His body was limp, skin cold, and the bandage covering his stitches was gone. His eyelashes looked like bruises against his pale face, and there was blood smeared on his cheek.
I shook him, watching his head loll against my arm. “Hazard.”
No reply.
“Haz,” I demanded, carrying him to the SUV. His eyes didn’t flutter at all when I laid him across the cold leather of the back seat. Ignoring the traffic flying past us, I climbed inside to lean over him.
Grasping his chin, I pulled his face around, planning to yell. The second I laid eyes on his exhausted, bloodied face, my heart constricted. “Baby doll,” I rasped, dragging my knuckles over his cheek. “Look at me with those innocent eyes.”
His lashes did not flutter, but he made a light sound. “Kieran?”
“I’m right here, baby doll.”
“I don’t feel so good.”
Panic slapped me that he’d been shot, that he’d been wandering the city with a bullet wound. Apoplectic, I started pulling at his clothes, searching all that smooth, unblemished skin I’d washed just last night.
It was unblemished no more. There were no bullet wounds, but he was covered in cuts, some of them still bleeding. Patting down his legs, I noted the large tear in his jeans and a nasty cut on his knee.
“Whoever did this to you will beg for my mercy, and I will show them none,” I swore.
Back in the driver’s seat, I wrapped my hands around the steering wheel, the blood marring them bothering me for the first time in my life.
So no, there would be no forgetting Hazier Maddox. I was too far gone for that.
Blood and death were of no consequence to me until I had something to lose.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Haz
The throbbing in my head was still raging when awareness rolled over me like a heavy fog in the early morning after a heavy storm. It was accompanied by unfamiliar aches and a pinching sensation in my arm.
Pungent panic cut through the hazy recognition, seizing my muscles with the urge to run.
They caught me! I was a goner, about to become fish food in the river.
Gasping, I sat up, survival mode overruling the way my body screamed in protest. Blind to my surroundings, I focused only on one thing: escape.
Something forced me back, trying to hold me down.
“No!” I roared, kicking and bucking.
A grunt. A growl. The weight on me increased.
A strangled howl ripped out of me, the strength of it powering my arm as I swung my fist. Agony exploded in my hand when it connected, and a sinister curse rolled through the room like thunder.
“Hazard.” The powerful voice cut through the panic, the name slamming me with recognition.
My shaking limbs collapsed, eyes finally able to focus. “Kieran?”
He huffed, the sound draping me in relief.
“He’s got a hell of a right hook for such a half-pint,” a voice I didn’t know interjected and spiked my anxiety all over again.
“Easy,” Kieran soothed. “You’re safe.”
