Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 44963 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44963 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
“Is there something I can help you with?” I say, putting up my defenses, my shield of sassiness. All the while knowing he likes it. Is this what flirting feels like?
He smirks, stepping into the room and stopping a few feet from me. Ever since the kiss, it’s like there’s this undercurrent of electricity, always there, sparking, taunting, teasing…
Tempting. Oh yeah… that most of all. Then I remember the pain it summoned, the memories, and I have to remind myself where it would end.
He keeps staring, a casual smirk on his face.
“Are you just going to stare like a weirdo or…”
He chuckles deeply, gesturing at my textbook. “I was just thinking about the irony. I spend my whole life in the shadows, keeping things quiet, and you’re studying how to make things as well-known as they can be as quickly as you can.”
I think about what else I overheard when Dad and Luke were talking downstairs. I wasn’t eavesdropping, exactly, but I heard it. Okay, I was sneaking around. Sue me. I heard Luke asking if I had a boyfriend. Is that because he wants to put himself forward for the role?
“Don’t worry. I don’t want to do PR for the hit man business.”
His smirk drops, his expression darkening. Absurd guilt touches me, as if I should ever let that emotion slip into my heart after everything that has happened. The more time I spend around this man, the more I want to get to know him, the real him, not the killer. The man at the center of who he is, his heart, his desires. His future. Our future.
No, no. I’m sprinting into a place that makes no sense. Nonsense Land, population one. Me.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You don’t have to be. It’s fair. It’s what I am.”
“It doesn’t have to be who you are,” I murmur.
I wonder if he’s going to reply to that, but he gestures to my textbook instead. “What sort of PR are you going to do?”
“Do you really care?”
He steps even closer, then pauses, glancing behind him at the open door. I’ve got no idea how Dad would react if he found me and this hit man kissing or being intimate, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be good. Things are complicated enough already.
“You should stop being so sassy,” he says roughly. “It gives me ideas.”
“Oh yeah?” I toss my head and force confidence into the movement, even if there’s always that niggling pain of self-doubt. “What sort of ideas?”
He looks at the door again, drawing in a breath. It’s like he’s wordlessly saying, If we were alone here…
“You didn’t answer my question,” he says gruffly.
“I want to work for a cancer-awareness charity,” I tell him. “That’s the dream, but any charity would be ideal. I want to spread the word and do some good in the world.”
“You will,” he says firmly.
I laugh as delight washes through me. There’s so much certainty in his words. It’s like he’s looked into the future.
“If we get through this in one piece.”
He kneels, so we’re staring eye to eye, meaning I don’t have to crane my neck to look up into his hulking form. He stares into me with his pale blue eyes, like he sees past all the defenses and all the bullcrap.
“You’re going to succeed,” he says fiercely, “because I’m going to keep us safe. I promise.”
He reaches forward and touches my arm. Sensation shivers all over me, tempting me to fall against him.
Then the stairs creak. Luke recoils away from me, standing quickly, just in time for Dad to poke his head into the room. It hurts how quickly he moves away, even if it makes no sense.
“Everything okay?” Dad says, looking at me. It’s like he’s pleading with me to share if Luke has gone too far.
“Fine,” I tell him.
I’ve got no way to explain that, in fact, Luke hasn’t gone far enough.
They leave, and I shut the door, turn the lock, and focus on my work.
Later, once I’ve had something to eat and night has fallen, I lie in bed with my eyes closed. My body’s too buzzing to sleep, the memory of the forest far too vivid, of Luke with his arms wrapped around me and his rock-hard manhood pushing urgently against my belly.
Instead of letting the past rule me—instead of letting the trauma rear up like a monster and crash down on the moment—I imagine dragging my fingernails down his chest and looking him bravely in the eye.
“Take me somewhere private,” I moan in the fantasy. Or this different version of me moans, the one I can never be. The one I shouldn’t want to be.
This man’s a kidnapper and a killer. I should be terrified of him, but in the fantasy, I leap into his arms, wrap my legs around him, and shift up and down as he grinds his manhood against my sex, brushing through my pants and my underwear.