Page 90 of Double Shot

He sniffed. “Not high enough and not far enough back, sorry babes.”

“Next time,” I promised darkly.

“Oh yeah, for sure,” Kyle agreed, stepping down. I handed him the pistol after he finished rubbing feeling back into his hands and freeing himself from the bands that the bitch had him in.

“We good? Can we get out of here now?” I asked.

“Depends, you mad at me?” he asked and I shook my head. No, I wasn’t mad at him, I wasn’t mad at him at all. Iwas, however, so over this need to play rescue ranger. I wanted that fucking cuntdead.

* * *

“I don’t givea fuck what you do or how you do it, butfind her!” I snapped once we were back in the panic room. I stalked out of the room, over several dead men and went looking for the bar this fucking place had to have. I found some gin in a blue bottle and stomped back, finding Roan sitting at the computer console and Lach almost done dressing himself in the suit of one of the dead men. He fingered the bullet holes in the dark shirt before putting it on. They were mid-conversation.

“Aggro Sadie?” Roan asked, mildly.

“Aggro Sadie,” Lach agreed and his tone was both grim and tired. “Any other evening this eventful, and I’d be all for it, but… bro…”

“I take your meaning perfectly, mate. I’ll handle her.”

“Neither one of you ever has tohandle me,” I said, oddly hostile. Kyle jerked back like he’d been slapped.

“Sadie, no. That’s not what we meant.”

I looked from one to the both of them and parroted Conan’s words: “I take your meaningperfectly,” I declared. I set the bottle of gin on a stone side counter of the panic room which was fairly sizeable and held all manner of surveillance and computer equipment.

“I’m going to take a shower.”

I left them both, staring at one another and went and did just that. Being clean from some of this blood would be more than worth using a strange shower. They weren’t in a hurry to chase after her, after all.

I found myself in the bathroom attached to the room that unmitigated cunt had been torturing Kyle in.

The bitehurt. Throbbing incessantly, the flesh torn and swollen like a damn tennis ball was up under there. I examined the bruised and angry skin; it was hard to see through all the sticky blood but I was betting it was going to scar. An ugly one.

Angry tears stung my eyes.

Fucking bitch, looks like you got what you wanted,I thought to myself.

Fuck. Every time one of the boys looked at it, would they see her instead of me? Every time we fucked; would she be in the back of their mind?

I wanted to scream. I wanted to take a great deep breath and bellow my rage at the marble and glass walls of this shower – but I couldn’t. All it would serve would be to panic Kyle and Conan and I couldn’t do that to either of them. They’d both been through so goddamn much and the last thing they needed to do was worry about me…

The last thing I needed to do was make myself into someone or something they needed tohandlewhen they were already overburdened as it was, trying to handle their own traumas.

Everything is such a goddamned mess.I thought, and I was so angry, so restless, so –gah!I felt like I was going to come out of my fucking skin!

I stood under the shower and gritted my teeth against the pain, watching my blood swirl pink down the drain, until the water ran clear to my eye and I felt as raw, pink, heated, and scrubbed as I was going to get.

I wrapped my hair in one towel, a turban on my head, and another around my body and went to find my men starting where I’d left them… the panic room. Roan was still furiously working at the terminals and I needed to apologize.

Lach stood at the side counter I’d deposited his gin on, a first aid kit open on the granite. He was meticulously unwrapping this or that and laying everything out neatly. He turned when he heard me and scowled, his gaze zeroing in on my shoulder.

“Come here, Shady. Let me have a look at that,” he said, and I sniffed and went to him. He put his hands on my waist and popped me up onto the counter. I gasped where the towel didn’t quite cover and the backs of my thighs made contact with the cold stone.

Too bad it did nothing to cool my ire.

“I guess we all three have been bitten by her, now,” I murmured and I wouldn’t make any eye contact.

Lach smirked, the accompanying scoffing snicker a light sound heavy with derision, as he tipped some antiseptic onto some gauze. I sucked in a sharp breath at the serious sting as he covered the bite with it and pressed lightly.

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