The Dividing Line: VENGEANCE (Book 2)

| 01 | (BWWM)

SUPPLY RUN - 3 WEEKS AWAY
Strangers no more...

Running across the yard in an attempt to catch the man left her no better off than she was when she initially started her fruitless pursuit. As he jogged in one direction or another, vanity fooled her into believing that she might somehow catch him, and it was that same self-assurance that convinced her to chase him in vain.

Still, no matter how close she came to touching Cole, it finally settled in that he had no intention of giving in to her pleas.

"Baby. Come on." She called out.

"What?" He questioned with a mischievous grin on his face.

"Stop it, now. Please." Angel's whining reflected the image of someone who was nothing like her as Cole lightly chuckled at her attempts to grab him.

Once again he was having too much fun at her expense, and once again Angel stopped to gather herself as she strategized her next move. Long ago, she'd learned there was no winning him in a foot race. Cole excelled at all acts of physical exertion. Her man zipped around as if he was the energizer bunny in and out of the bedroom.

Should she continue to play his game, Cole most certainly would beat her at every turn, so Angel decided to change the game they were playing.

She gave up.

As she stood rooted to the ground, her chest rose and fell in quick succession as she struggled to force oxygen into her airway. Wrestling with Cole for the last hour had left her no closer to convincing him to put it back.

To make matters worse, that devil had the nerve to pause right in front of Angel taunting her with his ridiculous horseplay. With rippling muscles and a shit-eating grin, waited for just the right moment to pounce on her.

Of course, that was his attempt at attention-seeking as always.

Pretending he wasn't in her line of vision would be best, she accepted as her head motioned from side to side.

With her course of action firmly settled in her mind, Angel turned to walk away feigning her loss of interest in his game. Though she appeared on the surface to dislike his silly side, Angel adored their fun just as much as Cole.

Their first six months together swelled with apprehensions concerning their different backgrounds, but all the tension eventually disappeared. The only challenges left for them concerned a growing number of external and internal obstacles.

Despite the way life worked itself out for them, Angel's nerves still hovered on the edge because of the constant reminders of the life he lived before they met. Those concerns behaved as a living breathing stop sign each time her eye landed on the insidious markings that were etched in Cole's skin.

Even though he preferred to sleep in the nude, he respected her so much that despite his discomfort, Cole wore a t-shirt and pajama pants while next to her in bed. It was the best he could do to obscure most of his ink until the time came when he could get the offensive messages covered permanently. She was grateful that Cole grew to sense her apprehension at being near the visible images forever linking him to his violent past.

After they reached their first year, the days began to blend leaving Angel and Cole in a state of bliss as if they had known one another their entire lives.

One day while nothing special was happening, questions began to bubble to the surface of her mind about them. Angel wondered how in the world they were supposed to work. He wasn't the first white man she'd ever had a relationship with, but he was by far the most challenging.