Doomsday Brethren, Book 04: Entice Me at Twilight by Shayla Black

saw that bus douse you in the rain.”
    “And turn me into a drowned rat.” She smiled wistfully. “Still, you came to my rescue, as you have so many times.”
    “I always will. Please, return to me safe and ready to be my wife.”
    She pressed her lips together, her expression turning pensive. “We’ll talk soon.”
    “If you want, we’ll elope next time,” Mason rushed to say. “Someplace warm and tropical. I know how you love the heat.”
    A vision of Felicia in white on a sandy beach with swaying palm trees and love in her eyes gripped Duke by the throat. The vision shattered when she extended her hand to Mason, not him.
    Fury boiled. Mason with Felicia, it was wrong. Duke suspected—
knew
—that if he kissed her, if he tasted her at all, his instinct would identify her as his mate and he’d be bloody tempted to speak the Call.
    But she’d belonged to Mason first. If Felicia had agreed to marry his brother, she must love him. For family harmony and her happiness, he would somehow find the strength to return her to his brother untouched.
    Desolation seethed inside him. How many decades—hell, centuries—would he spend alone if he allowed his one true mate to slip through his fingers? Yet how could he live with himself if he stole his brother’s fiancée?
    Squaring his shoulders and focusing on the winding road, Duke shoved the thought away.
    Mason murmured, “We’ll get married somewhere tropical, darling. Just come back to me.”
    Felicia teared up, bit her lip. Those tears, along with the idea that he’d stolen something from her that she very much wanted, were a stake through Duke’s heart.
    “I will,” she choked out.
    Mason sighed. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Let me speak with Simon again.”
    “All right. Good-bye, Mason.”
    “I love you,” he murmured.
    Before Felicia could say anything, Duke ripped the phone from her hand and jerked it to his ear. “What do you want?”
    “Two days, you bastard. You have two days to bring her back so I can get her adequate protection or I’ll report you to the authorities and charge you with kidnapping. Plenty of witnesses. And that will be nothing compared to what I’ll do to you personally.”
    Duke knew he could avoid all that by faking his own death and disappearing into the magical world. He’d have to someday, before people started questioning why he, like most wizards, looked perpetually thirty. In fact, he’d already begun making arrangements.
    Enacting his plan now was tempting. After tonight, there would be scandal, which would be ten times worse if the authorities sought him. Another challenge the Doomsday Brethren didn’t need. And what would all this strife do to his poor mother? Failing to return Felicia in two days could forever mar his already shaky relationship with Mason. And Duke felt certain that his brother’s fiancée would never be interested in him now that he’d abducted her against her will. Mason had warned her off, compared him to some wanker named Alexei. An ex-boyfriend?
    But he couldn’t abandon his family to Mathias’s whims before ensuring everyone’s safety. He couldn’t cause his mother grief by “dying.” He couldn’t bring himself to sever all ties with Felicia.
    Fucking hopeless
.
    “I’ll do my best.”
    But deep down, Duke knew it would take far longer than a couple of days to make Felicia safe now that Mathias knew she was the Untouchable. She’d be with him day and night. How could he possibly resist her?

CHAPTER 5

    A S THE CALL ENDED , Felicia risked a glance at Hurstgrove’s profile, illuminated by the dashboard’s lights. She didn’t know what Mason had said, but she didn’t imagine it was friendly, given the way her captor clenched his jaw and gripped the wheel. Restraining the urge to ask—she knew Mason and could fill in the blanks—Felicia winced and looked at the clock. Two-fourteen a.m.
    A new day, a new problem. She’d been abducted from her wedding. By someone not quite