Page 126 of Fall Into Me

“Get your fucking hands off me!” I snarled, managing to get a knee free and drive it as hard as I could between his legs, but all he did was grunt. Not even an eye twitch.

It was enough to throw me off my focus, and I lost our frantic battle when he managed to get both my wrists pinned above my head.

A guttural, throat-ripping sound tore from me, raw and involuntary, as he ripped the buttons from my blood soaked shirt, exposing my breasts to him. When his gaze raked over me and a vile hunger flashed in his eyes, he placed his free hand over one and squeezed violently, his fingernails digging into my skin.

He let go only to grab my face, forcing my mouth open before he pressed his cracked, dry lips against mine. His tongue slithered forward like a worm, trying to burrow its way down my throat.

All I could taste was blood, and my body jolted with nausea. The swell of panic started to rise, and the realization that the one chance I gave myself to get the upper hand had slipped through my fingers.

I started bucking my hips, trying to displace him from where he was bearing all his weight down on top of me, but all he did was grip my face harder, my jaw aching painfully at the way his fingers were digging into the bone.

I didn’t stop. I kicked, I flailed, every part of me moving like I was possessed. His grip shifted slightly as he tried to balance himself against my relentless thrashing, and that was all I needed.

You didn’t grow up on land with Dallas Grey as your father and not learn how to fire a gun.

Declan assumed I’d aim for his face again or maybe try another wild kick to his balls. He adjusted, bracing for the wrong attack, and that gave me the opening I needed. My hand slipped free of his hold and darted around his body, reaching for the weapon I’d seen him tuck into the back of his jeans.

The moment the gun was pressed to his side, he stilled above me. The house around us went deathly quiet, broken only by my heavy gasping pants.

The adrenaline was coursing through me so rapidly that everything turned crystal clear. Hyper focused.

“Get the fuck off me,” I said, each word with precision and dug the gun into his side even deeper, enough to make him pull his hand from my face.

Declan laughed, slow and mocking. “You won’t shoot me.” He sounded so fucking sure of himself. I was about to tell him that I was absolutely going to shoot him when another voice pierced the air.

“Oh, I think she might.”

I didn’t take my eyes off Declan, but I watched him slowly lift his head to look up at the source of that voice. I didn’t need to see him to know who it was.

Ashton.

I listened to the heavy footfalls of his boots walk around us slowly, lazily, until he was standing behind Declan. Watched as the barrel of his own gun settled onto the back of Declan’s head.

“Get off her.” Ashton’s voice was sharp, deep, and nothing like the man I knew. The man who had been one of my closest friends. Someone who had come into my life fused himself to a part of me, made himself integral in memories and birthdays andlife. Who’d only ever been kind and gentle to me, but wasshaped by a past I’d never understand. A past that was dark and vicious and monstrous.

That was who was looking back at me now, and I was fucking relieved.

Declan kept his eyes on me the whole time, and I didn’t lower the gun for even a second, reaching for the ends of my ruined shirt with one hand and clutching it closed.

Ashton didn’t waver. “Looks like Cindy did some real damage, huh, Dec?”

“I stabbed him in the ass.” My chest was heaving, but my gun was steady, and for some reason, it was the first thing that came to mind.

Ashton’s laugh was so misplaced, so perfectlynotappropriate, that by doing that one single thing he irrecoverably changed the entire situation for me. Because standing there, running through everything that had just happened, I still felt likeme.

The terror that had been coursing through me, the life-ending panic—it had all vanished. I feltpeace.

“I get to tell Fane.” He wagged his eyebrows at me, and I knew what he was doing. He was trying to keep me focused on whatever eye of the storm this was, where I could laugh while pointing a gun at a man I was pretty sure had come here to kill me. But…Fane.

“He’s going to hurt him.” I moved my eyes from Declan to Ashton’s icy-blue ones that flashed with fury at the very idea that something could happen to his friend. The same fury burned as he gave me a quick once-over, his gaze cataloging every bruise, every cut, every mark on my body.

Marks Declan had made. Against his own life, if I had to guess.

It was a strange concept to grasp that this had all happened in Darling. Sweet, safe Darling.

Love of my life spontaneously shows back up?Check.

Moves into my house because of a big fat lie I told for two straight years?Check.

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