Page 74 of The Unlikely Spare

He’s alive. Battered, bloodied, but alive.

The relief that floods through me is immediately chased by rage so pure it burns.

“What the fuck was that?” The words explode out of me, anger and fear tangled so tightly I can’t separate them. “A headbutt? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Nicholas straightens, wiping blood from his forehead with the back of his hand, examining it with mild interest before looking up at me.

Even disheveled and bleeding, he manages that aristocratic hauteur that drives me mad.

“It worked, didn’t it?” His voice is steady, only slightly breathless.

“By sheer dumb luck!” I advance on him, unable to contain the emotions surging through me. “He had a syringe, for Christ’s sake! If your timing had been off by half a second?—”

“But it wasn’t,” Nicholas cuts in, and there’s something fierce in his expression now, something wild and alive. “I knew what I was doing.”

“Did you?” I’m practically shouting now, professionalism be damned. “Did you know that your security team has protocols? That I had a clear shot if you’d just got down like I told you to? That stepping toward an armed assailant is literally the opposite of everything you’ve been trained to do?”

Nicholas’s eyes flash. The otherworldly blue glittering. “I just went by instinct?—”

“Your instincts are going to get you killed!” The fear that gripped me when I saw that syringe, when I thought I might not reach him in time, resurfaces with a vengeance. That moment is burned into my memory—Nicholas turning, seeing violence coming for him, and choosing to meet it head-on. Thoughts of what could have happened make my hands shake.

That moment when I thought I might fail in the one duty that matters most.

Not because he’s a prince. Not because it’s my job.

Because it’shim.

My heart is thundering, adrenaline still flooding my system, making everything sharper, more intense.

I’m so angry with him that I want to kill him myself, save the terrorists the trouble.

“You don’t do that!” I’m beside myself. “You don’t put yourself in danger like that!”

My vision narrows to a tunnel, everything falling away until all I can see is him standing there, blood-smeared and triumphant, and so goddamn reckless and beautiful I can barely breathe. It feels like someone’s taken a crowbar to my chest, prying open my ribs and exposing everything.

I do the only thing I can possibly do in this moment. The only thing that can possibly calm the raging monster inside me, can silence the screaming voice in my head that keeps replaying those seconds when I thought I might lose him.

I grab his shirt, bunching the expensive fabric in my fists, and pull him toward me so abruptly that he stumbles against my chest.

And I kiss him.

Chapter Eighteen

Nicholas

“You don’t do that!” Eoin’s yelling at me, so angry he’s shaking. “You don’t put yourself in danger like that!”

And then he’s pulling me to him, and his lips are on mine, terrible and unyielding.

This is not a kiss. This is a brand. It’s raw, unfiltered emotion pouring from him to me.

This is a collision of anger and fear and want so powerful it feels like being thrown into a storm after years of careful navigation around the edges.

It’s fingers digging into my arms like he needs to possess me, like he’s terrified I might disappear if he loosens his grip for even a moment.

After two heartbeats, I recover from my shock enough to kiss him back just as ferociously, messy and raw and real.

He makes a low growl as my teeth graze his lower lip, and I swallow the sound greedily, wanting more, wanting everything. One of his hands slides up my neck to cup my jaw, his touch gentling even as his kiss remains desperate.