Panic sang in Chloe’s head as she gasped for breath, legs uselessly kicking at him.
“Pretty,” he repeated with a grin, sliding big hands up under her dress, stepping between her legs. Oh God, this was happening so fast! Every move she made was countered by one man or the other. They were so strong, there was nothing she could do. She tried to bring her knee up to kick the man standing between her legs and he laughed, exchanging a narrow-eyed glance of amusement at his partner.
She couldn’t breathe yet. Mewling sounds came out of her throat, the strangled sounds of panic and pain.
They were enjoying this. Loving it. Loving her attempts to defend herself, knowing she could never, ever win.
A flush of rage flashed through her, like a nuclear blast, clearing her lungs. She drew in a full breath that broke the bonds of her panic and screamed as loud as she could, the sound echoing in the room.
She’d startled them. The shorter man between her legs loosened his grip on her thighs and she landed a foot straight in his crotch, reveling in the feel of his testicles crunching beneath her shoe. He doubled over in pain and she screamed again, loud and constant.
She wasn’t submitting without a fight.
The tall man shouted something, raised his fist, then turned his head with a frown.
Wood shattered and something large, moving fast, tackled the man assaulting her. They disappeared from view, dropping to the floor with a heavy shudder.
Terrible animal sounds came from the floor as the two men grappled, thudding against the desk, shaking her. Chloe scrambled upright, she had to move, she had to get to—
Suddenly a massive blow struck her and she flew across the room, bouncing off a pillar and landing painfully on the floor. A man, face bloodied, stood with a terrible roar and jumped the taller man. She had an electric moment of awareness—Mike!—and lost consciousness.
Fuck this, Mike thought, hand hovering over the wood-panel door at the shelter where Chloe volunteered.
Men really weren’t supposed to be here. It was a law of the shelter and he understood it, completely. Everyone in this building, including Chloe, especially Chloe, had suffered at the hands of a violent man. For the women in this building, men were the enemy. A different race from them, sworn to destroy them.
Many of the women would never recover their self-confidence after what had been done to them. Would never breathe easy in the same room with a man. Would never have a relationship with a man again.
Chloe had been young enough that she could function in the world, though she still had problems.
He shouldn’t be here, he should be out in the parking lot, waiting for her outside the building, as he always did. He knew that.
What the fuck was he doing here, then? Why come here to talk to Chloe when he’d be driving her home, or would be seeing her at Harry’s for supper tonight? Or tomorrow morning in the building’s gym where he’d run her through her weights cycle? Or at lunch tomorrow when she’d come in to consult with Marisa about one of the Lost Ones whose disappearance RBK was engineering?
He was here because he couldn’t stand it anymore. Not for one fucking second more. The situation was driving him batshit crazy, and he was almost unable to function.
He couldn’t eat. Just couldn’t do it. Food tasted like wool in his mouth.
He was forgetting things on the job, which was unheard of. Mike was intensely detail-oriented. He didn’t forget things, just didn’t happen. Until now, because the situation with Chloe was eating up his hard disk.
This morning he had a contract with a bank to go over and yet he’d spent two hours staring at a picture of Chloe, taken at a family barbecue a couple of weeks ago. He hadn’t even noticed the time passing. He just stared at the fucking picture and there had been wetness in his eyes. Not tears, Mike didn’t do tears, but there’d been definite wetness. That’s when he knew he had to see her.
Right now.
He needed to see Chloe right fucking now.
He’d butted his head against the iron wall of his word to Harry and it was breaking him. It was either Harry or his heart, and after holding out for six fucking months, his heart won out. He’d spent the past freaking six months in a hell of penance and enough was enough.
The first thing was to ask Chloe out for that date they were supposed to have had at the Del before his shit hit the fan. They were going out on a date like normal people and Harry could go jump in the fucking lake. Or the Pacific, which was right outside his door.
And then maybe Mike could start eating and sleeping like normal people did. Maybe this raw buzzing in his head would stop. Maybe this burning pain in his chest would go away.
First Chloe, then he’d bite the bullet and talk to Harry. He’d . . . what? Ask Harry permission to date his sister? Not just permission to be around her and carry her groceries in, and be her personal trainer, but be with her, date her. Because surely six long nookieless months were enough to earn him points with Harry?
He’d tell Chloe everything, how he felt about her, how he couldn’t even conceive of being with anyone but her, even though that still astounded him.
If you’d asked him six months ago if he could go six months without sex, he’d have laughed in your face. Mike Keillor didn’t do abstinence. Mike Keillor needed no one, let alone a woman.
And here he might as well have been living in the seminary for all the sex he’d had these last six months. Even without the sex, he’d walk barefoot across hot coals to watch Chloe walk, talk, hell, even breathe.
Other women? He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t go to other women. He’d tried a couple of times and it just . . . didn’t work. In the sense his dick simply wouldn’t respond, like some contrary member of the board vetoing some proposal. When he tried, when some woman in a bar came on to him, he’d felt a form of repulsion, his cock a piece of dead meat between his legs. Once he’d actually felt his dick shrink in disgust.
If it wasn’t for the fact that he had to hide his hard-on or will it back down whenever Chloe was near and that he woke up hard as a rock after dreaming of her, he’d have thought he’d suddenly turned impotent. A eunuch. Game over.
It was pathetic. He’d rather spend the evening with Chloe helping babysit Gracie and Merry, watching the three thousandth rerun of The Little Mermaid, than go out and finally get laid.
More than pathetic. Lame.
And not only that. Every fucking time he saw her, his heart did this . . . thing in his chest. Like a heart attack, only not.
Every morning he’d tell himself sternly, enough is enough. He was driving himself crazy honoring his promise to Harry. Even though Harry was one hundred percent right. There was something wrong with him, inside. He could recognize that now.
Mike functioned just fine in other areas of his life. He’d been a great Marine, made Force Recon, had headed up the local SWAT team, was a good businessman. In those areas he was okay, more than okay. But in everything else he was damaged goods.
Maybe success as a soldier, cop and businessman was all he’d be allowed in life, because sure as hell he wasn’t good at human relations. Particularly relations with women. It was only now, when his goddamned feelings for Chloe threatened to slosh over and drown him, that he realized he’d never had any relationship at all with any of the women he’d fucked. Never. How terrible was that?
He’d perfected the art of the quick in-and-out fuck. In after sundown, out before dawn. One woman used to call him “the Bat.”
He found himself incapable of staying away from Chloe. And even though he’d always had the Irishman’s silver tongue with other women, he turned tongue-tied around her. Awkward. Jesus.
Chloe was grace itself. Calm and serene and fucking golden. Harry was wrong to make him promise not to touch her, but he was right, too. Mike was not what she needed.
That was why he’d dedicated himself to doing what he did best with her.
Mike was good with gear. He didn’t know how to open up to her, his brain seized
up when he tried to talk to her about anything but externals, but goddammit he knew how to assemble her shelves and keep her car in running order and make sure she knew how to use the weightlifting equipment.
He could have gone on forever like this, shadowing Chloe like some stalker, happy just to be near her, except lately he’d been . . . what? Restless. Erratic. Jittery. Emotions all over the goddamned place. Unable to concentrate on work. Unable to eat. Unable to sleep.
He needed to talk to her. He started to knock, then stopped, his fist an inch from the door.
So . . . suppose he dumped all of this on Chloe. And then—Jesus!—just suppose she didn’t feel about him the way he felt about her? What then? Chloe was gentle with everyone. Everyone loved her. Not as much as he did, that would be impossible, but still. But suppose she liked him but didn’t want to go any further than that with him, ever?
Suppose he had to live with these . . . things slicing him open inside every minute, every day for the rest of his life?
What then?
Mike wasn’t a coward, not in any way. He’d been in battle and been decorated for it. He’d taken point in a big SWAT takedown of a warehouse full of meth addicts armed to the teeth. He’d been born strong and made sure he stayed strong and he’d back down from no man.
But the thought of losing Chloe . . . it brought him to his knees.
So here he was, the Cool Dude with the Guns, standing outside a door with his hand raised like a dork, afraid to knock.
What the fuck?
He heard Chloe’s voice behind the door, soft and gentle, and smiled. And then he heard the rumble of another voice. Low, deep, unmistakably male, and he froze.
Oh shit.
That hadn’t occurred to him. Not really. Not seriously. That Chloe might be seeing someone else. Not possible. He’d made that journalist dude back away fast, and because he’d kept a close watch, no other guy was sniffing around her. He’d have taken a bet on it.
He was around her almost 24/7, after all. When the fuck was she supposed to meet other men?
But that deep voice was a man and he must be a really good friend if she allowed him into the shelter against all the rules.
Fuck. Mike dropped the hand about to knock and gently rested his forehead against the door, listening to the rumble of male . . . voices? Two of them?
She had two boyfriends?
And then he heard something else, something that stopped his heart. Something that galvanized him as nothing else could.
Chloe, screaming.
Pure instinct took over.
He smashed through the door, had a glimpse of Chloe struggling on the desktop, one fucker between her legs, cock out, the other standing by. He didn’t even feel his feet as he rushed at them and brought the man assaulting Chloe down with a flying tackle.
The guy was big and strong but Mike was stronger and he had a berserker’s rage inside him. He didn’t even feel the blows as the man punched him over and over in the side. They grappled, wrestled, rolled around the room, shattering tables and chairs, grunting in a no-holds-barred struggle. There were rules to combat, but not now. Mike instantly realized it was a fight to the death.
The man had some moves in him, had been trained. Later, with hindsight, Mike would pin his style down to SAMBO, the martial arts specialty of Russian Special Forces. SAMBO was essentially ground fighting.
The man had him in a leg lock on the ground, almost immobilized. While Mike was on the ground with this bozo, he could see Chloe pulling her dress down, turning to fight the other man in the room, a tall strong son of a bitch. He backhanded her, hard. She flew across the room, bouncing against the wall, landing on the floor like a broken doll, deadly pale and still.
The idea that she might be grievously injured or—God!—dead gave Mike superhuman powers. He had to get to Chloe and the man holding him was keeping him from her. Mike had enormous strength in his arms, but to get to Chloe, he’d punch his way through steel if he had to. This had to finish, fast.
He flexed his arm and drove the point of his elbow into the man’s windpipe with all the power of his upper body and heard bone crunch.
Instantly he was free. The smell of feces filled the room as the man’s bowels loosened in death.
Mike didn’t even look back as he scrambled to his feet and launched himself at the other man who was bending to pick Chloe up, hoping to get her away while Mike and the other guy were fighting.
Over my dead body, fucker, he thought savagely.
The guy didn’t stand a chance. He saw Mike coming at him and dropped Chloe to free his hands but it was too late. Mike punched him in the stomach and then a straight punch to the center of the face, crushing teeth and cartilage. The man dropped like a felled bull, moaning, bubbles of air coming out of the mashed red wreck of his face.
Mike didn’t even look at him. He just kicked the fuckhead out of his way as he dropped to his knees and gathered Chloe up, so terrified he couldn’t feel his hands as he touched her.
“Chloe,” he said, his voice raw. “Chloe, honey. Talk to me.” She was soft in his arms. Still and boneless.
He pulled her to him, lifting her to his chest, and rocked. There was a keening sound in the air and it took him a second or two to realize it was him, that awful sound coming from his throat.
His head snapped up at a sound across the room. More assailants? If there were, good. He ached to punch, to maim, to kill.
Instead, there was a bunch of sad-eyed women at the door, one holding her hand in front of her mouth. The one who’d let the sob escape, which was the sound he’d heard. He must have looked crazy, because they all took a step back when his head lifted.
“Chloe,” the woman who’d sobbed whispered. “Is she—is she dead?”
There wasn’t much hope in the woman’s voice. There hadn’t been much hope in their lives, either. They all loved Chloe, but took it as a given that she could be taken away from them by violence.
No. Mike rejected even the thought of it with every cell in his body. He hunched over her even more, pulling her into him, as if he could transfuse energy from his body to hers.
“Call 911, medical emergency,” he said, his words barely comprehensible as he shouted around the boulder in his chest. “And call the cops.”
They stood there, staring at him, a phalanx of white faces.
“Now!” he shouted, and they scattered like birds at the sound of a shot.
A pressure on his arm, a shifting of the body he was holding so tightly. “Mike,” Chloe murmured.
She was alive! Oh God!
Mike wiped at his eyes, which for some reason were wet.
“Chloe, honey. You’ve been hurt. Don’t move. Medics are on the way.”
Even as he said Don’t move she did, shifting slightly so she could sit up. She looked down at herself, then up at him, placing a small hand on the side of his face.
“Don’t look like that, Mike,” she said softly. “I just passed out. But I’m okay.” She frowned, touching her left forearm, discolored and slightly swollen. “I hope that’s not broken, just sprained. It’s been broken twice already.” She touched her head, a slight frown between ash eyebrows. “What—what happened? Two men—” She stiffened in his arms, alarm in her eyes. “Two men, Mike! They came in and—”
A shift of her gaze and she saw them. One unmistakably dead, the other slumped against the wall, face a red mess, wheezing to get breath, blood burbling around his smashed nose and mouth.
“Don’t worry about them, honey. They’re never going to hurt you again.” Mike’s head fell to her shoulder. “Oh God, Chloe. I thought you were—I thought you were . . .” He couldn’t even say the word. Couldn’t form the thought. Could only remember the cold emptiness when he thought she’d gone from this world, leaving him behind.
Her skin was the color of ice, pupils dilated, entire body shivering from the aftermath of shock. He held her close and kissed her forehead gently, a mere brush of his lips because she seemed
like glass, ready to shatter at any moment.
“No.” Her voice was a whisper as she reached up a shaking hand to wipe wetness from under his eyes. “I’m still here. Thanks to you.” A hard shudder ran through her. “What did they want? Do you know? Besides, um, raping me?”
Jesus. It hadn’t even occurred to him to try to keep them alive to get intel. One of the fuckers was still alive only because he was distracted by Chloe. Because what if this wasn’t a random act of violence? What if it was directed specifically at Chloe? What if she was still in danger?
He couldn’t stand the thought, literally couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t go anywhere with it, was incapable of processing it. He shook with terror.
This wasn’t like him.
He kept his cool during combat, always had. He was a fucking sniper, one of the very best. Snipers don’t do terror. His heart rate had been tested at a cool, calm sixty beats per minute even under live-fire training. He knew how to use violence precisely, like a surgeon wields a scalpel. He knew how to measure his violence out into precise amounts, applied at specific times. He knew how to hold his fire, how to wait.
And yet he’d smashed into the room with no thought of strategy or tactics, none at all, just a wild bloodlust in his head drowning out all thought. And maybe his lack of control had endangered Chloe.
Still holding Chloe with one arm, Mike reached out to the guy slumped against the wall and bunched his shirt in his fist, lifting him up and away from the wall. “Hey, fuckhead. What are you doing here? What’s your mission?”
Because even through the bloodlust, the wild singing desire to hurt and kill, he recognized one thing. He was dealing with trained men. Soldiers. Their moves, their demeanor. These weren’t punks off the street who’d maybe seen a beautiful woman and followed her inside. No, they’d kept their cool even when he hadn’t. The combat moves had been expert.
In a normal situation, it wasn’t likely Mike could have prevailed over two highly trained men, but in this case, to defend Chloe, he’d have taken on a hundred men and won. He’d have taken on an entire fucking army.