Page 50 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

He closed them, hoping she was right, terrified she was wrong.

Would she be able to slit his throat in time?

They had no way to know how the infected turned.

No one had observed it. Or at least no one had observed it and lived.

Was it a slow gradual process? Was it sudden?

If it was like throwing a switch, Sophie’d have no chance.

The only way she had any chance at all was if she could see him turning, and decide to put an end to it.

To him. He wouldn’t block her in any way.

In fact, he hoped to be aware enough to tilt his head back and offer his throat.

His life was, in every sense of the words, in her hands.

“So how—” he began, then stopped. Suddenly the heat became even more intense, like a sun blooming in his arm, the heat spreading up through his arm, through his chest. He could feel his heart heating up, the strangest sensation he’d ever had.

At the same time, he could feel a nasty chill inside him, ice prickling in his veins, horrible and painful. With a lurch to his heart, he realized that the sensation of cold was the virus. He was turning.

God, he was turning.

Black cold ice, eating him up, pushing away the heat. His body was a battlefield, like a cold dead planet approaching the sun.

Pain wrenched through his muscles, he felt his heart contract from the cold that gripped it. Something freezing cold, like Satan’s hand, was squeezing his heart.

Jon gasped for breath but breathing hurt.

His lungs were on fire but encased in ice.

He couldn’t move his lungs, he couldn’t breathe, his heart tried to beat its way through his chest as it fought the cold.

The cold swam through his system like black smoke, infiltrating every cell, eagerly seeking out the warm places so it could squeeze them in its cold dead embrace.

It wsn’t working. Jon could feel himself start to go under.

To his horror, visions of blood and violence starting filling his head.

The pleasure of biting and tearing and maiming.

A deep satisfactory bloodlust in a rising tide, like sexual desire.

He fought it, he fought it as hard as he could.

Sweat broke out all over his body. It felt like he was sweating blood.

“Sophie.” He could barely get the words out.

“The knife. Now.” He clenched his fists, willing them not to move, but he could feel control slipping away, cold and elusive like smoke.

Inside his clenched fists it was as if he could feel Sophie’s soft neck, how good it would feel when he had his hands around it, squeezing… “Sophie!”

He opened his eyes, the lids as heavy as lead. Fuck. Sophie wasn’t reaching for the knife, both hands were on his arm and her eyes glowed as if a firebomb had been lit behind them. An eerie light, almost supernatural, the glow so bright he couldn’t look away.

His hands opened, closed. Heat was pouring into him from Sophie, heat and light.

Light he could feel under his skin. Now her entire face glowed, as if the sun had just risen inside her.

She was trembling with the force of the power inside her.

For it was a power, no question about it.

Something more powerful than her, some outside force. A force she was transmitting to him.

His entire body was a battleground, ice and fire. Ice wanted him to turn on her, tear her, bite her, feel her blood in his mouth. He could taste it, the blood rich and fine, a need so strong he was shaking with it. But fire—fire was love and life, Sophie beside him for all his days.

The trembling grew, both of them were shaking hard, sweat pouring out of them. Jon’s jaw had locked, he couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. He wanted to kiss her, he wanted to kill her while the fire and ice fought in his blood, bringing the bloody battlefield to his veins and bones.

Sophie tightened her hold on him even more, that glow so bright it blinded him.

With a sudden blast, the ice around his heart exploded and heat suffused his body, running through him, filling him like hot honey down to his fingertips.

Every inch of him was filled with heat, even the memory of ice gone.

Sophie let go of his arm and he gasped for air. It came. It filled his lungs with sweetness, where before they had been unable to expand. He drew in air like a man cresting a wave, the sensation sweet and full of life.

A swirl of wind, pine needles blowing in his face, shouts.

The hovercar. Haven. Rescue. Nick’s worried face bending over him, shaking him.

Jon could barely feel his body but he knew he missed Sophie’s touch. “Sophie,” he whispered and Nick frowned and shook his head.

The ice was suddenly back. Not the ice of the infection but the ice of terror. Jon looked down and saw Sophie lying bonelessly on her side, all color and light gone from her face. Motionless. He moved slowly, as if underwater.

“Sophie!” he screamed but nothing came out, just air. He couldn’t move. All his muscles were lax, exhausted from the battle. He toppled over, close to Sophie, one hand on her face. She didn’t move when he touched her, not even a flicker of her eyelids.

Nick had two fingers to her throat. He said something, something absurd. Jon couldn’t hear him, the words were crazy. One word in particular.

Dead.

Jon crawled to cover Sophie’s body with his. She’d given him life, he was going to give it right back.

Nick pulled at his arm, but Jon punched him weakly.

“She’s dead, Jon. I’m so sorry, but Sophie’s dead.” Nick’s voice was low, sad.

No. He shook his head, the movement slow and weary. She wasn’t dead.

She couldn’t be. She’d just given him life.

But she wasn’t moving. She wasn’t moving.

Suddenly, the energy of panic suffused him. She’d somehow exhausted herself healing him, used up all her body’s reserves. Stopped her own heart.

He’d start it again for her. Because he wouldn’t let her die. Couldn’t.

With newfound energy, he rolled Sophie over, not allowing himself to see her head loll listlessly or the utter stillness of her body.

He was suddenly frantic. Every bit of his medic training, which had been extensive, came back to him.

This was a wounded comrade who needed his help.

This was the woman who’d saved his life, risking her own.

This was the woman who held his heart. If she was no longer in the world, then neither was he.

He leaned over her, placing his left hand over her heart, right hand angled over it to strengthen the pressure and began pumping, trying to replicate with his hands pushing her chest muscles what the heart had stopped doing.

He leaned in heavily, working hard. Chest compressions had to be at least 5 cm deep, at 100 compressions a minute to manually make blood flow through her heart. And he wasn’t going to stop until her heart pumped on its own.

He would stay here forever, with his Sophie, until she came back to him.

He had no notion of time, none. All he knew was that the sweat pouring off him was pooling in the small hollow of her neck. All he knew was that his world was reduced to his two hands over Sophie’s heart, working, working…

“Jon.” Nick’s voice was low. His hand landed on Jon’s shoulder. He shrugged it off angrily. He couldn’t miss a beat, not one. Because it might be the pump that jump-started Sophie’s heart, that would bring her back to him.

Nick’s voice was louder. “Jon, she’s gone. I’m sorry, but she’s gone.”

“No!” he screamed. That wasn’t true, she wasn’t gone, she was still with him. Jon’s hands didn’t stop for one second. He was curled over her now, shoulders blocking her from the sun because he didn’t want her blinded when she opened those beautiful eyes. Which she was going to do…any second now.

Vaguely, he realized that several people were standing over him, in a circle, watching him.

He didn’t give a fuck. Let them watch. Let them watch him forever because that’s how long he’d stay here, letting his hands pump blood through Sophie’s heart until her own heart could do it.

It was only fair, because she held his heart in her hands. Her still, cold hands.

He wished there were two of him. One would continue applying CPR, the other would hold her hands, make sure she knew—wherever it was she’d gone—that he was with her.

The other Jon would kiss those cold, still lips, bring her back like some prince whose princess had been put under a spell by an evil witch.

He was no prince but she was his princess. She owned him. She’d saved him and she owned him, forever.

His hands continued, tirelessly, while the people around him were murmuring, voices becoming louder. He heard his name, hers. The crackle of a commo communication. Nick’s voice.

“Jon.” Nick’s hand landed on his shoulder again, and stayed there even though he shrugged angrily. “Elle says to reach inside her heart. She says you know how to do that.”

What? What the fuck?

Was she saying to slice open Sophie’s chest using his knife as a scalpel and try manual massage, as field surgeons somehow did?

No, she meant something else, but he couldn’t figure out what. Reach inside her heart? How could he do that? What the fuck did that mean?

And then—the world slipped sideways, fractured.

And his hands reached inside to touch Sophie’s heart.

At one level, his hands were still on her chest, over her rib cage, working hard.

But at another…his hands touched her heart, reached in and touched it because her heart belonged to him and only he could do this.

He reached, with his mind not his hands, and touched.

And Sophie coughed.

God.

Everyone was shocked into silence. Nick kneeled beside him.

Sophie coughed again and drew in a long, choked breath.

Jon’s eyes were dripping water, falling now on Sophie’s chest and he couldn’t wipe his eyes because his hands had to be over her heart, the heart that was now…

Beating. On its own.

Nick placed his hands over Jon’s and stilled them. They both watched as Sophie’s head turned and she coughed again and took in air in long gasps. Jon’s hands were trembling under Nick’s.

“Sophie?” His voice was a croak, he could barely shape the word.

And her eyes opened, those glorious eyes, dark blue and loving.

“Jon,” she whispered and reached for his hand.