Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(64)

Oh, it was terrible. She couldn’t watch. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away either. Because Vanessa, tears running down her face in a terrible mess, grabbed Rock’s head from the puddle of blood and lifted it, hugging it against her chest before bending to place a gentle kiss on the man’s lips…

And what happened next didn’t make a bit of sense.

Because Billy settled his hard, callused palm over her mouth, and from the corner of her eye she watched Boss do the same thing to Becky. Then, before Eve could begin to struggle, Boss asked, “We clear?”

And that’s when she noticed Ozzie over in the corner tapping away like crazy on a laptop keyboard. “As far as I can tell,” the wild-haired man answered, frowning at the screen and then shooting a pointed look toward the windows of the adjacent living room. “But let’s stay vigilant.”

“Affirmative,” Boss said, then, “Okay, let’s get the body cleaned up and ready for transport.”

And that’s when Rock’s shoulder moved, and Eve saw his wide hand emerge from behind the partition to settle on the back of Vanessa’s head.

Eve understood then why Billy had placed his palm over her mouth, because before she could call it back, a shriek of surprised terror rippled up from the depths of her shaking chest.

“Shh,” Billy whispered into her ear again. “It was all a hoax.”

***

“Vanessa, chere, just breathe,” Rock crooned, and the sound of that slow drawl and silken baritone kissed her ears and had another hard sob ripping up the back of her ravaged throat. It felt like she’d swallowed industrial-strength bleach. But she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Rock was alive! He was alive!

But how…?

She’d seen those bullets hit him. She’d seen him go down. Yet, here he was. Sitting at Eve’s dining room table after having grabbed a quick shower and change of clothes, reaching over to run a reassuring hand through her messy hair even as he held a tea towel against his ear.

And in the ten minutes since he’d been lying in that pool of blood, in the ten minutes since he’d pulled her to him and kissed her back with everything he had—probably to keep her from screaming her fool head off at the first sign he wasn’t dead—she hadn’t been able to stop crying.

It was like something inside her had broken and couldn’t be fixed…

Oh, she’d think she had herself under control, the tears would dry up, the shaking would stop and then, suddenly, off she’d go again, proving what an incredibly unhardass she really was.

Jesus.

“Done.” Becky walked into the living room, dusting off her hands like she’d been chopping logs instead of putting batteries into an amazing assortment of vibrators before taping them to all the windows in the house—along with Eve’s help. Which was another thing Vanessa had yet to fully process, the sight of Eve Edens, Chicago’s reigning socialite, with huge, ridiculously colored plastic cocks in her hand. “No more optical bugs up in this joint. Bam!” Becky acted like she was spiking a football before she broke into a little victory dance.

“Let me get a look at that ear,” Steady said, grinning and shaking his head at Becky as he sauntered over to Rock, his camouflage Army-issued medical kit held loosely in one tan fist.

“Nothing to be done for it,” Rock said, pulling the tea towel away. There was a shallow, half-inch wide chunk of flesh missing from the outer edge of his ear.

“At least we can stop the bleeding,” Steady muttered, setting his kit on the table and unzipping a pocket. He reached inside and came out with a package of QuikClot.

“Merde,” Rock groused, his goatee drooping at the corners. “That stuff burns like the fires of hell.”

“Quit being a baby,” Steady teased, ripping open the pack to shake some of the powder onto Rock’s torn ear. Rock hissed and grimaced and Steady rolled his eyes. “It’s better than losing any more blood and—”

Blood.

There’d been so much blood…

Vanessa couldn’t help it; another loud sob shuddered out of her.

“What’s up with her?” Steady asked, one black brow arched in question.

“I think the dam’s developed a major structural crack,” Rock replied, frowning over at her even as he held still so Steady could tape a makeshift bandage around the wound on his ear. “Chere,” he murmured again, grinning and giving her a reassuring wink. “It’s okay. Je suis bon.”

Yeah, he might be good, but she was definitely not. Because she could have killed him. And she could not get the image of him taking those shots to the chest out of her head. The gruesome sight of blood spraying in a terrible shower, of watching as he—

Just then, the back door inched open, and Ghost slid into the house, fluid like a shadow, quiet as a whisper.

“We good?” He posed the question to Ozzie, who was at the other end of the dining room table, alternately typing on the keyboards of two humming laptops.

“Seem to be,” Ozzie nodded, never taking his eyes from the screens. “Looks like the satellites have been repositioned, and I’m not picking up any other signs of surveillance.”

“Yeah,” Ghost nodded, approaching the group in order to carefully place his sniper rifle—he called it Sierra, of all things—on the table before lowering himself into a seat opposite Vanessa. “I didn’t see any sign of continued surveillance, and I made two passes ’round the property before enterin’. Maybe we’re good t’go.”