Page 115 of Desperate Desires

My eyes flew open just in time to witness the carnage.

My attacker’s face—his ugly, monstrous face—erupted in a grotesque spray of blood, bone, and flesh as what must have been a dozen bullets tore him apart.

The world slowed.

Time splintered into jagged fragments as his body crumpled, lifeless.

Blood painted the walls, the floor—everything. But none of it mattered.

Because standing behind him, like a god of wrath incarnate, was Ono.

My Ono.

And he looked like the very embodiment of vengeance.

His cobalt-blue eyes blazed like ice lit from within, wild and unyielding.

“No! It was him! It wasn’t me!” Rico lied, but Ono wasn’t buying it.

He turned, grabbing his blade from his back holster and slicing it up and across Rico’s belly.

“Ono! I swear,” he sputtered.

“You swear? You fucking pig. A quick death is too good for you,” he growled, then turned to me.

“Did he touch you?”

I nodded. Then Ono turned back to Rico, and I couldn’t help it. I watched as he grabbed his hands, slicing them both off at the wrists.

Rico screamed, and Ono leaned down and whispered to him.

“I hope you bleed out slow, you sonovabitch.”

Then he slapped him with his own hands and grabbed his jaw, forcing it open as he shoved them both in his mouth.

Rico sputtered, choking on his flesh as he bled out on the floor.

I was a doctor. I took an oath.

Maybe I should have felt something. Some compulsion to help the men who’d hurt me.

But all I could feel was relief. Relief and vindication.

My man had come for me. He’d protected me. And I never loved him more.

Ono stood up. His chest rose and fell, each breath a storm barely contained beneath his ink scarred ivory skin.

Blood—not his own—streaked his jaw, and his hands gripped the still-smoking gun like it was forged from his very fury.

He wasn’t just a man in that moment.

He was retribution given form—unstoppable, terrifying, and utterly mine.

A sob clawed its way up my throat, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

All I could do was stare at the man who had just torn through Hell itself to save me.

Because no one—no one—brought me back from the brink of death but him. And the way he looked at me...it wasn’t just love.

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