Page 60 of Crying Wolfe
“Your ‘usband inn’t ‘ere,” Hector rumbled.
“Listen,” she laced her fingers in front of the two towering men like a penitent in prayer. “I…I’ve been unfaithful to my husband. Here in this house, in one of the bedrooms on the top floor. And—I left something behind. That is why I was dishonest with you. I had to retrieve it before it was discovered.” With her heart galloping at the pace of an entire stampeding herd of wild horses, and her legs trembling from the strain of her venture and the shock of her capture, it wasn’t difficult to summon a few tears to lend her story credibility.
“I beseech you to have mercy on me,” she begged. “I meant no disrespect to your duties, but you don’t know what will be done to me if my sin is revealed.”
Hector ran his hand over a hairline fast receding and winked over at Peckering. “You were right, she’s a pretty little thing, inn’t she?”
She yearned to inform them that she wasn’t a thing, she was a woman. A person. Someone worth their compassion…if they had any.
Peckering sized her up with one wide eye. “I’m feeling downright merciful today, wouldn’t you agree, Hector?”
The other revealed teeth in desperate need of a good cleaning. “Merciful. Indeed.”
“Here’s wot we’ll do… We’ll keep our mouths shut about finding you where you ought not be, if you repay us with the favor of your own mouth.”
Rosaline blinked several times, a lead weight landing in her gut. Surely they weren’t blackmailing her for—
Hector’s hands went to the waistband of his trousers, erasing all denial in regard to what they were demanding of her.
“I can’t,” she said, springing to her feet and diving around a leering Peckering. She made it as far as the door latch, gripping it before a hand seized her hair and yanked hard enough to rip her head from her neck.
A desperate word escaped on a sob, both an invocation and an appeal for help.
Eli.
CHAPTER13
Eli didn’t recognize the man whose teeth went flying out of his face. Didn’t care to. The motherfucker put his hands on Rosaline.
And in doing so, forfeited his life.
Simple as that.
The bone of his jaw shattered with athoroughlysatisfying crunch, and the tub of guts and gore crumpled to the ground, too unconscious to catch his weight with anything but his ruined face.
Next came his hatchet-faced friend, who’d reached into his jacket to pull a pistol out of the shoulder holster.
Eli beat him to it, wrenching the gun from the man’s grip, spinning it on his itching trigger finger, and whipping him across the temple with the butt of the weapon, hard enough to leave a significant dent in his skull.
Having dropped them both, he spun the weapon back and pointed the barrel at the fat man’s head. “Tell me,” he snarled, his lips barely able to form the words. “They hurt you? I’ll end them.”
He couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t face a telling pain in her eyes without ripping the men’s bones from their sockets with his bare hands.
Eli had always considered his temper to have a medium to long fuse, depending on the situation. Once ignited he blew hot as a smith’s forge.
But this…this cold, hard, eerie demon inside of him was something new. It licked at his bones with a numb sort of calm, locking him down with a fury so intense, it coalesced into a strange implosion of pure, white rage.
The violence running through him wasn’t primal or feral as it had been in the past, as he expected to be when it came to her.
It was a lethal calculation. A precise and fanatic joy at the thought of carving the flesh that’d profaned her away, from the man’s meat and making him watch.
“Nothing happened,” she said shakily. “Not yet…”
“Good.” He cocked the pistol.
“Wait! Stop!” She lunged forward, and Eli instantly released the hammer, respecting the weapon enough not to want it anywhere near his wife. “You’ll bring the entire house if you shoot.”
Frantic little fingers tugged at his sleeve, and permeated the ringing of rage in his ears.
