Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 44435 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 222(@200wpm)___ 178(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44435 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 222(@200wpm)___ 178(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
“Gabriel?” Jessica rushed over to me. I sobbed, tears streaking down my cheeks as I clutched at Tango’s oversized hoodie I was wearing. I tried to say Tango’s name, but I couldn’t force my tongue to work. Instead, a cry ripped from my lips. Everything was wrong. I closed my eyes, swallowing down a scream when I felt his hands on me, yanking my jeans down my thighs, his dry fingers pressing into my hole.
I was spiraling. Even now, I could hear my father’s voice shouting at me in my mind, a flashback threatening to drag me under. I could feel the VP’s cold hands clawing at my shirt, ripping it off of me.
So, when Jessica tried to fold me into her arms, the scream I’d been swallowing down ripped from my throat, nearly shattering her eardrum.
She immediately released me just as Tango barked at her to move. My fucking savior. I sobbed and reached for him, his large, bulky form blurry through my tears. He lifted me from the chair I’d been sitting in for the past two hours and held me close. I wound my limbs around him, shaking and crying in his arms. His strength surrounded me, cocooning me in a nest of everything Tango, where only his scent and the feel of him were capable of infiltrating my mind.
“I’m here, baby boy,” he soothed, his hand stroking over my dark curls. “I’m here. Just breathe. I’ve got you now. No one can touch you again. I won’t let them.”
I buried my face in the curve of his neck, soaking his cut with my tears, but the leather of his cut, warm from the sun and smelling just like him—like cigarettes and his cologne—grounded me.
I was with Tango. I was in his arms, where nothing in the world could ever even hope of touching me.
Tango might have almost killed me once before, but I’d seen it in his eyes that he would if he had to. He hadn’t wanted to, but I had already forgiven him before he even spoke a word. Because he was trying to do what I had been silently begging for someone to do my entire life.
He’d been protecting his family, even if it meant he had to kill a boy like me.
He’d promised me a quick death if I spilled everything he wanted to know, so I did. Because I knew from the moment my eyes met his that he was a man of his word.
But I hadn’t been expecting rage—rage on my behalf—to darken his blue eyes as he listened to everything I had to say. And when his president ordered him to get me out of the cellar they had been holding me in, telling Tango I was his responsibility, I hadn’t expected the man to scoop me up and carry me out of there much the same way he was carrying me now. Like I was something precious. Something to cherish and protect.
He’d been taking care of me ever since. And I’d been falling more and more in love with him with each day that passed.
Tango stepped into our room and kicked the door shut behind him before settling in the recliner so he could rock me—a recliner he’d bought only because the rocking soothed me. I kept deeply inhaling the scent of him, letting his scent and his strength soothe me and calm my heart rate. He wrapped one of my throw blankets around me—this one deep purple and fuzzy—and bundled us up together, making me feel even more secure.
“Better?” he gently asked a few minutes later, his low voice gruff. Tingles shot through my body at the sound of it.
He always sounded like pure sex when he talked.
I nodded and leaned back to look down at him. He lifted one of his hands, wiping the tears off my cheeks. “Don’t like it when your tears hide these freckles,” he gruffly told me, making a blush stain my cheeks.
He always said little things like that, leaving me to wonder if he felt the same way that I did. But he was always strictly platonic otherwise. It left me confused more often than not, wondering if I was misreading all the signals he was sending me. Still, it didn’t stop me from hopelessly loving him.
“I’m sorry I panicked,” I croaked, my throat hurting from screaming earlier.
He sighed, his hands resting on my waist as he looked up at me. His blue eyes were normally so guarded, but with me, they were always open and warm—like now. He let me see everything. And right now, I knew he was concerned about me—so deeply worried, it made my chest ache.
“What triggered you, baby?”
God, the names. “I swear I did my research before buying the book,” I rushed out, suddenly fearful I was in trouble. Tango frowned. “I looked everywhere. I looked on the author’s social media and her website and even used the look inside—”