He shook his head. He couldn’t avoid this. It was time for the truth. “No, I’m not.”
The tears spilled down her cheeks. She wasn’t shocked anymore. Her gaze narrowed and he could feel her anger from across the room. It lit into him like a cold fury.
“Who the hell are you, Dalton?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ryder held Angie in his arms and listened to her slight moans. Not sex moans, but fitful ones. The kind that signaled bad dreams.
She was sleeping, but not peacefully.
He wasn’t sleeping at all. He’d gotten an hour, two at the most, which was all he’d needed. Now he was restless, anxious; he would feel a lot better if he could get up and pace. But he didn’t want to risk waking her. She needed the rest.
And he needed to think, to figure out what to do now that they’d crossed the line.
Not that he’d done a lot of resisting. One look at her coming out of the steamy bathroom wrapped in only a towel and he’d been a goner. He’d tried to get across to her that the two of them together was a bad idea. His body had thought it was a great idea, though. And damn if he’d been too tired to argue with either her or his cock.
“No.”
He looked down at Angie as she whispered the word. She was frowning. Still asleep, twitching a little, mumbling unintelligible words. She was having one hell of a nightmare.
He knew all about those. He pulled her closer and stroked her hair, wishing he could take the bad dreams away.
From both of them.
Ah, hell. He felt something for her. Desire, definitely. But it was more than that. He didn’t want to see her hurt. He didn’t even want her to have a bad dream. She was frowning, and tears had started rolling down her cheeks. Whatever she was dreaming about was making her unhappy. Her chest rose and fell rapidly and she had started to shake.
He couldn’t stand this.
“Angie. Wake up, darlin’.”
Her eyes shot open with a start and she laid her palm on his chest, lifting her head to stare up at him.
“You were having a bad dream.”
She stared at him for a few seconds, then blinked. “Isabelle was in trouble and I couldn’t get to her.” She wiped away the tears. “Silly dreams.”
He drew his hand over her hair. So damn soft. Everything about her was soft. Yet, she was so tough, thinking she had to carry the entire world on her shoulders, do it all on her own. “Are you okay now?”
“Yes.” She sat up and turned to face him. “I worry a lot about Izzy.”
He propped a pillow behind him and sat facing her. “I can tell.”
“The darkness in her concerns me. Especially now that I know the Sons of Darkness may be searching for her. And with what happened to me at the house last night. . I mean it’s obvious I have some kind of skills that aren’t exactly. . normal.”
“Yeah, it does.” She seemed to accept it. In fact, they hadn’t even had time to delve into where she’d gotten those abilities. That was a major talk he wasn’t prepared to have with her.
“What if she has those same kinds of powers, Ryder? I’m not exactly a dark soul, and look what I did to that demon. It scares me what she might be capable of. To be honest, I’m even worried about what
He blew out a breath. “I know what it’s like to have a dark side, to wonder if you’re going to snap any minute.”
“You do? How?”
He never talked about his past. So why now, and why with Angie? He’d like to think it was to coax her into revealing something about herself and about her sister, but he knew that was bullshit. Maybe he just felt bad that she felt bad about herself, and about her sister.
“When I was young, my mother disappeared. My father went ballistic. Not that he wasn’t already half crazy by then, anyway. The whole town just assumed she’d run off, tired of dealing with a madman for a husband.”
“How bad was he?”
“Really bad.”
“Alcoholic?”
“That was part of it, but it was more than the alcohol. The old man was on a power trip. I don’t think he was right mentally, either. Whether that occurred before or after the war I don’t know. I was too young. All I know was that he was an evil sonofabitch for as long as I could remember. He liked hurting people.”
“Did he. . hurt you? Hurt your mother?”
Ryder shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Oh, Ryder. I’m so sorry.”
“We dealt with it, learned ways around the beatings. If you could get him drunk enough, he’d pass out and
