Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 83961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
The breath I had been holding rushed out sharply, audibly, as a dozen different thoughts flashed to the forefront of my mind. My system felt drunk on an exotic cocktail of desire and fear. It made my leg muscles feel wobbly and my heartbeat feel erratic, speeding up one moment and slowing down the next. The swirling in my stomach was at once both exciting and nauseating.
"Two choices," Wolf's voice growled at me, making my head snap up guiltily. God, I had been staring at his dick! Jesus Christ.
"Two choices," I repeated, watching his face. It was still closed down. His tone was oddly empty.
"Come in or leave," he clarified and the words landed like lead in my belly. Because I knew I couldn't go in, no matter how curious I was, no matter how much a part of me wanted to. But leaving was equally unpalatable. But I couldn't just fucking stand there all day like a freaking creep either, could I?
"Right," I said, ducking my head as I nodded and moved to walk out of the room.
I closed the door on a quiet click and moved over to the side of the bed where my legs finally gave up on me. Okay. So... yeah. I just saw Wolf naked. I saw Wolf naked and hard. And a part of me really did want to strip down and step into that shower with him. A part of me wanted his strong arms around me again, wanted to feel his fingers on my skin, his lips on mine. I wanted to see if I could break down the barrier in his eyes and voice.
But that wasn't me. I didn't do things like that. And no matter how nice it may have been for him to hold me while he slept and I read, as new and novel as his kiss had been, that didn't change anything. I was still me. I was still full of nightmares and demons. I could never be the girl to strip naked and step into the shower with a man without fear, without memories rushing back and ruining it. What had I been thinking playing at trying to be something other than what I am? I needed to stop playing house and focus. I needed to get my life back on track, as empty and unpromising as the rest of it sounded.
There was no room in my universe for fantasy, hopes, and dreams.
I closed my eyes on the crushing, crumbling feeling inside as I felt those childish wishes slip away. Then I got my ass off the bed and got on with my day.
Wolf came out a while later after more primal animal sounds and slamming that I pretended I didn't hear. He made a cup of the coffee I brewed and shuffled around making food. I sat at the table staring out the window wondering how deep a sleeper he was, if I could slip out when the dogs and he were passed out. It was worth a shot.
The frantic pounding came at the door sometime that afternoon. It was a long ass day pretending it wasn't driving me ape shit crazy that we hadn't spoken so much as a word to each other since the bathroom.
Wolf flew at the door, blocking the doorway as he did. "Not now," he growled at whoever was there. There was a short pause, then, "Seriously?" he asked.
"I need Janie's help," Cash's voice reached me. It was his, but it wasn't. Because I knew Cash's voice and it was always almost lazily flirtatious, light. But his voice sounded tortured, crazed.
"No," was Wolf's typical one-word response.
If I hadn't been listening so aptly, I would have missed it. But as it was, there was no mistaking the sound of a gun cocking. Cash had a gun on Wolf? What the hell was going on? They were brothers in every way that counted.
"This is not a discussion. Lo is in the hands of some fucking psychopath and no one, not even those freaks at that camp of hers can find her. So I need Janie's fucking help."
At that, my heart seized in my chest. Lo. Lo was at the hands of some psychopath? My Lo? My mentor, the woman who was like a big sister and mother and best friend to me all at once. I flew across the room, wrenching the door open.
"Who has her?" I demanded, hearing a bit of hysteria in my tone and not caring.
"Damian Crane," he told me, expecting the name to stump me, because he went on to add, "Her husband."
But, well, there wasn't a whole helluva lot that I didn't know about Lo. She was private; she never talked about her past, but I had done my digging and I knew. "Ex," I supplied.
"What?" Cash asked, brows drawing together.
"Ex-husband. She had a contested divorce that finalized a decade ago. He's her ex-husband."
"How do you know this shit?"
I looked off over his shoulder at the woods for a moment, surprising myself when I offered up the truth, "When I can't sleep, which is often," I started, "I go online. I look into stuff. When I was first at Hailstorm, I looked into the people. So... I know her name is Willow Swift. When she was eighteen, she married Damian Crane. They were married until she was twenty-seven though, obviously, she was not with him that whole time because she was building up Hailstorm at the time and no one there had ever so much as heard his name. I don't know why she wasn't..."
"He beat her," Cash cut me off, effectively stunning me into complete silence.
"What?" I asked, hearing the horror in my own voice.
"I found a picture. There were bruises on her arm. That, coupled with the article that said he was stabbed twelve times in his apartment..."
"Oh my god..." I whispered, feeling a little light-headed at the idea. I couldn't picture it. I couldn't imagine a young Lo, untrained, knowing nothing of all the self-defense she now did, cowering away from a man who raised his hands to her. No wonder she fought so hard to be so damn strong all the time. She never wanted to feel that way again. She never wanted to cower or fear a man again. She...