J. Geissinger - Edge of Oblivion

“We don’t have time for the daily mutiny, Aurelio,” Lucien snarled. “She belongs to the King.

Back off or I’ll make you wish you hadn’t gotten out of bed this morning!”

Aurelio curled his hands to fists and growled at Lucien, Lucien bared his teeth at Aurelio, and Morgan took the opportunity to reach out with her free hand and touch the hand Lucien still had wrapped tight around her wrist.

“You’re going to let me go and kill Aurelio now,” she said very clearly.

That flicker of amusement appeared again on Aurelio’s face as he shifted his attention to her and gave her the onceover with those black eyes. “Beautiful and fierce, but perhaps a bit demented, eh, Lucien?”

But Lucien didn’t answer. He blinked once, then released his grip on Morgan’s wrist. Aurelio didn’t have time to react before his brother slammed his fist into his face.

Morgan jumped out of the way as Lucien followed the wild swing by slamming his huge, naked body into his brother’s, toppling them both to the marble with a flat thud. They struggled madly, Aurelio cursing and shouting, Lucien eerily silent except for several hoarse grunts as he tried to get his hands around his bigger brother’s neck while being punched and wrestled. She sagged to her knees against the wood console, terrified, trying to work up the nerve to make a run for it. All she saw was flailing huge limbs and acres of bare, toned flesh and the occasional flash of a heavy, swinging male member. She had the insane urge to laugh.

At that exact moment, Xander crashed through the door.

When he caught sight of Morgan cowering and bloody against the console, staring up at him with huge, terrified eyes and a bruise blooming garish blue and purple across her cheek, Xander experienced a flood of rage so overwhelming he literally lost his mind.

With a roar so fierce it pulled the two fighting males up short and fractured the oval mirror above the console into a web of splintered glass, he bared his teeth, unsheathed his knives, and lunged at them.

He hit the bigger one first. His charge was so powerful it knocked them both off their feet.

They flew through the air and landed on top of the glass coffee table in the living room, which shattered into a million pieces with a hideous crash. The male beneath him grunted in pain but wrapped his arms around Xander’s back with such force he thought his spine might be crushed. They rolled over the broken glass together and slammed against the sofa, which was shoved back several feet by the impact.

He heard Morgan screaming something but was too focused on the fight to make it out. His arms were trapped in the male’s vise grip; his weight pinned him to the floor. He was wedged against the sofa, but none of that mattered. In a swift, practiced move, he thrust up with his dagger and sank it deep into his opponent’s side. The male arched back, howling, and gave Xander perfect, unobstructed access to his throat.

Xander took the opportunity and slashed his other dagger straight across his carotid artery.

Blood sprayed out in a huge red arc, splattering his face, his chest, the floor. The male rolled to his back, clutching his throat and writhing, and Xander freed himself from beneath him and leapt to his feet, ready to fight the other one. He whirled around to find him standing only a few feet away, shaking in rage, his black eyes wild.

“He was mine ,” he hissed, curling his hands to fists.

Xander frowned. It almost sounded as if he was mad at him for killing the other one first. He didn’t have time to figure it out because the male lunged at him like a madman, snarling and swinging. Xander waited in a crouch for him to get near enough; then, in a blindingly fast move practiced hundreds of times, he stepped swiftly aside, used the other’s forward momentum against him, and shoved the male so hard from behind he stumbled right into the half of the glass terrace slider that hadn’t already been destroyed.

The huge male hit it face-first. It shattered like a bomb.

Arms flailing, he went flying through a field of razor-sharp, glinting glass and landed on his chest with an ugly smack against the pink marbled terrace. He lay there stunned while shards of glass drifted down all around him, catching the light like diamond flakes. With adrenaline roaring through his veins Xander leapt across the room, landed in a crouch beside the male, withdrew a dagger from his boot, and sank it deep between the bones of the male’s neck, severing his spinal cord.

He jerked then exhaled in a sputter. On the marble beneath his body, blood began to pool.

Breathing hard, Xander noticed a sharp pain in his abdomen, blooming with heat. He stood and looked down at himself and was amazed to find a widening circle of blood seeping through the front of his shirt.

“Xander.”

Morgan’s voice jerked him back to reality. He turned. She stood in the suite’s foyer, shaking, leaning against the wood console for support. Her beautiful face was nearly white.

“Are you hurt?” He fought a sudden wave of dizziness. Instinct made him reach around to his back, where he discovered a thick, jagged piece of glass sticking out at an angle from his shirt. He touched it and it sent a wave of pain shooting through his body. A hot rush of liquid spilled over his skin and pooled around the waist of his pants.

The table. He’d hit the coffee table, he’d rolled in the broken glass—

“Are you hurt?” he said again, harsher this time, taking a step over the blood-splattered ivory carpet toward Morgan.

“No.” Her gaze flickered down to his waist. He put a hand over his abdomen and felt his own blood seep hot and thick between his fingers. A tiny sliver of glass pricked the tip of his finger.

Christ. It went all the way through. He’d seen enough knife wounds to know that a perforated bowel was not going to be pretty. And he was bleeding like a stuck pig, which meant there was a distinct possibility one of the abdominal arteries had been compromised. If he had any chance of survival, he needed help.

Fast.

“Listen to me very carefully, Morgan,” he said, his tongue strangely numb. “I want you to get my cell phone from the leather case on the desk and call the first number on the speed dial. No one will speak when it’s answered, but tell them you’re with me, and I’m hurt. When they ask for it, the password is Esperanza.”

He felt both hot and cold, and sweat had bloomed over his chest. He took another step toward her and almost stumbled. She jerked forward with both hands out and crossed the room.

“Say you understand. Say it, Morgan.”

“You’re bleeding.” Her voice cracked. “Here, sit on the couch. Let me take a look.”

She guided him to the couch, and without protest, he let her. With pain now radiating out from the wound in throbbing hot spikes, he held perfectly still as she quickly unbuttoned his shirt and smoothed it over his shoulders, then pulled it off his body. She knelt next to him and touched his side, probing, her fingers featherlight on his bare skin. Her movements were careful, almost reverent, and he realized she was taking care to avoid hurting him.

She didn’t want to hurt him.

That thought gave him as much pain as the blade of glass embedded in his body. He closed his eyes, concentrated on his breathing, and let the deep, warm scent of her skin wash over him.

Not bad. This wasn’t a bad way to die. Here, with her, with her scent in his nose and her fingers soft on his skin. Of the thousand ways he’d imagined his death, one as pleasant as this had never been included.

“It’s clean, but I won’t lie—it’s bad,” she said. “I’m not going to remove it because that will only make it worse.” He smiled, wondering how she knew that. “Do you think you can lie on your side?”