His to Possess. Delores Fossen

didn’t bother to catch. She couldn’t hear now because her heartbeat was drumming in her ears. Her chest was tight. Her body and mouth tingling for another dose of Lucian.

      And she got one.

      He caught up with her the moment that Olivia stepped outside, using his body to stop her from running out into the parking lot. No images this time of Marissa and Damien going at each other. Just Lucian right in her face while he pressed himself against her.

      “I don’t do things like this,” she said. “I don’t kiss men I don’t know.” Laughable since she had done it.

      Or had she?

      She shook her head. “I can’t become Marissa.”

      “And you won’t, not permanently, anyway. I think they want us to help them.”

      “Help them how?” she snapped. “Have sex for them?”

      The corner of his mouth lifted again, and he brushed a kiss on her cheek. Coming from any other man, it would have been chaste, but Lucian probably wasn’t capable of a chaste anything.

      “I need to go,” she insisted.

      “You can’t. I know you don’t want to trust me, but you have to. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

      There were so many things wrong with that on so many levels. “Safe from what?”

      But the question had no sooner left her mouth when she heard the sound of tires screaming on the asphalt. She whirled around and saw the black car coming across the parking lot.

      Directly toward them.

      Olivia couldn’t see the driver because of the heavily tinted windows, but she had no trouble determining the driver’s intent.

      The car was about to plow right into them.

      Lucian reacted a lot faster than she did, thank God. He already had his arm hooked around her, and he yanked her back, pulling her against the glass door.

      Just as the car came onto the sidewalk where they’d been standing.

      The front end scraped against the building, the bricks and the trunk of one of the weeping willows tearing into the fender. That slowed the driver, but Olivia heard the scream bubble up in her throat when she realized the driver had thrown the car into reverse and was about to back over them.

      Lucian shoved her behind him, and Olivia fell onto the concrete sidewalk. In the same motion, Lucian pulled his gun.

      He took aim.

      Fired.

      The shot blasted through the air.

      Everything seemed to freeze. Her breath. Her heart. Her. All but Lucian. He moved, readying himself to fire again.

      But he didn’t get the chance.

      The driver hit the accelerator, the tires kicking up the stench and smoke of burning rubber as it sped away.

      However, even over those sounds and the warning throb of her own heartbeat, Olivia heard something else.

      Someone’s voice.

      A voice straining to be heard from beneath the decay. Barely audible—a warning, murmured and soft—but just as bone-chilling as the scream that bubbled up in her own throat.

       Help us. Or die.