Page 101 of Fuse

Funny what happens when the queen doesn’t get her way.

Amazing what happens when a guy gets to watch the train wreck of a follow-up meltdown.

To feel my eyes pop open as wide as my sockets will allow them—as I vow to commit the sight before me to my fondest memories for life. Perhaps beyond that.

Because it’s not every day a guy gets a chance to see a sadistic witch taken down and laid out. Then locked that way, flat on a concrete floor, as her skin starts resembling a wince-worthy sunburn-spray ad.

Courtesy of a thousand ribbons of white-gold sun.

That are emanating from his fiancée’s palms.

Nope. A guy usually doesn’t get to watch as the bitch spits and hisses and spews with every filthy word ever conceived. Nor does he usually get to witness the edges of her catsuit start to shrivel beneath those concentrated rays, threatening to burst into tiny flames any second—as he hopes they really do.

But he especially doesn’t get to behold every shred of his woman’s fiery beauty, her eyes filled with blue flames and her skin shimmering like crushed gold, as she whips toward him and commands in the most wicked-sexy voice the ages ever gave a warrior, “Baby, I can’t do this for much longer. Please, get your ass out into the car!”

Yeah. I really will remember this for a thousand damn years.

But I’m also going to remember the clenched distress in her voice—and the sudden realization that I can’t do a fucking thing to help her get past it except oblige with her dictate the best way I can.

So I do.

Grunting hard as I slide off the table, barely keeping my balance.

Growling at my legs through clenched teeth as I stumble toward the door—“Move, move, move!”—and then out into the hall, where a half-dozen more henchmen are sprawled across the floor, alive but unconscious. Next to each of them is a melted mangle of black steel. As I take agonizing hops over the assholes, I try not to gawk but quickly accept that impossibility. My fiancée has just turned a bunch of high-powered rifles into oversized licorice twists.

“Good and Plenty,” I mutter, my careening brain dropping imaginary white and pink coating on top of the decimated weapons. I get two seconds to indulge the vision before being snapped back to the purpose by a pained moan underneath me—to which I respond with a vicious spit when it’s accompanied by a desperate hand around my ankle. “Shit! Asswad!”

The minion turns a half-burnt grimace up at me. “We…will find you again,” he snarls from between his charred teeth. “She…will find you…again. She…she…is…everywh—”

A boot on the dick’s neck cuts him off from spewing anything more. Not mine. Number one, I don’t have a cock sock to my name at the moment, let alone boots. Number two, the eerie surety in the guy’s voice has tugged at a visceral part of my being. A part I abhor acknowledging. The part that, for as long as I fucking live, will never completely go away.

The part permanently haunted by Faline Garand.

“Time for night-night again, boo-boo bear.”

The part easily shoved away and out of my psyche as soon as Foley puts an end to the guy’s consciousness with a swift smack of his rifle butt. He’s barely done with the task before snapping his regard back up to me.

“And now it’s time to get your sorry ass out the damn—eeowww.” He whips the back of his free hand over his eyes. “I didn’t literally mean ass.”

I fling a glower. “Sorry about your delicate sensibilities, precious. Didn’t have time to muck around for my leathers while Emma and Faline were—” I seize to a stop before we clear the next archway in the hall, doubling over as horror lances me with physical pain. “Holy fuck. Holy Christ. What the hell am I doing?”

Foley jerks a hand into my armpit, yanking me back up with agonizing intensity. His features are a daunting match to the mood, confirming he’s been on this E-ticket ride a bunch of times before. “You’re doing the best thing for the situation right now, gimp-orina. Getting the hell out of the way.”

“Emma—”

“Yeah. Exactly. Getting the hell out of her way.”

As if he’s shot all the syllables at me from a nail gun, I sag. And even look down, expecting to find a couple dozen steel heads turned into sippy straws for my bloodstream. Though I come up empty, I growl at Foley, “This feels disgusting.” Against the demand of every bone in my body. Every calling of my instinct. Every need in my soul. Must fucking protect her. Must fucking save her. Must keep her away from that horrific, heartless bitch…

“I know, man.” Foley’s low rumble conveys that he really does—though it’s less than a drop of comfort for my spirit. And as I let the guy help me hobble all the way out to the Rover, I pledge a solemn vow to myself. And to Emma.

This is the first and last time she’ll ever have to do this. To shoulder the burden of conquering our enemies for the sake of saving my sorry, naked ass.

I’m going to remember.

All of it.

All the fear and the pain and the desperation and the helplessness.