Tempted Hero by Ella Miles

Ri

Beckett shot me.

Why?

Beckett shot me.

Why?

It was a mistake?

He was saving me?

He hates me?

He knows what you really are—a monster?

“Wake up, Beautiful,” a calming male voice says.

Pain ricochets through my body. My arm feels numb. The blood my heart is forcing through my body is sandpaper in my veins. It feels too dry, too little. I need more blood to survive.

“I need you to stay with me, Princess. I can save you, but only if you stay with me. Promise you’ll stay with me, or your father is going to kill me, and then we’ll both be dead. I’d much rather spend my time with you here than in hell.”

A hero came to save me. But not my hero. No, my hero shot me. He’s the reason I’m bleeding out, about to die.

Why?

Why?

WHY?

“Stay with me so you can show me how good your shooting skills really are. I didn’t fall for that ‘I’ve never touched a gun’ act. I know you can shoot. I know you can fight, show me how much of a fighter you are.”

Fighter.

That’s what Beckett used to call me. It was his nickname. So why is this stranger calling me it?

Fighter, you have to fight.

So I do.

I fight.

I open my eyes, and his hazel ones stare down at me. He flashes me a crooked grin.

“Hello, Beautiful. You’re going to be okay,” Leighton says, stroking my hair. Someone else is driving.

“Where are we going?”

“To the hospital.”

I frown. “You can’t take me to the hospital. They will ask too many questions.”

His smile brightens. “Not when you’re me. Your father isn’t the only one with pull in the city. I could take you back to my place, and you’d survive, but I thought we’d get you a full checkup. I don’t want you dying on me; I’m far too young to die.”

I smile lightly. He is young, maybe a year or two older than me. Unlike Beckett, who is almost a decade my elder.

I thought I’d like a guy close to my age, but Beckett pulls at my heartstrings like no other man.

Although, this man may be sweeter than I thought he’d be. Funnier too. He reminds me of Hayes. The world hasn’t hardened him yet, which is surprising given his surroundings.

The car stops.

“I’m going to lift you out. Don’t pass out on me. Talk to me, tell me something no one else knows,” Leighton says.

I think for a moment. I shouldn’t say anything. But I blame it on the blood loss. “If Vincent hadn’t made me lose, I’d have won. I’d even have beaten you, Saint.”

He laughs, his eyes turning devious. “I imagine you would. Which is why you have to live long enough so I can see it for myself.” He leans in closer. “And by the way, I’m no saint, but I do love that you gave me a nickname.”

And then I’m on a gurney. Finally, I close my eyes and shut everything out.

My eyes flicker open. The room is dark, except for an annoyingly bright light over my bed burning my retinas.

I immediately shut my eyes again, waiting until the feeling goes away. I squint my eyes open again, looking away from the light.

I’m in a hospital room. There’s an IV in my left arm, and my right is heavily bandaged in a sling. I can’t feel either. I glance at the IV pole. They must be pumping me full of morphine.

I sigh, my head is already fuzzy from the drugs. I know morphine is different than heroin or whatever drugs I was filled with before, but my body reacts the same way to it. I don’t want to be on painkillers. I don’t want to chance losing my memories again.

I look for a call button to get a nurse to remove the IV. I can’t move my right arm, and I don’t see any button within reach of my left hand. In fact, I don’t see a call button at all.

“Looking for this?” a voice says from the shadows, holding a beige device with a call button on it.

The voice hits me in the chest—Beckett.

It can’t be, though. He didn’t win. Leighton did. This can’t be real. I’m either imagining him or hallucinating his voice over Leighton’s.

I stare at the shadow, hoping it will reveal itself. The man steps forward, just enough that he’s no longer a black bob. Dark jeans wrapped around thick muscles, a dark shirt where a veiny forearm protrudes. I don’t have to keep traveling up to know what I’m going to find. A sharp jawline, a devilish smirk, and dark eyes that can only belong to one person—Beckett.

“Expecting someone else?” he asks with a smug expression.

“It’s really you, Hero?” I croak, my voice dry.

He frowns, the lines in his face tighten. “You’re not hallucinating me.”

“How are you here?” I look around. “Where is Leighton?”

“The good thing about Leighton being the leader is he doesn’t have time to sit around all night and wait for you to wake up. He had business he had to attend to. His guards were easy enough to slip by.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You’re a leader too. Doesn’t that mean that you have responsibilities away from here?”

“No,” he says simply. His voice is deep and commanding. Then his gaze drifts to my arm. His furrow deepens, and he reaches for his own right arm, his missing arm. He grabs for it absentmindedly while staring at my arm. When he comes up empty, grabbing air instead of his arm, he looks down, remembering his own loss.

He squeezes his eyes shut as the agony overtakes him like a wave crashing down on top of him. From where I lay, watching him, it looks like he’s drowning, fighting for air and not getting any, no matter how hard he kicks for the surface.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Me? I should be asking you that,” he says through his own pain.

“You must have gotten shot, too. Otherwise, you would have won.”

He lifts his leg, and I see the small flesh wound on his outer thigh.

I open my mouth to ask him why he shot me, but instead, I ask, “How did you lose your arm?”

He stares at me like I just asked him a complicated math question. He won’t tell me. It was rude of me to ask anyway. I shouldn’t intrude.

But then he exhales a long breath. “An explosion.”

My eyebrows raise as his eyes glaze over with overwhelming memories. His entire body tightens, veins bulge in his forearm, neck, and forehead, and his muscles convulse.

I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t mean to cause him pain.

“I was with my brother and the woman who eventually became his wife. We were running down a dock. The explosion happened just as we made it to the end. It flung us into the water.”

His chest rises and falls, and I want to jump from the bed to go hug him. The IV, drugs, and injured arm keep me in bed. I’m not sure he’d appreciate my embrace anyway.

“The water was cold. Even after we got out of the water, I still felt cold. That’s when I knew.” He closes his eyes as his nightmare replays in his head. “Enzo and Kai tried to do everything they could to save my arm, but there was nothing left to do, but…”

My eyes open wide, and my heart aches for this man. “Tell me you didn’t endure that pain. Tell me you were unconscious when they…” I can’t say it either.

“Sawed my arm off.”

I wince as his pain whips in me like cold lightning through my body.

“I was awake for more than I want to remember.”

A tear springs from the corner of my eye, burning down my cheek. I wish I could take his suffering away even now. It’s a trauma he’ll never forget, one that has influenced every aspect of his life.

“But that wasn’t the worst part. Sure it hurt like hell, but it only lasted a few minutes.” He sucks in a breath, and his chest heaves. His eyes lock on mine. “The worst part was the next day, when I woke up without a part of myself. When I realized that everything changed. I would always be looked at with pity in others’ eyes. I would struggle to relearn how to do everything I once took for granted. I would never be whole again. Others would always look at me as deformed, as less than, as incapable of the same things others do.”

My tears are falling freely now. He’s lost so much. He lost a part of him. He lost the love of his life in Odette. And there is nothing I can do to give him back what he’s lost.

A wicked grin spreads across his face. “Don’t worry, Princess, you won’t lose your arm. All you need is some physical therapy, and you’ll be good as new.”

I wipe my tears away with a half-hiccup, half-smile.

He called me Princess, not Fighter.

“I’m not worried if I did,” I say, trying my best to let him know I don’t see him any differently. What he went through doesn’t define him.

He chuckles ominously. “You should be.”

The machine to my left whizzes to life. A blood pressure cuff around my arm tightens, checking my blood pressure. It’s higher than it should be because I’m so wrapped up in Beckett. He’s in pain, so I’m in pain.

Liquid starts pumping from the machine through the line in my IV.

Painkillers.

I feel the warmth as it hits the back of my hand.

I squirm, but I can’t get my left hand to bend in such a way to remove the catheter. And I can’t move my right arm at all. I try to scrape the IV against the fabric to remove it, but it doesn’t budge.

Beckett is at my side in an instant. He gently pulls the tape off before pulling the catheter out of my arm. He reaches behind him and finds gauze to presses against the back of my hand to stop the bleeding.

I should thank him, but the constricting feelings in my chest finally get me to ask the question I should have asked the second I woke up.

“Why?” I rasp, staring at where he’s holding my hand like he cares about me. I can’t understand his conflicting actions. Does he care about me or hate me? Is he just using me?

He doesn’t answer right away, and the pull of my curiosity takes hold as I finally meet his eyes. They look as confused and conflicted as I feel.

“It was a mistake. My eyesight is shit in the dark. I thought I was aiming for the outside of your arm, but I missed. I never meant to hit your arm.”

I read his face.It’s a lie—all of it.

My breath quickens as my anger spreads. Why is he lying to me?

I need answers.

I pull my hand away, and he lets me.

“I’m so sorry, Ri. When I saw you in Leighton’s arms, unconscious, bleeding out—” his words suddenly stop as his nostrils flare and his hand fists, fighting his own feelings.

His words are genuine. These are the truth.

So why did he shoot me? It’s not because he can’t see well in the dark. I’ve seen his skills. The darkness wouldn’t stop him.

I have to have answers.

I don’t have much mobility or strength, but Beckett is close enough that I jab my fingers into his leg wound.

He reacts as I knew he would. He bends over to swat me away, barely acting like I hurt him worse than a bee sting. But I’m not trying to hurt him.

I grab his gun and aim for his heart.

His lopsided grin appears on his face like he finds me adorable, but he knows the truth. I’ll use it. I’ll kill him if I have to.

“Tell me the truth,” I say, my breathing so fast that I’m practically panting.

“You go first.” He cocks his head, waiting for me.

Except I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“You going to pull that memory loss act on me again?” He leans closer until the gun is stabbing him in the chest. It will probably cause a bruise, but he doesn’t seem to care. His eyes scan mine, looking for something, but all he’ll find is the fire growing inside me.

A fire flamed with anger. Marked with loss. And encircled with desire.

He leans back after realizing all my emotions. “You won’t shoot me.”

“Just like you’d never shoot me,” I counter. “Oh, wait, except that you did. Your explanation is bullshit, Hero. I’ve seen you in action. You don’t miss. And you can see better than most in the dark. You shot me because you wanted to. Why?”

He’s silent for a moment, and I get lost in his dark eyes. Eyes I still love despite him being the one who shot me, being the one who hurt me. There has to be a reason. I’ll find out sooner or later, and then I’ll judge his actions, decide if he is worthy of my love or not.

Suddenly, he captures my lips with his. I lower the gun, aiming more for his stomach than his chest. His kiss is soft and gentle as his tongue pushes between my lips like he’s trying to figure out how much pain I’m in by the taste of my tongue against his.

Once he’s reassured that I’m fine, his tongue twists against mine in that familiar battle I’m used to. I let my guard down as he kisses me, pouring his feelings into the kiss. Feelings neither of us understand—but it doesn’t feel like he hates me, doesn’t feel like he wants me dead. It feels like he’s lost without me.

He pulls away and stares at me, unblinking. “Sometimes it’s better if we don’t know all the answers, Fighter. Sometimes you just have to trust that the person you thought was a monster is really a hero after all.”

He stares at my arm like it tortures him. “It won’t happen again.” He closes his eyes, closing in his pain.

His eyes reopen a moment later. “I owe you a save, Princess. I’ll be watching.”

I lower my gun as he walks away. “You owe me two saves.”

He stops, turning his head.

“I should shoot you, but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. So you owe me twice—once for shooting me and the second to deserve my mercy.”

His lips turn up, and he gives the slightest nod before he disappears. I’m left with nothing but the tingle of our kiss on my lips and the strange feeling that I shouldn’t have let him off easy. I should have shot him.