Page 139 of Crave Me

I saw his eyes spark with that familiar savagery, him trying to fight it off so he didn’t lose himself to it. He’d been tested so much lately, it seriously concerned me that he might not be able to resist the pull of that blackness.

I fired off two more shots, dropping the opponents either side of him.

I couldn’t take the one right in front of him without risking hurting Caleb in the process.

“Elijah wants his pet back,” the guy was telling him as he tried to choke him out. “Gonna make great leverage against King, gonna give him one hell of a show this time.”

I was there in the next second, pistol-whipping the guy. It had his grip weakening a little and I trapped him in a head lock and wrenched him back off Caleb.

“Motherfucker!” Caleb roared, slicing his knife across the guy’s cheek, then driving it into his chest as I held him steady.

As he lurched, I released him and he collapsed among the rest of the fallen all over the lobby.

I stepped back and moved my gun back and forth, scanning the immediate area and listening intently, as I held my other hand behind me, keeping Caleb back in a protective stance.

More screams sounded form outside in the courtyard.

Then footsteps rounded the corridor and I looked to see my security team being led by Luke rushing down. Luke headed to me, while sending the two dozen men in various directions.

A crash rang out from upstairs and he rediverted some of them up there, just as I bolted forward.

“Report,” I urged, wanting to head upstairs and secure Bastian and Skylar.

“It’s been difficult to determine with all surveillance down along with communications, so I had to use word of mouth, hence the delay, and our response not being instantaneous. We’ve got three dozen of them spreading out throughout the property. Highly-trained mercenaries. We need to secure you and yours immediately.”

“Secure the others, I’m not sitting this out.”

As he went to protest, more crashing, the shattering of glass, and hefty thuds sounded, and in the next few seconds, a whole barrage of hostiles barreled out onto the corridor, coming from the living rooms, dining rooms, along the left.

Fuck.

30

~Skylar~

Not the wakeup call I’d imagined.

As I slammed my opponent’s face into the dresser, knocking the bastard out, I turned to see Bastian hurling a pair of scissors he’d snatched from the bathroom through the air toward another guy who’d just hurtled in through the now shattered window. The guy choked and Bastian spun into a brutal kick that sent the hostile careening through the open window, his choked screams sounding all the way down the long drop before being cut off with a sudden thud as he obviously hit the ground.

Bastian turned back to me, breathing heavily, as we both took in the carnage all around. The broken furniture, the mess on the bed, as well as a hostile bleeding out all over it. He’d been one of the first to smash his way in here through the window. Another was through the bathroom with the shower curtain half ripped off the bath and wrapped around his neck from Bastian strangling him with it. He wasn’t dead, but unconscious. Bastian didn’t kill and I hoped he hadn’t broken that rule with the guy he’d thrown out the window.

Reading me so well as usual, he assured me, “He’s alive. Still wide awake, just not able to move a fucking muscle. The scissors didn’t hit his artery.”

“Good,” I breathed. “Good.”

He brushed past me then, stroking my arm along the way, then ripped open the bottom door of one of Caleb’s nightstands. There was a safe inside, which he hurriedly unlocked, then opened to reveal two guns inside. He handed one to me, then shut the safe and cocked the other.

“Wow,” I said, doing the same.

“Fully loaded as always. Cal’s security blankets.” He approached the door. “This room isn’t safe. We need to get to the sub-level. Power’s out, but there’s a manual lock on the inside. Once the door’s sealed, the space is impenetrable. Cas keeps the computer system in Faraday Cages so it would’ve been protected from the hit that knocked out everything. Even if we can’t get word out from there, he has military radios and shit down there too, so we can use those.”

“We need to get my dad and your brother too.”

“Your dad was shacked up with Riley tonight, so she’ll get him to safety with that crazy skillset of hers.”

“He… what?”

He winced. “Before I came in here for our sex marathon, I saw him sneaking into her room.”

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