Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Until he killed my brother.
Anger burns in my belly, and I cross the entertainment area of the house and head straight for a window that is high above my head. I look around for something to stand on, but Luke is already right beside me. He catches me to him and turns me, my body folded against his big, powerful one, and before I know his intent, he’s tangled fingers in my hair. “In case I don’t get out of here alive and you do,” he says, and then his mouth is slanting over my mouth.
I moan with the familiar, long-lost taste of him on my lips. I don’t mean to, I really don’t, but when his tongue finds my tongue, and sensations burn through me, I am his again. I am living a million delicious moments with this man. My arms slide around him, and I am back in time, replaying the night we met. Back in the parking lot of Brewster’s coffee house. We’d spent two hours talking, and when he’d walked me to my car, we’d stood there staring at each other.
“I have to do it,” he’d said, and then he’d moved.
A moment later, he’d kissed me, and it wasn’t a tentative, gentle kiss. He’d molded my hips to his hips and claimed my mouth with a possessive slide of his tongue, in a sultry way that had left me helpless to resist. The world had faded and all there was, was this man boldly kissing me when no one else in Kurt’s world would dare such a thing. The memory consumes me, the way Luke always consumes me, from the instant I met him. I sink into the here and now, into the kiss I never thought I’d know again, drinking him in and melting with the wicked wild way this man undoes me.
Until gunfire just above the stairway jolts us apart.
“That meant nothing,” I whisper.
“It means I can die a happy man, sweetheart, but I’d rather not. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” He turns me and lifts me toward the window. I shove my gun in my belt, and I’m already reaching for the lock when Luke moans, “God, woman, you still have a fine as fuck ass.”
“Stop looking at my ass,” I snap, working the lock and shoving the window open, but I’m still aware of the taste of him on my lips, and of every burning second his hands are on my body.
The minute the window is open, he hikes me upward, and I rest my gun just outside on the ground, eyeing left and right, but the bushes block my view. They also offer me coverage. “Clear,” I whisper, and he and I both lift me forward. Once I’m outside, gun in hand, in a squatting position, I have a decision to make. Any second now, Luke will join me, and then I’m riding this ride with him. Do I trust him that much? I just kissed the man. I obviously want to trust him that much, but he killed my brother. He deserves my bullet, and nothing more.
Still, damn him. Hesitation burns my feet to the ground, the part of me that never let him go, not wanting to again, but this is about survival. Dark mode, Ana, I can hear Kurt say in my head. Luke appears in the window, and I look right and start moving. I don’t want to desert Darius, but he’s been off lately, and something in my gut tells me Luke isn’t wrong to suspect him.
“Damn it, Ana,” I hear Luke curse, but I don’t look back. He’s not Luke. He’s Lucifer, and I’d do well to remember that. I round the bushes and take off on a run, leaving the devil who killed my brother behind. This time, for good.
Chapter Nine
ANA
The past…
A loud banging has me jolting into a sitting position on my bed, darkness suffocating me, and my heart thundering in my chest. My fingers curl on the edge of the mattress, but otherwise, I don’t dare move, listening for another sound. Not sure if the banging was even real or another one of the nightmares that have haunted me this past year.
Seconds tick by and there is nothing, not even a tick of a clock, when suddenly, a flashlight shines in my eyes. “Up, little girl,” my stepfather says. “You have five minutes to be dressed and outside.”
Objection and relief rush over me all at once. “It’s still dark, and I’m tired.”
“Exactly the point. No one attacks you when it’s convenient. “
“I’m fourteen, Kurt,” I say, calling him by his name. He never wanted to be “Dad” anyway. He said that’s fake imagery and I don’t need a sense of reality that isn’t real.
He kneels in front of me and shines the light on both our faces. “I wish like hell that mattered. And I wish like hell your mother wasn’t gone, but she is. Now that your brother is off serving his country, we’re all we have, you and me.”