Tasting the salt of my tears on his lips, I fought my way on top of him. We grasped each other, clawing to get closer. I straddled him, and he sat up. As I sank down onto him, I shut my eyes to revel in it. My arms wrapped around his neck while his hands clutched my hips, guiding the rhythm.
We were usually careful. Even in our most desperate moments, he’d been sure to protect me from consequences.
But we weren’t careful that morning. I climaxed with a hard shudder, and his fingers gripped me, driving himself deep as he came inside me.
I didn’t care. Reckless as always, I wanted every bit of him and any repercussions that resulted. When it was done and we both panted in the afterglow, he pressed a kiss to the rapid pulse at my throat, and I stared at the gold glinting on my finger.
His kiss on my skin. His seed in my womb. His ring on my finger. This was the last will and testament of Lucas Scott.
I gave in to the tears
Part Three
28
Kissing Death
No person shall… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…
—5THAMENDMENT, U.S. CONSTITUTION
Several days later, news of a serious attack came mid-afternoon, leaving hundreds injured. The wounded were transported to the quarantine house for treatment since it was closest. Every medic at headquarters was called to help, so we threw handfuls of supplies into packs and hauled out.
When I arrived, chaos and blood prevailed. The injured had been dragged inside and left abandoned in the lobby, and not all of them were soldiers. They littered the floors, the chairs, the old hotel check-in desks. Some moaned, but others were so still, I feared we’d arrived too late.
In a team of medics, I set to work organizing and classifying the wounded per our usual protocol. I grabbed colored flags, throwing greens on the minors, reds on the majors, and blacks on the fatals.
So many black flags.
Body after body crammed into every nook and cranny of the building.
“Do you know what happened?” I finally asked another medic as we worked on one man with a fractured femur.
“I heard Hunters bombed one of the refugee zones outside the city,” she said.
My hand slipped on the stabilization board. “What? Why?”
She shoved hair from her face, leaving a streak of blood on her temple. “They probably heard Defiants were living there.”
My stomach cramped as I imagined being bombed by my own government just because an enemy lived nearby. Would Theo allow such a thing?
Would Williams?
I really wasn’t sure.
We finished stabilizing the man’s leg and left him for new patients. My hands grew slippery with blood as I tied off tourniquets, stabilized snapped limbs, removed objects impaled through flesh and bone.
The screams in the lobby slipped into whimpers and moans as people were moved to rooms further in the hotel or succumbed to their injuries.
“Don’t leave me!” a soldier cried when I rose to help someone else, giving him up for dead. His insides spilled through a slash in his abdomen.
Shaking wildly, he grasped for me, and I leaned close to his sweat-drenched face. The smell of burned flesh and blood was thick around us. Dark eyes held mine, fear making them glisten until the light died behind them, and he breathed his last breath.
I turned to the next patient, shoving that memory down with the other soldiers I’d failed to save.
We worked for several hours, my body overloaded by death and blood. Fatigue slowed me, and my bad leg ached. I wiped theback of my hand across my brow, taking a stuttered, steadying breath while I stared around at all the work left to do.
A scream ripped through the room.
