“Of course.” Beach’s gaze raked me again and some of the sorrow bled away, replaced by humor. “Sarah would have been trying to kick my ass by now. You have more self-restraint.”
I didn’t say anything, but I couldn’t help but think of how true that statement was. In normal situations, I’m very hard to shake, a result of my dad’s stress training. When your own father has held a gun to your head and screamed that he was going to blow it off—even if he never would because he was just trying to train you to survive a hostage situation—it was stressful. My father would rather have his legs cut off than hurt me, but he’d done his best to make sure I’d survive, no matter what.
I grew annoyed. “Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on? And what kind of name is Beach, anyway?”
Smoke made a pained sound.
It was only my sister and my mother that could rile the inner bitch sleeping in my soul. With them I was like a sarcastic phoenix rising, biting in my anger and, in general, a raging bitch. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to let this guy know exactly what was on my mind about this bullshit situation, so I shrugged.
Instead of being pissed, Beach just laughed. “You sound more like your sister every minute.”
Smoke moved to stand next to me, somehow managing to hover over me without getting too close. “You find out who took her?”
“Los Diablos.”
Smoke sucked in a quick breath, then roared, “What? Those raping, slave-selling, motherfuckers had her? They almost fucking got away with her? People are gonna die, and they’re gonna die slowly.”
I swear the entire world paused for a moment as complete silence filled the room. There was an odd electricity building around Smoke as he stared at Beach. His whole body, his whole everything seemed to shut down for a moment and I wanted to poke him to see if he was still alive. Before I could touch him he stomped across the room and picked up a wooden chair before he began to slam it onto the floor until it shattered and I let out a little yelp.
Smoke stomped the remains of the poor chair into toothpicks as he shouted, “Los Diablos? They dared to touch my girl? They fucking dared? I’m going to cut their fucking fingers off and shove them up their ass while I put their dicks in a blender and make ’em fucking drink it.”
My stomach clenched and I wrapped my arms around myself, not liking this outburst of anger, at all.
A couple more guys in leather vests came into the room, but Beach waved them away while Smoke proceeded to destroy shit while speaking in super-fast Spanish that I couldn’t understand.
Beach gave me a grim, but oddly reassuring look, then turned back to face Smoke. “They were gonna sell her to the Russians.”
“They what?” Smoke roared as his temper exploded again.
I watched, rather impressed even as I tried to stay perfectly still, while Smoke began to rant and rave, his knowledge of swear words and curses vast and interesting. He swore in a mixture of Spanish and English so I had to try and translate his words while keeping up with his switches back to English. I’d learned rudimentary Spanish as part of my home schooling and had grown up in an area of Texas where Spanish was just part of the culture. I also knew Italian, thanks to my step-mom. Once again, my father’s obsessive need to make me strong surfaced in the form of being multi-lingual, yet never leaving my parents’ side until I forced myself to go live in the real world.
Still rampaging, Smoke picked up another chair and threw it out one of the windows, which shattered in a loud crash of broken glass. This time I did let out a little scream. I took a big step back, his anger bringing back unwelcome memories of my father throwing fits. My dad spent some time in some fucked up places while he was part of the Special Forces, and it had messed with his mind. My dad’s temper was legendary, and while he never hurt me, he did scare the fuck out of me.
In the middle of kicking a hole in the wall Smoke looked up at me, and whatever he saw in my face froze him. A flash of anguish passed through his eyes, and when he took a step toward me, I took an involuntary step back. He froze and closed his eyes raising his hands with his palms up. “Am I scaring you, babe?”
Duh.
“A little bit,” I whispered.
Smoke calmed down enough to take a deep breath, then slowly let it out. The tension drained from him in an unusually swift manner and I could see his pulse slow as I watched him.
“Babe,” he murmured in his deep voice with his eyes still closed, “didn’t mean to scare you, but the thought of what they would do to you if … just trust me, it wouldn’t be good. I won’t let that happen, you hear me? No one is going to touch you while I have a breath left in my body. I will fucking slaughter them if they so much as look at you.”