Page 102 of Dark Angel
They exited the car. She pulled her tote, but he took it from her, shouldered it.
“Are you staying here?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Not the embassy compound?”
She wrapped her arms around him, pushed onto her toes, and pressed her warm lips against his ear. “Minka lives in a shithole, but Evangeline put Barbi here.”
Her breathy whisper made his junk move.
The hotel generators bathed the area in barely-there light as they made their way toward the front entrance. Three men exited a nearby bar, two of them staggered onto the sidewalk.
As he and Halston passed them, one of the men grabbed Halston’s arm.
She whirled around, kneed him in the groin.
He doubled over, groaning loudly. “Oh, fuuuuuuck.”
“Yo bitch, what the hell did you do that for?” asked the third, the one whohadn’tstumbled from the bar.
She and Gabriel exchanged glances. At the same time, they turned.
“I’d walk, if I were you,” Gabriel bit out.
The guy laughed. “Do the math, dick brain. Three of us and you got a girl.”
Halston marched over to him, fisted his shirt collar. “I’m awoman. You want to get kneed in the groin too?”
One of the drunk guys pulled a dagger. “Let him go or I slice you.”
Gabriel pulled his CANiK, but Halston grabbed the thug’s wrist and twisted him around—without letting go of the first guy’s shirt—and clunked their heads together. Both men yelped in pain as she clasped Gabriel’s hand and started running.
They raced toward the hotel, flying by a couple who’d stopped to share a kiss. Gabriel glanced back but the drunks weren’t there. When they approached the hotel entrance, he slowed, then stopped.
Breathing hard, she started laughing. “That was fun.”
“My family callsmeinsane,” Gabriel said catching his breath. “What the hell was that?”
The sheer joy on her face made him smile.
“Sydney’s right, I have met my match,” he said.
“Well, you couldn’t shoot them,” she said. “And I wasn’t about to let them take me.”
He stilled. “I wouldneverlet that happen.”
“You say that now, but if they’d stabbed you, and I couldn’t defend myself, they might have taken me, raped me, maybe killed me and dumped my body.”
“You’re dark, like me.” He swept his gaze over her, but she remained stone-faced.
“Iamdark,” she whispered. “But I didn’t choose the darkness, it chose me.”
“It chose me too,” he replied.
She collected his hands, threaded her soft fingers through his. “Maybe you’renota nobody,” she whispered.
“No, I don’t think I am,” he murmured as he pulled her close and kissed her.
