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)
Master didn’t answer her. His arm was a heavy weight, unmovable. She shoved at it. His gun was still answering whoever was firing at them. If he was hurt, he was still fighting back.
“Are you hit? I think I can manage to put a Band-Aid on your owie without hurting you,” she said, sarcasm dripping. Her struggling had managed to uncover a ribbon of view. Master’s set expression. The total concentration in his eyes. The way the sky spun crazily and then righted itself as the driver maneuvered through obstacles she couldn’t see. “Let me up. I promise not to let gangrene set in.”
Master’s gun was hot when he rested it for a moment against her arm as he slammed another magazine into it, ignoring her entirely as he once more took aim and began shooting. She didn’t think there was a way to aim at or actually hit anything with the truck slewing around, spinning and bumping the way it was, but she didn’t know, she could be wrong. She tried to get her head up where she could see better.
He shoved the top of her head down with his arm. “Stay down, damn it. Do you have a death wish?”
She decided it was best to just let him save her. She was tired and she hurt like hell all over. Her dress was a wreck, and so was her mind. If the truck kept spinning and bumping, she might vomit all over Master, his gun and, more important, the vest he had draped over her.
Ambrielle closed her eyes and stopped struggling. What was the use? If she survived this shootout, she was going to make Master keep his promise to her. She’d sold her soul to the devil for a reason—and she was more than certain he was the devil. When she looked into his eyes, she saw the promise of death there. He would kill without hesitation. He had promised her he would kill for her. She’d meant every single vow she’d taken in that chapel, and her husband better have meant each word as well too. She’d give him her allegiance and her body for the rest of her days, however long that might be, but he’d better find the men who’d killed her parents, and he’d better find a way to keep her friends alive. If he didn’t, he’d find out very fast that the woman he’d married wasn’t the princess he thought she was.
FIVE
Master swore as the hot water poured over his body, soothing the bruises the bullets had made when they tore into his vest. He didn’t give a damn about them. He wasn’t a saint. He’d never be one. He’d spent a good 60 percent of his life in and out of prison, and none of it had been good. He was as hard as they came. As rough. And he didn’t give a damn about anyone but those in his club, and sometimes—especially when he first came out of a cage—it was difficult to remember he cared about them. So why the fuck had he tried so hard to save Ambrielle Moore from himself? And he’d tried.
He’d laid it out for her. He’d been crude. Rude. He’d backtracked. He’d tried to tell her he’d go after the fuckers who killed her parents without her having to put her body—or the rest of her life—on the line. Nothing he said or did seemed to work. She was in the master bathroom, taking a shower. Naked. That body of hers, hotter than hell. She’d been through the worst time of her life, and that didn’t seem to make a difference to his body. He was as hard as a rock. Fucking titanium.
He should have let Code put Keys’ name on the marriage license, not his. The moment the thought came into his head, so did the need to beat the man to death—and Keys was his friend. He’d lost his humanity in that prison this time, but it had happened time and time again when he went back. He was unable to survive there unless he cloaked himself in that persona of a man who cared for no one. A man who could not care less about life. The problem was, it had been getting more and more difficult to find his way back. That persona had become his reality, and the other person who had cared so much about the world and its inhabitants had faded so far into the background he couldn’t remember him anymore.
Bottom line, the woman he’d just married was in for a really bad time. Life often gave you a really fucked-up deal—it had him. Now she was caught up in his reality, and if she persisted in becoming part of it, he wasn’t going to let her go.