Ramagos, Tonya - Running from Angel [Sunset Cowboys 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read Online Free PDF Page A

he’d been holding, eternally grateful she left it at that. Much more and he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from catching that finger, right along with that head full of red hair, and taking from her everything he had sworn not to touch.
    “She listens well,” Mitch commented when he felt fairly certain she could no longer hear him. He turned a hard gaze on Jacob. “I thought we agreed not to go there.”
    Jacob crossed his feet at the ankles and folded his arms, a hint of amusement quirking the corner of his lips. “She’s not quite the timid Angel you remembered, huh?”
    Mitch pushed away from the doorframe and crossed the kitchen in three long strides. “It’s an act.” He wrenched open the refrigerator with enough muscle to make the condiments rattle in the door. “Got anything to drink around this place?” The milk, orange juice, and pitcher of tea he spotted on the top shelf weren’t exactly what he had in mind. Had he known what he would be walking into by responding to Jacob’s SOS text, he likely would have taken the time to polish off beer number five before leaving the Double Horn Saloon.
    “Bottom cabinet to your right.”
    Mitch reached for the cabinet, arching a brow when a half-drank bottle of his favorite Uncle Jack all but fell into his grasp. “That’ll work.” He retrieved the bottle, twisted the cap, and took a long pull straight from the bottle. “Never knew you to be one to go for whiskey.”
    Jacob had never been much of a drinker. The short binge he allowed himself shortly after meeting Angel was the most Mitch had ever seen his buddy drink.
    “It softens the hard edges once in a while.”
    “Then I suggest you grab a glass and pour yourself a shot, ’cause you’ve got something hard that needs softening right now, brother.” Mitch tipped the bottle toward Jacob, shook his head when Jacob declined, and took another swig.
    Jacob sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t think it’s an act.”
    “Yeah, I got that.” Mitch braced his free hand on the closed refrigerator door and regarded his friend. “And I think you’re letting your dick do your thinking for you.”
    “Figured that’s what you would say. Thing is, I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing anymore. She came here or tried to at least. A woman doesn’t come looking for a man unless she knows what she wants.”
    “That woman”—Mitch pointed toward the kitchen doorway Angel had disappeared through minutes before—“doesn’t have a clue in a mountain of horse shit about what she’s getting herself into.” If that was true, why did the words leave a bitter taste in his mouth?
    “When we met her, I agreed with you. Now…” Jacob stopped and shook his head.
    “She’s damaged, Jake.” And what they would do to her, the things they would require of her, would only break her more. Mitch knew it in his mind even if his heart and cock refused to accept it as fact. Yet hadn’t he watched her in her attempts to repair that damage? He had kept tabs on her after walking away from her at the Applebranch Mall that fateful day. He made it a point to never do anything that might alert her to his presence, but he had followed her. By the time he finally forced himself to stop, to get the hell out of Dodge and move on with his life, he had a mental list of the places she frequented, the people she hung with, and a good sense of the direction her life was headed in. That direction never stretched a path from Applebranch to Sunset.
    “She’s healing,” Jacob argued, “and doing a damned fine job at it from what I can tell.”
    Mitch figured the classes she took in Tae Kwon Do contributed to a lot of that. She not only learned how to defend herself, but she had built a confidence and strength that showed in the way she carried herself and the decisions she made. Decisions like the one that lead her to become stranded on Old Santee Road tonight.
    Damn it all to hell .
    “We walked away from her