Twisted Games (Twisted, #2)(22)
“You’re really letting me walk around here without my vest?” I teased. The bulletproof vest hung in the back of my closet, unused since our trip to the mall.
An image of Rhys’s hands on my skin in the dressing room flashed through my mind, and my face heated.
Thank God it’s dark out.
“Don’t make me regret it.” Rhys paused before adding, “You’ve proven you can handle yourself without me breathing down your neck.” He said it almost grudgingly.
I had been more careful with my actions in recent months, even without Rhys’s explicit instructions, but I hadn’t expected him to notice. He’d never said anything about it until now.
A pleasant warmth unfurled in my stomach. “Mr. Larsen, we might not kill each other after all.”
His mouth twitched.
We continued walking through the park, where we passed couples making out on the benches, teens huddled by the fountain, and a busker playing his heart out on the guitar.
I wanted to stay in that peaceful moment forever, but dinner, alcohol, and a long day conspired to drive exhaustion into my bones, and I couldn’t hold back a small yawn.
Rhys noticed instantly. “Time to go, princess. Let’s get you to bed.”
Maybe it was because I was delirious from fatigue and the high emotion of the day, or maybe it was because of my recent dry spell with the opposite sex, but a mental image of him “getting me to bed” flashed through my mind, and my entire body flushed.
Because in my imagination, we were doing anything but sleeping.
Images of Rhys naked, on top of me, under me, behind me…they all crowded my brain until my thighs clenched and my clothes rasped against my skin. My tongue suddenly felt too thick, the air too thin.
My first sexual fantasy about him, and he was standing less than five feet away, staring right at me.
I was a princess, he was my bodyguard.
I was twenty-two, he was thirty-two.
It was wrong, but I couldn’t stop.
Rhys’s eyes darkened. Mind reading didn’t exist, but I had the eerie sense he could somehow crawl inside my brain and pick out every dirty, forbidden thought I had about him.
I opened my mouth—to say what, I wasn’t sure, but I had to say something to break the dangerously charged silence.
Before I could utter a word, however, a gunshot ripped through the night, and chaos ensued.
8
Bridget/Rhys
BRIDGET
One second, I was standing. The next, I was on the ground, my cheek pressed to the grass while Rhys shielded my body with his, and screams rang out through the park.
It all happened so quickly it took my brain several beats to catch up with my pounding pulse.
Dinner. Park. Gunshots. Screams.
Individual words that made sense on their own, but I couldn’t string them together into a coherent thought.
There was another gunshot, followed by more screams.
Above me, Rhys let out a curse so low and harsh I felt it more than I heard it.
“On the count of three, we’re running for the tree cover.” His steady voice eased some of my nerves. “Got it?”
I nodded. My dinner threatened to make a reappearance, but I forced myself to focus. I couldn’t freak out, not when we were in full view of the shooter.
I saw him now. It was so dark I couldn’t make out many details except for his hair—longish and curly on top—and his clothes. Sweatshirt, jeans, sneakers. He looked like any of the dozens of guys in my classes at Thayer, and that made him all the more terrifying.
He had his back to us, looking down at something, someone—a victim—but he could turn around any second.
Rhys shifted so I could push myself onto my hands and knees, keeping low as I did so. He’d drawn his gun, and the grouchy but thoughtful man from dinner had disappeared, replaced by a stone-cold soldier.
Focused. Determined. Lethal.
For the first time, I glimpsed the man he’d been in the military, and a shiver snaked down my spine. I pitied anyone who had to face him on the battlefield.
Rhys counted down in the same calm voice. “One, two…three.”
I didn’t think. I ran.
Another gunshot fired behind us, and I flinched and stumbled over a loose rock. Rhys grabbed my arms with firm hands, his body still shielding me from behind, and guided me to the thicket of trees at the edge of the park. We couldn’t reach the exit without passing directly by the shooter, where there was no cover at all, so we would have to wait until the police arrived.
They had to be here soon, right? One of the other people in the park must’ve called them by now.
Rhys pushed me down and behind a large tree.
“Wait here and do not move until I give the okay,” he ordered. “Most of all, don’t let anyone see you.”
My heart rate spiked. “Where are you going?”
“Someone has to stop him.”
A cold sweat broke out over my body. He couldn’t possibly be saying what I thought he was saying.
“It doesn’t have to be you. The police—”
“It’ll be too late by the time they get here.” Rhys looked grimmer than I’d ever seen him. “Don’t. Move.”
And he was gone.
I watched in horror as Rhys crossed the wide-open expanse of grass toward the shooter, who had his gun aimed at someone on the ground. A bench blocked my view of who the victim was, but when I crouched lower, I could see beneath the bench, and my horror doubled.