Tempting Gray - Untouchables 02 by T. A. Grey Read Free Book Online Page B

that.
    Pulling to a stop out front of his house,
Grayson didn’t think—he ran. His mouth was dry as the desert and tightness
squeezed his chest. He felt like he was suffocating.
    Inside the front door he slammed to a stop as
if he’d run into an invisible barrier. The stench. Oh, god, the stench of
blood. It permeated everything. It might as well be painted on the walls. But
where was it? Where were the guards that TJ had ordered?
    When he swallowed it felt like he was eating
nails. “Anita!” he roared, desperate to hear an answer. Not a sound. Not even a
whisper.
    Heart pounding like a jackhammer in his
eardrums, Grayson made his way to the hallway. There, he found it. The walls were painted with blood. The blood of guards. Their dead bodies had been tossed
in the hallway like bags of trash. Dead Weres, dead vampires. He recognized
their faces. Every single one of them he’d worked with. They were great, the
best.
    “Anita,” he said again, this time much softer.
    He knew. Deep in his gut he already knew.
Stepping over the bodies, he made his way to the back of the house. To where
the nursery and their bedroom sat. The pressure in his chest became suffocating,
making his lips part just to suck in desperate breaths.
    The nursery door stood ajar. Light spilled out
from the room. Grayson closed his eyes feeling wetness there, wetness he hadn’t
felt in god knows how long. With the push of his hand he sent the nursery door
open—and opened his eyes.
    Oh no. Oh god. No! It can’t be. Not her.
Not his Anita.
    His knees gave out and he collapsed. Hot tears
spilled down his cheeks. He crawled to the lifeless body lying in the center of
the nursery floor. The blood had soaked deep into the carpet staining it red
around her in a morbid halo.
    “   ’Nita?” He spoke to her as if there was
any chance of her survival when her head rested a foot away from her body,
detached.
    She still wore the same white nightgown from
yesterday. Her hair was matted from where they’d grabbed her and used her hair
as leverage while they cut…
    He couldn’t finish thinking the thought.
    With trembling hands he pulled her head back
down to the severed skin of her neck, making her look joined once more.
    “   ’Nita!” The scream came suddenly from
his throat, from a desperate sense of hopelessness and loss. Tears came harder,
hindering his view of her. He wiped them away furiously as he cradled his dead
mate his arms. “I didn’t save you. I didn’t save you.”
    Warm blood coated his fingers. She was covered
in it. He didn’t know how long he lay there holding her but it wasn’t long
enough. It would never be long enough. Using his fingers he combed and smoothed
her dark hair around her pale face. He closed her open eyelids and pressed a
kiss to her lips.
    On her neck in blistering red skin was the Donato
stamp. They’d stamped her before they killed her. The skin was irritated
and he knew it’d hurt like a son of a bitch when they pressed the silver stamp
tight to her neck.
    Below the stamp they’d sawed her head off. It
wasn’t even a clean cut. It looked ragged like they’d used a serrated blade
meant to deal the most pain. They’d wanted this to hurt. She’d died in agony.
Streaks of tears had dried in paths down her face.
    He hadn’t been there to protect her. He could
have saved her.
    You couldn’t even save her from the bottle. You
really think you could have saved her from the Donatos?
    Ugly thoughts ate him up inside, twisting his
innards into knots.
    Grayson lay next to Anita with his arm across
her waist while memorizing her face when the others showed.
    Vas, Graham, the whole team had come. The rest
of the Blackmoore family soon followed. They tried to talk to him but he had
nothing to say. Not a single thing.
    When they tried to touch her, to move her, he
snapped, slammed his fist into the unlucky person’s face—it was Dominic, his
older brother. Dom didn’t attack back, merely backed away, nodding.