Page 64 of Reignite

The remote dropped from my hand crashing to the floor. Time and space and the universe flipped upside down and then right again.

Gray stepped from behind the wall, pushing past the woman, and used a tool to slice the ropes holding me under the drip of the candles.

“Gray?”

My vision blurred. I couldn’t see him. Was he here, or had my brain broken from the torture and reinvented him in my mind?

I’d stay locked up in a mental institution for the rest of my days with my imaginary Gray.

“My love.”

My body wanted to pass out, but I didn’t want to lose a moment. I swallowed the tinny taste in the back of my mouth and found my equilibrium again.

I reached up and touched his cheek. The beard there scratched my skin, the heat from his body seeped into my hand. “Are you really here?”

“I am, and I’m never leaving you again.” Gray picked me up from under the legs and carried me out of the room.

My heart fluttered in the way it does when we meet a new lover for the first time or find an old flame again. My skin tingled, from my scalp to my toes. All the fine hairs stood up all over my body, reaching, asking to be soothed.

He was here. Gray was alive.

I couldn’t comprehend it. Nothing made sense. “But… how?”

“First, let me get you out of here. Then I’ll explain everything.” He carried me toward the exit.

“You’re alive.” My grip back on reality lingered just out of reach. Because reality had taught me a hard lesson, a very painful one.

“You’re not going anywhere, Baker.” A shot reverberated through the club and we dropped to the floor.

Oh no. This couldn’t be happening. Gray’s body was on top of mine, crushing me under him. I didn’t feel any blood and I could feel him breathing.

“Are you shot? Are you hurt.”

“Go, Angel, go, go, go.” He rolled and shoved me toward a plush couch.

Foster’s voice filled the club from every speaker in our sound system. “Don’t be like that Baker. You’ve been hiding long enough. Let me end your misery and your girlfriend can get back to her depression.”

Gray did some hand signals to the woman and looked back to me. “We’re going to distract him, and you run for the exit.”

This was déjà vu all over again.

“No. Fucking. Way. That’s how I lost you last time.”

“Do as I say.” This wasn’t his Dom voice, this was pure desperation.

“No. You do as I say. We are going to get this pendejo once and for all.”

The barrel of a gun pressed into the back of my head. “Not this time, Angelina.”

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