Kiera’s trigger finger jerked, and the gun went off. Eyes locked on the muzzle, Mac saw the gun kick high. She was going to miss. Violet rammed into the taller woman, sending them crashing over a heavy wooden chair, taking it with them in a tangle of arms and legs. The bullet hit the wall as the gun spun away out of Kiera’s hands.
Violet had police training, but Kiera worked out in a gym regularly and had her in strength and weight. When she rolled to her feet and took a martial arts stance, leaped forward and tackled Violet before she could go for the gun, she demonstrated she’d had contact training as well. The two women made it to their feet. Violet landed a punch, 184
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but Kiera knocked her back with a hard kick. Undeterred, his fiery Mistress rolled, rammed forward, slamming them against Jonathan’s cross. Powell grabbed a generous handful of Kiera’s hair, and she screamed, turning on him as Violet yanked a gun out of an ankle holster.
Kiera shoved her elbow into Powell’s stomach, gaining her release, and flung herself on Violet before she could get the gun up. She rolled Violet over with another hard kick to her mid-section, taking her wind and making her drop the gun. Violet spun and grabbed her, and they went over Mac, tumbling to the other side of him. Violet landed on the bottom, her head hitting the wall. Kiera struck her, rolled off and scrabbled away.
When they rolled over, the bench groaned, and the significance of that exploded in Mac’s mind. As Kiera scrabbled for the gun and Violet tried to orient herself, he heaved against the bench. Not up and back this time. Left, then right, left, then right.
The anchoring had been designed for the pull of an aroused sub, resistance anticipated forward and back. He snarled, heaved again, side to side, fast as the pumping of a piston, every muscle screaming, demanding release, despite the awkward positioning of his legs. The floorboard cracked, twisted.
He roared, using the sound to galvanize him to further action. The floor ripped in response. The right side of the bench came loose abruptly, unbalancing him. Mac rolled with it, using the momentum to tear the bench free and coming to his feet, face to face with Kiera, who had just claimed the gun and leveled it at Violet. The roll put him squarely in the middle of them. He kept going, a forward charge, the bench anchored to his front like a Roman wooden shield.
Violet screamed his name. The gun fired. Kiera shrieked as he took her down under him. One wooden leg drove into her left breast, the other under her right arm. The impact to the breast caused a scream of pain. Still manacled to the bench, he had no mobility in his hands, and she still had the gun, but then Violet was there, stomping on her wrist, knocking it away, while Kiera abandoned all training and went after his face with teeth and nails.
“Roll off,” Violet shouted. Mac obeyed slowly, fighting through a haze of pain roaring through his body as if his insides were on fire, but his sense of self-preservation galvanized him to get him away from those wicked nails. Violet swung down with the P99 and clipped Kiera’s temple, stunning her, but the woman lunged forward nevertheless.
“Watch your feet,” he managed hoarsely, but it was too late.
Kiera caught Violet’s ankle, yanked, making her land with a heavy thud on her back. Violet’s foot caught her squarely in the mouth, snapping her head back, and then Mac was back on her, adrenaline filling in as his body weakened. He aimed better this time. When he landed, the four-by-four solid polished leg of the bench went directly into Kiera’s face, caving in her skull with a sickening crunch.
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There was no finesse to it, nothing but clear, brute strength, messy and final. Kiera’s body went slack. Mac closed his eyes as the burning in his back merged with the burning in his gut. God, he was going to throw up after all.
“Let me out of here!” Powell screamed.
“Shut up,” Violet snarled, not bothering to look at him while she freed Mac from his manacles and chains and moved him off the mangled bench onto his back. Onto blissfully cool tile that gave him a second’s respite from the fire in his gut.
“Mac. Oh, Mac.”
Fuck. He hurt. His hands automatically went to his abdomen, where the bullet had punched through the board and into his body.
He heard a heavy thud above them and started up, but she slid her arms around him. “That will be the local police. We’re here!” she shouted as the footsteps continued above them.
“Likely… soundproof,” he reminded her.
She bounced up, loosed Jonathan with three quick jerks, threw a robe at him. He caught it automatically, but before he could bolt, she caught his cock barehanded and twisted hard enough to turn him white, a maneuver Mac remembered had been very effective on him.
“You go up and show them how to get down here. Tell them we have an officer down and we need EMTs now. Right now, you’re just an idiot on a questionable kidnapping charge. You run, and I’ll have you marked on the attempted murder of two cops, you got me? I’ll make sure you get a prison cell with the meanest son of a bitch Master you’ve ever met in your life, whose idea of a bedtime lullaby each night is making you scream in pain.”
Powell bolted for the stairs, but she was already kneeling by Mac again. He was covered in something wet. His own sweat, he realized, though he was trembling uncontrollably. The pain was enormous, sick waves of it.
“Afraid you’re not seeing me at my best,” he said, through clenched teeth.
Her eyes darkened, “Jesus, Mac, if this isn’t your best, I’ll be overwhelmed when I finally do see it. You took a bullet for me, you jerk.”
“Can’t…couldn’t…have to protect you. Keep you.” Her hands were light, like the touch of angel wings on his flesh. “Sorry I involved you…but you did it.”
“We did it, Mac. Mac…Mackenzie,” she snapped sharply.
He pulled himself out of the pleasant white haze enveloping him.
“Mackenzie.” She was very close to him now, her lips just above his. She had the most beautiful eyes, even when they narrowed as they did now, telling him she meant business, and there’d be hell to pay if she wasn’t obeyed. “I absolutely forbid you to die.
Do you hear me?”
“Yes…Mistress.”
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“So all that sappy stuff you agreed to, about wanting to be with me forever, letting me nag you, you just said that to buy us time and save your ass, right?” He managed a smile. “You bet.”
She eased her hand under his shoulder, trying to avoid the torn flesh from the scourging, but Violet could tell all his focus was on the lethal agony in his midsection.
He didn’t even flinch when her fingernails accidentally caught in a welt, reopened a half clotted wound on his shoulder.
“Oh, Mac.”
“You shouldn’t…have come. Could have killed you.”
“Don’t make me slap you around in your current condition,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady, though fury and fear were pumping through her in equal measures. “You’d be dead, she’d be gone and we’d have had to run her down before she got someone else. I was at my mother’s late, didn’t start here until about 7:30
because I couldn’t raise Tyler on the phone.”
Had almost not checked her messages, God help her. She kept talking, knowing he wasn’t hearing half of it, but hoping he could hold onto her voice like a lifeline. “I knew he had left for his tour, so I figured T&K were in the dungeons with you, waiting on me like he said. Though I couldn’t understand for the life of me why you would have agreed to go alone with them without waiting for me, unless…” her voice caught. “I thought you set it up as some sort of surprise for me. To make me feel better.”
“Not brave enough…for that. They…twins…always scared the shit out of me.” She fought tears with the smile. “I was pulling up the driveway at about five after nine when your sergeant called me, said you hadn’t reported in. I figured something was up. Mac. Mac!”
“Wh—What?” He blinked his eyes back open, but the pupils were dilated, no focus.
Where the hell were the EMTs? She put her hand over his, over the wound, let him feel her touch over the source of his pain. “Mackenzie, I mean it. You’re going to obey me, because you’ve told me over and over there’s nothing you’ll refuse me. You understand? I don’t care how much you hurt, you will not wimp out on me. You hear me? Mac?” She shouted it, and he jerked.
His silver eyes focused on her for the barest fraction of a moment, enough that she saw he acknowledged her words, lingered on her face in a way that made the tears win, roll down her cheeks. His hand brushed her leg, rested on her thigh. “Yes, Mistress,” he repeated. Then he lost consciousness.
* * * * *
They airlifted him to Tampa General. When the copter touched down on the pad, Violet jumped down, a step ahead of the gurney. She stayed out of the way, but refused 187
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to be pushed back as the EMTs ran Mac across the ground to the ER doors. Nurses and a doctor burst out, sprinted to meet them, falling in with the rapid procession headed through the double doors to the prep area.
The doctor was young, reminding her this was one of Tampa’s teaching hospitals, but she was reassured by his quick fire of orders to place an emergency call for the surgeon on duty. He tapped the bracelet on Mac’s wrist. “Get this off of him and get him ready for Dr. Hilaman.”