Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Fuck Sasha. He wasn’t keeping Joshua’s woman, although from the conversation, as much as he didn’t like it, or want to admit it, things sounded as if Sasha really cared about Sonia and was trying to protect her.
“That’s just it, Sasha. I am his,” she said quietly. “I’m his mate. Our leopards chose each other. She’s had her heat and she chose him. I chose Joshua. I would every time.”
Sasha turned away from Sonia, swearing in Russian, and she closed her eyes and pressed the water bottle to her temple as if she might be getting a headache. Joshua’s heart contracted. He despised seeing her upset or in pain.
“Let me call him. Talk to him. I can convince him to stay away. You can meet with him at a neutral location.” Joshua heard the hope in Sonia’s voice, and it gutted him. She definitely didn’t want the two men fighting.
Sasha turned back to her. “You can tell him the two of you are done and I’m sending you somewhere safe.”
“I’ll just find my way back to him.” She said it quietly, not defiantly, just matter-of-factly, stating the truth. “I love him. I could be carrying his child. Did you think of that?”
Joshua’s mouth went dry. His entire body froze. He hadn’t thought of that. Not for a minute. What the fuck was wrong with him? When he’d first met her, he’d known she was in a heat and he didn’t care one way or the other if she got pregnant because he knew she belonged to him and he’d claimed her. He hadn’t thought about it since. He should have locked her somewhere safe, somewhere she and his child wouldn’t be taken by the Bogomolov family.
Sasha let out a groan, turned and flung the bottle of water at the fireplace. It hit, spraying water everywhere, bounced off and hit the floor, the rest of the water leaking out.
“Please, Sasha, at least get to know him. Give me this chance with someone I love. My leopard can hear lies. She knows he’s telling the truth when he says he loves me. I feel it every time I’m in the room with him. Please just give us this chance. All of us. You, me and Joshua.”
Joshua felt it was a very good time to announce his presence. He couldn’t take much more of her quiet declarations of her love and belief in him. Or her pleas. They sure as fuck didn’t need the Russian’s permission to be together and he intended to make that perfectly clear.
“I think that would be a very good idea.” He spoke quietly, his gaze on the Russian, waiting to see if the man was going to live or die.
Both spun around, Sonia’s breath catching in her throat as she stared at him. Sasha went for the gun in the holster beneath his shoulder.
Joshua shook his head. “You’d be dead before you got it out.”
Sasha slowly dropped his hand to his side and regarded the intruder with a sour look on his face. “Joshua Tregre, I presume.”
“I came for my woman.” Joshua was making that perfectly clear from the get-go. “Sonia, come here to me. Give him a wide berth.”
“He wouldn’t hurt me,” she protested.
“Sonia, don’t you dare move from that chair,” Sasha commanded.
Rage burst through Joshua’s normal calm, reminding him Zen went out the window when he dealt with anything having to do with his woman. “You have no fuckin’ right to tell her to do anything. I should blow your head off for planting a bomb in her car.”
“He didn’t,” Sonia said, jumping to her feet and flinging her body in front of Sasha’s. Her arms were spread wide to cover as much of the man as possible.
“Just so you know, baby,” Joshua hissed through clenched teeth, “I can take the wings of a fly. No problem finding a body part on him you can’t cover. Get your ass over here before I take him out so I know you’re safe.”
He held out his hand to her, and if she didn’t get over to him in the next thirty seconds, he was blowing the Russian’s head off. That was the one target she couldn’t cover.
“Sonia, you are not to shield me,” Sasha hissed.
“Don’t need you tellin’ my woman what to do. I’m capable of handling her on my own.”
She stomped over to Joshua, glaring with every step. He caught her wrist and thrust her behind him. “What do you mean, he didn’t plant the bomb?”
“It’s a long story, but he was trying to save me from Nikita. I’ll tell you the entire thing at home, but right now, you two have to be friends.”
“That isn’t likely, baby.” He dismissed her decree out of hand. He didn’t take his eyes from the Russian. From the moment he’d suspected Sasha Bogomolov had been Sonia’s husband, legal or otherwise, and there was nothing to prove the marriage legal, he had collected as much information as possible on him.