Page 30 of Fighting Salvation

Giving them his back he trusted his team to do as he asked. Val looked exhausted and he reached out and tugged her into his arms gently, holding her close and pressing a kiss to her head. Her arms came around him and he felt the shudder work through her. Her scent and the feel of her was the only thing keeping him from going nuclear.

“It’ll be okay, mo chroí.”

“You were right.” Val lifted her head to face him and tears were heavy on her delicate lashes. He fought the urge to curl his fist because right then, she needed him to be her strength.

“I usually am, but what about this time?”

“I’m a liability. I should go home.”

Bás shook his head as he swiped a whisp of hair from her damp cheeks. “You’re not a liability, Val. You’re the strength I need to fight this and come out whole. I once thought I’d die in a pit of loneliness and guilt but you’ve shown me that life can be worth living if you have people you care about in it. I haven’t had that for a very long time, until you.”

“You want me to stay?”

“I can’t do this without you, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to put you at risk so don’t ask me to do that.”

“I won’t.”

“Good. Now go grab your shit. We need to leave.”

“He’s meant to be calling me back on this phone.”

She handed it to him and their fingers brushed, sending tingles up his arm. When did he revert to a teenage boy with his first crush around this woman?

“We need to lose the phone. He’ll track it.”

“Or we leave it someplace else and stake out the location.”

“You think he’ll fall for it and try and come for you?”

A sexy smile curved her lips. “He wants to take what’s yours from you and I’m yours.”

Those three simple words almost split his chest wide open with the enormity of feeling in them. He grinned down at her before kissing her gently, but thoroughly. “Fuck yeah, you are.”

“Oh, shit. Sorry.”

Bás lifted his head at Lotus’s statement but he didn’t let Val move from his arms. If he was doing this he wasn’t hiding it from his team.

Lotus was looking anywhere but at him and Val.

“Something you need, Lotus?”

“Um, just to say we’re ready when you are.”

“We’ll be there in a second.”

She twirled around on her heel, head facing the ceiling as if something was fascinating her there. “Yeah, okay. Sure. I’m just gonna go wait with the boys out here.”

As soon as she was out of the room a chuckle exploded from his chest as Val buried her head in his neck and it felt damn good to be alive.

Chapter 9

She was determined to be chill about the events of the last hour but it was hard when she could hardly keep the grin off her face. But she had to remember Hansen was a huge threat to them, and the fact he knew so much about her made her uneasy.

They were now in a new safe house further out from the city and this one was owned by a friend of Jack’s with no ties to Shadow. It had belonged to the head of a drug cartel so the security was top-notch, as was the positioning of the property.

Rykov had taken off in the other direction to plant her phone in the hope it would draw Hansen out but she wasn’t sure it would work. The man always seemed to be a step ahead of them, and that alone made her uneasy.

Duchess, Titan, and Bein had also arrived as backup and were meeting with Rykov so Duchess could devise a plan for watching the house where the burner phone was hidden.