Free Captured Rapture: 3 (Mercy) by Lexxie Couper Page A

to Fraz, slapping my
hands against his chest again, a dark part of me knowing my aggression was born
from bleak frustration. Damn you, Torr . “That was our last stash, you dick,”
I whined. “I needed it. I need—”
    Fraz struck me. Hard. With the back
of his hand. Right on my cheekbone.
    I saw stars and fell to my knees,
the coppery taste of blood sliding over my tongue.
    “I said , shut the fuck up.”
    “Hey!” the perp burst out, and I
hid my smile in my trembling hand.
    We had him. Hook, line and—
    “I know you!” His voice rose an octave
and from the corner of my eye, I saw his feet scramble back a step.
    My heart slammed into my throat and
I bit back a hiss. Not good. Not good. Shyte , this was not good.
    “You’re the cunt Enforcer who took
out Eop’s child slavery ri—”
    Four things happened
simultaneously.
    The memory of the Mendovian’s
violent arrest smashed through my head.
    Fraz pulled his de-atomizer.
    I leapt to my feet.
    And the perp pulled a de-atomizer
from who knows where.
    Then everything did, as I feared,
go pear-shaped.
    The dealer shot Fraz. Just like
that. In the space of half a heartbeat, the bastard shot Fraz. In the chest?
The throat? The shoulder? I couldn’t tell. The stench of ozone burned my
sinuses and a split second later, I saw my partner fall, his eyes wide with
shock and pain.
    I yanked my disruptor from its
holster and spun to face the perp, leveling my weapon slap-damn in the middle
of his greasy forehead. “Drop it,” I snarled.
    The spice dealer’s de-atomizer
locked on my face and he grinned at me, yellow teeth glistening with saliva.
“Not a chance, cunt.”
    My aim on his forehead didn’t
waver. I could hear something raspy at my feet and when I sucked in a quick
breath, the coppery stench of blood filled my nose. Fraz’s blood. Fuck.
    Fury rolled through me. Thick,
black fury that felt like flames of incinerating heat. Fraz was the closest
thing I had to family and this scum-bastard criminal had just shot him. I was
going to make him hurt. “You’ve got two choices, dickhead. Drop the de-atomizer,
or keep it aimed at me and find out what it’s like to have that ugly-as-shit
face of yours explode in a puff of disintegrated matter.”
    The perp laughed, the sound snide
and way too confident for my liking. I wanted to shoot Fraz a quick look but I
didn’t dare. The spice dealer with the anal sex fetish would squeeze his
trigger the second I broke eye contact, and there was no way I wanted to die.
    Not when I’d only just begun to
live.
    Mine to claim.
    The disconnected thought whispered
in the depths of my mind and I gritted my teeth. When this was all done and
over with, I was having a long conversation with Torr about staying out of my head.
I may be his destiny, but—
    I swallowed, the absurdity of the
situation hitting me. I was staring down the barrel of a highly lethal, highly
illegal weapon, wielded by a criminal with a highly violent track record, my
partner shot and most likely dying at my feet, our arrest gone to hell in a
friggin’ handbasket, and I was thinking of my lunatic man in the moon?
    You’re not just talking to
Torr when this is done, y’know that, don’t you?
    I bit back a sigh. No, when this
was done, I wasn’t just talking to Torr. I was throwing him on the nearest
bed/bench/rock and making love to him like there was no tomorrow.
    Mine to claim. Mine to fuck.
Mine to—
    “Throw away your weapon, cunt,” the
perp snarled, his eyes a crazy mix of glee and rage. “Or I’ll shoot you in the
mouth and fuck your dying body as your brains dribble out of your head.”
    “Try it.” Oh yeah. This bastard
deserved to die. I was going to kill him. In exactly five seconds.
    Five, four, three, two—
    “Shoot me and we all die, cunt.” He
jerked up his left hand. My stare snapped to what he held and my stomach
dropped. Ah fuck. No wonder his eyes were crazy.
    A tiny red glow on the small metal
ball he gripped told me the neuron