Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
He framed her little face with both hands and bent close. “Look at me, beautiful woman, in the eyes, so you see I’m telling you the truth. I’ll be right in the next room. Nothing will happen to me. I’ll leave the door open, and I’ll stay in your line of vision so you can look in and see me at all times. We’re in this together, remember?”
She nodded. Swallowed hard. “He’s dangerous.”
“So am I. More than he is. He has no idea what I am. You do. I let you see because you’re mine. He’s the one in the room in danger, not me, princess. You do what you were doing. It was perfect and helping me. Let Ink and me do what we need to do.”
“Stay in sight.”
That was an order. Issued as one. He didn’t smile, even though he desperately wanted to. The thought that she was worried for him and not for Reese was a joke. Ink would be in the room with him. Two lethal men who had trained as assassins practically since birth. He nodded his head, brushed a kiss into all that dark, glossy hair and stepped back. She reluctantly dropped her arms and let him go.
Master sent one wary glance toward Tyra, who had pressed herself against the front door. He didn’t like her cutting off Ambrie’s escape. “Tyra, move away from the door. You want to take Ambrielle to the chairs and get her comfortable. She’s had a long, very trying day.” He made it an order—easy enough to do when he put a growl in his voice.
He waited until she complied, sweeping her hands toward the two most comfortable chairs they had in the room. Ambrie took the one facing the room Master was about to enter. She smiled gratefully up at Tyra. “Thank you. I really did need to sit down.” All the while, her gaze continued to flick toward her husband. One hand rested just inside the jacket Master had given her to wear. He knew the gun was inside that jacket. She looked relaxed, but she was on alert. He was proud of her.
He nodded to Ink and moved ahead of him. “Coming in, Reese. I’ve got Ink with me. My wife, Ambrielle, is going to stay with Tyra out here.” He believed in stating things just the way they were. He also believed in being prepared. When he moved into the room, he was very aware his wife was in the line of fire if Reese was armed, so he didn’t step to the side as he might have normally, clearing the doorway for Ink. He gave Ink just enough room to take a shot if he had to.
Reese sat in a large cloth-covered chair, one he and Tyra had found at a secondhand store and both fallen in love with. Reese was a big man, and the chair suited his large, muscular frame. He’d worked out before he went to prison and while he was in prison and continued to do so. It was part of his daily routine, and it showed. Between his big hands, he rolled an unopened bottle of Jack Daniel’s back and forth. On his lap was a revolver.
Glass lay broken on the floor in colorful pieces where lamps were shattered. Books were knocked from shelves that had been torn from the walls, so the shelves hung suspended upside down or sideways.
Master walked all the way into the room, deliberately stepping on what had been Tyra’s favorite stained glass Tiffany lamp, the one she’d found at a garage sale and talked about for weeks. The shattered glass crunched under his boot. Master grunted loudly as he smashed the glass, going straight toward the chair, keeping his body between the former MMA fighter and the door. Ink slipped into the room and stayed along the back wall, to one side, a silent shadow, arms folded across his chest. He looked relaxed, but his weapon lay hidden along his arm, the barrel aimed straight at Reese’s left eye.
“Stop right there, Master,” Reese ordered without looking up.
“Fuck you, Reese,” Master said, not even slowing down. He kept the same pace, stalking across the room in his motorcycle boots, not fast or slow but purposefully, a kind of fury building in his chest. He’d dragged his woman, suffering from a real trauma, out in the middle of the night to help this man, and he dared to threaten him? That was so not happening. “You do this with Sandree in the house?”
He towered over Reese, snagging the revolver, putting the safety on and tossing it to Ink, who caught it one-handed. “Did you? You tear up your home with that little girl here?” He had the presence of mind, even in his fury, to stay out of range of Reese’s feet. The man was a hell of a fighter, and you had to respect that.