Leather & Lark (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #2) (104)

And then the oven fans start.

Air blows through the slats in the walls. The circle in the floor turns clockwise, the rotary function spinning me in a slow dance as the current of air grows warm. There’s commotion outside the door. When I turn in that direction, I see Rose with Lachlan at the window.

“He locked it somehow,” Lachlan says. “Hit the emergency stop—”

“Where?”

“There.”

“It’s not working—I don’t know why it’s not working.”

“He fucked with it. Get her out—”

The air is already hot, getting hotter with every heartbeat that knocks against my ribs. My skin is slick with sweat. I drop to the spinning floor in search of a cooler breath that never comes. When I look up to the window, I see Lachlan with a gun pointed to the door handle.

Rose pushes his hand away. “No, you could make it worse. Shoot the window.”

I try to keep hold of Lachlan’s eyes as I spin. The heat becomes nearly unbearable as the fans pick up speed.

“Get down, Lark.”

I fold my slick arms over my head.

With a deafening bang, glass shatters into my enclosure and rains down around me. Some of the heat is released and I’m able to fight back the wave of darkness that threatens to knock me unconscious.

A moment later, I hear Rose’s sound of triumph and feel a rush of cool air. Two hands wrap around my ankles to drag me from the steel and onto the concrete.

The cold floor. I’ve never felt such relief as when I press my hot skin against it. I blink. Breathe. I try to control the nausea roiling in my belly as shock and adrenaline and the remaining sedative swirl in my body. With my pulse raging in my ears, I lift my head just enough so that I can meet Abe’s lifeless eyes. A hole sits between them, a rivulet of thick crimson trailing toward a growing pool of blood on the floor. A discarded tool lies at his side. It’s the same one Abe had in my apartment; the silver end now painted crimson.

I pull my attention away to reach out a hand and Rose takes it with a squeeze. “What about Sloane—”

“I contacted them as soon as that fucker said he knew they were driving. They managed to pull off the road and get out of the vehicle.” Rose kneels beside me, heavy, unsteady breaths heaving from her lungs as she looks down at her phone. There’s a tremor in her hands as she taps out a message. “They’re fine, the car hasn’t blown up but it’s not like they really wanna check it, you know?”

I let out a long sigh and close my eyes. When I open them Rose’s tired smile is waiting. “I might call in a contract for that one. Anyone here know if Leviathan does bombs? I bet I’ve got a guy.”

With Rose’s help, I push up enough to look at Lachlan where he sits near my feet. His forearms rest against his knees. His dark hair, slick with sweat, hangs over his brow. He tilts his head up to look at me. In his eyes, I can see all the pain and fury and fear rising to the surface.

“You feckin’ catastrophe. Don’t you ever. Ever. Do that to me again,” he grits out as a tear slips from his lashes to fall down his cheek.

“Getting kidnapped by a psychopath? I’m not planning on any do-overs, Batman,” I whisper through an unsteady smile.

Lachlan shakes his head. “No. Forcing me to not choose you.” Though he grasps for control of his emotions, he’s as powerless as I am to stop them. “You’re brave as hell. But you’re my person, Lark. I can’t do this without you.”

And this is one of my favorite things about Lachlan. I can look at him and that one glance tells me everything that words can’t. It shows truths that are locked away, about how hard it is to love. How much it hurts to let go of the armor we wear, to peel it back and show the most damaged layers of ourselves, to bear all our wounds.

Lachlan opens one arm toward me and I launch into him like a crashing tide.

His arms wrap across my back, powerful even though they tremble. He lifts me from the floor. This is the feeling I thought we would never have again. The feeling of being entwined with each other. To stitch together and know it’s not the last time. It’s just the beginning.

“You’re my wife, Lark Kane,” Lachlan whispers, his breath hot against my neck before he presses a lingering kiss to my skin. “And I’m not letting you go.”

Lachlan’s arms tighten around me. And he keeps his promise.

He doesn’t let me go.





RENEW




Lachlan


“How can I be sure Damian has authorized you to sign the contract on his behalf?” Leander asks as he watches Lark read through the paperwork laid out on the coffee table of the basement pub of his home.

Lark shrugs, not looking up as she flips to the last page and picks up the waiting pen. “I guess you’ll just have to trust me. Have I ever given you a reason not to?”

Leander laughs but still shifts his attention to me as though I might give him a hint of reassurance. When I don’t, he looks even more delighted. Blimmin’ nutjob. He loves chaos almost as much as he loves money, two concepts that don’t seem compatible, and yet he makes it work.

Lark signs the final page of the Covaci contract and slides it across the coffee table. Leander leans back in his chair and feckin’ beams at the both of us. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’s actually happy for me. I’m not sure he has that capacity to feel genuinely happy for anyone but himself, but he at least looks the part. Or maybe it’s not so much the end of my tenure with Leviathan that has him looking so pleased. It could just be Lark, who has been the source of his admiration ever since the muffin incident.