Julie Walker - Born Wild

“Eve!” He frantically tossed off the restraining hands of the police officers who leapt toward him, instinctively shoving an elbow into someone’s nose. “Eve! Eve!” His wailing, breathless cries howled from him like the wind blowing over the dunes in the desert. His lungs worked like bellows, but no oxygen got to his brain.

“Stand down, asshole!” one of the officers shouted in his ear, snaking an arm around his throat as two, then three more uniformed CPD boys tried to wrestle him to the ground. He fought them like he was fighting for his life, hissing and biting, punching and kicking. He was a mindless beast, bent on only one thing: getting inside that ambulance and—

“Billy!”

When he heard his name, when he heard her sweet voice, all the fight seeped out of him like air from a torn balloon. He choked on a hard, wet sob that lodged in the center of his chest. Then, the next thing he knew, he was kissing concrete, there were an unknown number of very pointy knees digging into his back, and his wrists were being secured by a cold, hard set of handcuffs.

He didn’t care. Because she was alive! The CPD could take out their billy clubs and pound the living shit out of him for the rest of the evening if they wanted to, and he’d still be smiling.

“Get off him! Get off him!” From the corner of his eye—the one not being ground into the parking lot’s hot pavement—he could see Eve pushing officers aside. “He’s with me!”

Slowly, the restraining hands disappeared, as did the pointy knees. And after a ringing command from Eve that someone should help him up, two policemen grabbed his elbows and hauled him to his feet. The very next instant, Eve was pressed against him. Her arms were around his neck, her head was on his shoulder—the smell of her fruity shampoo obscured the more pungent aroma of car exhaust—and she was sobbing and squeezing him so tightly he could barely breathe.

Who cares? Oxygen is overrated anyway.

“Jesus, Eve…” Her name was a benediction and a prayer all rolled into one. He wasn’t a religious man, but he whispered a quick thanks skyward to anyone who might be listening and went to wrap his arms around her, to hold her close to his pounding heart. But the handcuffs stopped him with the bite of unyielding steel.

“Get these fucking things off me,” he growled at the officer closest to him.

The man wiped a hand under his bleeding nose—apparently this was the one Bill’d clocked with his elbow—and glowered. Then the policeman took a deep breath, obviously deciding he might’ve done the same thing had he thought the body of someone he cared about was being loaded into a waiting ambulance, and moved to oblige Bill’s request.

Bill had just enough time to wonder uneasily at the direction of his thoughts—Someone he cared about?—when the handcuffs disappeared and his mind blanked because…heaven. She was safe in his arms, warm and alive and breathing his name into the space where his T-shirt ended and his chest began.

“What happened here, Eve?” He dipped his chin to whisper against her ear, the delicate shell felt baby-soft against his lips, and the subtle smell of her lotion elicited an ill-timed response from the imbecile housed behind his zipper.

For the love of God, nuclear bombs could be exploding around me and being this close to Eve would still have me springing a chubby.

She pulled back, and he recognized the look on her tear-soaked face. He’d seen it plenty of times in the killing fields of this war or that conflict. It was a combination of shock and horror…and guilt. And it was enough to take the edge off his unrepentant libido.

“Th-that was s-s-supposed to be me.” She nodded toward the ambulance, her expression caving in on itself, her slender form quaking like a rickety telephone pole on the edge of an immense fault line. “They c-came here for m-me.”

Supposed to be her? What?

“What do you mean?” he demanded, instinctively thumbing away a glistening tear from her smooth cheek, growling when he noticed the circle of angry bruises darkening up around her neck making the white of her pearl pendant stand out in harsh contrast. He’d seen that before, too. Some sorry sonofabitch had tried to strangle Eve. Some sorry, dead sonofabitch should Bill ever find him and get his hands on him…

“Th-the men who killed Buzzard,” she choked. Buzzard? He glanced toward the ambulance, then closed his eyes as a wedge of remorse briefly invaded his mounting rage. The rascally biker had been an annoying, charming, and licentious old fart by turns. But he’d been a decent fellow, all things considered. And he’d certainly deserved a shitload better than whatever violent end he’d obviously met. “He caught a stray bullet,” she went on, and once again his heart stopped cold because…bullet. There’d been fucking bullets involved? Jesus Christ. “But it was a bullet meant for…for me.”

Her voice rose with each syllable, and he knew the sounds of hysteria and shock when he heard them. Soon, she was very likely to either completely lose it or go catatonic. He’d seen both, experienced both, and he wasn’t sure which was better. One allowed the horror to spill out in a vile, endless stream. The other allowed it to slowly simmer until the terror coagulated and hardened into something awful that you carried around inside yourself for life.

Sweet Jesus, how he wished he could take it all away. Just pluck the experience from her psyche and take it into his own, lock it in the box where he kept all his unspeakable memories…

“H-he…he said,” Eve stammered, and he could tell she was becoming more and more unstrung with each passing second. “He said, there she is and pointed his gun at me. I dove for him. We…we struggled. So…so—” She couldn’t go on, and he did the only thing he could think to do. He pulled her against him again, holding her as tight as he could.

So, whoever wanted to kill her had found her here at Delilah’s? But how?

Confusion and rage warred inside him for supremacy. But he knew neither of those emotions was what Eve needed from him now. So tamping down his desire to ask more questions or just begin to arbitrarily kill everybody she knew for good measure, he cupped the back of her warm head in his palm and tried his best to hold her together because she felt like she was about to blow apart.

Then, she did something so shocking he could only stand there like a friggin’ idiot.

She kissed him.

One second the woman’s nose was buried in the crook of his shoulder, and the next second she grabbed his ears and slammed her mouth—her open mouth—over the top of his.

And unlike that girl he’d known years ago, this one didn’t hesitate. There was no slow, tentative tasting, or gentle foray of her tongue into his mouth. Hell, no. This was the kiss equivalent of zero to sixty in less than a second, and all he could do was blink at her blurry face in cross-eyed confusion for a long moment during which time she kissed him so passionately he was surprised he didn’t just melt into a puddle of lust around his biker boots.

Eventually, however, instinct and bone-deep hunger took over, and he reached up to palm her tear-wet cheeks, angling her head so he could join in on the two-tongued fun fair they had going.

And, it was confession time again. Because, he didn’t give a rat’s ass that this was undoubtedly one of those instances when a person had mistaken grief for lust. He didn’t give a rat’s ass that she’d likely regret this in about two seconds flat…that he’d likely regret it, too. Because for one blessedly passionate moment, the past was forgotten. For one brilliant instant, it was just the two of them, locked together, giving in to the flame of desire that’d burned in them since the moment they first locked eyes on each other.

She moved against him, her whole body sinuously sliding, and she was sultry and hot when he pushed his thigh between her legs. And then sanity returned. For her, not for him. He’d have probably laid her down right there in the parking lot if she hadn’t suddenly pulled back, blinking up at him with over-bright eyes and an expression of…

What was that? Confusion? Regret? Horror?

He didn’t have time to figure it out, or to contemplate the ramifications of what it meant to have lost his control around her yet again, because movement out of the corner of his eye snagged his attention. He looked over to find Delilah standing in the doorway of the bar, dried blood streaked down her T-shirt.

She looked like an extra in a slasher film. Scratch that, she looked that the slasher in a slasher film, because her expression was straight-up, undiluted I’m-shithouse-crazy-enough-to-kill-someone-right-now. Nostrils flaring, jaw grinding, fists clenching and unclenching, she stepped into the parking lot and started marching stiffly toward Mac.

Oh, damn.

Bill knew what was coming before the loud smack of Delilah’s open palm meeting Mac’s hard jaw echoed around the block. The former FBI agent’s head snapped back and to the side, emphasizing the strength of the blow. But no sooner had he shaken off the harsh strike than Delilah was grabbing the collar of his light-weight motorcycle jacket and screaming into his face, “How dare you bring whatever bullshit you’re involved in to my doorstep, you bastard!”

Eve pushed away from Billy’s warm, reassuring, oh-so-deliciously-solid chest—she could not believe she’d just kissed him or, considering their talk this morning, that he’d actually kissed her back—when she heard Delilah’s words explode into the noisy city air. All the blood that’d been sizzling through her veins because of Billy’s scorching kiss instantly froze into solid red rivers of ice.

No. Oh, no! Delilah couldn’t blame this on Mac. She just couldn’t. This wasn’t Mac’s fault. It was her fault. All her fault…

Without a second thought, she turned and raced toward the tussling couple. Through her tears—was she crying?—she could see Mac dragging Delilah around the corner and into the alley where he wrapped her in a reverse bear hug, seizing her from behind by securing her wrists low across her waist as he bodily lifted her from the ground until all she could do was kick ineffectually as she screamed profanities hot enough to blister the ears off a sailor.

“Delilah,” she breathed. Was that her voice? Why did it sound like that? Like it was being pushed through water. “It’s n-not Mac’s f-fault.”

But her words were too hoarse and too quiet for Delilah to hear, and before she could swallow and try again, Billy stopped a group of police officers from moving in to investigate the commotion. “Gentlemen, my friend back there doesn’t need any help. He’s man enough to handle what she’s dishing; don’t you worry.”

One of the officers eyed him skeptically, and Billy made a face. “She’s hurt and grieving,” he explained, and Eve knew all about that, didn’t she? “And she needs to take it out on someone. She’s decided to take it out on him.” He pointed his chin toward the alley where Mac and Delilah had moved out of sight. “And like I said, he’s man enough to handle it.”

The policeman nodded once before motioning for the rest of the officers to follow him to the ambulance.

The ambulance…

Eve winced when the loud thunk of its door slamming shut ricocheted around the parking lot. Holy moly, if there was ever a sound of absolute finality, then that was definitely it. Instantly, her blood thawed, rushing through her system and pooling in her head until she was dizzy.

Don’t look. Don’t look.

But she couldn’t help herself. Turning, she saw a medic hop into the passenger seat of the ambulance. A heartbeat later, the vehicle’s lights began flashing accompanied by…silence. Deafening, head-splitting, soul-shattering silence. There was no blaring siren or honking horn, just the sad rumble of a big engine turning over and the quiet crackling of tires rolling over rock-strewn pavement.

Which, dear God, was so much worse.

It emphasized the fact that this was no emergency. That the life this ambulance had raced in to rescue was beyond salvation. That the life had been cut short because somehow, in some way, she had done something to someone that was so horrible they were determined to see her dead.

This is all my fault…

Again, the sentence circled through her overwrought brain, and the shaking she thought she’d finally gotten under control returned with brutal, teeth-clacking force. The urge to scream her frustration and regret and guilt overwhelmed her. It built in her chest, burning like a jellyfish sting as it seared its way up her throat, singeing the tissue in its path until she wondered if she’d ever speak or swallow correctly again. But just before she opened her mouth to let loose with all the dark emotions bubbling and seething inside her, Billy was there, wrapping a steadying arm around her shoulders and bending to whisper in her ear.