Page 67 of Too Lethal to Love

Beth knotted her fingers in front of her mouth and squeezed, but they still shook.

Kane drew her to the side of the room. “I’m sorry about your colleague. I promise I’ll do everything in my power to bring her home alive.”

“I know you will. That’s what I’m afraid of.” She kicked his bionic shin. She preferred the painful reverberation in her toes to the fear-spiked panic in her heart. “Your leg may be made of bulletproof steel, but the rest of you isn’t.”

“Come on.” Kane tugged Beth out of the conference room and down a long hallway lined with paintings of military battle scenes. She had to jog beside him to keep up with his long, determined strides, but he didn’t care. The only thing on his mind was making Beth believe he’d come home alive.

“Where are we going?”

He stopped at a scanner by a door at the end of the hall and peered into it. “I need to show you something.” The seconds it took for the device to verify his retinal signature seemed like hours. As soon as the door opened, he tugged Beth inside and pinned her to the wall. “You want to know about the voodoo magic Scarlett and the rest of the brainiacs here at VIPER put in my body?”

“Did Edgar give you permission to tell me?”

The perk of excitement in her voice assured him that sharing his secrets wasn’t just right; it was essential. Edgar had instructed him to only use his weaponry if it was a matter of life or death. Telling Beth what VIPER engineered him to be, why his chances of surviving the bloodiest, harshest,deadliest situations imaginablewerelife or death. It killed him to know she feared she’d be the cause of his demise. She needed to know that coming back to her gave him more reasons to live.

“No, I don’t have permission, but I’m telling you anyway.” He wasn’t waiting for Edgar to sort through red tape. The worry needed to be wiped from her psyche now. He trusted her to not tell a soul about what she was about to witness. She’d kept Triple X to herself for years. He had no doubts she’d keep VIPER’s secrets and no doubt his brothers would understand why he disclosed classified information. Beth wasn’t just Scarlett’s bestie any longer. She was part of the VIPER family because she was…

Mine.

He wasn’t about to tell her that yet though. Hell, he wasn’t ready to say it aloud either, but between Jenna’s last words, Gran’s insight into his mother and her warning about regretting not living every moment on this earth with the snarky scientist he hadn’t meant to fall for, his thought didn’t seem so scary.

Beth took in the four bays with paper targets at the end in the shape of bodies. “This is a shooting range.”

“Yeah, it is.” He picked up a pair of thick, red-tinted glasses and handed them to her. “Put these on and watch.”

“Watch what?”

“You can’t see what I’m about to show you unless you put the glasses on.”

She opened her mouth, presumably to ask more questions, but he silenced her with a quick kiss. Against her lips, he murmured, “Just do it and watch.”

Slipping into bay number two, he stared down the long stretch and focused on the target. He’d never been in the range without his brothers, but it didn’t feel weird. Beinghere with Beth, sharing what he’d become, felt almost as intimate as making love to her.

He froze as his thoughts echoed in his brain like a gunshot.

Shit, is this what it felt like to be in love? What Chris had felt like when he’d fallen for Scarlett? Like he’d tear down any enemy that threatened the woman who had infiltrated his mind and heart so quickly, so easily, he’d been powerless to stop it. Chris had put his job on the line to protect Scarlett. Kane was about to do the same thing for Beth. If Edgar found out—no, when Edgar found out because that man knew everything that happened at headquarters—Kane would be in big trouble.

He grabbed glasses from a hook by the door and shoved them onto his face. He didn’t care about the consequences. The only thing that mattered was proving his point.

And the way to do that was to blow shit up.

On that thought, he activated his weaponry and welcomed the deadly current. The pain-laced pleasure reminded him that he was alive. That being a super soldier didn’t sentence him to the same fate as his father. That he hadn’t lost everything that day in the desert. That he’d been granted a second chance at life—at love—and he’d been too afraid to take it.

He glanced back at Beth as he adjusted the safety glasses that allowed him to track his V-Strikes as they streamed down the corridor and found the target. Witnessing his weaponry in action always gave him a thrill, but he spun to face Beth as he thought the command to fire.

The wonder on her face, like she’d unlocked a scientific secret that could change the world, made him feel ten feet tall. Her work with Triple Xwouldchange the world, and he was the lucky devil who had a shot at witnessing it with her.

No regrets.

Serve first, love later.

The two camps battled in his mind as V-Strikes streamed from his leg in rapid succession, each one fueled by his drive to obliterate everyone who hurt the smart, beautiful reason a war waged in his mind. As his V-Strikes hit the target, he locked his gaze with that reason and ticked off the degenerates who had hurt her.

Chavez.

The men in black who’d infiltrated the safe house.

Judy Martin and her big-mouthed entourage.

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