“You fucking dick,” I whispered as I squeezed. His hands at my wrists trying to pull mine away, I put my entire body weight into my arms. Everything I had in me I transferred to my fingers and I… squeezed… hard. “You fucking, fucking dick.” His body bucked, his feet kicked out, trying to push me off but I kept my focus, kept my place, and kept squeezing. “You took Bree’s beautiful future. You are not gonna take mine.”

I squeezed harder.

He started gagging.

I kept squeezing.

I watched his face turn purple as his mouth started opening and closing. His body stopped bucking and started jerking.

I kept squeezing.

I didn’t hear the front door crash open and I didn’t hear the pounding boots of men’s feet on floorboards.

I just kept squeezing.

Then I wasn’t straddling him anymore. I was up and my back was plastered to a hard male body. My wrists captured and wrapped around the front of me and lips came to my ear as I watched my attacker suck in air, hands to his throat as a tall, dark-haired man with a badge at his belt stood pointing a gun down at him.

“You’re safe,” those lips whispered in my ear. “I’m Hawk, Gwen’s man, and you’re safe, Tess.”

My body, tense and wired, stayed that way for long moments and then it sagged in his arms, my legs going clean out from under me but he held me up and he held me close against his solid warmth.

“You’re safe, Tess,” he whispered again in my ear.

I nodded mutely, my eyes on the dark-haired man who was using his boot to kick my attacker to his stomach. He crouched down, knee in his back, pulling cuffs out of a holder on the belt of his jeans, yanking my attacker’s hands behind him and cuffing them.

I started trembling.

Hawk, Gwen’s man, arms went tighter.

The dark-haired man muttered a harsh, “Do not fuckin’ move,” to the man on the floor. He stood, pulled a phone out of his back pocket, hit buttons, and put it to his ear. Then his warm but intense and alert dark brown eyes came to me. He did a top-to-toe. They shifted up to Hawk, then back to me. Then he said into his phone, “Yeah, it’s Lawson. We got her. She’s unharmed. Tell Slim.”

We got her. She’s unharmed. Tell Slim.

That’s when I started crying.

EPILOGUE

He Got His Wish

THE ALARM WENT off.

It was music, Tim McGraw, and Brock heard Tess murmur sleepily, “What on earth?”

He grinned before he even opened his eyes.

She shifted away from him but before she could touch the button to turn off the music, he opened his eyes, caught her about the waist, and pulled her back into his body.