Bang!
Chase slowly wilted on top of Giselle.
Giselle didn’t move either.
The metallic smell of gunpowder burned Jo’s lungs. Blood pooled next to their bodies, flowing downhill toward Jo, filling cracks like spilled ink.
Jo squeezed her eyes shut to extinguish the gruesome image, but it remained, burned on the back of her eyelids. Trembling, she turned her face into Avery’s chest and clung to him.
Footsteps pounded the pavement. Shouts came from all directions, men barking orders. They sounded far away. Several cars screeched to a halt, lights flashing through her eyelids. The police. How were they here already?
“Jo?” Avery slid off her to one side. He feathered his fingers over her cheek. “Are you hurt?”
“No. Are you?”
“No.”
The ringing in her ears grew louder. “Chase?”
“I don’t know.”
The world went black.
Chapter Twenty
Perched on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a towel, hair wet, Jo winced as Avery cleaned the scrape on her shoulder. Before tonight, their showers had been soapy explorations that ended in weak-kneed euphoria. The one they’d just shared had been mutually clinical, a quiet cleansing of the night’s horrific events.
Dawn’s relief to the darkness held her spellbound as she sipped the wine he insisted she drink while his tumbler of whiskey sat untouched on the nightstand. This was not the way she’d pictured her last night with him and not at all the memory she wanted to leave with him.
Avery blew against her skin. “Are you thinking about him?”
I should be. But all I can think of is you. How I almost got you killed. How much I need you right now.
She’d come to in the back of an ambulance in the museum parking lot, a paramedic taking her vitals as Avery held her hand and reassured her everything would be okay. His family hovered at the open door. Nick stood a few feet away, talking to a cop with lots of stars and bars on his uniform.
Witnesses, including a half dozen police officers, corroborated their statements. She still wasn’t clear on how the cops had come to be there, except that it had something to do with Chase. As soon as she and Avery were released, he had driven her to the hospital since no one could offer any details about Chase other than he was in route to the hospital with a gunshot wound.
When she didn’t answer, Avery wrapped his arms around her from the back and pulled her against his chest. “The surgeon said it was a clean through-and-through. No bones. No arteries. He’ll be fine. Just a small scar.”
“It’s not the physical scars I’m worried about. Because of me, he’ll carry an emotional scar for the rest of his life.”
Giselle hadn’t made it through surgery. He’d taken a life. That wasn’t something he’d come back from easily.
Avery took the glass from her hand, set it beside his, and turned her around. Hands bracketing her neck, he tilted her chin with his thumbs, forcing her to look at him. “You did not put him in that position. Sure, maybe they’d never have met if not through their connection to you, but he chose to enter into a relationship with her. He chose to be there last night.”
“To save me.”
“And I’m grateful to him for that.”
“But his life is forever changed.”
“So is ours, but none of this is your fault, and it’s over.”
It was over.Theywere over.
Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the desperation of knowing their time was running out. Maybe it was fear of almost losing him. It was definitely the feel of his hands at her throat. She loved the way he always felt the need to touch her, the way he welcomed her touch. She needed more of that.
Her face grew hot, her nipples hard under the towel, and the pulse in her clit throbbing. She ached to move his hands lower, to release the knot holding his towel on his hips, forhim to tear the one from her body. She wanted him inside her, pounding her toward oblivion.
