, pumping bullets into the car, pings! and bursts of Roman candle sparks turning the thing into a deadly disco party.
Lucan got as many bullets off as he could before he landed so hard, the breath knocked out of him and his vision went on the fritz. He told himself that the distant shout of pain was the shooter going down, but he had no proof of it. He might have made the sound.
Now . . . no more shots. Just a soft moaning.
His? The human female’s? Not the shooter, too far away.
Meanwhile, the Charger was no more. The engine roar was dimming . . . and now disappearing.
Breathing. His. Hers.
Then he felt the pressure on his chest ease up and that on his hips increase. He opened eyes he hadn’t known were closed.
The woman was sitting up with her back to him. Right on his pelvis. Talk about bull riders.
As his thoughts went to places where they were naked, she was yee-hawing all over him, and things were on the hot and sweaty side of hi-how’re-ya—she cursed and put her hand up to her head. Then she looked around. Twisted around. Met his eyes with ones of her own that went wide as paper plates for a second time.
“Oh, Jesus—” she barked.