Page 27 of The Last Time You Break Me

The world spun and it almost stole me to the mindless haze I was trained to withstand.

I raised my hand and took aim, ready to fire my second bullet. My finger tested the trigger and without hesitation, I pulled.

Reggie came out of nowhere and grabbed my wrist, making the shot go wide and implanting within the skull of one of the mystery man’s minions and that gave them enough time for him to dash inside the car and speed off kicking up dust and soil in its wake. The other cars followed and left behind three other drivers who stepped from the car.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” I hissed as my temper flared.

“We need him alive, Lara. We need to know what’s happening here,” Reg reposed as if I was thick.

I sneered and shoved him away from me. “I know that, for fuck sake! Like I said, I never miss, asshole. My shot wouldn’t have killed him, it would have slowed him down so we could get to him!”

My nostrils flared as my hands trembled from my rage. It took everything within me not to swing at him. But I could never do that. It would cross the line between sensual dominance and domestic violence. So instead, I clenched my fist so tightly, my nails dug into my palm and drew blood. I bit back the hiss as I rolled my shoulders and tried to calm myself down from losing it and allowed the darkness to take me.

Reggie reached around me as he twisted us and tucked me into his hold while he brought his arm up. He hissed in pain as one of the suited men slashed him with a knife and opened his arm. Blood poured from the wound, thick ropes of tissues and plasm that meshed together.

Bone glistened in the light and that darkness returned once again with something I don’t think many, if not any, could withstand.

“Son of a bitch,” I sneered as I bolted forward, while I swung my knife artfully within my hand when I replaced my gun with it. I slashed and I carved, arcs of blood splattered throughout the air and rained down upon my body. It coated my face and blonde hair and I relished in every second of it.

I craved it, with a vengeance for more. It sparked mayhem and savagery in my core and I could no longer hold back the urge to brutalize. Something like an impulse clawed at my chest, pushing me forward with a need that made me see nothing but sheets of brilliant red.

When I came out of my darkness, I was kneeled above a corpse. I had removed his face, carved and weaved until he was unrecognizable. I slashed down his throat and ripped out his Adam’s apple, crunching it beneath my knee. His eyes laid hanging from his skull, swaying in the soft winds that blew a little too forcefully. His chest had been cracked open, ribs shattered and organs pulverized.

I hadn’t noticed how dark I had gone, how uncontrolled until I blinked and saw the callus and ferocious attack done by my very own hands. My breathing was heavy, broken and with every inhale, it stuttered out of me like a broken air con that choked out broken gushes of hot air that went nowhere. I never recognized myself when I got like this.

But I always knew it was me behind it.

My throat was dry, raw like sandpaper as it scratched and bled from the noises being pulled from my chest that heaved.

I swiped a hand over my face, unintentionally added my blood to my tanned complexion and I withdrew, staring down at the body in disconnect.

I kept my eyes trained to the corpse, not wanting to see my surroundings. I had said it before and I’d say it again, I make no apologies for what I am. But that didn’t mean that it was easy for anybody else to see it when it was unleashed.

A noise captured my attention. A wet and gurgled grunt which forced me to bring my eyes up and turn my head to the left. Reggie stamped down on one man’s skull, brain matter and skull fragments lost to the flattened soil as he inscribed the man’s head back into the earth and then broke the neck of another in a way that had the bone protruding and parting from the flesh of his throat.

It was gruesome, grotesque. Fuckingawesome.

“Guess nobody really does survive the psycho, hey, Hellcat?” he whispered, voice so husked and raw that it sent shivers skating across my chilled skin.

Blood covered his body, his leather jacket left back in the car. It left him in nothing but a shirt that rippled under his strength and gathered around his shoulders, covered in crimson red.

His tattoos were on display and utterly glorious. My pulse thundered as it pumped just beneath the surface.

I could have tried to deny how I felt about him all that I wanted to, but I couldn’t deny how I reacted when he became hurt. It unraveled me.

I looked up, and noticed John. He had been struck dumb in the chaos, and only now had he thought to run. I took aim with the gun and unloaded a bullet right into his spine.

It wouldn’t kill him but it sure as fuck would paralyze him.

He wouldn’t need to be able to walk in order for us to interrogate him.

He fell to the ground, flat on his chest as his face hit the floor hard with a thud. That look in his eye, it was one of the soul being dragged down into the depths of Hell.

I looked back at the two girls on the ground, heads covered as they trembled. “Hey,” I whispered from my seated straddle of the dead man. “Over there, in the raised part of the field is a latch. Open it and get down into the tunnels. Tell Big Terry that Lara sent you. That they need to help you until backup arrives. Is that clear?”

One of the girls, with a tentative energy, gazed up at me and timidly nodded her head, breathing a heart-wrecking yes, before she helped the other girl up and ushered her to follow the orders I had issued. As the second girl went down, the first turned back toward me. “Thank you,” she choked out, then disappeared beneath the ground.

I stood on shaky legs and stumbled to Reggie’s side. He caught me with little effort, with eyes that assessed me before I took his arm and looked at his wound. My heart hammered at how severe it looked. He pulled back, as he hid it from my sight. “It’s nothing. I’m fine, Lara.” he protested with a groan before a determined look passed in his gaze and he pushed forward and with his good arm, tangled his hand in my hair and brought my face close to his. Heavy breath kissed against my lower lip as he hovered above me, emotion thick in those stormy eyes which caused the world around us to still. “Admit it, troublemaker,” he whispered heavily. “ It scared you. It scared you because you love me. You have always loved me. You’re just too stubborn to admit it now,” he pleaded with those hurricane brewed eyes of his, with the hard planes of his face that softened in the hope I would see the more gentle side to him.

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