Page 89 of The Boss

I can’t see.

I can’t hear.

I taste metal. My ears are ringing. I’m on the ground.

I’m on the ground?

Explosion. There were explosions. Plural.

And gunshots. I can hear gunshots.

We’re under attack.

Quinn is under attack?

Quinn is under attack.

QUINN!

I force my eyes open.

I get up, pull my knives from my back and I run.

•••••

I can’t see much in the smoke but I want to get to the back of the house. Once I get to the side wall, I can slip around the corner and in the back door like I have hundreds of times. But there’s no more shrubbery or tree cover between where I’m standing and that wall. And I keep startling at every gunshot.

Amateur Hour! Get it together! Go!

I run.

“Shit!”

Bullets fly past. I don’t make it to the wall, I run into something?

“Luna!”

Someone.

Quinn’s here. I’m safe. His arms lock around me and he lifts me, running back to the cover of the treeline with me held to him.

“Quinn?” I say, shaking. He’s bleeding from one ear and I can feel one whole side of him is wet with blood. He’s been hit somewhere. “Quinn, you’re bleeding.”

“Luna, listen to me,” he begs as he sets me down and holds my head in his hands. “You have to run, Luna. Go to the back fence. Get out of here, now. Tink will take you.” He moves one hand to put his fingers in his mouth and whistles for his dog.

“What? No. I’m not leaving you.”

He looks back at me and holds me tighter, huge hands spread under my ears and down my neck. His eyes search mine, pleading. “For once in your life, for the love of God, listen to me. We’re holding them at the gate but—”

“Holding who?”

“I don’t know but there’s more coming and—”

“I’m not leaving you, give me a gun! Seriously let me fight, Quinn come on I,—”

“They can’t find you, Luna! They can’t take you. Theycan’t.”

His voice breaks and he pulls my face to his and kisses me, hard. He groans and I open my lips. He takes over all my senses and invades me with his tongue.Finally.The kiss is brutal and sad and desperate. He wrecks my mouth with long passionate strokes I’ll feel in my soul until the day that I die.