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“Natches isn’t the boss of me,” she enunciated clearly, teeth clenched at the very thought of it. “No more than you or Tracker are.”
He chuckled at that, a dark, warning sound that had her fists clenching at her thighs.
“Honey, when Natches can’t get his answers from you, then he’ll track down Tracker and Chance. If they don’t have those answers, then he’ll go for J.T. and Mara. Is that what you want?” The gentle if foreboding question was no more than another warning and she was growing sick of them. Going to J.T. and Mara would be about as productive as asking Tracker, Chance, or even Duke. Because they didn’t know. Angel had never told anyone about the phone call her father had made to Chaya. Except Bliss.
“Take me back to the hotel, Duke,” she demanded. “There’s nothing to see here and this conversation isn’t going anywhere. . . .”
“Natches wants you at the house,” he interrupted her, his tone hardening. “You revealed yourself to Chaya because you wanted to protect Bliss. And I know you’re probably one of the best protection agents I’ve ever met. Well, yo
u’ve been contracted for the job. Call Tracker if you want to argue the decision.”
The Jeep started with a powerful rumble as Angel stared back at him in shock, her heart clenching then beginning a hard, sluggish beat. Jerking it into gear he reversed smoothly before pushing it into first and heading away from the decoy safe house.
“That’s not going to work.” She had to force the words past her lips. “And taking me to their home isn’t going to work. Take me back to the hotel.”
She couldn’t face Chaya, not tonight, not with so little time after her mother’s denial of her. She would have begged Chaya to allow her to help protect Bliss if the other woman hadn’t become so determined to know why.
Why? Why?
The demands and the insults had bit into her like a dagger, twisting and turning in an already brutalized wound.
There was a part of her, she readily acknowledged, that was still three and feeling the horror of her mother’s refusal to come for her and Jenny. To know that her mother was too busy with a man she’d just met hadn’t made sense at the time. Her mother would never choose anyone over her, definitely not a man.
But she’d done just that.
By the time the memories had returned Angel was old enough to understand, to have seen the things some women would do for a man. She’d seen women leave their children with family, with strangers, and she’d even realized that some women would kill their children to have the man they wanted. Loyalty to a child, to their own flesh and blood first, wasn’t something a lot of people understood in the world she’d been raised in. But as a child, as a three-year-old, it had been intrinsic to her life.
“Tracker officially accepted the contract just after he contacted you. Are you refusing the job?” The question was delivered with a smooth, masterful stroke as he glanced at her, his brow lifting, his brooding expression revealed by the Jeep’s interior lights. “Cancellation goes through the service, not Tracker,” he reminded her. “So far the team has a clean slate where black marks are concerned. Want to bet Natches will be pissed enough to inform the service that Tracker can’t control his people now?”
As if she wasn’t aware of the drawbacks of listing through the anonymous service that secured the jobs the team agreed to. Without a hell of a good excuse, there was no way to cancel out any black mark Natches or Chaya used for Angel’s denial of the job.
She just hadn’t considered the fact that they would do so.
“This is a personal matter. . . .” she tried to argue.
“Won’t matter, Angel,” he assured her as he made the turn onto the main highway leading back to the hotel. “If you don’t show up to the house before dawn, the listed time of arrival, then don’t think Natches won’t lose his fucking temper. He’s already had to watch Chaya completely break down when he showed her the file I arrived with. If he has to watch her hurt further because you’re refusing to come to them, he won’t care how he hurts Tracker professionally. He’ll do it, even if he has to regret it later.”
She turned her head again, watching as the Jeep passed the heart of the business center, the lights lowered, shops closed. Sometimes, she wondered at the life that passed by her as she drove through the cities and towns she’d been in over her life. What she was missing, what she might have known, if only . . .
“You’d think Tracker would realize that she’s hurt me enough without giving her carte blanche to further it,” she finally said, the words slipping free before she could stop them. “She didn’t want me when I was three and she doesn’t want me now.” She turned back to him, eyeing him with icy fury. “And I don’t appreciate you or Natches Mackay forcing me on her. So, don’t expect me to pretend that I do.”
The Jeep swerved as he twisted the wheel, pulled it into the parking lot of a grocery store, and jerked the vehicle to a stop.
“And what makes you think I’m trying to force anything from you or her?” he demanded, anger ringing in his voice as he pulled the parking brake and turned to her. “Damn you, Angel. You make me crazy!”
Before she could anticipate his next move or prepare herself for it he gripped the back of her head in one hand, his fingers threading through her hair, holding her still, and his lips covered hers.
Shock held her still, but it wasn’t shock that had her lips parting for the hungry lick of his tongue, and it wasn’t shock that had her fingers suddenly gripping his shoulders as she found herself lost in a pleasure she couldn’t have expected.
Where had this come from? Why?
His fingers tightened in her hair; the ones gripping her hip slid higher, pressing beneath the suddenly swollen, sensitive curve of her breast. She was too warm, too excited now. It wasn’t anger surging thick and hot through her bloodstream, but need, pleasure. . . .
A hunger she’d never experienced before and now had no idea how to combat. She became lost in it instead. The sensations, lightning and fire, her stomach tightening, her sex aching, her clit swelling so abruptly and with such demand that she had no idea how to counter it or how to stop it.
She responded to it instead.
The touch, the warmth, the hunger of his kiss; it had lived in her fantasies since she was rescued from the bombed hospital five years ago. From the moment she saw him, saw that hint of a smile at his lips and became lost in his gaze, she’d hungered for this.
