Deep(18)
Nick’s hand left her thigh, and his arm went across her back. “Okay, bella. Let’s go.”
Bella. That meant beautiful. Bev turned her head; his face, his mouth, was right there. Before she thought any more about it, she kissed him.
She’d startled him—and that gave her a rushing sense of power. The one thing she felt sure she knew about him was that he was a man of immense power and control, and that scant flinch when her lips touched his gave her a little hit of his power, like the connection had transferred some of his to her.
And then his other hand took hold of her face and his tongue was in her mouth, and she was completely in his control. Oh God, oh God. His mouth was hot and firm and tasted of scotch, and his tongue was like silk against hers. She wanted him so much. It was all lust, all physical desire and mystique, no substance that she could see, and she didn’t care at all. She moaned and kissed him back, abandoning herself to the folly of lust.
He broke away and kissed her nose. “Come on, Beverly. We have a long ride before I can do what I want to do to you.”
And that right there was easily the sexiest sentence in the English language, as far as Bev could imagine. She scooted out of the booth, smoothing her dress as she stood, and then Nick’s hand was on hers, on her ass, and he laced fingers with her and led her through the club. Brian stayed close, leading the way.
Stepping out into the late night, Bev felt a little bit like a celebrity. Though it was eleven o’clock, there was still a long line of people trying to get in. The bouncer—a different guy—stood up from his stool and nodded at Nick, and the effect was almost as if he were bowing.
She couldn’t help but smile brightly at everybody. Maybe she was acting like a nerd, but she was happy and excited and a little drunk, and she loved everybody.
Brian led them down the block a bit toward a huge, black SUV with blacked-out windows and black wheels. As they approached, the guy she’d seen at Nick’s door the night before, every bit as big as Romeo, maybe even bigger, got out of the driver’s side and walked around the front of the truck. He opened the passenger door.
And then he twitched—Bev only saw it because she had just noticed for the first time that he had gold tips on his black hair, which seemed an oddly fussy style choice for a man who looked liked he’d been hewn from rock with a dull chisel.
But he twitched, and then he spun around with surprising speed and grace and yelled “DOWN! GET DOWN!”
Nick knocked her to the sidewalk and landed on top of her, and Brian landed on top of him, and Bev was pretty sure the impacts had broken something inside her, but she didn’t have time to finish that thought before Nick’s arms were around her head and the air was full of noise and hot with fire.
The SUV had exploded.
~ 5 ~
“Fucking hell! Nick, you okay?”
Brian’s strained voice came as if it were passing through thick layers of gauze. His hands were on Nick’s shoulders, trying to pull him up and over. Nick shook him off.
“I’m okay.” He shifted off the woman under him and brushed her hair from her face. Her cheek was badly scraped, and she looked pained and terrified. “Are you hurt?”
It took her a second or two of mute staring before she answered. “My…chest. It hurts to breathe.”
Intending to have Brian call for help for her, Nick looked over his shoulder, not letting his mind take in more than the most immediate problems yet. But Brian was lying prone on the sidewalk. He seemed to have fallen as soon as Nick had said he was okay.
A piece of the Navigator was embedded in his back. “Fuck! Brian!”
“I’m okay, Nick. It’s just my shoulder. Hurts like a mother, but I’m okay.”
Now, Nick saw, too, that the back of his friend’s leather jacket was smoking. “Are you burned?”
Brian shook his head. “Singed. I’m okay, boss. I’m okay.”
He didn’t look okay, but Nick nodded. As he turned back to Beverly, he saw a big, black Italian shoe just past her head, a socked foot and ankle still inside it. Jimmy. Dammit. Ah, dammit.
He turned to the wreckage, finally hearing, still heavily muffled, the shouts and screams and weeping around him. Other small parts of Jimmy, many of them flaming, were scattered about—a hand with his diamond pinky ring twinkling in the light of the fire consuming it, another foot with more leg attached—but Nick figured most of him had been vaporized by the impact of the bomb. The blast radius looked to be controlled—only fifteen feet or so—but several people were down, probably hit by shrapnel from the Navigator. Jimmy seemed to be the only death, at least so far. Fuck. He had a wife and four kids.