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In for a penny, in for a pound. “You’re in love with her. With Ariana.”
He stopped, straightened, and glared daggers at her. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s my mother. Get. On. The. Fucking. Bed.”
“So, is Marshall even your father?” She tapped her finger against her lip, noting how her verbal reasoning and indifference to his hostility was pushing him over the edge, evident from the way he spasmodically fisted his hands.
She didn’t seem to care. Unraveling the details behind his actions exceeded her sense of self-preservation. “Maybe he is your father, but from a woman other than Ariana.”
Without warning, she yelped as he lunged, grabbing her by the hair, twisting it around his fist with an iron grip and yanking the robe off her body as his hot breath grazed her ear. “Get on the goddamned bed.”
She’d gone too far. The lamp cord, her only weapon, was now on the floor in the pocket of her robe.
He dragged her head back again, slamming his forearm across her neck and against her throat as her fingers instinctively reached up in an effort to pry his arm off her neck.
The door swung open, as if on cue, banging against the wall. But instead of an incensed and indignant Ariana, there stood in the doorway a heaving and glowering Lucas Santos, without a disguise and dressed for stealth in a pair of black athletic pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt.
His eyes were peeled on Errol, who was now back stepping, using Birdie as a body shield as Lucas stalked toward him. With lightning speed, Lucas’s hand clenched around Errol’s neck with enormous control and squeezed, until Errol had no choice but to release her.
“You’ve touched her for the last fucking time.”
Birdie’s hands were at her throat, coughing and sputtering as she took in the scene before her. Amazed that Lucas had come to protect her. To save her. And horrified at the thought of what might happen if he were to kill him.
* * *
Lucas was having an out-of-body experience.
He had built a life around being a tempered, pragmatic man who never raised his voice let alone lost control.
Regardless of his lifetime ability to remain aloof and unmoved from emotional attachments, he was currently squeezing the life force out of Errol Shepherd’s body as a result of losing his mind while standing on the other side of the door and hearing him yell at Birdie to take off her robe and get on the bed.
His body turned predator. Reacting without thinking and driven by the need to make this man pay for trying to hurt the woman he loved and his daughter.
The rage in his body was beyond control and palpable. In the past, he had failed her. Every damned day he allowed her to walk back to a home filled with a sick-minded mother and a vindictive sister, who made sport of Birdie’s defenselessness.
Made her their own personal scapegoat, whipping post.
And he let them.
Too young and afraid to speak up. To question. To interfere.
Not the fuck now.
He was a man who refused to allow another bad thing to happen to this woman. And by God, if he died defending her, so be it. He couldn’t live with himself knowing he didn’t do everything in his power to protect her.
Not now.
Not this time.
In the background, her voice was pleading with him to stop, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The heady feeling of removing this man from the face of the Earth too gratifying to release his hand from his neck, as Errol used both of his to create some small space for air to break through.
Somewhere in the haze of Lucas’s rage, he heard pounding footsteps. Someone yelling at him to release the man, and then…his head exploding with pain.
