Neil (The Uncompromising Series Book 2) (12 page)

Both gun and knife now pointing at Viking, Candle scoffed. “Do I look like a fucking princess?”

“Ranger,” Viking stated as if a puzzle piece was falling into place.

“Took you long enough,
Jægerkorpset
,” Candle countered. “You won’t walk out of here with only a through and through.”

“You will not walk out, period.”

“Maybe not. But I won’t go down alone.” Candle’s eyes made a telltale glance in my direction. “You sure you can protect her before I hit the ground?”

Viking said something in Danish.

André lowered his aim and stepped back. “Come here,
chica
.”

Candle shook his head. “Stay right where you are, sweetheart, unless you want to see your boyfriend bleed.”

Viking spoke again in Danish. André moved toward Candle’s back.

“One more step, Luna, and I pull the trigger.” The corner of Candle’s mouth tipped up like he was enjoying himself. “That was textbook, Christensen. I expected more out of you.”

“You will be dead before the knife hits her chest,” Viking retorted.

Candle winked. “I wasn’t aiming for her chest.”

Viking’s arm moved up a few inches from my chest and covered my throat.

Dread rose from my stomach and I tried to swallow but couldn’t.

Candle smiled. “Now I’m aiming for her chest.”

André stepped forward, his gun raised.

Viking shook his head once and André lowered his aim. “How much?” he asked Candle.

Candle’s smile amped up. “What makes you think this is about money?”

“Because you have none,” Viking stated.

Candle slowly nodded and studied Viking a moment. “You sure about that?”

Shaking, victimized, and angrier by the second, I couldn’t stand there another moment. I needed to get to Conner and I needed to do it now. Praying he would understand, I tapped Viking’s leg. “Let go of me, Neil.”

Candle smirked and André took aim at his head again. Shockingly, Viking raised his arm off my neck and without letting go of Candle’s gun, he gave me enough room to escape. I ducked under him.

“C’mere, sweetheart.” Candle didn’t take his eyes off Viking.

I sidestepped him. “Fuck you, Candle. Shoot them both for all I care.” My heart pounding, my knees practically knocking, I reached for every drop of attitude I had and stormed to Conner’s room. Just as I closed the door, the thunderous stomping of men running up my stairs accompanied the telltale sound of guns being cocked. It sounded like fucking Armageddon as I stumbled to the closet, dropped to my knees and slowly opened the door.

My baby was sound asleep.

I barely registered the raised voices coming through the walls. Panic hit me so hard, my chest burned and air refused to fill my lungs. I didn’t have a bullet in my brain or a knife impaled in my throat and Conner was safe. I kept telling myself that, over and over as air tried to wheeze past my mouth and squeeze into my lungs, but it only got harder to draw in a full breath. My vision blurred and my fingers curled in on themselves.

Giant thigh muscles appeared in my line of sight as I gasped for air, any air, and a huge hand cupped the back of my neck. My legs were shoved apart and my head was pushed between them.

“Breathe,” Viking commanded.

My chest pressed to my knees, I couldn’t.

Then I was airborne and the hallway flashed into my view before my ass hit something soft and my bed squeaked. A string of foreign words filled my bedroom and movement erupted around me. Noises, crumpling, no oxygen.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Ariella.”

I was going to die.

My hands in balls, my toes curling, my chest compressed, this was it. Oh God,
Conner
.

My vision tunneled.

My hair was pulled, my head snapped up and something was shoved over my face.

“Breathe.
Now
.”

Scratchy paper was held over my mouth. My chest burning, my ears ringing, my hands useless, I pushed to my feet in a total panic but my legs crumpled.

“
Damn it,
chica.”

The paper still pushed to my face, the hand still at the back of my head, I fell to my knees and shook.

“You are hyperventilating. Breathe into the bag.” Muffled like someone was speaking through a pillow, I barely heard the words.

Shaking, short, rapid breaths firing into the bag, I couldn’t hold my weight, not even on my knees, and I started to sink. Oh my God, Conner…

My head was yanked by the giant hand, my ass hit the ground and my back landed on something hard and warm.

“Breathe, Ariella.”

My lungs burning, a short little breath formed.

“Again,” he commanded.

My body listened. Two rapid intakes of air fought my lungs. The bag crunched up on inhale and spread out on exhale. Another intake then another until it became one longer breath. Over and over I breathed into the bag until one clawed hand released with agonizing slowness.

“Slow it down. Deeper inhale.”

My body responded to Viking’s instructions.

Both hands and both feet released and my breaths settled into an almost normal pattern.

Viking took the bag off my face. “Inhale, count of five. Hold it.”

Spicy musk and sweat filled my lungs.

“Exhale. Slow.” Still firmly holding the back of my head with one hand, he crumpled the bag and tossed it at André. “Again.”

Air rushed into my system and the sensation of a thousand pinpricks raced across my skin. Alarmed, I glanced up.

Kneeling with my body cradled between his legs, Viking stared down his chest at me with cold detachment.

The pinpricks multiplied tenfold. “Tingling—”

“Temporary. Keep breathing.”

The more I calmed down, the more embarrassed I got. The second I thought I could sit on my own, I pushed away from Viking. He let go of my nape and the support of his legs left my back. I thought I was in the clear but his hands landed on my waist and in one smooth push, he rose to his feet, taking me with him.

Upright, I took a deep breath and when I exhaled, Viking let go of me.

“You okay?” André’s concerned expression was in direct contrast to Neil’s stern one.

“I heard boots, guns.”

André’s expression shut down. “Candle had backup.”

“But he’s gone?”

“For now.” André dropped the concern. “Why the hell did you leave the office?”

Ashamed, realizing how stupid I’d been, I admitted my plan. “I thought I could run.”

“Fucking hell,” André cursed.

“The child,” Viking quietly warned behind me.

André lowered his voice but still managed to snap at Viking. “He’s asleep.”

My nerves shot, too many waves of adrenaline for one day, I sagged against the wall and my fractured thoughts spilled out of my mouth. “You’ll take a bullet for me but you won’t call my son by his name?” It wasn’t even close to the most important thing that was going on right now but that’s all I had. I wasn’t wondering what’d happened in the living room. I wasn’t wondering why Candle had simply left. I wasn’t wondering what was going to happen next. I was stupidly, inexplicably wondering why Viking wouldn’t call my son by his proper name.

The air conditioning hummed, my old refrigerator labored and two men breathed in a space that was barely big enough for just me, but no one said anything.

Viking inclined his head at André and André walked out.

I watched his back disappear down the hallway then I pushed off the wall. “You can leave too.” I took a step toward my bathroom, needing distance.

Calloused fingers wrapped around my arm and a soft breath touched my ear. “I am not leaving.”

The last of my composure took a nosedive. Tears welled and I closed my eyes. I drew my tender bottom lip into my mouth and choked back a sob.

Viking led me to my bed and sat me down before going to my closet and coming back with my only suitcase. “Pack.” He dropped it at my feet and took one stride toward the door.

“Neil.”

Viking glanced back. The set to his jaw only a fraction more rigid, his stance no different than any other time, I still saw the coldness he was capable of filter back into his demeanor. But this time, it hit me a thousand times harder than ever before.

My emotions swung in a pendulum and despite the wet tears on my face, I reached for all of my bravado. “I’m not leaving my place. Candle knows I don’t have the guns.”

“He is not who you have to worry about.”

“I’m not staying with you,” I blurted.

“You are right.” He turned back toward the door. “You are not.”

V
IKING CARRIED
C
ONNER DOWNSTAIRS AND
buckled him into the car seat that had been in his truck but was now securely belted into André’s Escalade. The suitcase I’d packed for myself was in the back next to a suitcase for Conner, packed courtesy of an impenetrable six-foot-six
Jægerkorpset
, whatever that was.

“Where are we going?” I asked no one in particular once Viking got in the front passenger seat.

André’s hands tightened on the wheel and Viking pulled out his phone and started texting. No one said anything. I glanced at my son. Unruly silky curls, long eyelashes framing his light brown eyes, he sucked his thumb and held his blanket close. I grasped his little foot.

André broke the silence first. “You wanna tell me why the Lone Coasters are after you?”

I was shocked Viking hadn’t told him about the guns. “If you don’t know, then why did you come to my place?”

“What did you think I’d do after you pulled that stunt with Tyler? Not check on you? Jesus, the LC’s sergeant at arms had you at gunpoint. He wouldn’t have thought twice about—”

“Enough,” Viking barked. “Not in front of the child.”

“You’re gonna answer to me too, damn it,” André snapped at Viking.

“It is being handled,” Viking stated decisively.

André swore in Spanish then turned the corner and pulled up to his office building. He used a remote to open the single-arm gate of the parking garage but instead of parking by the office entrance, he went around the block of elevators to a roll-up door. Entering a code into a keypad, he waited until the metal door noisily rose then drove in and parked by a different set of elevators.

Throwing the SUV into park, he barely spared me a glance. “Go with Christensen. I’ll bring the bags up in a few.” He got out and strode back toward the office entrance.

Viking opened my door and held out his hand.

Torn between not wanting to touch him and wanting to fall into his arms, I stared at his outstretched hand like it was more than a simple gesture. He wasn’t doing anything he probably hadn’t done a hundred times over with a hundred other women. But I wasn’t those women and my son was safe. And Viking wasn’t giving me the cold shoulder right now. And his hand was huge. And why the hell was I thinking about all this shit right now?

“Ariella.”

Huge with thick fingers. “Why didn’t you tell him?”

“Step down.”

How did he pick up small things? Or get an eyelash out of his eye? They weren’t delicate, his hands or his fingers. They were “hide three crates of guns” hands. “Where are they?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Taken care of.”

I’d never seen such a large hand. And it looked even larger when he held my son. Oh God,
Conner
. “My son was there the whole time.”

He dropped his outstretched hand and answered me as if he could easily follow my fractured thoughts. “The child is fine.”

I stared at Viking. He wasn’t model pretty. His features weren’t perfect. His jaw was too square, his nose too long and straight, his cheekbones looked like they were cut from stone, but when you added it all together? He wasn’t just striking, he was beautiful. Beautiful like the one and only hope you wanted to hold on to when your life was falling apart. But holding on to this man would be like tethering myself to a category five hurricane. So I focused on clear gray-blue eyes and tried not to forget who I was talking to. “Why won’t you say his name?”

“He is not mine.” His answer was so direct, so simple, it should have made sense, but I didn’t understand a word of it.

“So that means you can’t call him by his name?”

“Who is the biker to you?”

No, he didn’t get to change the subject. “Don’t answer a question with a question.”

His intense gaze cut to my swollen bottom lip then shot back to my eyes. “The biker,” he repeated.

I saw an opening and I took it. “Answer me and I’ll tell you.”

For two breaths, he studied me then he opened his mouth and I wished like hell he hadn’t. “I do not say your son’s name because familiarity breeds attachment.”

I didn’t feel anger. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Pulling that gun to his shoulder, holding me when I was hyperventilating, the TV, his protectiveness of my son, every damn alpha thing about him—I sucked in a breath and shoved all my shit emotions down. “Candle is Jason’s friend and don’t worry, I’m not getting attached to you.” I wasn’t
getting
anything. I was staring into the face of a warrior who cared more about me than the father of my son and I wasn’t attached, I was fucking screwed.

He didn’t give me a second’s reprieve. “How did Tanner get the guns? The biker would not have let that happen.”