Savage gapes at me. “You killed her brother? Fuck, man, there’s no coming back from that.”
Aware of that truth, and even more so the fact that we could be attacked at any moment, I grab Ana. She slaps me hard in the face, yet the sting doesn’t stop me from throwing her over my shoulder. She tries to kick and fight, of course, and she calls me names, but Adam was right. This is between me and her, just me and her, which is why I walk toward the location I know to be a bedroom.
Once we’re inside, I kick the door shut and set her down.
Now we’re alone, and I’m not at all surprised when she slaps me again. And again. I let her just do it. Maybe I want the pain. Maybe I deserve the pain, but it can’t hurt as much as the day she told me she hated me. The day she tried to kill me and almost succeeded.
“Do something!” she shouts at me. “Stop just standing there.”
I catch her arms and drag her to me, turning her and pinning her between me and the door. “Does that work?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lucifer
Ana doesn’t jerk at her hands or fight me. She’s trained not to waste energy she can’t afford to expel. Her eyes meet mine, and there is a punch of history between us. Four years of history that started in a corner store turned into an engagement ring, and then ended with a bullet in my gut. I never thought I’d be this close to her again, even if I had to pin her to a door to make it happen. She’s still beautiful. She still smells delicious. And I still fucking love her, and I hate that I do.
She feels all the things I do. I see the flare of memories in her eyes, and I damn sure feel the push and pull between us that is familiar, ripe with history, and burning with the knowledge that we are still wickedly hot together. I know the exact moment she realizes this, the moment she hates me for it, the moment she really does want to shoot me all over again.
“Why are you not in hell already, Lucifer?” she demands softly.
I’d flinch, but she’d enjoy it too much, and of all the ways I’m willing to offer her pleasure, that’s not the kind of pleasure I intend to give Ana now or later.
“Because, apparently,” I say, “I was supposed to stick around to keep you alive so you could have another shot at me, Ana, but do it later. Jake’s dead.”
She blanches. “What?”
“He called me to warn me about a hitlist. He was being chased.” My lips thin. “I heard him die, and then a man came on the line. He told me you were next and challenged me to get to you first. I was in Texas, and you wouldn’t take my calls.”
“I was undercover. Darius grabbed my phone by accident. That’s why I’m here.”
In other words, Darius knew I was calling her. He might have even read the text message, but for now, I leave that alone. “Bottom line, Ana, it’s been hours since that threat was issued and that’s too long for us to be in a place where you’re easily located.”
Her lashes lower, her expression rippling with tension, before she looks at me again. “Let me go. Please.”
“Are you going to hit me again?”
“Not now. I make no promises about later.”
The fact that she suggests there will be a later at all is enough for me. I ease my grip on her wrists and reluctantly lift my body from hers. She doesn’t move, she doesn’t run, but then it’s not Ana’s nature to run at all.
“Do you know what this is about? And why it’s happening now?”
“Other than the obvious connection to the past, none. You know I left my team behind when—” I stop myself before I say, “when your brother died” and decide on, “a long time ago.”
“You have to have some idea what this is about, Luke.”
Luke.
Not Lucifer.
That little change is not little at all, but the minute I tell her where this threat originates, she’ll be back to Lucifer. But I also have no choice. “I told you—”
She points her finger at me. “Do not tell me my brother was dirty. Do not. He was not dirty.” She steps around me now and walks away, but I don’t immediately turn and not because I trust her not to shoot me. She still might. And fuck me, if she does, so be it.
Weary as fuck, I pant out a breath, run a hand through my hair, and turn to face her, hands settling on my hips under the puffer jacket someone shoved at me when we exited the plane earlier. “We need to leave.”
“We don’t need to do anything.”
“Whoever this is, used you as bait. I’m not leaving you behind.”
“You know I can handle myself.”
“Yes. I have the scar from the bullet hole to show for it, too, but this is bigger than either of us. And thank fuck you don’t have a gun right now because I’m just going to put this out there: considering the challenge I was issued, it seems to me the man who issued it knew I wasn’t going to be able to call you and warn you when he hung up. In other words, this rings of someone close to you being involved.”
“Are you suggesting that someone is Darius?”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Are you?”
“I don’t trust anyone anymore.”
“Right,” I say dryly. “Thanks to me. We need to get the fuck out of here.”
No sooner have I said those words than gunfire erupts in the front of the house.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ana
My world is already spinning with Luke’s return, even before the sound of bullets rings out in front of Darius’s house. Imminent danger tells me it’s time to find my dark zone, that place in my mind Kurt trained me to find in battle, a place where there are no emotions, only skills. If only it were that easy with Luke standing in front of me again.
“There’s a window off the side of the house downstairs,” I say, moving toward him and the door. “Exit to the hallway and cut left. And your men better not leave Darius in a damn closet, or I swear to you—”
“They won’t leave him,” he says, “but I swear to you, if I find out he sold you out tonight, he’s going to wish he was in the closet.” He reaches under his pant leg and produces a Glock, offering it to me. “Don’t shoot me. I’m the one trying to save your life.”
My stomach knots with the idea of that bullet I put in his belly. I was angry. I was hurt. Things happened that were not supposed to happen. All sourced from the fact that I was scared I was too in love with him to see him coming for me next. Now, years later, especially with him standing right here in front of me again, I don’t know what I feel anymore. I snatch the weapon from him. “Open the door.”
He pulls another weapon from behind his back in his belt, which tells me he could have used it on me earlier in the living room, yet he didn’t. I don’t allow myself to start thinking about what that means. Dark means dark, no emotions.
Luke opens the door, and the sound of gunfire exchange remains in the front of the house.
He grabs me and pulls me in front of him, and even now, in supposed dark mode, fighting for my life, his touch burns through me. So does his intent of ensuring that any bullets coming from the front of the house hit him first, but I remind myself that his love for me was always the definition of a scam. Focusing on freedom from the gunfire, I move down the hallway, find the door I’m looking for, and rush down the stairwell to the lower level. Luke is right behind me, and while there is a lock on the door, he doesn’t use it, leaving his men and Darius a way to escape. It also offers the enemy the ability to follow us, but I’d have done the same thing. Everything he does is what I would do—it always was, until it wasn’t.