Christine Feehan - Dark Secret

"If I scream, Tony, half this town will come running."

"No one can see with me blocking the view," he said. "Scream away, I'll just say your leg hurt and I was trying to help."

"As if they'd believe your word against mine. Go to hell, Tony. And get your hands off me." Colby swung at him, but her movements were hampered by the lack of space.

He dodged the blow and laughed at her. "You leave your rifle at home, Colby? What's wrong, where's all that cold haughty disdain you love to dish out?" His hand was back at the bandage, hovering there while he watched her closely, enjoying her helplessness.

"Shut up, Tony, and get out of here."

His fingers inched closer to the wound on her leg, pressing that little bit harder.

"This isn't funny, Tony." Colby tried to not to look at his hand.

"Oh, yeah, I think it's really funny. You always thought you were better than me, haven't you, Colby? So now you've got your rich man and you think that proves you're too good for someone like me, but you know what I think? I think you're nothing but his paid whore. I'm going to show you what a real man makes you feel like."

Before she could elude him, Tony bent down, clamping his mouth to hers, deliberately grinding her teeth against her soft inner lip. One hand remained on her leg, right beside the swollen laceration in warning.

Colby forgot everything, her weariness, the pain in her leg, the fact that she was parked on the main street of town. It was one thing to put up with Tony's sick innuendos and bullying; it was an altogether different proposition for him to physically touch her. Their feud had started in the schoolyard when Tony, two grades ahead of her, had been unmercifully teasing a boy in her class. She had hit him right in front of everyone. When he had retaliated, Joe Vargas, Ben, and Larry Jeffries had all instantly jumped to her defense. Over the years Harris had threatened and harassed her, but he had never laid a finger on her.

Her right elbow slammed into his solar plexus and her left hand caught the back of his curly black hair in a wicked grip, in an attempt to jerk his head away from her. To her horror he was suddenly catapulted from the truck as if unseen hands had lifted him bodily and thrown him down. Then she was staring into Rafael's black, black eyes. She caught her breath at the stark menace concentrated there. Tiny red flames were glowing, fierce and unnatural. He looked a demon, a predator, vicious, cunning, more animal than man. Nothing in her life had ever frightened her like the grim emptiness revealed in his eyes. She was looking at death. And she knew he could very easily kill Tony Harris.

No! No, Rafael, you can't. Deliberately she used the more intimate means of communication to call the man back into his body, his brain. She was looking at a natural predator. He was already turning away from her, back to Harris, who lay sprawled in the street.

"Rafael, let it go," she called aloud, struggling to slide off the seat, her heart pounding in a kind of terror. She swore softly under her breath as her leg took her weight, jarring her entire body.

Tony leapt up, doubling his fists as he spat in the street.

Rafael coolly and quite brutally slapped Tony Harris open-handed, a hard, powerful blow that staggered the man as he rushed forward. Rafael continued to slap him, delivering blow after powerful blow, walking the cowboy backward down the street. Each blow had Tony stumbling off balance, a jarring, humiliating punishment. Colby had witnessed a thousand brawls, but this was completely different. It was a savage, yet cold-blooded attack, a brutal display of power that held everyone motionless, standing on the sidewalks simply gaping at the drama.

Colby went hobbling after them, anger beginning to smolder as her heart accelerated at the realization that Rafael could have dropped Tony Harris with one blow. This was a public punishment. Rafael would have killed Tony, coolly and without remorse. He preferred to kill him, but refrained because Colby would never have condoned murder.

It didn't help that she was drinking him in, her body flaring to life. She could feel every cell, every fiber of her being reaching for him, needing him, craving him like a drug. She detested the control he had over her body and mind. Did it show? Natalya had looked at her with pity and she felt scorn for herself every time she thought of the way she had been so grief-stricken, almost to the point of harming herself. She had been forced to reach out to Nicolas, someone she didn't altogether trust, in order to get through each night.

"Let them go," Paul yelled, grabbing at her arm, out of breath from his headlong dash through the street. She was limping and didn't seem to notice her teeth were clamped together in pain.

Colby shook off her brother. "Shut up!" she snapped.

Paul halted immediately. Colby's hair was red for a reason. She could go up in flames if someone pushed her too far. He regarded De La Cruz with intense satisfaction. He was about to be publicly put in his place. The crowd was certainly big enough.

Colby caught at Rafael's arm, momentarily taken aback by the sheer hardness of it. It was like clutching a piece of iron.

"Stop it, Rafael, right now!" She attempted to place herself between the two men, but Rafael glided around her easily, keeping his body squarely in between her and Harris. It only made Colby angrier. "I don't want you handling my problems. You understand me, not ever again. This is my business." She understood power, understood, better than most people, the need to stay continually in control, but she was so angry with both men she attempted to drag Rafael away from Tony by his arm without much success.

Harris took the opportunity to stumble away, clutching at his smashed face with both hands. Over the top of Colby's head, Rafael watched him go, red flames still flickering in the depths of his eyes.

"Damn it, Rafael." He was making Colby feel like a fly buzzing around him. She slugged him in the chest, all her pent-up anger behind her well-thrown punch.

He stood towering over her, blinking down at her as if seeing her for the first time. Slowly amusement crept across his sensual features, warmed the bitter ice in his eyes. Did you hit me, querida? His voice was soft, sexy, intimate there in the middle of the street, making her blood heat and body clench, and that made her angry enough to want to strike him again.

"Don't be funny." She would not be charmed by him. She would not feel her body melting and pooling with hot heat. "You stay out of my business. If I don't want Tony Harris mauling me, I'll handle it myself. You've made the situation ten times worse; the entire town knows something happened, thanks to you. In case you've forgotten, you're in the United States, not Brazil, and here we call the sheriff."

He picked her up easily, casually, right there in front of everyone, cradling her against his chest, moving back up the street toward her truck with effortless long strides. "You know I would not stay away when you are injured, Colby." His voice whispered over her, velvet soft, irresistible. Magic. There was possession in his burning gaze, and something else, something wild and primitive, as if he wasn't yet finished with Tony Harris. "And I am not about to allow another man to put his hands on you."

Colby reached up to touch his mouth. Her fingers trailed over the lines etched so deeply, lines of strain and weariness that had not been there before, reminding her he had awakened before Nicolas said he should. There were faint marks on his face, slowly receding but evidence of the claws that tore at him. He had suffered terribly to provide a barrier for her. She smoothed her hand over his heart, wondering if the bite marks were still there. Something softened inside of her when she didn't want it to. "I can handle Tony Harris," she said more gently than she intended. "Our laws don't allow people to just go out and kill someone because you don't like what they do."