AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Angel pulled back from him and shot him a glare.
“Nothing is affecting my ability to do my job,” she informed him. “I’d know if it were. And Chaya Mackay sure as hell isn’t affecting it. And you were the one that kept me awake all night. Now if that’s all you wanted”—she extended her hand toward the door in an angry gesture that he could leave now—“I have things to do.”
The amusement flashed back in his expression.
“Are you trying to dismiss me, Angel?” The vein of laughter in his voice was infuriating. “Have you ever known that to work?”
“A two-by-four wouldn’t work with you,” she muttered, turning her back on him to return to the laptop.
She should have known better. Turning one’s back on Duke was never a good idea.
Before she could counter him, he gripped her arm, swung her around to him, and secured her to him with the other arm, his head lowered, taking advantage of the gasp that parted her lips.
Angel froze.
Pleasure exploded through her brain. Just that fast, just that effectively, he stole her ability to fight, to challenge him, to think, by covering her lips with his and parting them with the heated stroke of his tongue.
He wasn’t asking permission to kiss her. He wasn’t being in the least polite about it, and that fact alone should have enraged her. But this was Duke. His kiss, his touch, the easy possession of her senses was something her body was beginning to crave.
It was something she was beginning to crave.
Her fingers fisted in the material of the shirt covering his wide chest, her body melted against him, and her senses began to riot with sensation. And all he was doing was kissing her. His lips moving over hers, sipping at them, little nips and hot licks of his tongue. And she was mesmerized.
She should be trying to kick his ass; instead, she was trying to sink inside his skin, to get as close as possible.
Just as quickly as he grabbed her to him, he released her. Again. They were both breathing hard, and Angel swore she was on the verge of swaying.
“What was that for?” she all but panted, staring up at him surprised and a little confused that he’d released her so quickly.
In the past days, grabbing her for a kiss had meant far more than just a kiss.
“For distracting me,” he muttered, shooting her a brooding look.
For distracting him?
The man was crazy. That was all there was to it. And before long he was going to make her crazy. Or crazier.
She had to admit the situation as it stood wasn’t doing much for her sanity. Being in Chaya’s life was never what she expected, and she sure hadn’t imagined being in her home.
The fact that Duke and Natches had forced Chaya to acknowledge her was a pain in her side, too, and she admitted it. The woman shouldn’t have had to be forced to accept Angel; she should have known, shouldn’t she? When Angel stood before her, silently begging her, every hope and dream she’d ever had of her mother pouring through her, shouldn’t she have recognized her daughter?
“For distracting you?” she asked him carefully.
“Natches caught me outside and tore my ass because you’re ignoring Chaya.” There was the faintest look of disappointment in his expression. “You should give her a chance, Angel.”
“Should I really?” The sarcasm in her tone really wasn’t deliberate. “And is this what you think or what Natches Mackay told you to think?”
“I think it was a mutual decision.” The grin that quirked his lips was going to get him kicked.
Confidence oozed from him in waves and dominant male power was so much a part of him that it tended to completely irk her feminine independence.
“You and Natches can shove your mutuality,” she informed him, walking past him into the sitting area then to the kitchenette and coffee maker.
There was a time when she would have told him in exacting and explicit detail exactly what she thought of his and Natches’s mutual decision. A time when the filth she spewed from her mouth would have made a sailor wince.
Now the words refused to pass her lips, the memory of the times when they had nearly causing her to cringe.
She hadn’t been a nice person then. She wasn’t exactly a nice person now, but at least she’d managed to clean her language up for the most part.
