Shut Up and Kiss Me (29 page)

His gaze traveled back to me, and remained locked with mine as he bent down on one knee. “Baby,” he said, reaching for me.

It took everything I had not to flinch as he cupped my chin and began roughly running his thumb across my lips, as if he were trying to erase the kisses he knew Will had placed there.

“
Not coming home with me wasn’t ever an option.”

I blinked rapidly, trying to keep my gaze on him as I processed this new information. He didn’t plan on killing me after all, but instead he was bringing me home—where I would more than likely be a prisoner in my own home. I couldn’t decide which was worse: death or…Luke.

“
Okay, that’s okay,” I eventually said, “but Luke, please let him go. He doesn’t have anything to do with this. He didn’t even know. Please, I’m begging you.”

It happened so fast. One second he was kneeling before me and the next he was standing, his hand slapping across my cheek hard and fast. Flinching, I yelped in surprise as the pain ricocheted across my cheek and jaw and the coppery tang of blood flooded my mouth.

“
Touch her again,” Will growled beside me, sounding furious. “I fucking dare you…”

I didn’t dare look at him, not with Luke bearing down over both of us, yet I could feel Will, feel the anger radiating from within him, burning up the oxygen between us.

In answer, Luke barked out a loud, cruel laugh, not in the least bit intimidated. “You rich boys never know when to keep your hands to yourself, do you? This is my wife you’ve taken, and you’ve got no clue what I do to people who steal from me.”

“
No!” I screamed. “Luke, no, please, don’t!”

Will didn’t know, but I knew. I had seen firsthand exactly what Luke did to people who stole from him, and that was what he saw this as, me with Will: it was theft. He didn’t seem to realize that it was I who’d run from him, run from him because of what he’d done, and how much he’d terrified me. All he could see was that I’d left, and now Will had me.

My God, my heart was aching, grieving over every damn decision I had ever made. I regretted marrying Luke so young, and subsequently never really having the chance to explore who I was. I regretted going to the warehouse that day, regretted telling Luke that I’d seen what he’d done. Most of all I regretted running away. I should have never run. How many people had been killed because of me, and how many more people were still to die? This was all my fault.

“
Shut up,” Luke bellowed. “I told you, Anna. Didn’t I tell you not to go?” He pointed a meaty finger into my face and I nodded frantically, praying that he took all his anger out on me and not Will.

“
I know,” I sobbed softly. “I know and I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

There was no love in his eyes when he looked down at me, even as his gaze raked over my body possessively. “I’ve missed you, baby,” he drawled. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

I bit down on my lower lip, trying to control my tremors. “I’ve missed you, too,” I whispered.

He stared at me a moment longer, until the fury creasing his features eased away. Reaching around his back, he brought forth a gun and aimed it at Will. I screamed, short and sharp and full of terror.

“
Please, please don’t,” I cried, pulling violently on my restraints.

“
It’s okay, Mila,” Will said, his voice hoarse and strained. “It’s going to be okay.”

I turned sharply toward him, finding him watching me, appearing almost…calm. His shoulders were tense, yet his beautiful blue eyes were empty—emotionless, even.

“
Don’t you fuckin’ speak to her,” Luke snarled. His gaze flitted angrily between me and Will before stopping on me, and he stepped forward.

I braced myself, readying for whatever he was about to unleash on me.

“
Did you fuck him, Anna?” he demanded, the hand holding his gun starting to quiver. “Did you fuck Richie Rich here?”

I stared up at Luke, feeling numb, knowing whatever answer I gave him would only infuriate him more. I could lie, but Luke would know. But if I told him the truth, he’d shoot Will immediately.

“
We took vows,” he continued, his fury only growing. “We made promises. Now you answer me. Did you fuck him?”

I nodded slowly, as if the movement physically pained me.

Oddly enough, Luke’s expression stayed the same. “Did you enjoy it?” he asked quietly, an eerie calm in his tone, a small, ugly sneer on his face.

I opened my mouth to speak, but found myself with nothing to say. Luke was trying to humiliate me, to humiliate Will before he killed him. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Realizing I wasn’t going to answer, Luke looked again toward Will and lifted the safety on his weapon.

“
Anna,” he said softly, his voice rough and his eyes still fixated on Will. His tongue darted out over his lower lip as his mouth pulled up in a cruel smile. “Baby, did you enjoy being fucked by him?”

Behind him, Davis started to chuckle, and my already churning gut painfully lurched. This was a game to them, a sick and twisted game that they took pleasure in. Again, I berated myself for not realizing sooner that I’d married a monster—that I’d married the devil himself.

Gritting my teeth, I lifted my chin and stared up at my husband, waiting for him to look my way. When he did, I nodded. “Yes,” I spat through angry tears. “Very much.”

Will should have felt fear. Anyone in their right mind who’d just been kidnapped at gunpoint, learned that the woman they loved wasn’t at all who they’d thought she was, had both their thumbs broken and was now waiting to die at the hands of a madman would have and should have been afraid.

But he wasn’t. At least not anymore. Somewhere in between his broken thumbs and Luke’s mind games with Mila, Will felt a kind of calm fall over him. An acceptance of sorts, he supposed. It wasn’t that he’d given up hope, because he hadn’t—not in the slightest. It was more like he’d come to terms with whatever was going to happen, a feeling that only strengthened while watching Mila stand up to her husband.

Soon, he thought, soon he was going to stand up—while praying that the ties around his ankles didn’t send him flat on his face—and tackle Luke, wrestle the gun away from him, with broken hands no less…

And then what? That still didn’t take care of the man standing behind Luke, who just so happened to be holding a gun aimed directly at his head. But there was nothing he could do about that. He’d just have to follow through with the shoddy plan he had, his only course of action, and hope it worked.

Any moment now, Luke was going to lose control. By this looks of him, shaking with rage, it would be sooner rather than later. And when the man did snap, when he was entirely distracted by Mila, that’s when Will was going to make his move.

“
Whore! Dirty fuckin’ whore,” Luke spat, and raised his hand, backhanding Mila across the face.

She yelped in pain as her face swung right, but almost immediately lifted her head, raising her chin in defiance as a trickle of blood mixed with tears slid down her pale cheek.

Nostrils flaring, Luke reached for her. Gripping her shoulder, he bent down before her and brought her roughly forward, bringing them eye to eye. Even trembling, tears streaming down her face, Mila didn’t shy away from him. Instead, she met his angry glare head-on and lifted her chin even higher.

“
You remember what I told you?” he hissed angrily. “Till death we do part, Anna.” Spittle flew past his lips. “I think it’s come to that time. I think—”

Will jumped to his feet and lunged for Luke. The chair still attached to his ankles hindered his momentum, but also helped him as well. He was a dead weight as he fell forward, toppling directly on top of a startled Luke and sending them both sprawling to the floor.

Someone was shouting and someone was screaming, but Will wasn’t paying attention to any of it. He was fumbling with all his might with the barrel of the gun in Luke’s hand, trying desperately to rip it free from his grasp, even while his thumbs didn’t want to work and the pain shooting through both his hands and up his arms was damn near crippling.

Desperate for leverage, Will arched his neck back and slammed his forehead into Luke’s with a loud grunt. Stars swam in front of his eyes as Luke’s grip loosened on the gun, yet still he continued fighting. Luke’s free hand flew to Will’s throat, gripping and squeezing, blocking his airflow. Wheezing, desperate to breathe and in the midst of a tangle of limbs and testosterone, Will finally managed to pull the weapon free, and almost instantly Luke’s hands fell away from his throat. Clenching the cool steel in his broken grip, his hands shook with pain as he attempted to right the weapon.

Those wasted seconds cost him dearly. One second he was trying to turn the gun on Luke, and the next a meaty fist had slammed into the side of his face, knocking him off balance. He lost his precarious hold on the gun, as well as his ability to see clearly.

“
No!” he heard Mila shriek, just as something hard and heavy sucker punched him in the gut. He barely had enough time to shout out his newfound pain when an explosion went off dangerously close to his head, rendering his ears all but useless.

The ringing was incessant, the pain radiating from his hands and his head all-consuming. Still, he tried with all his might to move, to right his body and to see past the blur of his vision.

“
Mila?” he shouted. “Mila!”

Another explosion shocked him into stillness and silence, this one not nearly as close as the first. A few moments of panic followed, and then there were hands on him, grabbing at him. He flinched and jerked, trying to move his body away from the threat.

“
Will! Will, can you hear me?”

Richard? Thank God… Thank God…

“
A little,” he croaked out hoarsely, blinking repeatedly until he could see a blurry outline of his friend. “Mila? Where is Mila?”

“
I’m here,” Mila called out, her voice strained and sounding far away.

Grabbing hold of both his arms, Richard pulled Will into an awkward sitting position and began fumbling with the ties around his ankles. Immediately Will locked eyes with Mila. Still tied to her chair, tears streaming down her red cheeks, her body shaking violently, she met his gaze, her beautiful face a picture of misery and sadness. He broke their contact only briefly, scanning the room, finding two prone bodies lying on the floor. Luke was lying only a few feet away, his eyes closed though Will could make out the soft rise and fall of his chest. Closer to the door, face down, the other man lay unmoving, a large puddle of blood pooling around his body.

“
How?” he managed to ask Richard.

“
I was in the damn trunk,” he muttered angrily. “They thought I was dead. Didn’t even take my gun.” Pausing, he patted the two holes in his dress shirt, exposing the bulletproof vest beneath. “Told you my vest would come in handy one day. You rich fuckers have too many enemies.”

Still feeling what he hoped was just shock and not a case of insanity, Will suddenly could do little more than stare at his friend, feeling a myriad of emotions while Richard proceeded to reach into his pants pocket and pull forth a pocketknife. After Richard rid him of the plastic ties and the chair affixed to his ankles, Will shot straight to his feet and all but fell on top of Mila. Whimpering, she dipped her head and pressed their foreheads together, nuzzling him.

“
I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, straining her bound body, attempting to be closer. “God, I am so very sorry. This is all my fault. All my fault, Will. I’m so sorry…”

Richard must have freed her hands while they’d embraced, because suddenly her arms came around his shoulders and her hands went to his hair, gripping two handfuls tightly and using it to pull him closer. Under any other circumstances, Mila attempting to rip his hair from his scalp would have been somewhat uncomfortable. In this particular situation, it was a welcome relief to all his other aches and pains, and was even somewhat grounding him from breaking down entirely, something he felt he was precariously close to doing.

Because if it hadn’t been for Richard…

“
Shhh,” Will whispered, lifting his face and finding her lips. He pressed an urgent kiss to her mouth and held her there, not moving for several moments, just relishing in the warmth of her when every part of him felt suddenly ungodly cold. Eventually he pulled away and looked into her eyes.

Mila stared back at him, her expression pleading. “I want to explain,” she whispered. “I want to tell you everything. Everything and—”

“
I really hate to break up the party,” Richard interjected, his dry tone sounding uncommonly pained, “but I’d really like to get to a hospital. Pretty sure I have a few broken ribs…”