He pulls from my leggings when I’m already down on my heels, pulling the small blade of mine from my sock, and when I’m about to thrust it upward, a knee catches me instead—right in the face.
I’m on my ass before I know it, my palm coming up to my nose that is gushing blood.
A hand laces through my hair, and I’m brought to my knees, then yanked on harder to meet the malicious state of Alexander.
“What happened to you?” he all but whispers. His brows knit together as if to play out all the ways I’m not the same. How the dynamic of us—a couple who got along famously—is now bleeding with a gang full of weapons and jealousy.
His grip on my hair loosens, deep in thought, and I dare not steal a look at Bishop. I don’t think my heart could stand it. I won’t stay calm. I’ll have us both dead in seconds.
“You were everything sweet and wanting in this world,” he continues softly. “You had my children.”
I just stare at him because I did.
Getting pregnant was the best and worst thing in my life. Because I brought a monster into our lives that will always scare, haunt, and hurt us if I don’t kill it.
And I don’t know where my knights are, my backup.
We’ve reached the plot of the story where one side dies, and the other will forever be changed.
With a knee to the back of my neck, the world is tilted sideways, but I still make out the brave look on Emmy’s face. The fucking glow about her when she’s around. The stubbornness in her spine and the look of defiance in her eyes.
Alexander has his hands possessively in her hair, trying to control the situation, but that’s where he’s entirely wrong.
You can’t control Emmy Lou Rhodes.
She’s like a shooting star that takes off and you spend your whole night watching for another.
No matter what he thinks or has concocted in his fucking head, if you were ever lucky enough to be loved by Emmy Lou, you better not fuck it up.
Me, I’m a lucky bastard.
I don’t know why or how I’m the exception, but I’m not going to question it. I’m going to just keep her forever and raise our babies together.
And then she’s going to give me more.
The gunshot to my shoulder and thigh burns like a motherfucker. The warning shots beforehand were just that. They probably thought that’d scare me enough to behave.
Whoop-de-doo, they know how to shoot off a gun.
Good for them.
The few punches the old man landed on me were precisely calculated, so I know he’s done this before. The two younger pricks were sloppier but you can’t get good help these days.
I’m not worried about them, though maybe I should be. I’m bleeding out onto this floor, my head feels like he took a two-by-four and repeatedly bashed me with it, but that was his brass-knuckled gloves.
However, my sole focus is and has always been Emmy.
So I watched with blurred vision Alexander whisper something that I obviously can’t make out. Even if he said it out loud, my ears are still ringing from the last hit I took, and blackness starts to cloud my perspective.
Time stands still, or maybe, it fast forwards at warp speed because the next thing I think I’m seeing is Emmy on her knees with Alexander’s dick in her mouth.
I blink.
And blink again.
I tightly hold my eyes shut, then re-open them and still see it.
I lunge upward just to be shoved back down to the dirty and solid hardwood floors. My leg swings out to take the asshole behind me, I can’t see him, but I know he has to be near. I catch an ankle but don’t take him down like I want to.
No, I’m responded back with what feels like the handle of a gun to my skull.
Blinding pain radiates through my head and I growl out from it. My heart is beating so quickly in my chest that I think it’s gonna run out of gas. That it’s just going to stop completely.
“There you go,” Alexander coos gently, regaining my focus. He’s thrusting forward, cupping Emmy’s face with one hand and her hair in the other. “Fucking perfect.”
“Motherfuck—“ I’m hit again but this time, I soak it in and soar upward, smashing the old man’s leg and getting him off balance.
I reach up to pull him down and for me to ascend up, but the other asshole jumps my ass like a koala bear and holds on for dear life.
Cool metal wraps around one of my wrists and I repeal my head back to catch the dude’s body behind me. It doesn’t do much but buy me a second but I roll, using his own body weight against him to get the upper hand.
A foot kicks me in the ribs, and I capture it before it resends, yanking back on it to get the asshole on the ground with me.
I don’t catch faces, just body parts.
I don’t need them.
I just know that my girl has another man’s dick in her mouth and the rippling feeling of disgust running through her is something I felt all too well.
Bubba and his buddies fucked me up for a long while. I don't want Emmy to become so closed off that kissing, and soft touches make her repeal away.
She’s meant to be loved and made love to.
If she hides from me, to restrain the mental pain, I’m going to have a hell of a time digging her out. It’s a dark and engulfing hole that’s like quicksand. The more you think or feel it, the harder the suction.
Another gunshot rings out, and I feel it graze my bicep.
Pissed, I rear back on the guy beneath me and crash my skull into his face.
Without another thought and ignoring the throbbing pain, I try to use my good leg to push myself up to
