Cruel Seduction (Underground Kings 2)

It can’t end like this. This isn’t supposed to be how it ends.

“Give her to me,” I say, holding out my arms for the woman I’ve been searching for far too long.

Owen doesn’t hesitate. He slides her frail, cold, wet body into my hold, and I cradle her to her chest. She is so cold, I start to shiver. “We need to get her down to the infirmary,” I say, staring at her soft, delicate face. God, she looks like a porcelain doll. Her lashes are wet and shadow long spikes over her cheeks. She looks thinner, but she is so goddamn beautiful, my chest hurts.

It fucking hurts to look at her like this.

And she is still wearing that goddamn collar. This one has a lock on it.

“She’s dead,” Owen says. “I tried CPR, Sebastian. I tried, but nothing worked. I’m sorry.”

I ignore him. She isn’t dead. I didn’t spend seven years of my life waiting for her only to bury her. Fuck no, there is a plan. I have a plan. I reach for the pocketknife in my pocket and fling it open. I dig the sharp metal under the collar, careful not to cut her skin, and saw away the damn disgusting thing off her.

“Sebastian—”

“She’s not fucking dead!” I shout at them, tossing the collar to the side. Her neck is bruised; the collar was too tight. “She’s not dead,” I repeat as I lay her on the floor. I tug her robe together, so she isn’t exposed, and I cup the back of her head and carefully place her against the hardwood. “You can’t die, okay? You can’t. We have been through too much to find each other.” The fucking ocean brought her to me. Everyone, everything, the fucking universe knows we belong together, and I’m not going to let Kendrick take that away from me.

I lean my head over her heart and wait.

“I found her a half mile away, on the shore, face-down in the water—”

“We have to make him realize that he has to let go.”

“Will you two shut the fuck up so I can listen? Shut up. Just shut the hell up!” I hold my breath as I listen to her chest, but Owen is right, there is no beat, no small thud, nothing. “No. I fucking refuse.” I open her mouth and give her the kiss of life. Filling her lungs three times before I lay one hand over the other in the middle of her chest and press “I fucking refuse to let you die. You can’t. I’ll be so fucking mad at you if I have to go the rest of my life without you.” I count in my head with each press I give to her chest.

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

“Come on, baby. Please, don’t do this to me.”

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

I'm scared out of my mind. I can hardly think. I try to wrap my head around what Owen said, the hard truth that Gabriella was dead. The world couldn’t hate me this much to take away the one thing in this life that I have stayed alive for.

Thirty.

I jerk my hands away and cover her lips with mine again, doing my best not to fall apart by the fact this I the first time I’ve touched her lips, and they are frozen. I breathe down her throat and continue another set of compressions.

I remember the first time I saw her. Kendrick had come over to the house to borrow something, I can’t remember what. To be honest, I can’t remember much about that day besides Gabriella. God, she looked beautiful. She wore black jeans and a white sweater, it was fuzzy, and her hair was up showing the long, slender column of her neck. My eyes were locked onto the side of her throat the entire night.

And her perfume.

Fuck me, that perfume had me harder than fucking nails. I was relieved when they left, but guilt sank its way into my bones when I knew she was with the wrong brother. Kendrick has always been an asshole, but I told myself I’d win her over, make her realize how a man was supposed to treat her.

“Come on!” I yell at her, getting angry at the fact that she isn’t breathing. My arms are starting to burn. “Breathe, baby,” a sob breaks from my chest, and I wipe my left eye on my sleeve when a damn tear falls free. Fuck this, I am going to lose it. “Fucking, breathe!” I scream and lift my fist it in the air, slamming it down into the middle of her chest, knowing it is a last-ditch effort; knowing Owen is right.

I’ve gone from happy when I found a match on the camera, to confused, to fucking devastated in a matter of minutes. If Gabriella dies, where does that leave me? No one understands the depth, the … the obsession, the infatuation, the fucking undying need Gabriella makes me feel. It controls me. I’m not a man in possession of my own mind or emotions, and I haven’t been since I first met her.

She ripped out my heart and left me bleeding that day, and I have continued to bleed for her ever since.

Water leaks from the corners of her mouth, and my eyes widen. I slap her cheeks gently. “Gabby, wake up, baby. Wake up, come on,” I beg. She coughs, sending a fountain of salty water into the air. I turn her head to the side and let the water continue pouring from her lungs out onto the floor. I look up to the ceiling and blink away the tears. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” I whisper to up above. I don’t believe in God, not after everything I’ve seen, but right now, I am nearly convinced because it is a miracle that Gabby is breathing. Her heart is beating. Her eyes blinking and her lips, while still blue, they are moving.

She is weak. Once she is done coughing up the water, her eyes fall shut, and she slips into unconsciousness. I watch to make sure her chest rises and falls, and my shoulders sag as mollification takes over.

“You just saved her life,” Owen says, clapping me on the shoulder.

I gather Gabriella into my arms and hold her so tight, I’m afraid I may cause her to stop breathing again. I narrow my eyes at Owen as I place my feet under me and stand. “No thanks to you. You two wanted me to give up on her. Owen, I expected it from you, but Jaxon? If this would have been Quinn, you wouldn’t have given up. Fuck the both of you for telling me to.” I leave them behind as I walk down the hallway, passing Quinn who has tears in her eyes as they lock onto a limp Gabriella.

“Is she okay?” Quinn asks in a wispy, barely breathing kind of voice. Her light footsteps tell me she is following me, but I want to be left alone.