Page 2 of Cruel Kiss

He roars and shoves me so hard my head snaps back against the banister. The world goes white and starry, but at least the knife stays in him. My hands fall back, empty. I taste blood, mine or his, I can't tell.

He's clutching his side, which is good.

What's less good is that he's still standing and he's still between me and the stairs down.

But I'm still, still, still between him and my little ones' doors. I can almost breathe a sigh of relief. Until?—

"Mommy?"

Isabella's voice. Small, whispered through a crack in her door. Sleepy and scared, just like I knew it would be.

Everything in me turns to ice.

"Stay in your room!" I scream. "Bella, stay in your room, do NOT come out, lock the?—"

While I'm turned, the man hits me.

It's an open strike across the face, but it's like getting hit by the house itself. I crumple down onto the landing, ears ringing, cheek pressed to the runner. I can see his black boots, and just past the steel-toed tips, there's the yawning, shadowy openness of the staircase.

I grab his ankle with my feeble hands. I don't have anything else to work with. I can't reach to bite him again and the knife is still quivering in his side. All I have left is this weak grip and a decade of being told I was too small, too soft, too much, not enough.

I wrap both arms around his boot and I hold on like it's the last thing in the world, because it is. He can't get up the last two steps if I'm anchoring his foot to the floor, right?

I hope so, at least. He seems to disagree. He kicks. He drags me. My bare knees burn and peel open on the carpet like he's yanking me across a cheese grater.

"You stupid—" he grunts. He reaches down to pry me off, and as he does, I see that there's a wet, dark stain spreading across his shirt where the knife is still buried. I think, with a strange, floating calm,Good. Bleed, you bastard. Bleed out and die, right here on my landing.

Maybe it'll happen eventually, I don't know. I'm no expert on how much blood a 228.1 pound body contains or how fast it must escape him in order to stop him from hurting my children.

What I do know is that, before that hand can reach my throat, where he's aiming it, something else arrives.

The whole house shakes.

The front door doesn't merely open. That wouldn't be dramatic enough, I suppose. Instead, it quite literallycomes off.Wood and hinges exploding, a smoky bang that I feel in my teeth. And then there are voices below, fast and loud and Russian, and feet on the stairs, a lot of them, charging up hard.

The man on top of me hears it, too. He freezes. I feel in his posture the exact moment he understands that whatever he came here to do, it's over, and the only undecided thing that remains is whether he gets out in one piece or several.

He lets go of me and lunges for the top step, toward the doors, toward the kids, because a hostage is a way out and he knows it?—

But he never gets that far.

Because just then, Ronan appears over the top of the stairs.

I've never seen him move like this. I've seen him still. I've seen him slow and certain and unhurried, a man who makes the world wait for him.

This is nothing like that.

This is fast in a way that doesn't look human, a blur of dark suit and dark hair. He hits the intruder with his whole body, ripping him off the landing in a bear hug and then hurling him into the wall so hard that the plaster cracks and dust comes down.

I remember how scared I was of Ronan backstage at the opera, when he threatened that man in a monotone whisper.

That's maybe one percent of how much he terrifies me now. He looks like the Grim Reaper, hooded eyes and pale, violent hands. One of those hands goes to his side and comes back with something dark, metallic, and heavy. Two sounds follow, like champagne corks popping.

Then the man who attacked me puddles to the floor.

After that, it's quiet. My ears are still ringing from being slapped, and I'm still breathing hard. But no one speaks or moves.

From where I'm lying on the ground, I can see half of the man's face. A thin trickle of red blood leaks out of the corner of his mouth. He's dead. It's beyond obvious, even to someone like me who hasn't seen much in the way of corpses.