Wounded Courage (Lucky Thirteen) (26 page)

I forced myself to my knees and looked back at the complex behind us. The main house was engulfed in flames, dark smoke billowing into the sky. A second explosion joined the first, taking out the one of the surrounding buildings.

He’d tried to kill me. Again. Alex tried to kill me.The whole complex caught fire, and while we felt the heat when the wind shifted, for the most part we were safe. A half dozen mini explosions went off in succession, destroying the once elegant estate.

The one thing I did know was that if Alex could escape being shot, then he could escape an explosion. We hadn’t seen the last of Alex. It was likely those explosions were wiping evidence, wiping the slate, as it were.

Murphy groaned from where he’d landed on the ground. I hurt all over, but it was nothing compared to what was happening to him. I had to get him to a doctor.

“Murphy…” I whispered, trying to keep from sobbing. “Murphy, look at me.” His eyes met mine, but his focus wasn’t there. I brushed his cheek with my thumb. “Eamon, please.”

He groaned again and his eyes rolled up into his head.

“Eamon, no, stay with me. Please.” I sobbed out the words, holding his head in my hands. Tears came unbidden, uncontrollably. I couldn’t lose him.

His eyes followed something beyond me. I looked around, but I didn’t see anyone. Glancing down at his side, I noticed my sweater had soaked through. My heart sunk, pulling down into my gut. I was losing him. I didn’t know what else to do.

“Watch.” The sound of his voice pulled my attention back to his face. His eyes were open again, those gorgeous icy blues staring back at me. He was more coherent than he was a second ago.

“Watch what?”

“My watch call. Top left. Bottom right. Together.”

What?

His left hand twitched, catching my attention. That’s when what Murphy was trying to tell me clicked. “Oh!”

I grabbed his wrist, and turned his arm so I could see his watch. It was one of those really expensive outdoorsy kind of watch, with a compass and a bunch of other things I’d probably never need in the city. I remembered him putting it on while we were on the train. But it had four buttons, like a stopwatch did. What had Murphy said? Top left, bottom right. Could that be what I was supposed to press?

What would happen if I pressed them?

What did I have to lose? At worst, it killed us too. If I didn’t get Murphy out of here, he was as good as dead anyway. I took a breath, used my thumb and forefinger together, and pressed both buttons simultaneously.

I exhaled, leaned over to give Murphy a quick kiss on the lips. I smoothed my hand over his forehead, which was clammy and warm. He didn’t have long. I was going to lose him.

~*~*~

Murphy

Coming back from the darkness of unconsciousness is sort of jarring. The first touch of bright sunlight on eyes used to the darkness is like being stabbed in the pupils. Not to mention that I came back to life with the headache of a lifetime and what felt like a two ton weight on my chest.

It took me a few minutes to open my eyes and get used to sight again. Above me, I saw the dull ceiling tiles that looked like sponges all lined up together. The air was cold, but clean. I tried to stretch out but my side felt like it split open.

I groaned out the pain and tried to sit up.

“No, just sit your happy ass back.” My eyes rested on Gabe White as he came to stand by the bed. He shook his head. “You have some very pretty stitching in your side right now. You need to keep still.”

I frowned, feeling the tightness of the skin around me. “Really? I feel like I got ran over by a tank.”

“Please. You’d bulldoze right over a tank.” White replied.

What had happened? The last thing I remembered was the Giroux house… and Addison…

“Addison!” I groaned as I tried to sit up again. “Where is she?”

“She’s next door.”

“Is she—”

“She’s fine. A couple of little stitches on some small cuts, but mostly okay.”

I leaned back against the pillows, grateful. I hadn’t been sure that the couch would shield us at all when I’d pulled her over it.

That left one other piece of unfinished business. “And Chris?” White paused, not taking his eyes off the IV he was switching out. “Did you find Chris?”

“Yeah, we found him.” The voice was flat.

“Did he make it?”

“He’s alive.”

I leaned back against the pillows, letting out a long sigh of relief. One of the hardest things I’d ever had to do was to trigger Chris’s emergency signal and leave him there on the train to bleed out. “Can I see him?”

“Murphy… Hardy was hurt pretty bad. He’s lost a lot of blood, and his motor functions have been affected.”

I pushed myself up to a sitting position, which probably wasn’t the most fantastic of ideas. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I’m just a medic, Murphy. They called in specialists to help him out.”

Hardy was my best friend. I swung my legs off the bed, which in hind sight—not the best idea. Fire started in my side so bad that my vision darkened.

“Hey, no moving.”

“I want to see Chris.”

“Murphy, I don’t know that—”

“You can get me something to take me there, or I can get up and walk.”

White sighed. “Hang on. I’ll get you a chair.” He disappeared for a moment and returned with a wheelchair. He hooked up my IV to it, and then we began the production of me getting from the bed to the chair. I hadn’t realized just how fucked up I was. I’d have never made it down the hall.

Once I was settled, White wheeled me out of the room. “You shouldn’t be up at all, Murphy, so try to take it easy, okay? For both you and Hardy.”

I nodded.

The room he took me too was quiet, except for the slow beep of the heart machine. White put me next to the bed and reminded me again not to overexert myself before he left. Chris didn’t look good. His normally tanned skin was pale. His eyes were closed, and he had an IV hooked up to his arm.

“Chris?” I whispered.

His eyes fluttered open and slowly, he turned his head toward me. “Hey.” God, he sounded worse than I did.

“How ya doin?”

“I got shot. This shit hurts.” He grinned weakly. “You did good, Eamon.” 

I glanced up at him, surprised.

He nodded. “You promised me that she’d be safe, and you kept her safe.”

I started to say it was the other way around, but the feminine deliberate cough caught both our attention. Addison was in the doorway, her arms crossed. She smiled when she saw me. “Hey there.”

“Hi, beautiful,” I told her. My voice sounded like a ninety-year-old’s. Still better than Chris was. I’d never been so happy to see her.

“Awkward…” Hardy singsonged. “That’s still my sister, man. I’m just gonna… yeah.”

Addison grinned as she side-stepped into the room. “You two. What am I going to do with you?”

“Look, I’m still a little weirded out by the whole best friend-little sister thing.”

“We’re twins. It’s a fifteen minute difference.” She rolled her eyes. “Not a little sister.”

“Different birthdays.” When she groaned and narrowed her eyes in irritation at me, I chuckled, but it hurt too much to keep that up.

“You guys nearly died on me.” Unlike what I expected, Addison didn’t seem like she was crying. She looked angry. “Don’t you dare do that to me.”

I glanced at Chris who shrugged and both of us looked back to her.

“You guys can’t leave me alone. I need you. Both of you.” Neither one of us knew what to say to her. She looked down at her fingers. A minute later, interrupting the most awkward silence ever, White came back in to check on Chris. That was when Addison made her escape. I ignored the pain in my side and wheeled myself into the hallway.

“Addison!” I yelled. “Don’t go.” She stopped, only ten feet from me, and slowly turned on her heels. She walked back, slowly until she was only a foot away.

“I almost lost you. I didn’t like that very much. I thought…” She glanced down at her fingers, playing with the tip of one of her fingernails. “I didn’t want to lose someone else I loved.”

I blinked. Did she just say she loved me? I tamped down the elation in my heart and cleared my throat. “You didn’t lose me.” I held out my hand, wincing just a little at the sharp pain… all over. She took my hand, and I pulled her closer to the chair. “You won’t ever lose me. I’m like… one of those stickers you find on your pants after sitting in the grass.”

She giggled softly, but I couldn’t take the growing tears in her eyes. I tugged on her hands, so she knelt between my legs. “Listen, Addison, I haven’t been honest with you. There’s something you should know.”

The look of dread on her face was priceless, but she didn’t say anything. She just nodded.

“I am hopelessly, utterly in love with this girl, and she just told me that she loved me. I’m not going to be able to see you anymore.”

Her lips parted as she realized what I was saying. “Damn it, Murphy!” 

She smacked my shoulder, which sent a whole new round of tingling pain through my body. “Ow! Stop that! I’m hurt here.”

“You’re such a jerk,” she said. “I really thought you were going to break it off with me, now that it’s all over.”

All over. Yeah, right. Instead of four Giroux family members, we had one really powerful one. But I didn’t want to worry her. And right then, I just wanted her close. “I’d never be able to walk away from you, Addy. Hell, right now, I can’t even walk.”

“Master Chief Collins was here yesterday.” She swallowed hard.

“Oh?”

She nodded. “He said he got you guys cleared.”

“And you?”

“It’ll depend on how much I can give them on Alex.”

“The notebook?”

“I didn’t tell them. Alex knows I have it.” She paused. “It’s hard to give up something like that, which protected you from someone else, but pretty much signs your death warrant with another.”

“It won’t stop Alex.”

“No, it won’t. But I can,” she smiled. “I didn’t know enough about Simon to be useful, but I damn sure know Alex.”

I was tired of hearing about Alex. I sighed and squeezed her hands in mine. “We’re not going to think about those things right now. We’re going to sit here, and you’re going to tell me how much you love me again.”

She smiled. “I am?”

“Absolutely.”

“Bossy.” She narrowed her eyes, and pursed her lips, but I could tell she was playing.

“You like that about me,” I told her. She grinned, which pretty much confirmed what I thought was true. She did like that.

Addison

One Year Later…

I gripped Murphy’s hand tightly, feeling the weight of the ring he’d just slid onto my finger. But Murphy had owned my heart long before he’d given me that ring. And he always said that a piece of my soul was inside him. I was pretty sure it was the other way around.

It was mission time now that he was all healed up. I couldn’t mask the anxiety I had. “When do you leave?”

“In the morning… But I shouldn’t be gone long. This is just a quick trip.”

I didn’t know what the mission was, and I didn’t want to. Knowing what kind of danger he faced with me all those months ago was enough. I almost wished he’d been hurt as bad as my brother, who was now out of the Navy. He’d returned to Oak Creek to finish out his physical therapy. But being part of this SEAL team was a part of who he was.

I wrapped my arms around Murphy’s slim waist and curled against his bare chest. My breasts brushed against his skin, sending deliberate shudders through my body. My center tingled in anticipation of what I wanted to do. I glanced at the alarm clock across the bed from me. “We have four hours. Guess I should make sure to send you off right, then, huh?”

He shook his head. “But I don’t want to fit in sex with you. I want to take my time. I want to get to know your body. I want to leave no inch of you untouched by my lips.”

“Yes, talking like that really makes me not want to do you right now.” I rolled my eyes. “Murphy, you’ve seen more of my body than anyone else in the world. I’ve been waiting all this time for you, while I watched you get better and get stronger after the explosion. I’ve been very patient. Now you’re healthy enough to work. Don’t make me wait any more.” For punctuation, I slid my hand down to his crotch, the intense hardness of the bulge there surprising me. I’d known I could turn him on, but he was straining.

“I don’t want to rush us.”

Us. I liked the sound of that. But his worry was unfounded. In the last twelve months, we’d slowed things down so he could concentrate on getting better, but I was always there. I wasn’t going anywhere. I ran my hands over his chest, dropping kisses in a straight trail down his body. I kissed every visible muscle in his six pack, ran my tongue down the center of his abdomen.

“Oh, you’re killing me.”

“Oh, I’m just getting warmed up.” I crawled between his legs, pushing his knees further apart so there was room for me. His erection was already at attention, and his back arched whenever I wrapped my hand around it.

“Fuck!”

I was a little nervous about what I wanted to do for him, but he’d done it for me in the past, and I wanted to return the gesture. And I wanted to know his taste as intimately as he knew mine.