The Protectors Christmas Box Set (sexy paranormal romances) (29 page)

“This is what you want.” She bit his shoulder. His arousal jumped. She bit him again.

“Oh, hell…Faith…” Horace took her into his arms and crushed his lips against hers. This time when she reached for his belt, he let her unhook the buckle.

“My, my, my…” a voice from the door startled them both. “You, my stubborn foundling, are supposed to be dead.”

A dark-haired man, who Faith would later have one hell of a time describing, walked toward them. He held a huge gun that he kept trained on Horace’s back. And when he spoke, his lips didn’t move. “Never mind, I’ll simply kill you again.”

Kill him
? Faith’s heart slammed into her throat. The dark-haired villain, with a deadly glint in his eye, aimed the gun directly at them. She had no doubt he meant to do them harm.

Horace grew very still. His grip tightened on Faith’s hips. “Now, let’s not be hasty. Let us talk about whatever is—” Horace started to say but the dark-haired man shook his head. The force of the movement seemed to slap Horace in the face. He jerked his head back in pain.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Lion. The contract has been made. But I do feel like
I
need to say something first.” The assassin clucked his tongue. “I never would have guessed you would treat your woman so carelessly. She’s not a whore, but your mate. She should be honored. Celebrated. Not tossed to the floor and taken like some common…like some common…”

Words seemed to fail the villain.

“Who are you?” Horace asked. He shifted Faith in his arms, shielding her with as much of his body as possible from the assassin.

“They call me Ballou.” The assassin’s gaze narrowed. “And I’m your death.”

“My death? Why? What have I ever done to you?”

“You exist.”

“Okay…okay,” Horace said. Faith could feel the tension coiling in his body. “Your quarrel is with me. Let the girl go.”

Ballou shook his head. The mechanical movement turned Faith’s blood cold. “She stays. Because you had sex with her last night, you and she are now a package deal. Perhaps this is for the best.” The anger in his voice vibrated through the room and rattled the ceiling tiles. “
You don’t deserve her
.”

The assassin pulled the trigger. He gun fired with a deafening blast.

Faith felt as if she’d been hit by a train. Oh God, had she been shot? She found herself lying on her back on the floor, waiting, praying for the air to come back to her lungs.

No, not shot, she slowly realized. Horace, moving with preternatural speed, had somehow rolled her and himself out of the bullet’s path.

Probably just dumb luck that they were still alive.

Ballou adjusted his aim and fired again. This time Faith felt the bullet wiz by her head before Horace sent her skidding across the dance floor and out of harm’s way for a second time.

She curled into a tight ball and prayed some more, remembering all the reasons she should have stayed away from Horace’s sexy-as-sin body. What had she been thinking crawling back into his lap?

He’d warned her and warned her, and now because she’d been too stubborn to listen she was going to die.

She didn’t want to die.

Nor did she want to lose Horace to some madman’s bullet.

But Faith didn’t know what to do. Her earlier bravado had fled as soon as the bullets had begun to fly. Perhaps if she tackled the gunman she could buy enough time for Horace to escape. That way least one of them would survive the ordeal. But she couldn’t gather enough courage to make such a risky move. All she could seem to do was huddle on the floor and try not to cry.

Horace pulled himself up to his feet and started moving toward the assassin with his arms raised, his body slightly hunched and ready for a fight, even though confronting the armed assassin head-on like that had to be nothing short of suicide.

Run
, a voice—one that didn’t belong to her—ordered from inside her head.
Get out of here, Faith. Go. Run
.

“No,” she whispered. She couldn’t leave Horace. He needed her. Faith had to get up. She had to find the courage to stand with Horace and face their attacker. Perhaps together they could—

The front doors of the club crashed open with an angry force that literally crackled in the air.

Someone shouted.

Its force jolted Faith out of her turtle-pose. She peered through her half-opened eyes and between the fingers covering her face. A giant shadow of a man rushed toward her. Faith yelped and scooted out of his way.

Not too brave, but she had no experience with life-and-death situations. She didn’t know how to act. With this new unknown on the scene, staying out of the way seemed like her best course of action.

Action. She needed to act. Since she’d already decided she couldn’t leave Horace, Faith crossed running away off her list.

It took some doing, but she finally pried open her eyes all the way so she could see what was happening and hopefully avoid letting it happen to her.

With her eyes wide open, she could see that the shadow man that had charged into the building wasn’t a giant, but a man. She recognized the pale-haired Frank Stone and foggily remembered meeting him the night before.

This afternoon he stood directly behind the gunman who squeezed off several shots as Horace dove toward the bar.

Stone raised his arms like some cinema-grade sorcerer and shouted, “Be gone!”

Ballou whirled around. The aim of his pistol shifted from Horace to Stone. Faith fought an urge to bury her head in her hands again. Someone was about to be killed. Perhaps all of them.

Faith’s heart beat so hard in her chest she couldn’t seem to breathe right. She scooted across the floor. Though her hands trembled, she managed to pull her cell phone from the pocket of her discarded jeans. She pushed her clothes in front of her as she quietly edged toward Horace’s office.

No matter what Horace might think, she needed to involve the police. Their lives depended upon it.

Before she dialed, she slipped her green tunic on over her head. If she’d thought there had been time, she would have pulled on her jeans too.

Though she’d spent most of her childhood with primitive tribes with no qualms against nakedness, her parents had done a good job of instilling a healthy dose of modesty into her upbringing. Public nudity made her uncomfortable, especially when coupled with the chance she might be killed.

She didn’t want to be found dead in the middle of the club’s dance floor completely nude. A foolish thought, she supposed, to worry about something like that. But she didn’t care.

She simply didn’t want to die in the nude.

“Be gone!” Stone shouted again. Talk about being foolish. He needed to do something more than shout at the shooter. What did he hope to accomplish with that? His voice echoed through the empty club. “Be gone!”

Her phone sang a little tune as she switched it on. No one seemed to notice. Letting Stone serve as a diversion, she quickly dialed 911.

“You’re not on the list, Frank Stone,” Ballou said. The gun clicked as he cocked it.

“Hello? Police?” she whispered into her phone. Could the operator hear her voice over the thundering of her heart? “I’m calling from Club West. There’s a gunman—”

Ballou suddenly swung toward Faith and, without even turning his head, aimed the gun so that she found herself staring clear down its dark barrel. He pulled the trigger.

Time seemed to move at a snail’s pace after she saw the explosive flash. She watched the golden bullet swirling toward her forehead, heard Horace give an anguished shout, felt a great power leap out from Stone’s upraised arms, and watched as a whirlwind surrounded Ballou and sucked him into oblivion.

Though the assassin had vanished, the bullet still hurled toward her.

“Stop!” she shouted.

She closed her eyes and held out her hands, as if that would do any good. It wouldn’t.

It was too late for her.

No one could stop a bullet.

Instead of her life passing before her eyes, her future paraded before her…a bright, beautiful future that, because she’d been too stubborn to listen to Horace’s warnings to stay away, now would never get the chance to unfold.

She’d never see her parents again. Never get the chance to make them proud by earning a Ph.D. of her own. Not to mention the whole marriage deal. Dead at twenty-three. A spinster before her time. No husband to mourn her. No children. She’d always pictured having at least one child. Perhaps two. They’d both be scamps.

But now, that would never happen. None of that would happen, because she was dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

She covered her face with her hands and cried. Since it didn’t matter anymore, she let go and wept loud, messy sobs.

“Shhh…shhh…” A familiar, welcome hand rubbed up and down her back. “It’s okay. It’s over, sweetie.”

“Nooo,” she sobbed. “You-you don’t un-understand. I’ll never have a husband to love me, or children to pester me. It’s all over for me.”

Loving hands pulled her into a tight embrace. “Nothing is over for you. You can still have a brood of children if you want. I promise. Please, Faith, please just stop crying.”

She sniffed and blinked up at Horace. He looked close to tears himself. He brushed the pad of his thumb against her cheek, wiping away a crystalline tear.

“That’s my brave girl,” he said gravely.

She carefully touched her forehead, expecting to find a gaping hole. Of course, there wasn’t one.

“How?” she asked.

His gaze traveled to the floor where a perfectly shaped bullet was lying next to her foot. “Looks like he missed.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. Her heart started to pound out of control again. The bullet may have fallen short of its target, but it wouldn’t have dropped from the air intact like that. Not unless something unnatural had stopped it.

But how?

You stopped it
.

But that would be impossible.

She glanced down at the bullet again. As impossible as it seemed, she needed to start trusting her own instincts. She might not want to believe what they were telling her, but deep down, she knew the truth when she heard it.

“I did that,” she whispered.

“If you say so,” Horace said with a shrug.

How could he so readily dismiss what had just happened? She had stopped a bullet. By wishing hard enough, she’d changed the course of the future.

Impossible.

No one could simply will a solid object to change its course mid-stream like that. She wanted—
needed
—to talk about it.

But Horace didn’t seem interested. His attentions had already turned elsewhere. He glared at her pearly pink cell phone she’d dropped on the floor at her feet. The lights on it blinked periodically. He picked up the phone and held it to his ear.

“Yes. We’re okay,” he said.

Faith remembered then that she’d never finished that rather frantic conversation with the police operator.

“Yes. Yes,” he said. He listened for what felt like several minutes. Though, thinking back, the conversation couldn’t have lasted for more than a few seconds. “I understand.” He snapped the phone closed and handed it back to her.

“The police are on the way,” he told Stone.

He didn’t sound happy about it. Instead of thanking Faith, he gave her such a disgusted look, she felt an urge to bury her head in her hands again.

Why wouldn’t he want the police involved with…with…mysteriously disappearing gunmen?

Oh
…

Even she could understand how that might be difficult to explain.

“I’ll get Hadrian over here,” Stone said, pulling a cell phone from his suit coat pocket. “He’s got connections with the police department. He can handle the difficult questions for us.”

Horace nodded, but he didn’t look satisfied. “You had to go and call the police, didn’t you?” he grumbled.

“There was a man shooting at us,” Faith shot back.

“We had it under control.”

“Did you?” She motioned toward the spent bullet on the floor.

His lips tightened. “This isn’t the time to argue.”

“Oh?” But she felt like arguing. It was either do that or start crying again. Her hands started trembling. She quickly tucked them under her arms. “When will it be a good time? After you try and break up with me again. Or…or should we wait for another man to start shooting at us?”

Horace rolled his eyes.

“What was that thing?” he asked Stone. He helped Faith to her feet and pushed her pair of panties and jeans into her arms.

“I don’t know, but it sure as hell wasn’t human.”

“No kidding,” Faith said. Whatever had attacked them had disappeared into thin air before her eyes. No ordinary man could do that. And neither man seemed interested in hearing what she had to say about it.

“It wasn’t anything I’ve ever seen or heard of.” Stone said.

“You mean it’s new?” Horace asked.

“Or that ancient.” Stone shrugged. His eyes suddenly darkened. “Judging by its power, I’m betting on ancient.”

Horace was impressed with how well Faith handled herself. After a few well-deserved tears, she’d managed to pull herself together and had, though not happily, accepted what must have appeared to her to be an unfortunate trip into insanity.

Instead of dwelling on what almost had happened—his body still shook from the thought of how close she’d come to dying—Faith blushed furiously while dressing. He found her sudden bout of modesty charming.

When she finished buttoning up her jeans, she turned around and thrust her hand out to Stone. “I know we’ve already met, but everything about last night seems hazy. You’re Stone, right?”

Stone raised a brow as he focused his steady, unforgiving gaze toward her proffered her hand. “You remember meeting me?”

“It would be impossible to forget you,” she said, “seeing how you’re the only person Horace would let me call after he was shot.”

“Indeed.” Stone’s silvery eyes widened a touch.

It wasn’t an easy feat to surprise a man as talented as Frank Stone. Horace’s pride swelled. Faith was indeed an uncommon woman.