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“It doesn’t matter where she was,” she all but whispered. “She left me and Jenny and we paid for it. Jenny paid with her life.” She shook her head slowly. “I won’t lose Bliss as well.”
Her fingers curled over the knife still strapped at her thigh, something she did often when she was upset, Duke knew. As though it comforted her in some way. The knife her mother had left with her, and how many times had it saved her life over the years?
“And you think refusing to discuss any of this is going to help you protect Bliss?” he asked her, watching as she paced to the doors of the private patio before turning back to him.
“It won’t hurt.” The shrug was careless, as though it didn’t matter, but he knew better.
She was so incredibly stubborn it amazed him. It was that stubbornness that had assured her survival over the years, though. Her determination to do what had to be done to not just live but help protect the family that raised her, no matter the personal cost to her tender heart. Or the risk to her life.
“Keep thinking that,” he told her knowingly. “And let me know how it works out for you.”
Angel hated that look of smug male superiority that settled on Duke’s face. Arrogant, superior. It never failed to irritate the hell out of her.
“It works out fine for me,” she assured him with a curl of her lip. “And it will work out fine for her as well. Trust me, that woman has no desire to acknowledge who I am. Your information and her husband’s Mackay sense of responsibility are the only reasons I’m here. Not because of any motherly love.”
“Really?” His arms went over his chest again. “And the bedroom? How does that tie into your opinion of her feelings for you, Angel? If she didn’t love her child, why keep that bedroom so pristine?”
“Guilt.” What else could it be? Her heart ached at the thought, though, because as she’d stood in that room she felt a crack in the shields she’d built over the years and found hope she was certain she’d eradicated once she’d realized who she was and remembered those final days before her life exploded around her.
What mother that loved her child refused to come for her? Angel couldn’t imagine ever leaving her baby in such a way.
“If you knew Chaya, you’d know that wasn’t true,” Duke disagreed, frowning back at her reprovingly.
“Well, I don’t know her,” she agreed, giving into the mockery that refused to lie silent. “I won’t take the blame for that, though. It lies squarely on her shoulders. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
She was striding for the door as she spoke, intent on escaping the room and the argument brewing between them. The potential for that argument had been there since he’d shown up the night before.
And it wasn’t antagonism toward Chaya that fueled it. It was the physical attraction, the memory of that kiss, and her knowledge that giving into it had the potential to hurt far more than ignoring it.
She never allowed herself to be distracted on a job. Distractions were dangerous, and she knew it.
She didn’t make it past him. In one swift move Duke caught her, pulled her to him, and lifted her so her back was against the wall, his hard thighs parting hers as he pushed her head back and his lips covered hers.
It happened so fast there wasn’t a chance to protest. There was no way to know what he intended; there was only the wild, burning heat of his kiss and the pleasure exploding through her senses. It caught her off guard. It ripped through any control she’d fooled herself into believing she had, and any shield she might have thought could protect her emotions or her senses.
The onslaught of sensations was destructive, mesmerizing. His lips were knowing, experienced, moving over her mouth as his tongue licked sensually against hers.
One hand cupped the side of her neck, his thumb beneath her jaw, as though to hold her in position; the other cupped her rear, his fingers caressing, stroking through the thin material of the pants she wore.
She didn’t know what to do, how to fight it. Her body stole that control, it reveled in the caresses, in the dominance of the kiss, and some inner sex kitten she didn’t know she possessed rolled her hips against his, stroking the too-sensitive flesh between her thighs against the hard wedge of his erection as it pressed against her.
The layers of clothing between them weren’t enough to protect her from the shift of his hips, the slow thrusts against her sex that had her clit swelling, sensitizing. Her world narrowed to the man that held her, the kiss and his touch and the arcing forks of pleasure tearing through her body then striking at her womb.
She ached. She needed.
Oh God, she needed . . .
Touch. Duke’s touch. The forceful dominance, the male lust that consumed her and called her own forward to meet it, challenge it.
She was insane and she was helpless against it, had no idea how to combat it. And when his hand moved from her rear to her hip, where he slid beneath the material of her T-shirt to find bare skin, she completely lost the rest of her breath.
It wasn’t that he’d never touched her before; it was that he’d never really touched her before. The calloused roughened rasp of his fingers and hand slid up her side, then to the band of her plain cotton bra, where his fingers slid beneath, lifted the material, and found her pebble-hard, painfully sensitive nipple.
She cried out into his kiss. A sound that shocked her with the hungry need that filled it just as the involuntary arch of her body pushed her breast into his hand.
The sensations were chaotic; the feel of his fingers gripping the hard tip, tugging at it, tightening around it sent sharp explosions of sensations straight to her vagina. Her clit throbbed, ached, and she couldn’t help but wonder how his fingers would feel there as well, stroking, exciting the little bud.
A gasp left her parted lips as Duke suddenly pulled back, breaking the kiss. Not that he gave her a moment to think or to find her common sense. Instead, his head lowered as he jerked her T-shirt above her breasts and his lips covered the tight, distended peak of her nipple.
