Angel: An SOBs Novel

by Irish Winters

  Suede’s head came up, fear glittering in her eyes. “Wilhelm Gonzales is Mitch’s f-family? H-his uncle? Is that true?”

  Patrone knelt at her side, his big hand on her bare knee. With one hand at the back of her head, he nodded. “I’m sorry, Miss Tennyson, but yes. Now tell me. Who are you? Really?”

  Since she was facing away from Chance, he couldn’t read her eyes when her shoulders heaved and she cried, “I’m just me, Mr. Patrone. I’m the unwanted kid of two politicians who loved themselves more than anyone else. I’m Suede Tennyson, and I’m so tired of men throwing me away. I… I’ll do anything you want if you please, just let me live.”

  Her bottom lip quivered and Patrone almost looked like he cared—until the blade slithered out of his sleeve and nestled in his palm like a pet snake.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  “Go,” Chance hissed, and from where he stood at the far window, Kruze took Garcia down with a headshot. Patrone jumped to his feet and whirled to embrace his demise, courtesy of Pagan. From the window opposite Kruze, he’d emptied both Sigs into the guy’s broad chest. Between bullets flying and the risk of ricochets, Chance walked calmly to Suede. Cutting her restraints, he had her under his chin where she belonged in a minute, shivering but safe before Patrone’s hefty body hit the floor.

  “I knew,” she whispered, her poor eyes swollen again, her lips ragged and bleeding. “I knew you’d come for me.”

  “And now that I’ve got you, I’m going to spank your ass so hard you won’t be able to sit down for a week,” Chance promised, though he knew better. He was no woman beating asshole, and this strong, intelligent, beautiful creature had an entirely other kind of discipline coming.

  While he dug out the extra large T-shirt he always carried and worked it over Suede’s tender shoulders, his brothers hurried through Mitch’s place, lifting laptops, portable drives, every last one of the porn clips, and as much other intel as their backpacks could carry. The four of them exited Franks’ island home on a dead run while Kruze hung back and covered their six.

  “W-wait,” Suede muttered as they neared the shore. “There’s a dog. A big black Schnauzer. Meine Liebchen. We can’t leave her.”

  Pagan took off for the dog before Chance said a word. With his back to them and his rifle still trained on the trail behind them, Kruze hit the shore, his phone to his ear, already contacting his friend to come get them. While they waited on Pagan’s return—which had better be quick— Chance gave Suede a quick once over. Bloodied lip. At least one black eye come morning. Maybe a couple loose teeth. Other than that, she’d be fine.

  Breathing hard, Pagan strode out of the jungle with a Giant Schnauzer prancing at the end of the leash in his hand. “Bastard had this pretty girl locked in a crate. She’s coming with us.”

  Great, Chance thought. Now I’ve got two dogs.

  Once safely at sea, they settled in for the ride back to Puerto Veijo. Pagan sat facing Chance and Suede, the dog at his side and talking a blue streak to her. The animal sat watching him and not at all distressed. He ran her through some simple commands—sit, stay, shake, bark—none of which Gallo could do. Yet.

  “This is a smart dog,” Pagan said. “Glad you remembered her.”

  Suede nodded. “She didn’t deserve to die.”

  Pagan cocked his head at Chance. “Did you hear what I heard back there? Wilhelm Gonzales is, umm, was, Franks’ uncle? Do you believe that shit?”

  “Kind of makes you want to stay far away from the whole fam-dam-ily tree, doesn’t it?” Chance said.

  Pagan shook his head and grunted. No. Makes me want to end every last one of them.”

  “And who the hell is Johnny?” Kruze asked from where he stood aft, watching their wake and guarding their exfil, his rifle still aimed at the shore.

  “Not sure,” Chance hissed, “but we need to do a little research, boys.” Because I’m paying Johnny a visit.

  “I just want to go home,” Suede murmured.

  Chance leaned his nose into her cheek. “Montana or—”

  BOOM! His head jerked up as Mitch’s legacy blew up behind them. Sky-high. The center of the island was nothing but a writhing ball of orange and black conflagration surrounded by a sandy beach. The evidence that the Sinclair boys had ever set boots there was gone.

  “Nice touch. Which one of you planted explosives?” Chance asked, his binocs to his nose, watching the curls of bright flame and black smoke rise skyward.

  “Not me. Wished I’d thought of it, though,” Pagan replied.

  “Me too.” Kruze had his bincos up. “There. On the beach. Look! It’s—”

  “Julio,” Chance finished. “Son-of-a-bitch. He’s been there all along. He’s who neutralized the Rio Brothers.”

  Sure as hell. Julio stood extra tall watching them hightail it across the Caribbean. He lifted his right arm and waved, then clicked his heels and performed a regulation military salute that brought a sheen to Chance’s eyes. “He was there all along,” he told his brothers, his voice gone husky. “He set those charges. He had our six. Julio’s finally free.”

  “This was that one last job,” Kruze muttered, a catch in his voice, too. He climbed the boat railing, gripped one of the fishnets overhead for balance, then waved and bellowed, “I see you! Brother, I see you! Fair winds and following seas!”

  “He’s as good as any SEAL I know,” Pagan said firmly. “Let’s go back and get him.”

  “No,” Chance answered, the wind in his eyes making him tear up again, damn it. “He didn’t need our help today. He won’t need it tomorrow. He’ll be okay.”

  “His family is safe now,” Suede whispered from where she nestled, one hand on Chance’s chest, her tired head on his shoulder.

  He cupped her cheek, barely able to refrain from kissing the hell out of her poor mouth. “You did good, real good, baby. Don’t ever do it again.”

  “Promise,” she murmured. “You get the bad guys. I’ll cook and clean for you, take care of your dog, important stuff like that.”

  And you’ll take care of our sons and daughters because I’m knocking you up the minute we get home. He pressed her head under his chin, his eyes watery, and his heart so damned full that his chest hurt. But this was a good kind of pain, not the ragged kick in the gut he’d gotten when he’d found out she’d gone after Franks. No, this level of pain felt more like torture. Like love. It hurt so damned good.

  This was why he did what he did, because of love for his country and his God., for his brothers and the men who served with him. And now—for the rest of his life—for her.

  “I love you, Suede,” he told her. Finally.

  “I know,” she whispered.

  When Chance laid a kiss on the top of Suede’s head, Kruze and Pagan had the good sense to turn their heads. “Let’s go home,” Chance told his woman. “Let’s go home.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chance licked her again, sending Suede into a writhing frenzy just before she screamed and toppled over the edge into her third orgasm of the night. He hadn’t spanked her, though she had it coming. No. Chance took his temper out on her by pleasuring her until he drove her crazy. Three orgasms, huh? Let’s go for four.

  Burying his face between her thighs, he kissed her core, so damned satisfied that she’d fallen into his world and had given him a reason to live again. To want to live.

  “You’re killing me,” she panted, her hair a delightful mass of tangles and curls, some of them hiding her face at the moment. But that was what happened when a man dominated his woman in their bedroom. He’d turned her upside down, over and under. Different positions with all of them ending with him inside of her. The best was yet to—come.

  “I shaved just for you,” he teased. “One more time?” He’d shaved because his scars no longer mattered, and he could finally stand to look at himself in the mirror.

  “I can’t,” she whined in that spoiled, petulant little girl tone she pulled out of her bag of feminine tricks when she wanted h
er way. “It’s too much. I won’t survive.”

  “Yes, you will,” he promised as he climbed up her sweat-slathered body. Stopping with his knees at her hips, he swirled his tongue in her navel, then licked a slick trail up her delicious body, between her voluptuous breasts, up her slender neck, and ended at her kiss-swollen lips. He liked her like this, swollen, sweaty, her lips bitten and mashed. Her chin was a little chafed from what was left of his whiskers, and his scent was all over her, from her top to, well, her bottom.

  Clenching the cheeks of that sweet ass, he gave her no time to argue, but lifted her hips and plunged headlong into his bride-to-be. If he got his way and talked her out of using birth control, she’d be barefoot and pregnant in weeks. Maybe months, but soon, damn it. Real soon.

  “Marry me,” he told her, not asked. But he thought, ‘Please, please marry me!’

  By then he had her outrageously aroused. What else could she say but, “Yes! Oh, God, yes!”

  For a second he wasn’t sure if that was an answer to his proposal or her reaction to another breathtaking orgasm. He had to ask, “You will?” even as she sighed in his arms.

  Suede nodded, her eyes closed, her body clenching his. “Oh yes, I’ll marry you. I love you. You know that.”

  “I do,” he answered, so damned overcome with happiness that tears swamped his eyes. Lowering his forehead to hers, Chance covered her mouth with a heartfelt kiss. Deeply in love, he could no longer see life without the resilient, intelligent, incredibly sexy woman in his arms.

  When they’d come home to Montana after that fateful day in Costa Rica, he’d laid the law down, though why he felt as if she’d wrapped him around her little finger that same day, he still didn’t get. It wasn’t supposed to work like that, but it had. He’d meant to tell her no more operations for her—EVER. Instead, she ruled him, day and night, just like she was ruling him now, though Suede might not realize it. But everything he owned was hers and everything he did, he did for her.

  He thrust extra deep this time. Extra hard. Did an extra good job at the intimate mission he was on. When she bucked and groaned against him, he knew just what to do. The second her scream “Chance!” split the air, he smiled and plunged over the edge with her. Flying with her. Holding her tight and never letting her go.

  They shattered together, and he couldn’t help thinking that each time they went to the stars together like this, each time they fell back to Earth wrapped in each others’ arms, they also absorbed a part of each other. He’d never be just Chief Sinclair again. He finally was that more, that real man he’d been searching the world for.

  “I love you, Suede,” he growled as he took her mouth one last time. So sweet. So giving. So damned fine. A man wanted to linger in her body and never leave, but that wasn’t humanly possible. He rolled off and to her side, anchoring her with his heavy arm just below her cushy breasts, one leg over her thighs, and his nose tucked in the warm recess of her neck. Chance took a long, deep breath of the future Mrs. Sinclair.

  “Whew,” she huffed, the pulse in her neck pounding as hard as his. “We have to disagree more often.”

  “You like make-up sex?” he asked, pulling the heady scent of her into his soul. They hadn’t really disagreed. Her trip to Costa Rica was more a mission he hadn’t seen coming, yet one that he should’ve expected. He would’ve done the very same thing.

  “So babies,” she whispered. “You really want children right away?”

  “Yes,” he declared as he dragged his lips up her neck to nibble at her ear, his scruff catching strands of her hair along the way. “Unless you’d rather wait. I want a family, but I want you with me in this life raft we call marriage. If this isn’t the right time, tell me. I really can wait.” Yeah. She owned his balls.

  Suede rolled to her side, facing each other, her luscious breasts aligned to the planes of his pecs. “You, Chance Sinclair, are the best thing I’ve ever fallen into.”

  He cringed, hating when she minimized her near-death. “Will you stop saying that? I’m no Prince Charming, and you didn’t just fall. You were pushed.”

  “But I did fall for you,” she insisted, “and just like in the fairy tale, my Prince Charming kissed me and—”

  “Not the same thing. I pinched your nose and re-inflated your lungs. Damned near broke your ribs doing CPR—”

  “And you prayed.”

  She had him there. “Okay. I prayed.” God, how I prayed. “But I cursed God, too. He should’ve taken better care of you from the start. Giving you decent parents would’ve been nice.”

  “But He did take care of me,” Suede murmured, her nose rubbing his scruffy cheek like a cat scenting her territory. Up his sideburns she went and into his hair, following the ridge of one of those scars she claimed were medals of valor, not proof of mistakes made. The woman was born to be a military wife. She certainly said all the right things. “If I hadn’t fallen off your mountain, I wouldn’t be here now, would I?” Her big blue eyes blinked as if she’d just asked an obvious question. “And you wouldn’t have fallen for me.”

  He had to smile. They’d both done a lot of falling. But a SEAL can be stubborn. “Gallo found you, not me.”

  “And why’d you have a dog to begin with? Huh?” She knew the story, yet he let her lead him into temptation with those wet lips and innocent dewy eyes. His cock sprang to attention. Again.

  “My mom,” he admitted. “The pup was Mom’s idea and—”

  “And now, he’s yours,” Suede finished with a sly wink. “Trust me. Your mother knew what you needed, so she sent you a furry guardian angel.”

  “In her will,” Chance clarified, just to be difficult. “That’s how guardian angels work? They show up late, don’t listen, and leave hair all over the place?”

  “Whatever,” Suede retorted. “It doesn’t matter how they come to us, they just do.”

  “How do you know so much about Mom?”

  Her lashes came down. “Because of you. Because of Kruze and Pagan, too. I don’t think Scarlett Sinclair knew how to raise anything but good and honorable men.”

  “You’re biased.” He scooped her up onto his chest where he could reach both of her sumptuous breasts and thumb her nipples until he’d turned the tips of them as hard as diamonds. He watched her blue eyes turn dark as she straddled him. “All I know is that this guardian angel” —he thrust upward, connecting with her. Sliding home— “is going to scream my name one more time tonight.”

  “Me?” she teased, angling her hips and her core to where he needed her to be. “I’m not a—”

  “Oh, yes, you are,” he growled. “You fell from heaven, didn’t you?”

  “That makes me sound like a fallen angel.”

  He chuckled. “Not if you fell for me. Now answer the question. When can we start making babies?”

  Closing her eyes, she tipped her head back, giving him an eyeful of her naked self, her long tangles falling down her back and whispering over his thighs like wind through the pines on his mountain. Her plump breasts as round and as soft as clumps of grapes on the vine. “I honestly don’t know, but I’d like to go back to college and get my degree first. I’d like to have you all to myself for a while. Too long?”

  Arching his back, he filled her to the hilt, growling, “That’s what every man wants to hear, ‘baby, you’re too long.’”

  She slapped his chest. “I didn’t say that, but now that you mention it...”

  “I can wait for you, Suede. But soon, make it soon.” He cupped her breasts, thrilled at the tender weights in his palms. But come to think of it, “I didn’t know colleges offered degrees in culinary arts.”

  “Who said I wanted that?” she asked as she leaned into his hands. “I love to cook, especially for you, but that’s not what I intend to do for the rest of my life.”

  “And what would that be?” he asked, egging her on.

  “Besides doing you?” She had the nerve to giggle. “I’ve always wanted to teach math. Advanced algebra. Calculus
. The whole nine yards.”

  Soooooooooo not what he expected. Chance pushed her gently away from him then, far enough that he could see past her curtain of tangled hair and into her eyes. Her being a math geek actually explained a lot. Geeks weren’t known for being socially adept, which Suede was—now—but at fifteen and sixteen? Probably not. No wonder she’d fallen for the likes of Lionel York. She had no experience knowing one creep from another.

  Chance had to ask. “How many boyfriends have you had in your life? Before York.”

  Her shoulders lifted. “Umm, one. Why?”

  He arched his hips upwards, wanting her to know how much he adored their unique connection. “Did you and he ever...?”

  That earned him another smack. It stung, but that smack also told him plenty. “I’d say that’s none of your business, but” —she shrugged— “once. After the homecoming game. At least he tried.”

  Son-of-a-bitch. This sweet, inexperienced little thing had gone from being raped by Franks, traumatized by York, to finding true love in Chance’s bed. What a sad, wild ride that had thankfully, ended with happily-ever-after. He rolled her over, taking her by surprise when he trapped her thighs between his knees. Pride in this courageous woman and all she’d survived welled up, bursting his heart. “I love you, Suede Sinclair.”

  Starlight blossomed in those deep Pacific blues at the new name she’d soon have. Her fingers skimmed his temples on their way into his hair. “And I love you, Chance, but I want to contribute more than cinnamon rolls to the Sinclair family. I hope you understand. I love you with my whole heart, but I have to be productive, too.”

  He let the need to explain how productive she could be go. This was a serious subject for Suede. He could read it in her eyes. “Math, huh? I may have a job for you when you’re ready.”

  “You do? What?”

  He had to smile. “I know this dumb jock whose mother left him and his brothers a few million. The idiot travels a lot. He needs someone he can trust to handle his estate while he’s gone. Pay his bills. Budget. Invest. Feed his dog. Cover his ass. Kiss his face. You know. Financial stuff like that.”