I looked to my left, where Aloiki knelt over the Latino man. His knees pinned the thug’s arms to the ground as he pummeled the man’s face with his fists. Blood and teeth sprayedeverywhere as bone cracked beneath the onslaught of Aloiki’s assault.
Bacon helped me sit up more. Leaning against him, I grabbed for my belly. I hadn’t gone down hard, but I still waited with bated breath until I felt my son kick roughly inside me. I let out a shaky breath of relief, more tears streaming down my cheeks. I’d never been so happy to have my uterus treated like a punching bag as I was in that moment.
Suddenly, my eyes flew open and I turned towards Bacon. “Beetle! He was shot?—”
“We know,” he said calmly. “Tommy’s inside with him. How are you?” He picked up my hands and started to examine my scraped palms.
I looked down at my once pristine white skirt and grimaced. Blood coated it, and I could feel it on the side of my face too. “I think I broke his nose.” I choked with barely restrained anger. If I wasn’t so heavily pregnant, I would have done a lot more to the bastard than just break his fucking nose! He’d threatened my son’s life!
Bacon smirked, pride shining in his gaze. “Yeah, you did.”
As the sounds behind me shifted, I turned in time to see Capone pull Aloiki off the very dead man on the pavement.Lesu Kristo, the man’s face was completely obliterated. I watched as Aloiki pushed Capone off him, and then he rushed over to me.
Aloiki took my face between his bloody hands, his eyes wild as he looked me over. I was a complete mess, scraped up, blood-splattered, and tear-streaked, but he held me like I was the most precious gem in the world.
“Hokupa?a…” His voice broke on my nickname. I’d seen a lot of emotions on Aloiki’s face over the years. More often than not, it was sheer arrogance, but I also got to see wicked humor, joy, arousal, anger, sorrow, and determination. But never, not in all the time I’d known him, had I ever seen fear on his face.
Seeing it now took me aback. I gripped him tightly, needing to reassure both of us that I was okay. His eyes, as dark as my own, blazed. It took a moment for me to be able to get one of his hands off my cheek so I could drop it down to my abdomen. Aloiki closed his eyes, a huff of breath leaving him, as our son kicked his hand through my belly.
Grunts and rustling to my right drew my attention as I saw my second kidnapper hogtied with a… Was that an extension cord? Someone had also stuck a belt around his mouth, gagging him, and a pink bow on top of his head.
“Wedding gift,” Tick Tock explained with a smile when he caught me looking.
Aloiki didn’t take his eyes off me. Like he could care less about what else was happening around us. “Tommy needs to look at you,” he told me sternly.
I shook my head. Now that the adrenaline was dying now in my system, I started to shake. “He’s with Beetle.” I turned my head over my shoulder at Bacon. “What about the staff? Everyone else? Did you find them yet?”
“They’re still looking,” he informed me.
Aloiki took my chin in his hand and turned my head back to face him. “Lu! Stop worrying about everyone else. You could have been seriously hurt! You could have died!”
“But I wasn’t.” Aloiki turned, wrapping his arms around me. I settled against him, craving his body heat like I was standing in the Arctic. “And they could be seriously injured or worse!”
“I don’t give a damn.” His voice brooked no argument. “I only care about you.”
The body of the man he’d just killed protecting me had already been moved, but my eyes landed on the blood stain in the parking lot. There was something fundamentally reassuring about those words. I didn’t need the reminder of why I loved this man, how special it made me feel that his attention was sosolely on me, but it helped. Amongst the fear and the chaos, it undeniably helped.
I let out a shaky breath, stealing both body heat and strength from him. “I warned you I was a mess.”
A snort escaped him as he dropped his face down into the crook of my neck. “And I warned you it wasn’t going to stop me from marrying you.”
“I’m covered in blood,” I argued.
Aloiki raised his head up, turning my face towards him. I’d wondered for a while if there was such a thing as a puppet kink, because damn I loved how he maneuvered my body to suit his needs. “You wear the blood of your enemy while protecting our son. Wear it with honor, Lu. You earned it.”
Chapter Six
Aloiki
As Tommy looked Lu over,I pulled Bacon and Holly aside. I’d been meaning to have this conversation with them, and both of today’s incidents only cemented the fact that I shouldn’t have waited.
“I want to make Holly Lu’s official bodyguard,” I said without preamble. I kept one eye on Lu as Tommy cleaned her minor scrapes. Since she had no bleeding and could easily feel our son kicking inside her, Lu did not want to go to the hospital. If she had, I would have put her in the ambulance instead of Beetle, who was barely clinging to life as it was.
Kayl showed up with the police and ambulance. He was able to smooth things over, making it seem like Beetle had been shot in a robbery gone wrong. Both my wedding gift the others had wrapped up for me and the man I had killed were squirreled away where the police couldn’t find them. Though he’d been invited to the wedding, Kayl had been unable to get off work in time for the ceremony, and had only been planning on attending the reception. I did not approach or speak to him, needing to concentrate on Lu and her injuries. By now, all the guests knewsomething more than Lu’s need to take a piss had interrupted the wedding.
I still had blood all over me from beating one of her attempted kidnappers to death, but neither Holly nor Bacon blinked at the sight of it.
“No,” Holly said, surprising both Bacon and me.
