Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(50)

He moaned and the hand holding my chin slipped into my hair. He pulled gently, tilting my head to the side for better access, sweeping his tongue deep into my mouth. My eyes fluttered open a moment, and my legs turned rubbery. I had to brace myself over him, fighting a very real urge to straddle his erection, which was tenting the hospital blankets. The fact that he’d had surgery only two days before hardly registered. Not to me, and obviously not to him.

I didn’t know how far we’d have gone had he not been hooked up to a heart monitor. Cory’s pulse must’ve been racing—the machine beeped frantically and a nurse jogged in to check it.

“Damn, and here I thought you were going into cardiac arrest,” she laughed.

I straightened quickly and Cory tossed a pillow over his groin. Both of us were breathing heavily, both of our faces flushed, like teenagers caught making out.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” the nurse said. “I’ll let you alone. Just take it easy.” She winked.

“No, uh, no. I’m going. I have to go.” I smoothed my hair. “Goodbye, Cory. Goodbye.”

He offered me a version of his crooked grin, his eyes betraying him. The spark of passion we’d been kindling was there, but fading into sadness. Or resignation.

“Goodbye, Alex.”

I stared at him, drank him in one final time, and then hurried out of the room without looking back, down the corridor, and into the parking garage, which was mercifully free of press.

“Move on,” I said in the quiet confines of my car, my hands twisting around the steering wheel. “Yes. The robbery. The monster squad. And him.”

I raced my car over the streets of Los Angeles, trying to put as much distance between myself and Cory Bishop as I could. But he was right there on my lips and tongue, and the sound of his pulse racing on the monitor as we kissed resounded in my mind. The machine had betrayed him but my heart had been racing just as fast.

And still was.





Chapter Nineteen


Alex



Though the very last thing I wanted to do was discuss the bank robbery with the Posse, I dutifully showed up at the Belvedere on Monday at noon sharp. It was my turn to pick up the bill, after all, and I’d be damned if I’d show any weakness. I was fine.

I’d had dinner with my parents on Saturday night—mercifully without Drew who’d begged off for a work commitment—and endured their endless questions about the robbery, and then their worry over my living alone in the bungalow.

My father had been satisfied with my explanation but Mother thought the sun rose and sank in Drew’s honor, and was concerned that I was going to “lose that fine, upstanding young man” if I wasn’t careful. But I had managed to assure them that it was romantic notion for Drew and I to not see so much of each other before the party, and the dinner had ended with hugs from my father and only one mildly suspicious look from Mother.

And I’d had only one nightmare that weekend—a doozy, if I cared to admit it, which I did not. One in which Dracula dragged me before a firing squad composed of blinding lights that illuminated the splattered blood on my clothes. He leaned to me, his cold, dead eyes so close I could see nothing else.

“Hope he was worth it,” he said, putting the gun to my head. The shot was almost as loud as my scream. Almost.

But otherwise…

“I’m fine,” I said, answering Minnie Pitman’s pitying stare. “Really. It’s been a week and…I’m fine.”

I felt Lilah watching me and kept my eyes averted when she said, “A week? It’s been four days.”

“Well, I just can’t believe you were involved—no, at the center—of something as big as that hostage situation,” Antoinette said with more than a touch of envy tingeing her words. “Tell us all about it. Tell us about the end. Is it true the ringleader had singled you out? That he was about to…Um, well…”

“Kill me?”

Rashida shivered and Lilah looked away, shaking her head.

Minnie clasped her hands together. “Oh dear, how dreadful. But then that young man stopped him. Stopped the whole robbery.” She leaned forward over the table. “I’d heard he jumped on one of the desks with one of those automatic weapons—”

“One that he killed a robber to get,” Rashida put in.

“Yes!” Minnie said, her eyes alight. “And then he just started shooting. Is that true?”

“Not remotely,” I said.

“But he did stop the robbery, this hero of yours?” Antoinette asked. “And saved your life?”

“Yes, but he it wasn’t as Rambo-esque as the stories have made him out to be. He was scared. We were all so scared and he…” My memory folded back to that awful moment, until I could feel Connor’s gun pressed behind my ear and Cory’s low voice, Let her go or I’ll kill you…

Lilah, sitting to my left, squeezed my hand. “Alex? Are you all right?” She fixed the others with a dirty look. “We need to talk about something else.”

“No, it’s fine, I’m fine, sorry.” I shook off the memory and forked a bite of salad. It tasted like paper but I managed a smile. “Anyway, the moral here is never believe everything you hear.”

Antoinette stirred her iced tea. “Ah, but what we see with our own eyes is another matter. I’ve seen pictures of your bank hero. The news did a little feature on him.” She fanned herself with her napkin. “He’s yummy. I mean, wow.”