No Gentle Giant (A Small Town Romance)

There’s nothing but heaps of gold bars gleaming through the swirling dust.

And several twitching, red-streaked limbs just barely emerging from under them.

It’s fucking brutal—and brutally appropriate.

Nobody’s getting up and walking away from that.

I think I’m bleeding a little, but my adrenaline’s running too hot to feel where the cuts are, much less care.

Clutching Felicity against me, I squeeze her till it hurts, breathing her in, feeling her.

The beat of her heart rabbiting between us. Her shaky, shallow breaths. Her everlasting warmth.

The way she holds me so tight like she’ll break if I don’t keep holding her.

And the way she whispers, her voice choked with tears.

“Alaska, Alaska, Alaska...Paxton. You came.”

My name’s never sounded more reverent on her lips.

“’Course I did, Fliss.” I capture her face in my palms, lifting her tear-streaked eyes to mine. “I...fuck. I never had a choice. I could’ve lost you. I’m sorry. So sorry.”

She smiles fiercely, her fingers curling hard in the front of my shirt. “What are you apologizing for, polar bear?”

“I don’t even know. Mostly just thinking. If I hadn’t gotten my ass here in time, I might’ve never gotten the chance to tell you.” I stop, out of words.

To say I love you.

I want to say it so much it kills me. But they’re big words, so large and so strange when we’ve barely made it out with our lives, and we’re still surrounded by a bloody mess.

I fucking shudder as I draw Felicity up closer, trying to tell her what I can’t quite say just yet—with my lips, with my touch, with growling kisses that taste like hot tears.

She clings to me desperately, sweetly, rising up on her toes to meet me.

Gasping against my lips, she opens for me delicately as if she’s afraid of the same thing.

That everything we’d started building together was lost.

Until this moment, when we come together again in fire, and for just a few perfect breaths there’s nothing but the two of us.

One long kiss that feels more like a promise than a reunion.

A new beginning.

A graceful vow.

A clean slate, wiped from all the messes burning away behind us.

Christ, I want that. I want her.

I want every impossible thing I know we can have together in the coming days. Every chance for a future worth living.

I want her in my life.

In our life.

I just want her.

That want ripping out of me cuts short as Felicity goes stiff in my arms, staring over my shoulder.

The police? The guys? They had to make it in here sooner or later.

I’m not ready for her to pull back, but she jerks away, the strangest look crossing her face: stark terror and animal anger, something I’ve never seen in the time I’ve known her.

I barely get a second to process it before her mouth opens in a scream.

“Alaska!” She shoves me aside—rather, she tries—thrusting herself in the opposite direction.

Luckily, I’ve got the good sense to move where she wants me.

Just in the nick of time.

The instant I look down, I see her.

A bloodied, broken Paisley Lockwood, lunging at the spot where we’d been seconds ago, splattering herself against the wall with a shriek of rage.

One of her arms hangs loose, contorted, clearly broken.

She’s limping on a leg that just might be in two pieces inside her jeans, but that doesn’t stop her from whipping around and flinging her good arm out, pointing her gun straight at my face.

My heart skips half a beat.

I square my shoulders to charge her, ready to tackle her around the middle.

I never get the chance.

Because Fliss dives in from behind, coming in like a falcon, a familiar pearl-handled switchblade with KL engraved on the handle clutched in her hand.

Before I can do anything, she’s slashed the back of Paisley’s good leg, catching her behind the knee—and she must’ve cut deep, possibly severing the tendon.

Paisley drops like a puppet with her strings cut, breathlessly screaming, clutching at her leg, blood pooling around her and turning the floor to rusty crimson.

Breathing hard, face white as a sheet, Felicity looks down at her with a mixture of bitterness and grim satisfaction.

“You wanted this back,” she spits—then tosses the knife down next to Paisley’s writhing form.

Paisley shoots her a single venomous look.

Right before her eyes roll back in her head, and she slumps in a shattered heap on the floor.

Felicity’s eyes widen. “Oh, crap. Is...is she dead?”

I sink down into a crouch and press my fingers to the demon’s throat.

“Still got a pulse. Weak, but there. She probably passed out from blood loss or shock.” I lift my head, glancing toward the front of the café at the sound of fresh sirens, different from the boys and the fire truck. “Guessing that’s Langley. Late as usual, but just in time to keep her from bleeding out.”

“I have...mixed feelings about that,” Felicity says dryly. “But I have a feeling in the end I’ll feel a lot better about not killing someone, no matter what she’s done to me.”