Page 93 of Cruel Ice

Marley bent toward him. Her lips brushed over his ear. “Then I guess I’ll just go to hell and fight the devil until he gives you back to me. I’m not scared of evil, and I know it when I see it.” She pressed a kiss to his scar. Lifted her head. “I know it when I see it,” she repeated. “And I know love when I feel it.”

He did, too. His love for her was something that had been there…hell, since the basement. Growing and growing until she filled the heart that had always felt cold and withered but now beat so incredibly fast. Fast not because he was afraid of dying, but because he didn’t want to leave her. He wanted to be with Marley. To have a life with her. To have something more than ashes and pain and a past that gutted and twisted.

He wanted his Marley. Maybe he didn’t feel love the way others did. Who cared? She was it for him. The one he would always love. “I would die for you…a thousand times.”

“You’d better not,” she snapped back. “Not even once, understand me?Not even once.”

Royal’s head was suddenly next to hers. “Yeah, bro, so…we have two dead bodies here. Need me to hide them before the cops arrive?”

One cop was already there. Was Parker still alive? “Save…the detective…”

“We’re not burying any bodies.” Marley was adamant. “We’re saving Parker, and Declan is going to recover fully. You hear me, Declan? You are recoveringfully.”

His eyes wanted to drift closed. He didn’t let them. He couldn’t. If he was going to leave this world, she would be the last thing he ever saw. No darkness. Only light.

Only his Marley.

“I love you,” he told her.

“About time you said it.” Marley’s fingers skimmed over his cheek. “About time.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“I’m his fiancée.”Marley’s voice drifted through his head. “Where he goes, I go.”

He was moving. No,hewasn’t the one moving. He wasbeingmoved? Pushed. Lifted? A siren wailed and lights flashed and?—

Marley’s soft fingers squeezed his hand. “Where he goes, I go.”

“I’m his fiancée!”Marley’s voice. Loud. Angry. Definitely angry. “What in the hell do you mean I can’t go in the operating room with him? Did youmissthe fiancée part? Where he goes, I go and—Declan! Declan! Don’t you dare die on me!”

“I’m his fiancée.”Flat. “I’ll be staying here all night long and all day long. I will be here when he opens his eyes. Try to move me. I dare you.”

Declan opened his eyes.

Marley released a long, slow breath as she perched on the edge of his hospital bed. Her eyes felt grainy. Probably from all the tears she’d shed and the sleepless night. But she hadn’t been able to risk sleeping. Declan needed her.

And she’d been afraid he might slip away from her.

She waited a moment as he took in his surroundings. The bright, white walls. The low hum of voices coming from outside. The antiseptic smell.

His head turned. His gaze focused on her.

“Hi.” Way too hoarse. Marley cleared her throat. “Fancy meeting you in yet another hospital.”

His eyes narrowed.

Her heart drummed hard in her chest. He’d lost so much blood. His skin had turned deathly pale, and she’d been utterly terrified.

“Pro tip.” Still too hoarse. “If you’re shot, tell someone. I had this stupidly sexy billionaire guy tell me that once. Life changing info, right there. Lifesaving, too. Because if people know you’ve been shot, they can, oh, I don’t know—help you.” She wanted to pounce on him. To hold him tight and never, ever let go.

But he hadn’t smiled at her feeble joke. He just kept staring at her with that hard, fierce expression on his face.

Marley released another breath. “Do you remember me?” She’d asked him the same question the first time he’d awoken in a hospital and found her at his bedside. Surely, he remembered her, though. There had been no blows to the head. No brain injuries.Just massive blood loss.

Declan stared back at her with his dangerous gaze, and the hazel swirled. In the next instant, his hand flew out and clamped around her wrist. Sure enough, just that touch from him had her pulse racing like crazy.

Different hospital, same story.

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