Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 124077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 620(@200wpm)___ 496(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 620(@200wpm)___ 496(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
“I am already rich. If you really have been watching me, you know that,” Taurex told him.
“Then tell me what you want!” The human’s voice cracked. “Anything. I have contacts. Property. Businesses. Women. Whatever the hell you want, I can get it.”
For one painful instant, Terra’s face flashed through Taurex’s mind. She was all he wanted and yet she was beyond him. She was, as he had told Orlov, her own person and she didn’t want him any more than she wanted Orlov.
He thought of her longingly. Terra laughing in his office…Terra holding his hand in the Market…Terra curled up in his arms.
Terra backing away from him in terror.
The thought broke the spell, and he looked into Viktor Orlov’s frightened gray eyes.
“No one can give me what I truly want.”
Orlov opened his mouth, but Taurex had no intention of listening to any more of the human male’s stupid, cruel, boastful words or his insults about Terra.
He squeezed the trigger.
Zzzzp.
The sound was quiet, but the effect was profound. A steaming hole appeared between Viktor Orlov’s eyebrows, and he dropped to the floor with a surprised look on his face.
Taurex stood over him for a moment, watching until he was certain the human male would never threaten Terra or her family again. There was no satisfaction in the death—no pleasure in watching the life leave the human’s eyes and no desire to linger over the body.
Orlov had ceased to matter the instant he could no longer harm anyone. The ones who mattered now were Cody and Lisa.
Taurex turned and left the room to get them.
36
TAUREX
He moved quickly down the hallway, holstering the blaster beneath his jacket before he reached the bedroom door. He didn’t want the younglings to see the weapon, and he certainly didn’t want them to see what was behind him.
He opened the door and both children looked up. Lisa’s tear-streaked face went utterly still. For a heartbeat, she simply stared at him, then her eyes widened.
“Bull-man!” she gasped.
The cry tore straight through Taurex’s heart, making it clench like a fist in his chest.
“Taurex!” Cody shouted at the same time.
The boy scrambled toward the edge of the bed, dragging Lisa with him because their wrists were still tied together.
Taurex crossed the room in two strides and dropped to one knee beside them.
“You came!” Lisa sobbed.
“I came,” Taurex told her.
Her lower lip trembled.
“I was scared. So scared!”
“I know, little one.” He reached carefully for the ropes. “But you are safe now.”
Cody tried to hold himself together, but a moment later, the boy’s face crumpled.
“Are…are the bad men gone?” he asked in a husky voice that meant he was trying not to cry.
“Yes,” Taurex assured him.
“All of them?”
Taurex met his eyes.
“Yes. They will not hurt you again.”
“Good!” Cody nodded fiercely, clearly trying not to cry again.
Taurex pulled a small cutting blade from his belt and sliced through the ropes binding their wrists. The moment Lisa’s hands were free, she threw both arms around his neck.
Taurex froze—surprised at her reaction. Then Cody joined her. Suddenly both younglings were clinging to him as though their lives depended on it.
Taurex closed his eyes. He put his arms around them carefully, one hand spanning almost the entire width of Lisa’s small back while the other held Cody close.
“It is all right,” he murmured. “I have you and I won’t let you go.”
Lisa buried her face against his chest.
“I knew you’d come.”
Taurex’s throat tightened. “How did you know?”
She sniffed.
“I dreamed it. The Goddess lady told me in a dream.”
“She did?” Taurex asked.
“Uh-huh.” Lisa pulled back enough to look up at him with wet eyes. “She told me the Bull-man was coming to save us.”
Something inside Taurex suddenly seemed to break. He lowered his head and pressed his cheek carefully against the top of hers, mindful of his horns.
“Well,” he said, though his voice had gone rough, “the ‘Goddess Lady’ was right—the Bull-man is here.”
Cody gave a watery laugh and Taurex held them both tighter. The Goddess had sent him to protect Terra’s younglings, but as he knelt there with both children clinging to him, Taurex realized that he no longer thought of them merely as hers. Somewhere along the way, without permission or ceremony, they had become his too. Not because Terra had given them to him and not because a Bond had made them his responsibility.
No, they were his simply because he loved them.
And whether Terra ever chose to be part of his life again or not, Taurex knew one thing with absolute certainty.
No one would ever hurt her children while he still drew breath.
37
TERRA
Terra had never truly understood the expression “scared out of your mind” until now, because as she drove toward downtown Tampa with both hands clenched around the steering wheel, she honestly felt as though most of her mind had stopped functioning.
Thoughts came in broken pieces that refused to connect properly, sliding through her head so quickly she couldn’t hold onto any of them long enough to think clearly. A few thoughts kept looping over and over again, running like a broken record through her head.