“Okay.”
My voice was strange. It was quiet, weak and hoarse.
I didn’t see his hand move, but I felt him tuck my hair behind my ear.
That felt nice.
“You’re gonna be all right,” he assured me.
“Okay,” I whispered again in that voice.
“I’m gonna take care of this,” he promised.
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I replied with another, “Okay.”
His eyes closed then I could really focus on him when his forehead came to rest gently on mine.
He had great eyelashes.
“I love you, honey,” he said, low and fierce.
“I love you, too,” I told him, losing focus, my eyes slowly closing and reopening.
“I’m gonna take care of this,” he repeated his vow.
“Okay, sweetheart,” I replied, my eyes slowly closing and staying that way.
I felt the brush of his lips on mine.
Then I felt nothing.
*
I opened my eyes to sun then I blinked.
At what I took in, I pushed up the hospital bed, everything hitting me at once.
My arm in a cast. Pain in my ribs. My face. A concentration of pain at my upper lip.
No.
Pain everywhere. Dull pain, but it was there.
Everywhere.
And three big men I’d never seen standing around my bed.
Oh God!
“Told you you’d freak her,” a woman’s voice stated, and around the big man to my right, who had brown hair and a wicked scar on his face but was nevertheless extremely hot, came a pretty, petite blonde woman holding an adorable baby boy to her hip.
Her eyes hit mine. “Yo, I’m Sylvie Creed.”
This meant nothing to me and my hand inched toward the call button.
Her eyes didn’t miss this so she kept talking, jerking her head to the dark-haired man with unusual blue eyes standing to my left. “That’s Knight Sebring.”
Knight.
Knight was Raiden’s buddy.
My eyes went to him and my hand stopped.
“Least she knows you,” Sylvie muttered toward Knight, and an unbelievably beautiful woman came around his side and looked down at me with a small smile.
Then she said in a soft, calming voice, “Hi, Hanna. I’m Anya, Knight’s woman, and you’re safe. Okay?”
Not okay.
Nothing was okay.
Or nothing would be okay until I knew where my man was.
Because I remembered. I remembered everything. All of it. And as bad as what happened to me in my foyer was, it was worse with Raiden vowing he was going to take care of it.
I had a feeling with what he did to Meg (and he did do what he said he was going to do to Meg, the last thing I heard, she’d moved to Denver, mostly because she had no choice), since this was way worse, he was going to take care of this.
So I asked Anya, “Where’s Raiden?”
“That’s what we need to talk to you about,” she told me.
I did not take this as good.
“First, as Sylvie said, this is Knight,” she motioned to the man at her side and he jerked his chin up at me. “That’s Tucker Creed, he’s married to Sylvie,” Anya went on, motioning to the man with the scar. I looked to him and he gave me a small smile. “And that’s Deacon,” she concluded.
My eyes flew to the end of the bed to take in the extortionately good-looking, tall, dark-haired, scary man there.
“Looks like she knows you too,” Sylvie noted.
“I’m pleased to meet you all,” I cut in. “But where’s Raiden?”
“Hunting,” scary, hot guy at the foot of my bed grunted, and my heart started beating hard.
Or harder.
“Hunting?” I whispered.
“Yesterday,” Knight spoke gently and my eyes cut to him, “you were assaulted in your home by a man we’re looking for. You have a broken ulna, six broken ribs, a concussion and two stitches in your lip that the doctors say will dissolve and you’ll barely notice the scar. You’ll be under observation here at least until tomorrow and you’ll endure a recuperation period, but the doctors have assured your family that you’ll make a complete recovery. There’s no lasting damage.”
Except for the broken arm, ribs, barely noticeable scar, mild head injury and recuperation period and the news that my “family” was out there, probably worried like crazy about me, my ninety-eight year old Grams amongst them, that all sounded a lot better than what happened to me felt.
But I had bigger fish to fry.
“Okay,” I said softly. “But what does hunting mean?”
“You know your man, babe.” This came from Tucker Creed, and he was also speaking gently. “You know what it means.”
He was right. I knew what it meant.
Oh God.
I looked frantically to Knight. “You have to stop him. Stop him from doing something that might get him in trouble. Stop him from doing something he can’t live with.”
“He’ll be able to live with this,” Deacon’s voice rumbled up from my feet, and my eyes moved to him.
“Don’t let him do this,” I begged Deacon, his mentor, a man he trusted.