Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Inhaling a steadying breath, I pushed out into the late-afternoon warmth of the summer, praying for peace.
For rest.
To find a way when it felt like every direction I turned brought me to a dead end where I’d have to pick up and run the opposite way.
I paused just outside the door, attention dragging across the near empty lot as I searched for any sense that I might be being watched. Searching for a monster lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect time to strike.
Butterflies scattered when I saw what was really waiting for me.
He might be a monster, but my heart both rattled and leapt at the sight.
This dark, dangerous demon who leaned against his bike on the other side of the lot. Tattooed arms crossed over his massive chest, wearing his signature uniform.
Black jeans and black fitted tee and black motorcycle boots.
My stomach toppled over with the memory of the way he’d looked beneath those clothes last night.
The carved, sculpted beauty of his ferocious body. Covered in ink and misery. The way he’d touched me. The promises he’d made.
And I wondered if it could be exactly as Raven had suggested. That two souls could recognize the other without really knowing the person.
He pushed from his bike, towering in the distance, that rugged, vicious face carved in possession.
I gulped around the uncertainty and slowly edged his direction. I stopped three feet away, the sun blazing down, burning me up. The knot in my throat was so thick I couldn’t speak. Or maybe I just had no idea what to say.
Because the relief I felt at finding him there was staggering, but that didn’t change anything, did it?
“Think we need to talk.” The words rumbled over me, and I tried to swallow around the barbs in my throat.
“I’m not sure—”
His hand came out, and some piece inside myself shifted when I didn’t flinch. When I realized how much I truly trusted him.
Heat blistered where he set his palm on my cheek. “Please…just fuckin’ talk to me, Charleigh. Can’t leave things the way they ended last night.”
I wavered, fighting this war inside me.
His thumb brushed the hollow beneath my eye. “Told you if you ran, I would only chase after you. Thought it was going to have to be across the country, but you didn’t seem to get very far. Think that says something, yeah?”
Gulping, I gave him a bare nod, and he took my hand and led me the couple steps to his bike. He swung over the black metal, the man looking as if he were carved from the machine, or maybe vice versa.
I guessed maybe he had the power to break me after all because I allowed him to guide me to climb on behind him, and I wrapped my arms around his powerful frame.
I pressed my nose to the fabric on the back of his shirt.
Leather and ink and wickedness.
I inhaled it deep.
He kicked the motorcycle over, and the engine grumbled, roaring as he took to the street.
He headed down 9th, and it was less than a couple minutes later when he was pulling his bike into the parking lot beside my building.
He killed the bike, and he took my hand and helped me off, and I somehow couldn’t look back at him as we began to climb the stairs.
But I could feel him. His presence rolling over me from behind.
His power. His strength. His ferocity.
I shuddered beneath it, wanting to turn and sink into it, allow myself the fall.
I could barely squeeze air into my lungs by the time I turned the key in the lock and let us into my apartment.
It felt even smaller than normal with him in it.
Everything about him was overpowering.
As if he were gravity.
Everything drawn into his orbit.
Inhaling a staggered breath, I slowly turned around to face him where he stood just inside the door.
His hands were in fists, the tattooed Ss on the back of his hand clenched, the skull on the other thrashing.
“What I saw last night…” His voice was gravel. Shards of the aggression and splinters of care.
My chest tightened. “I can’t give you that part of myself.”
His expression raged, and his jaw ticked as he clenched his teeth. “Just need the confirmation that’s who you’ve been running from.”
I stalled, blinking at him as I toiled with what he was asking. God, was I really giving him this? Apparently so because I couldn’t stop the feeble, “Yes.”
His head nodded a million times as if he already knew but still had to come to terms with the truth of it. He itched in uncertainty before he spoke.
“Is it wrong that I want to protect you?”
“I can’t go back to that time, River.”
“Yet you’re still looking over your shoulder.”
I rubbed my hands up and down my arms, my words trembling. “I can’t just erase it, but I am trying to move on. I am trying to find a new life. Can’t you understand that?”