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He’d also be pissed I’d slipped out in the middle of the night.
I was too afraid to even turn and look at him. I’d managed to meet the eyes of a man who’d murdered the man I’d been sleeping with and had been planning to murder me, but I couldn’t meet the gaze of the man I loved.
“I wish I’d brought tequila,” Rosie muttered, eyeing the area above my head.
I smelled him first. Then he was in front of me, taking up all of my senses. My body relaxed entirely, despite the fury rippling off him.
Duke’s hand was rough on my chin, jerking it upward so he could get a better look at what I guessed was yet another bruise blossoming quite nicely. He was careful not to touch the cut on my lip.
Still holding me, but not looking at me, he focused on Rosie. “You let him fuckin’ touch her?”
He didn’t yell. It was the quietest I’d ever heard him speak. In fact, I’d never heard this tone in his voice. It wasn’t Duke. I’d seen glimpses of a darker side in him, the side that killed, that did things he’d never speak about. But this was something else entirely. Goosebumps erupted on my arms with the chill this stranger brought to the room.
Rosie wasn’t ruffled, of course. The woman was covered in blood and didn’t seem to be worried at all. “I had to get him close enough to let his guard down,” she said.
Duke moved in a flash.
One second he was holding my chin in that brutal grip, the next his was right up in Rosie’s face. Even Luke, who I expected had fucking good reflexes didn’t have time to move to protect his wife.
Not that she needed protection.
“You let him touch her!” This time it wasn’t a whisper. It was a roar, right in Rosie’s face.
Luke moved quickly then, with a danger of his own—one that wasn’t the same as Duke’s, but it was still scary.
“You back away from my wife now,” he said. Words of steel, full of threats.
Rosie rolled her eyes at both of them.
“You.” She looked at her husband. “You’ve known me for how long now? So what makes you think I’ve somehow changed drastically in the last few hours that you can go around fighting my battles for me, making threats for me? I fight my own battles, follow through on my own threats.” She didn’t wait for Luke to respond. Her eyes went to Duke. “And you. I get you’ve got the whole ‘alpha male in love’ thing going on. I get that you’re one of the last in our group to get it. You’re overexcited. Whatever. But you are not stupid. Nor are you anywhere near as misogynistic as you’re acting right now. You know that your woman has and can take a punch just as well, if not better than a man can take it. You also know that justice is a dirty business. Revenge is even dirtier. Despite what all the movies tell us—even her movies—it’s not a business that leaves anyone unscathed. Anastasia is a grown woman. She’s a smart one at that. Smart mostly because she called me. And because she knew exactly what she was getting herself into and what could come of it. She was prepared for that. She handled it. Her face will heal. So get over yourself.”
Rosie delivered the speech the same casual way she had delivered everything these past couple of days. She was probably one of the most impressive people I’d ever met.
Despite this, there was a tense moment, one that even the most badass of females couldn’t break.
Then Duke stepped back.
I exhaled.
Luke glowered.
Rosie grinned.
Duke didn’t say anything else, just snatched my arm and dragged us out of there.
I had been shocked to see Tanner and Andrew in the next room, both of them holding handguns and harsh glares.
They were still wearing their fucking boots and cowboy hats, milling with bikers.
Both of their gazes turned to stone when they saw me, more specifically saw what I was guessing was the already large bruise on my cheek.
Duke seemed to struggle to let me go when they both approached, but had no choice when I was engulfed in two different cowboy, macho-men hugs.
Andrew cupped my face when he finally let me go. He did it in the gentlest way a man could touch a woman, like a father might. That and the shimmer in his eyes hit me square in the stomach.
“You scared the crap out of me, darlin’,” he said, a rasp in his voice.
“You came all the way here?” I asked, stupidly. Obviously they were here.
He smiled, but there was sadness and love in it. “You’re family.”
It was that. That sentence right there, delivered from the patriarch that got me. That shattered me. I had planned on saving my breakdown for the privacy of my own mansion. But it started here, in front of all the bikers, Tanner, and Duke.
