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Things were fuzzy after that, clear in only bits and pieces. One of those bits and pieces was holding Jenny’s broken body against her own as her younger sister reached out for a mother who wasn’t there.
Now Angel lay there in Duke’s arms, her fingers sliding against the fine mat of hair that grew beneath her head, and knew it had never mattered to her that he was the son of the man that sent that missile to destroy her life. She’d known many men and women born to parents who had loved them, raised them with care and laughter, only to retreat to the basements of their lavish mansions where their victims were brutalized.
Kings, despots, dictators, generals, and wannabe leaders. They’d taught their children to be compassionate, strong, honest, because their children were their public face. They were how the world saw them, how they’d deflect suspicion against them.
And more than once it had been those very children who had aided in the apprehension of those parents. She, Tracker, and Chance had helped rescue several of those young people. They’d helped protect others and seen the struggle that eventually created men and women whose sense of purpose and determination were far stronger than any monsters.
Seeing those past examples had given her a unique understanding into Duke and Ethan, but especially Duke, she thought. He was the oldest, the one who bore the weight of his parents’ crimes the heaviest because he had been unable to protect his younger brother from their parents’ actions.
And now he was trying to protect Angel from them as well.
God love his heart—as Dawg was known to mutter—he was always trying to protect her from something.
A small smile curled at her lips at the thought of that. From the second he’d forced himself down that narrow shaft to join Tracker and Chance after they’d found her, he’d seemed to feel like it was his duty to make certain nothing else happened to her.
Of course, that had been rather extreme, even for her life, she knew. Caught in the memories of her childhood, hysteria taking hold of her, she’d been fighting the rubble and the heavy beam holding her pinned to the cement floor rather than working to be free of the weight.
Twisting, clawing at the rubble, animalistic screams and growls tearing from her chest, she’d lost her mind and Angel wasn’t certain, even now, that she would have found herself again if Duke hadn’t forced his way to where Tracker and Chance were breaking their backs trying to keep her from being crushed.
It was a battle they’d been losing, too. They couldn’t calm her down, couldn’t force her to listen to them, to find her sanity and help them free her. Not until Duke’s voice had snapped across her senses like a steel-tipped whip. The strong, deep tone, unknown, but ringing with authority, had sl
iced past the growing horror and given her a second, a small fraction of time to gain a desperate fingerhold on reality.
Just long enough to make her see the predicament she was in and use her head rather than the fear driving her.
He was there. Nothing would happen to her as long as she listened to him, he’d told her with such an undertone of certainty and force that she’d had to believe him. In a calm, steady voice, he’d quickly talked her through describing how she was trapped, then he’d briefly outlined what they were going to do.
They were running out of time, he’d told her, refusing to lie to her. And if she didn’t get herself free, then the rubble settling into the basement would take not just her, but her brothers and him and his brother. They were there for her; now she had to make her escape happen.
Keeping her attention on him, he’d counted to three, then he, Tracker, and Chance had forced every shred of strength they had into their backs and legs to shift the beam that tiniest bit needed for Angel to twist her ankle and jerk it free of the smaller rubble the steel beam had held in place.
As she dislocated her ankle beneath the piece of twisted metal to get it free, Ethan had been there to drag her out and he’d kept dragging her through the narrow tunnel they’d used to get to her. A tunnel collapsing around Duke, Tracker, and Chance even as they clawed their way through it after releasing the beam.
How could a woman hate a man that risked not just his life, but the brother he’d always tried to protect as well, to save an eighteen-year-old mercenary with more issues than a long-running tabloid?
Shifting against Duke, she ran her finger along the line of dark curls that ran from his chest to his abs, her gaze caught by the fiercely erect shaft rising along his lower stomach.
“You’re awake,” she murmured.
“I’m exhausted,” he growled. “You’ve been lying there thinking so hard I swear you wore me out. What the hell’s going through that complicated little mind of yours?”
She couldn’t stop the little giggle that escaped. He’d always claimed to know when she was thinking too hard. He’d frown at her and tell her to “stop that,” she was making him tired just watching.
“How do you always know?” she asked now, her finger playing at the indent of his navel, just above the wide, fiercely throbbing crest.
“That you’re thinking too hard?” he questioned. “Hell if I know. But it makes me tired. Find something else to concentrate on,” he demanded, lust darkening his voice, deepening it to a sexy baritone that had her creaming.
“Like what?” she asked with affected innocence as she moved against him, watching as her fingertips skirted the head of his cock to stroke the bend of his thigh.
“You really want me to go there?” He grunted, laughter teasing his voice. “You’ll blush.”
“You don’t like it when I blush then?” Yeah, right. She knew better.
“I love it when you blush,” he growled. “When you get flustered and don’t quite know what to say. Your eyes get darker, that hint of blue gets brighter, and your whole face turns the color of a pretty peach. I told you I was fond of peaches.”
She flattened her hand along his thigh and dipped to the inside with her caresses when her attention was snagged by something else.
“Duke?” She sat up, staring at the heavy sac beneath his cock before turning back to him in surprise. “Do you wax?”
