Savage Alpha (Alpha 8) (20 page)

“My turn?”

“You’re the reason all this happened. The reason Evan ended our relationship. The reason Charlie is dead. The reason Evan is dead.”

No, she wasn’t. No matter how much Todd might have twisted this around in his insane mind, she wasn’t responsible for any of his actions. “If you kill me now, you won’t be able to get away, and then the police will add two and two together and know you killed all of us—”

“You think I actually
care
?” he said scornfully. “Now that Evan is dead, I have no reason to live anyway. I have every intention of killing myself as soon as I’ve disposed of you,” he explained in that calm, unemotional voice. “The only reason I’m not already dead is because I had to wait for you to come out of hiding so I could kill you first. And tonight, you did.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way.” It was difficult for Lily to speak when her mouth was so dry. When her brain was frozen with the horror of Todd’s confession. When he obviously intended to kill her too. “You’re…unwell. I’m sure the police will understand that you were distraught at the ending of your relationship. That you suffered a temporary insanity.” Except Lily didn’t think it was temporary at all, and she doubted a psychiatrist would either.

“Don’t treat me like an idiot!” Todd’s calm had gone now, his body tensed and ready to pounce. “There’s no going back from the fact I’ve already killed two people, and now I’m about to kill you.” He raised the knife in his hand.

Oh God, where was Jonas?

Seth?

Anyone?

Chapter 14

“Lily? Open this fucking door and let me in!” Jonas turned the handle and gave the door a shake as he heard voices inside her dressing room. “Lily?” He gave Seth a desperate glance.

“I’ll go and talk to the manager, see if he has another key to this room.” Seth placed a hand on his arm. “She’ll be okay, Jonas,” he assured him before hurrying away.

“Lily!” Jonas gave the locked door another rattle. “Answer me, damn it!”

“Sounds as if your boyfriend is getting a little agitated,” Todd mocked.

Except Jonas wasn’t Lily’s boyfriend.

But if she got out of here alive—and that was a big if!—she wasn’t going to run away from her feelings for Jonas anymore. She intended to face them, and him, head-on. He liked her well enough to go to bed with her, to make love with, and if that was all he had to give, then she’d take it.

That decision made, she straightened her back determinedly. Knowing Jonas was on the other side of that door gave her courage. “My boyfriend, his friends,
and
my brothers are all going to kick your ass once we’re out of here.”

“I thought I’d made it clear neither of us is going to leave this room alive.” Todd eyed her with pity.

“Lily, who’s in there with you?” Jonas demanded through the locked door.

“It’s—” Todd’s free hand over Lily’s mouth stopped her from actually saying his name, the other hand pressing the knife against her throat.

Which was all Lily needed to make her move.

She put her brothers’ training in self-defense into action as she jerked her head back sharply, knowing she had hit her target when she heard the sickening crunch of Todd Shaw’s nose breaking and his pained gasp.

She took advantage of the loosening of Todd’s arm about her throat to grab hold of his wrist and twist. He let out another yell of pain as the knife fell from his limp fingers.

Lily kicked back, catching Todd in the kneecap before turning to bring her own knee up, aiming for his face as he bent over.

“You fucking bitch!” He had straightened too quickly. Blood poured from his broken nose as he grabbed her beneath her bent knee before she could make further contact, throwing her off-balance so that she stumbled. Lily cried out as Todd pushed back and her head made painful contact with the wall, rendering her temporarily dazed.

“Lily!” Jonas shouted again from the hallway.

“Jonas,” even to her own ears, her voice sounded weak, barely audible.

“Fuck! Lily?”

She gave a gasp as there was a loud thud, followed by a crashing sound as the door splintered and snapped open, the lock having broken under the force of Jonas’s powerful body hitting the other side of the door.

Jonas took in the situation at a glance. Todd stood menacingly over Lily, with blood pouring from what looked to be a broken nose. Lily appeared dazed as she slumped against the wall.

Shaw’s bleeding nose and the knife lying at Lily’s feet told their own story. One where Lily had put herself in danger when she was forced to disarm Todd.

A red haze filled Jonas’s vision as he could too easily imagine that knife plunging into Lily, ending her life, forever wiping out the sass and challenge in those beautiful blue-green eyes and leaving a gaping hole in his life where she should have been.

Jonas reacted instinctively, that rage now all he could see and feel as he plowed into Todd, knocking the other man to the ground before straddling him and pummeling him repeatedly with his clenched fists.

“Stop now, Jonas.”

Several pairs of hands tried to pull him off the other man, but Jonas resisted and kept on punching, unconcerned about his own bleeding knuckles.

“Jonas, you can stop now,” Lily spoke softly, her hand a gentle touch on his arm. “You can stop now,” she repeated huskily as he turned to look at her with unfocused eyes.

Which was when Jonas became aware of all the other people in the room: Seth and Gabriel, along with the rest of the Knight brothers, and Liam with a cloth pressed against the back of his head where he had been struck from behind, as well as the police inspector from last week and several of his uniformed men.

Jonas moved off the battered man before standing and stepping away, leaving it to the police to drag Shaw back up onto his feet before placing him in handcuffs.

“I’m going to need statements from all of you,” the police inspector informed them. One of his men bagged the knife from the floor before he and two other police constables escorted Shaw from the room.

“I believe the situation speaks for itself.” Gabriel was the one to answer coldly.

“I’ll still going to need those statements,” the police inspector insisted.

“Tomorrow.” Gabriel was just as unyielding. “My sister has been through enough for one evening.”

Lily gasped. “The play…”

“Is being canceled even as we speak,” the police inspector informed them.

Tears blurred Lily’s vision. “He killed them. Charlie and Evan. Todd killed them both. He was going to kill me too. He was also my stalker.” She was shaking so badly now, her legs were threatening to buckle beneath her.

Jonas’s eyes narrowed as he took in Lily’s appearance. She looked on the point of collapse. “Okay, that’s enough for one evening.” He stepped forward to put one arm about Lily’s shoulders and the other beneath her knees before lifting her up against his chest. “Miss Knight will answer all your questions tomorrow, Inspector. Right now she needs to leave. With me,” he added.

“Jonas—”

“She leaves with me.” His narrowed gaze challenged Gabriel to continue with his protest.

The other man looked at him searchingly for several long seconds before glancing down at his sister. Lily’s head lay against Jonas’s shoulder; her eyes were closed. Gabriel nodded. “Take everyone else’s statements tonight by all means, but she leaves with him,” he told the police inspector.

“Miss Knight?” the inspector prompted.

Lily roused herself enough to open her eyelids and look at the police inspector. “I want to leave with Jonas,” she confirmed huskily.

No one else offered a word of protest as Jonas carried her out of the room, down the hallway, and out the back door of the theater.

“Where are you taking me?” Lily prompted wearily as Jonas drove the SUV through the lamp-lit streets of London.

“Larchwood.”

Lily heaved a sigh of relief as she leaned back against the headrest. “You do know that I wouldn’t normally allow you to just take charge like this?”

“Oh yes.”

“Your poor hands!” Lily groaned as she looked at Jonas’s bleeding knuckles where he tightly gripped the steering wheel.

“You should see the other guy,” he attempted to joke.

Lily had seen the other guy, and as far as she was concerned, Todd Shaw deserved every cut and bruise—and broken nose—that now adorned his previously boyishly handsome face.

“I don’t think I’m the only one to have inflicted injury on him,” Jonas drawled as he recalled the blood flowing down Todd Shaw’s face and the way he had favored his left leg as the police took him away.

She nodded. “I managed to get in a head-butt and a kick before he tried to knock me out by banging my head against the wall.”

Jonas straightened. “You do realize you deserve another spanking for trying to deal with him on your own.”

“Really?”

“Except you’d probably enjoy it too much.” He scowled. “What the fuck did you think you were doing, antagonizing Shaw like that?”

“I had every confidence my hero would save me.”

“Me?”

“You,” she confirmed. “I just thought I’d put in a few kicks of my own while I was waiting. Todd is totally insane, I’m afraid.” She went on to explain the other man’s warped reasoning behind his actions.

Jonas nodded. “It sounds as if he’ll be placed in an asylum on suicide watch rather than a prison. Unfortunately.”

The horror of being alone with Todd loomed less immediate to Lily the farther they drove away from London. After her near-death experience, it felt good to be able to look at Jonas again. To be with him again.

He smelled wonderful. That woodsy aroma that was totally Jonas, along with a heavy musk that made her body ache and her head swirl. The fact that she was here, on her way to his house in the woods with him, must surely mean that he felt
something
for her, even if it was only his protective instinct kicking in. She could work with that.

“I’ve missed you,” she told him huskily.

The SUV swerved to the left as Jonas briefly lost concentration. He righted the vehicle again before glancing across at her.

“Did you miss me too?” she prompted.

“Could we save this conversation for when we get to my house?”

“I don’t know, can we?”

Jonas gave a heavy sigh before he admitted, “I missed you too.”

“Good.” Lily was satisfied with that.

For now…

“I can walk, you know,” she protested a short time later. Jonas had parked the SUV and then insisted on carrying her the half mile through the woods to his house. The snow had melted in the last week, but it had left the trail slippery in places.

“This is quicker,” he dismissed. Not only was he carrying Lily, but as she didn’t have a coat of her own, he had also wrapped that black leather duster around her to protect her from the worst of the icy chill in the air. He seemed impervious to that cold in just his T-shirt and jeans.

“Are we in a hurry?” she prompted curiously, her arms curved about the back of his neck.

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

A smile curved Jonas’s lips as he glanced down at her. “Don’t tell me you’re finally at a loss for words?”

“I’m sure I can think of something to say, if you think it’s necessary?”

“It’s not.” He shook his head. “Almost there,” he added with satisfaction.

Lily felt herself trembling again. Not that bone-shaking trauma of being alone with a cold-blooded killer like Todd Shaw, but with the anticipation of being alone again with Jonas. The man she loved.

Jonas didn’t put her down once they were inside his house. Instead, he carried on, walking through the open-plan sitting room and down the corridor to his darkened bedroom.

Lily looked up at him uncertainly as he placed her on the bed. “Jonas?”

“You need a hot bath and then bed.” He didn’t look at her face as he sat on the side of the bed and began to unwrap her from the leather duster.

“In that order?”

Jonas’s gaze was guarded as he glanced at her. “Not necessarily.”

Lily moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “In that case, bed first.”

Jonas drew in a sharp breath as he straightened. “You scared the shit out of me earlier. You know that, don’t you?”

“Why?”

“
Why?
”

“Yes.”

Jonas knew this was one of those moments of truth that came only once in a lifetime. Sometimes not even that. If he fucked this up now— “I thought you weren’t going to come out of that room alive once I realized what was going on. I walked away from you last week because—I realized I’m in love with you, and it terrified the life out of me.” That hadn’t been as difficult to say as he’d thought it would. “I love you,” he said again. “I am in love with you.” Amazing, the more he said it, the easier it got.

“I heard you the first time.” Lily moved up on her knees on the bed in front of him, eyes glowing in the light from the hallway as she curled her arms about his neck. “You love me?”