Page 162 of Carnal Wagers

I burst up at him, but the fucker reacted quicker than I anticipated. He whirled around to face me, gun poised. My metal knuckles hit his ear and cheek before he aimed. His anguished grunt spurred me on. I wanted a real scream from him. With three more jabs to his wrists, nose, and jaw, he went down to his knees, and the gun clattered to the ground. Still, he barely made a sound.

Gripping his insulated vest, I pulled my fist back.

“Did you shoot the first shot?” I needed to know if he was the one who made my wife bleed.

He spat at me. “Fuck you.”

I hit him again, his muffled groan music to my ears. “How many more of you are there?”

The asshole sneered, his mouth bloody. Eejit. Another punch broke his cheek, then his collarbone. Finally, that mocking sneer twisted into a pained grimace, and he no longer contained his mewls of pain.

“You don’t need your teeth to talk.” I hauled him closer by the collar of his vest. “The first bullet, was it you?”

“No.”

“Pity.”

With one twist, I broke his neck, and his body flopped lifeless to the ground. As I bent down to fetch his pistol, a bullet smacked the tree behind me, where I’d stood moments before. I dove for cover behind the nearest tree to adjust my grip on the gun.

Gunfire snapped against the bark in quick succession. To my left, thick ropy roots flared half a foot above ground. I rolled for the buffer they offered, aimed, and shot the shooter’s legs out. Then it was about who could be faster, my legs or his will to shoot me dead. I won and kicked out the sniper rifle from his hands, then kneed his nose. He landed in a ball at my feet.

The guy was scrawnier than I expected, with little muscle to hold up in a fight. Probably the type to let his guns do all the talking for him. With the way he lunged at my leg and snapped his teeth around my calf, I swallowed down my regret at not taking the kill shot behind the tree roots with a pained groan. My fist smashed his cheek, and he let go, spitting some teeth. Pain spasmed through my muscles as I shook my leg out. Jaysus, that hurt. Fecking cannibal.

“You seem like the type to take the first shot.” I gripped him by the hair and tugged his head back to expose his neck.

He tried to keep quiet. Like I’d let him.

With my thumb buried in the bullet wound in his calf, his face turned red with strain. Muffled grunts dragged out from behind his clenched teeth.

“You did, didn’t you? You’re the raging fucker who hurt my wife. Admit it.”

Leaf litter crunched beneath my knees, pebbles digging into my skin. His hand shot for the holster on his thigh, and I caught it just as he pried a throwing knife free. Mine now.

“Too slow,” I taunted as I plunged the knife into his lower thigh above the knee and twisted, then tore it out. “How does that feel?”

His howl was raw and everything that fed the dead piece of my soul.

“Let’s try this again. Did you or did you not fire first?” I aimed the tip of the throwing knife a hair’s breadth from his eye. “Lie to me, and I’ll cut out your eyeball.”

“I did,” he rasped through the pain. He barely put up a fight as I divested him of the rest of his belt of tools and toys. “To incapacitate. Not kill. You’re worth more alive. It wasn’t personal.”

“It felt dead fecking personal to me the moment your bullet grazed my woman.”

With one quick swipe, I slashed the blade across his back, tearing through clothes and sinew. The cut went deep and knocked against bone. His scream blew through the leafless branches and around the trees. It still wasn’t enough for the pain he’d caused her.

“Feel that? Does that not feel personal to you? ’Cause I’ll tell you, it bloody well is to me.”

“Cillian,” her voice called, a tinge of panic to it, but that wasn’t right. Not when she was supposed to be safe back at the hangar, away from this mess.

She burst through the trees like a wraith. Her body in that black outfit faded in and out between shadowed tree trunks as her long hair floated behind her. She ran at me with purpose, my curved knife braced back for throwing. For one excruciating moment, I wondered if that blade was meant for me.

“Get down. Now!” she yelled.

I dropped, crushing the assassin beneath my weight. The karambit knife spun through the air until it thwacked into the neck of a man only ten feet at my back. A bull of a man I hadn’t seen or heard, who would’ve given me a run for my money in a fair fight. This wouldn’t have been that.

He collapsed to his knees with a choked croak, holding the blade to his wound. Veins bulged along his forehead as he visibly fought his body’s demand to give up. Alizé hunched over, hands on her bent knees, and sucked in heavy inhales.

“You need to pay more attention,” she panted.