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Authors: Elodie Chase

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BOOK: CRAVE - BAD BOY ROMANCE
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Before I could answer, he marched me
back in the direction of the cell. I don't know what I would've said anyway. He
seemed to have it figured out, and I couldn't see much of a flaw to his logic.
And worst of all, it meant he no longer had to keep me alive for it to work.

“Rachel?” Jonathan asked when he saw
me coming down the hallway, though his hand came up over his mouth when he
realized I wasn't alone.

“Yes,” Thrace told him, “she's not
going anywhere. Sadly, neither are you.” His tone changed as he directed his
voice at me. “We grabbed him when we thought we needed a way to leverage you. I
was pretty sure that if I started sending pieces of him to you in the mail, you’d
get on your high horse and pranced down here to dispense a little justice. Now
he's going to die anyway, just like you and your lover. And all for nothing.
You should've stayed in Michigan.”

Thrace forced me forward a few more
steps before shoving me roughly from behind. I tried to balance on my injured
knee and failed, crashing to the ground beside Cade instead.

Cade. Poor Cade. He’d given up so
much of his life to help my Grandmother, paying her back for helping him. Would
he be here right now, bleeding to death on the cold concrete if I'd never have
come?

Surely not. He’d have found a way out
of the situation if he was in it on his own, and more to the point he was too
big and too mean to be stuck here like this if it weren't for me.

“I'm so sorry,” I whispered to him.
If we were going to die, I needed him to know that.

Cade opened his eyes as Thrace
stepped closer, the shotgun looming large. “Don't be,” my rough man said to me.
“You did good.”

I didn't know what he meant, but the
spark of life that burned in his shining eyes matched exactly the determined
look in his face when I first painted him in my apartment. Even back then, with
the cold pouring in through a broken door and bills piled up all around me, I'd
known. Somehow I've known. This man would move mountains for me.

Thrace laughed, but he wasn't seeing
what I was saying. From his angle, all he saw was a dying man. I saw Cade’s face
lit with fury.

“Time to finish the job, I suppose,”
Thrace said out loud, to no one in particular. “Who goes first?”

Not surprisingly, no one said
anything.

Thrace sighed. “All right then, since
Cade's unconscious and can't watch you die, you can at least watch him go. And
for a little bit of grisly drama, I'll slit his throat. May as well let him
take a while in dying, don’t you think?”

Cade winked at me again, only this
time I was sure of it. It was a wink. He had a plan, and I was afraid if I
leapt to his defense I'd ruin it. Instead, I stayed still.

Thrace stepped up beside Cade,
clearly not worried about Jonathan at all. To be fair, he is no reason to be
concerned about the little man. There was no way either one of us could
overpower him and claim ownership of the shotgun.

Thrace pushed at Cade’s body with one
of his boots, twisting my man’s body on the cement.

A wicked smile split Thrace’s lean
face when he saw the bandage. “Nice work,” he drudgingly admitted. “A bit
desperate, of course. Give me the knife and we can get this over with.”

I frowned, glanced at Jonathan. The
knife had been removed when I got to wound. Did Jonathan have it? I couldn’t
help but glance around the cell, looking for it like an idiot. Had I missed it
here, somewhere?

Cade exploded into action. In a flash
he lashed out with his boot and smashed Thrace's kneecap backwards. I heard the
grinding pop of the bone and cartilage, and watched as Thrace collapsed.

Cade was ready for him to fall. As Thrace
did, the man of my dreams twisted onto his back, revealing the long, silver
knife he'd been concealing beneath his body the entire time. Painful as it
must've been for him, Cade had yanked the knife from his own wound while I’d
been unconscious, hoping against hope that I could give him a chance to use it.

And now that I had, he didn't
hesitate. Thrace, completely off balance, collapsed just as Cade stabbed
upward, plunging the knife through his enemies heart up to the hilt.

Thrace shuddered and spasmed, his
last breath rattling into the cell.

“Is it over?” I asked, impressed that
panicky Jonathan had the good sense to scoop up the shotgun, just in case.

“It is,” Cade growled, shoving Thrace
off of him as he wrenched his knife free once more and got painfully to his
feet. “The others will know he's dead if and when they see us. They won't be an
issue. Time to go back into town to get me patched up…”

“You need a lot more than that,” I
said. “By the looks of that wound…” I didn't want to say the rest, but I felt
like he knew where I was going.

Cade shook his head and smiled,
pulling me closer and putting his mouth against my ear. “It’s just one more
scar, Rachel. And this one was worth it for you.”

 
 

EPILOGUE

We get
out of there. What else can I say? It wasn't easy, but Cade kept repeating that
he would take more than a single stab wound to bring him down. Turns out he was
right, and by the time we got back to the Harley he was even able to ride.

Jonathan had never been on the bike
before, and I think he was even more excited to be included in our trip back,
hanging on to the back of me like an excited chimp, happier even than when he
had seen my breasts a little earlier.

Later that night, Cade finally gave
in to my glowers and pleadings and threats and went to the emergency room for
x-rays and stitches. There wasn't a doctor or nurse present who believed him
when he showed them a knife he was stabbed with.

It should've killed him.

It didn't.

And now he's mine.

But that was months ago. Nine months,
to be exact. Time enough for a proper courtship, as they say in these parts.
Time enough for a wedding.

Time enough for the child inside me
to become big and strong and yes, probably mean. Just like his daddy.

 

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BOOK: CRAVE - BAD BOY ROMANCE
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