Page 140 of Wicked Rivals

Dark blue, worried, innocent.

A hand pressed down hard on my arm.

Pressure but no pain.

Only cold, cold blood. But without the pain…

Was I alive?

Blurs of light sped past.

My eyelids grew heavy again, so I let them close.

My mind faded back into dark oblivion.

The jostling of my body and my flailing arms pulled me back into a distant awareness again.

I opened my eyes and met Stefano’s gaze as he carried me in his arms, holding me against the warmth of his chest.

His breath pumped in and out. He was running.

His woodsy scent with its notes of whiskey and a spicy floral, iris maybe, overwhelmed my senses.

Proof I still lived.

He shouted at someone, his deep timber echoing through me as if he stood at the opposite end of a long, empty tunnel.

I wanted to say something, anything, but I couldn’t push out enough breath to form any words.

Then his warmth left me. His eyes. His scent. Gone.

He’d let me go.

Please come back.

Wait. A cold, hard surface. I lay on his desk.

The thought gave me a fleeting moment of happiness.

And then I lost myself to that fucking darkness again.

Searing hot pain burst through my arm, shooting up through my shoulder, and I screamed.

I was definitely alive and now wide awake.

The cold left me, everything becoming hot and wet and sticky. Sweat covered every part of me, which kind of didn’t make sense because my entire body trembled and shook.

An older man with white hair stood over me, studying my arm with small magnifying attachments on each lens of his eyeglasses. Stefano’s private physician.

“Hang in there, kiddo. Not much longer,” he said. “I found the bullet. Now we must get it out.”

With great effort, I rolled my head to the side and focused my gaze on Stefano. He sat beside me, holding my hand between his own strong hands.

The tube attached to my wrist with layers of medical tape had an enormous needle going into my arm. Not the normal tubing you would see with a standard IV but thicker, with dark liquid running through it into my vein.

I sucked in a sharp breath and stared at Stefano.

The line in my arm came straight from his.

---