Page 70 of Dirty Gambit

Frankie visibly hesitated, jaw muscles tight, but she relented gingerly. The gun was lowered and set on the floor at her booted foot.

“Kick it away,” Travis commanded. Frankie did with a deep, unhappy inhale. The weapon clattered loudly as it went spinning under the sofa. “Wonderful. Now, move to that seat over there, please.” He motioned to the sofa furthest from everyone and waited until Frankie was properly seated before speaking again. “Now, Jaxon and I are going on a ride, and if anyone follows us—”

“You’re not taking him anywhere.”

Lena appeared in the open doorway, clad in her beautiful white dress, the one he’d stripped off her just a handful of hours before. Her unbound mane spilled around her bare shoulders in glossy waves. The sight of her unarmed and vulnerable sent a violent wave of hot and cold crashing through him.

“Lena.” Travis beamed, cracking open the thin gash in his lip and spilling fresh blood down his chin to join the others across his shirt. “I was just on my way to get you.”

Lena never wavered under his leer. “Let them go, Travis.”

Travis scoffed. “Why would I do that?”

She took a small step into the room, and it took everything Jaxon had not to scream at her to run. She studied Travis with a calm no person should ever feel when confronted with that situation. Her gaze lingered on the gun wedged right up against Jaxon’s head, a muscle flexing in her jaw before her eyes found his. It held. The connection between them vibrated with a hot intensity that rippled along his skin. Something shone in hers he couldn’t place, a glimmer he didn’t like. The appearance of it tightened every muscle in his body, causing his heart havoc even before she broke their link and opened her mouth.

“Because you’re going to take me instead.”

“No!”

Panic and adrenaline whipped through Jaxon, a cyclone of crystalized ice ripping through his senses. He barely acknowledged his own reflexes when he nearly clawed to his feet, prepared to throw himself in front of her. It was only Travis’s grip on his top that stopped him. It was the vicious yank, the tearing of fabric as he forced Jaxon back to his knees that finally brought him back.

“Let the bitch speak, Jaxon,” Travis mocked, giving Jaxon a hard shake for good measure.

Jaxon released the snarl at the back of his throat, frustration blinding him to all rational thought. He could only see Lena standing small and determined in the doorway of his childhood home, facing down a monster. Her defiance radiated strength and power, an unwavering decision to fix a wrong. It didn’t seem to even dawn on her that this could get her killed in return.

“My life in exchange for theirs,” she declared, threads of conviction weaving through the offer.

“Lena, stop!” Jaxon begged.

She ignored him, steely determination an iron rod pressed along the length of her spine. It coiled in the tight fists at her sides, the hard edge in her eyes. She was a woman prepared to face death in exchange for Jaxon and his family.

“If you promise to let these people live and forget all about Jessie, I will go with you willingly. I won’t fight. I won’t resist. I will do whatever you ask.”

Travis’s scoff dripped with disdain and impatience. “Do you really think I care if you fight? In the end, you will do whatever I ask no matter what.”

“But imagine having a girl you don’t have to drug up, someone who willingly…” she choked on the rest of her words, the first real sign of how terrified she actually was. “You know you’d get more.”

Her words took Jaxon a few seconds too long to register. The implication of what she was doing, was offering dropped into the pit of his stomach like a chunk of ice. A numbing horror spread through him, paralyzing him even as every muscle in his body screamed to get up, to fight, to kill the bastard before he could touch her, but Jaxon couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel anything below his neck.

Travis barked a laugh. “Are you seriously trying to negotiate their lives in exchange for your pussy?”

The smooth column of Lena’s throat bobbed. “It’s a fair trade. The money you could make off me would pay off the amount missing in the bag, and I will work off Jessie’s freedom for however long it takes.”

Jaxon’s senses crashed into him with the ferocity of a train. “Over my dead body!”

An explosion of pain erupted across Jaxon’s vision when the butt of Travis’s gun collided with the side of his skull. A brilliant shower of sparks catapulted the world into a spiral of colors and sounds. Rough carpet cushioned his palms, peeling skin in his attempt to save his face from meeting the same fate. His ears buzzed, muffling Lena’s voice. He caught the fuzzy outline of her frame sprinting forward but immediately come up short when the barrel returned to Jaxon’s head.

“I’m not going to tell you again, Jaxon,” Travis was shouting when the ringing slowed. “Keep your mouth shut.”

“Fuck you,” Jaxon sneered through gritted teeth. “You’re not taking her.”

“Don’t!” Lena cried, arms springing up as if she could stop what was about to be another blow. “Don’t hit him again. Please.”

Jaxon wanted to tell her to stop protecting him, but Travis was speaking. “I’m losing my patience, Lena.”

Dark eyes bounced from the drug trafficker to Jaxon, brimming with anxious uncertainty. Her attention lingered on his head where he could feel the hot trickle of blood seeping down the back of his neck to soak into the collar of his top. Her tongue poked out to dampen her lips.

“Just let them go.”

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