I Hear Voices(24)

Asmoday hissed in fury and vanished from my mind.

“We can stop now, he’s gone.”

“Not on your life,” Derek growled as his hands cupped my bottom, lifting me to take him deeper.

My senses imploded into a million shards of ecstasy and a scream dragged from my throat.

Derek shuddered in release, threw back his head and roared, “Mine.”

Wrapped in his arms, I struggled to get my breath back. “Wow! That was…truly wonderful. Can you die from sex?”

“No, but it’d be a hell of a way to go,” Derek murmured against my neck.

My eyelids grew heavy and I drifted off to a peaceful sleep.

Gangster’s Paradise shocked me awake . “Who is it?”

“Dunno,” Derek said, grabbing the cell phone off the lamp table. “Sloan. Okay, I’ll be right there.” He rolled out of bed.

Dragging myself upright, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “What’s wrong?”

Derek pulled on a pair of jeans. “Someone breached our security system. It’s either your family riding to the rescue or bounty hunters.”

I opened my mind and reached out. Crap. It was Fabian. “I’ll talk to them.”

“I’m not letting you anywhere near your family until we find the gold.” Hard fingers suddenly manacled my right wrist and I was abruptly cuffed to the metal headboard.

Anguish twisted my chest. After I had given Derek my heart, he still considered me nothing but

a tool. God, I was such a fool. “You really don’t want to do this.”

“Yeah, I do. I don’t have you tamed yet and I’m tired of chasing you. This way I know you’ll be here when I get back,” he answered, shoving his feet into a pair of boots.

“Tamed!? I’m not a fractious filly you’re breaking to the saddle.”

“Until you learn whose boss, I’m keeping a tight rein on you.”

“Yippee-ki-yay! Ride ‘em cowboy.”

His lips twitched. “I will ride you hard and often.”

“Well, this filly has the bit between her teeth and you’re in for one hell of a ride, cowboy,” I snarled.

Derek dropped a hard kiss on my mouth. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Angel.”

My foot lashed out.

He caught it a scant inch from his balls. “Nice try.”

An explosion shook the room and Derek’s face hardened. “If that’s your cousin out there, I’m going to mess up that pretty face of his.”

“That would be a mistake on your part. The Dragos clan makes for really bad enemies.”

Punching a code into the gun safe, Derek pulled out his Glock and checked the clip. “I’m family now, Angel.”

I snorted. “Like hell, family doesn’t chain you to the bed. All I am to you is a way to get the treasure.”

Derek examined me, like a scientist studying an interesting but odd specimen. “Are you angling for a ring, Angel?”

I gaped at him in astonishment. Marriage!? Had he gone off the deep end? Okay, he was the man of my dreams but Prince Charming he wasn’t. “Why in the hell would I want to marry you?”

“Because you’re in love with me,” the jerk answered.

Horror bubbled up in me. There was no way for him to know that. Was there? “You’re delusional. I keep running from you, remember?”

“Liar. We’ll have a little heart-to-heart when I get back.” Derek opened the door and his hot-eyed gaze slid over my nude body. “Damn, but you’ve got a great pair of tits.”

My temper flared to life. “I’m not a damned hooker and that’s not a compliment.”

“I guess you don’t want to hear how hot your pussy is either?”

I grabbed the clock off the nightstand and hurled it at him.

With a laugh, he quickly shut the door and the clock bounced off of it.

“Go fuck yourself,” I shouted as my dreams of a grand romance vanished.

“I’d rather fuck you,” Derek called as he locked me in.





Chapter Twelve


Did the moron really think a locked door or handcuffs would hold me for long? With a grim smile, I pulled the earring from my left ear. Numb nuts had forgotten to remove all my jewelry. A mistake he probably wouldn’t make again. Derek’s learning curve was truly scary.

With one twist of the earring, I had my lock pick. It took another ten seconds to free myself. I shot to my feet and immediately clamped my legs together. Lordy, did I have to pee. Sprinting to the bathroom, I took care of business and a shriek broke from me as I saw myself in the mirror.

Bed head didn’t even begin to describe the awful condition of my hair. Add in the raccoon eyes, battered face and badly bruised body and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind. It had been a pity fuck.

Grabbing a wash cloth, I took care of the raccoon effect and hastily washed off my sticky thighs. A sudden thought hit me. Had he worn a condom? I had no friggin’ clue. Derek was a man whore like Fabian and with my luck, I’d end up with herpes or some other sexually transmitted disease. Thank God I didn’t have to worry about pregnancy. Good ole’ Aunt Sophie had forcibly taken care of that little problem just before I had     escaped. The bitch didn’t want me breeding and now I knew why.

I grabbed the man whore’s comb and hurriedly fixed my hair. At least I didn’t look like an escapee from the local skid row now.

A tube of lipstick caught my attention and I picked it up. The label read, Fuck Me Red.

Something clenched in my chest at the thought of Derek with other women. He didn’t strike me as a one woman kinda man and I would never be anything more to him than a convenient tool.

Pulling the cap off the lipstick, I wrote in big letters across the mirror, ‘ Thanks for the pity fuck but the gold is still mine.’

“If he hadn’t taken your virginity, you would be dead now,” Granny Annabel’s disembodied voice echoed eerily off the bathroom walls.

“Derek saved me because he needs me to find the gold.” I wiped angrily at the tears rolling down my cheeks. When had I become such a wuss?

“He truly cares for you,” Granny said.

“Really? Maybe I want the man in my life to love me,” I snapped. Storming into the bedroom, I pulled open a dresser drawer and helped myself to a t-shirt.

“It will come with time.”

“Will it?” I shoved my feet into those ugly orthopedic shoes.

“Your spirits are now bound together and only death can break the mating bond.”

“Yeah, he’ll probably shoot me himself when he discovers exactly what the bond means.” The thought of his little, okay not so little, pecker not rising to the occasion with any other woman but me brought a smile to my face. It was the ultimate payback.

It was karma.

It was justice.

God, I’d love to see Derek’s face when he found out he was now a one woman man; whether he liked it or not.

On second thought, gloating wasn’t really a good idea. Running away as fast as I could was a better one.

I picked the door lock.

“If you run, he will follow,” Granny Annabel warned.

“I know.” I stepped into the hallway.

“Going somewhere Angel?”

I jumped about a foot.

Derek leaned casually against the wall, cleaning his nails with a big, ass knife. I swallowed hard at the fury burning in his eyes.

“Shouldn’t you be out searching for bad guys to kill and maim?”

A nasty little smile curled his mouth. “The explosion was a diversion to draw me away.”

“Oh. Didn’t work, huh?” My increasing nervousness amused him.

“I’m not a fucking rookie.” He slid the knife into a sheath at his waist.

Shit! I could sense Fabian creeping down the hallway behind him. I couldn’t let my dumb ass cousin get the crap beat out of him.

The conniving bastard held out his hand. “Give me the lock pick.”

“No.”

A muscle in his cheek jerked. “No?”

I stubbornly shook my head and pointed to my mouth. “Read my lips. No.”

Derek straightened, taking deadly to whole new level as he repeated, “No?”

“You heard me. You’re not my boss or my boyfriend or my husband. You don’t have the right to tell what I can or cannot do.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You belong to me now and you will do exactly what I say.”

“Get a dog. They fetch, heel and roll over on command.” I poked him the chest. “I don’t.”

“How many times do I have to save your life before you show me some fucking gratitude?”

“Okey-dokey, thank bunches for saving my life again, oh snarly one.” I jabbed him in the chest.

“Now you can show me some fucking gratitude for saving you and your men from the Apache Thunder God, by letting me go.”

Derek’s hand clamped around the back of my neck and he growled, “Not happening. Ever. You’re mine.”

“Wrong answer.”

Derek grunted in pain, staggered and dropped to the floor like a pole-axed steer.

Fabian towered over his body, a menacing figure in head-to-toe black.

I gaped at him in stunned surprise. My God, he could give Derek a run for his money with all the weapons he had strapped on. This was a side of my cousin I had never seen before.

“You didn’t have to hit him that hard,” I growled, bending down to check on my Tomb Raider.