I swallowed the lump in my throat, slowly shaking my head. Hunter nodded as he moved behind me and wrapped his arms alongside mine.
“I got it,” I said breathlessly.
I turned in his arms and kissed him, before turning again and doing the same with each of them, holding their equally passionate and yet wholly different kisses in turn.
Hunter looked at the other three and nodded solemnly. “Alright then. Let’s roll.”
15
The lodge was quiet, but I knew the silence was deceiving. I followed my three men through the footpath from the mountain road, the shadowy outline of Luke and Jordan’s lavish mountain retreat looming against the starlit sky.
I felt a hand on the small of my back, and felt lips against my ear.
Damien.
“When I say hang back I mean hangwayback, got it?”
I nodded, shivering in the night air. “I got it.”
“Nothing can happen to you, Ari,” he said softly, all of us stopping by the dark tree line.
“I mean that.” He cupped my chin, raising it as he leaned in and kissed my mouth hard, as if to convey the things a hardened man like that couldn’t put into words.
“If...” I pulled back, my face crumbling. “If something happens to Sasha, or the baby—”
“It won’t,” Sean said quickly, shaking his head. He put a hand on my hip, rubbing me softly. “I promise.”
He pulled me around as he kissed me then, different than Damien’s, but just as electric and just as passionate.
I turned and grabbed Hunter by the shirt collar, kissing him and feeling the shiver run through me at the deeply masculine growl that rumbled in his throat.
“Alright, let’s do this thing,” Sean said, nodding solemnly. “On my mark, we—”
The sound of gunfire had us dropping to the ground, Hunter scrambling to cover me with his body as the tree-branches exploded like fireworks around us. The house suddenly lit up with floodlight, illuminating men in black with guns running out of various doors and from around the side of it, all converging on the thicket of trees we were in.
“Now!” Damien roared, lunging to his feet with the gun in his hands blasting as he lurched out of the tree. Sean and Hunter exploded after him, roaring and laying down fire as they made a break for the house.
The gun was like dead weight in my hands, and sweat suddenly broke out on my back. I could feel my heart pounding like a truck engine as I watched the scene unfold as if in slow motion. Sean, skidding to a stop behind a tree stump, his expression grim before he whirled around and squeezed off a few rounds into three men in black running towards him. They dropped to the ground, and Sean ducked back behind his cover as another fresh spray of lead raked the wood beside him.
I could feel the cool of the gunmetal in my hot palm as I watched Hunter and Damien rush to cover him, hurdling over a fallen tree and bellowing like warriors as they rushed the group converging on Sean.
Then it was chaos, like little vignettes flashing before my eyes. Sean jumping back up, and slamming his gun into the gut of one of the goons who’d tried to dash around his cover. Hunter dropping four more bad guys in cold-blooded precision. Damien roaring as something hit him in the arm, spinning him around and dropping him to a knee before he lurched back up, face a mask of rage as he shook off the hit and kept advancing.
And for a second, itreallylooked like we were winning. The three men advanced steadily on the mountain lodge, and more and more goons fell under their honed skills. I made a move from the stand of trees where I’d been waiting, darting behind the men as they advanced on the big glass wall that faced the huge patio.
“Behind us, Ari,” Hunter said breathless, his jaw tight and his gun trained on the glass door to the still-dark-inside house. “Stay—”
“That’s far enough!”
The lights suddenly kicked on behind the glass wall, illuminating the scene inside.
And the whole world went cold and slow around me.
There was Mark, an arm around Sasha’s throat and gun in his hand.
A gun pointedrightat her belly.
Her face was drawn but, it wasn’t fear I saw etched across my friend’s face, it was defiant fury.