Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
“Are you okay?” I asked him, my eyes landing on the hole in the hoodie by his shoulder. A hole that hadn’t been there before he’d gone in.
Now I knew what that crack had been about.
He didn’t even glance at what should have been a gunshot wound… if his body couldn’t repel bullets. “Fine.”
What in the hell had happened in there? I wondered before deciding it didn’t fucking matter. Not when he held his hand out, a small white bottle in his palm. “Take two.”
I read the label. Generic painkillers. He’d gotten me painkillers.
I grabbed them and shook two out, swallowing them dry with a wince. Alexander watched me slip the bottle into my pocket before waving me to follow him again.
I did, turning down a hall I hadn’t seen before, then another. He’d said there were only two guards, but was that really it? Had both of them been in that other room? It was so quiet; I kept my eye on the walls, looking for cameras. Maybe some trapdoors or booby traps.
But there weren’t any. I guess everything could be hacked into, including security footage. Maybe that’s why they didn’t have any security?
The hallway abruptly ended at another heavy-looking door. Alexander did the same thing, placing his hand at the intersection where it met the frame and slowly pushed it. There was a sound right before it popped, and a sliver of weak light came in through the crack.
I tapped him on the shoulder. “Are you going to blow it up?”
Those purple eyes flicked toward me. “Blow what up?”
I tipped my head to the side. “The building,” I whispered.
His blink was so slow. “We don’t… do that.”
Oh. Duh.
He gave me another look out of the corner of his eye as he held out the backpack he’d taken from the office. “Get on my back. I bought us time, but we need to run,” he said, already moving on to the next step.
I hesitated as I slid my arms through the straps, holding back a groan at the weight and the feel against me once it was on. Running was what I’d been training for, for years. What I’d expected, but… there was no way. Not right now. Not any time this decade from the way my lungs were acting.
I was out of breath just walking, and this damn backpack felt like it was loaded up with bricks instead of whatever was inside of it. Fuck. “Are you sure your back is okay?” I asked him, ready to… ready to tell him to leave me behind. That I’d figure it out. He had already done more than enough.
But his tense look turned into a dirty one.
Okay then.
“Get on my back,” Alexander ordered, his tone almost urgent.
I don’t know about this, but at the same time, my gut said this was our best shot. As long as he was okay, which he claimed to be, we could get so much farther away. We could hobble together, I guess, if he ended up hurting.
He gave me his back and I jumped, at least I tried to jump considering how weak I was. It was more like a bunny hop. Fortunately, those big hands caught me by the backs of my thighs and hoisted me high along his spine. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I squeezed my thighs around his ribs—or at least I tried to, they were so weak—and just barely heard him say over his shoulder, “If you fall off, I’m not stopping.”
This mother….
All those supple, hard muscles bunched under my legs, arms, and chest. He threw the door open just as I did the sign of the cross and put my arm back around him.
Where the hell were we? I blinked, taking in the dark gray sky. Those clouds don’t look good, I thought as he walked toward two SUVS parked right beside the dark gray building. I stayed quiet as he went to the first one and lifted the hood—it popped as he did it—and he reached inside and…
Something crushed in his hand like a fucking eggshell.
Then he moved to the next car, lifted its hood with another ominous pop, and grabbed something, and I watched it literally break into pieces and dust in that strong hand.
A big fucking crack of thunder exploded somewhere in the distance.
It was one thing to see his strength on television, but it was a totally different thing to watch him crumble metal in his hand like it was paper.
It’s incredible, I thought, as Alexander, the man known as The Defender, broke into a run, taking us away from there.
Turning my head, I finally let myself focus in on the landscape. There was so much rock everywhere. It was a sea of orange and brown formations, of rocks, sparse bushes, and trees. So much desert-like landscape, I noticed as my breasts, ribs, and stomach constantly bounced against the muscular back I was clinging to like a spider monkey.