Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 96742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
This is basically the most poorly planned escape ever.
But I didn’t have time. I saw my chance, and I took it without hesitating, because hesitating would’ve meant getting caught.
I lean back, studying him. “How about this? I graciously let you pay for this lovely meal, and you promise not to ask me about him again. Do we have a deal?”
Evander’s eyes sparkle with amusement. “Let me get you a room at the Drake and we have a deal.”
I blink at him rapidly. Did this man just proposition me? But he didn’t say come back to my room, he said, let me get you a room, like he’s offering to pay for a hotel for me, and only me.
“No, thank you. I thought you said you didn’t want a date? I’d rather just—”
“Keep running?” He pitched his voice lower, forcing me to lean in to hear him. “And where does that end? You still haven’t told me where you’re sleeping tonight. I suspect you have no plan beyond the next five minutes. And I wasn’t lying, I’m not interested in a date.”
“I’ll be fine.” I push my chair back and stand. “Thank you for your help, Evander, but I need to go.”
He takes a roll of cash from his pocket—all twenties and hundreds, and I stare at it with wide eyes—and drops an absurd amount on the table. I turn and walk out of the restaurant, but he keeps pace.
This time, when he takes my arm, there’s a promise in the way he grips me. I turn to face him in the dark overhang of an insurance office and tilt my chin up, gathering all my strength to tell him off, but I stop mid-sentence.
He steps forward until my back bumps into the brick of the building, trapping me there.
We’re alone on the street. Evander is enormous. I should be afraid—I should start kicking and screaming—but it’s the look he gives me that makes my mouth stay shut for once in my life.
It’s total desire, pure and simple lust, like he wants to take me right here in public.
It’s a look I haven’t seen in a very long time, if ever.
Christopher used to be nice. When we first met, he bought me flowers and chocolates and took me to dinner and movies and all that cliché relationship stuff. I was totally smitten—because I was eighteen and he was twenty-four and had more money than I ever dreamed of in my life. He worshipped the ground I walked on, and I thought I was the luckiest girl alive.
For a while, anyway.
But that changed after the wedding. He turned sour, and got drunk, and slowly the violence crept in. At first, just a slap here, a shove there. Always he apologized afterward and begged forgiveness. I gave it to him, because what else could I do? There was no such thing as divorce in my world.
It got worse and worse and worse from there, until I found myself sneaking birth control just to make sure I never got pregnant—not that we were sleeping together. Christopher was too drunk most nights to get it up, but I had to be sure.
I couldn’t risk getting myself trapped with that man.
The way Evander’s looking at me right now, that’s something I’ve never experienced before. To Christopher, I was a maid he occasionally slapped around and tried to fuck with his pathetic limp dick.
To Evander, it’s like I’m the only person in the world.
“I’m offering you a room, no strings attached,” he says softly, still staring at me intently. “No date. Nothing owed. Simply a place for you to sleep.”
“Why?” I manage to croak. “I don’t understand why you’re trying to help me.”
His lips purse together. “Would you believe me if I said that I have sins I need to atone for?”
“Yes, but no thanks. I’m not interested in being your charity case.” Besides, based on the look in his eye, I don’t think this is pure altruism.
His soul might be stained, but this man has more sin in his future.
“You can tell me no,” he says quietly, his big body pinning mine, practically crushing me. “You can walk away and disappear. You can take your chances and see if any of those credit cards you tried to use back at the bar will work. Maybe they do, and you have a warm bed tonight. Maybe they don’t, and you are lost. Or you can come back to the Drake. I’ll book you the suite, it’s very nice. Let me spoil you for an evening. Let me give you something you can use to forget whoever you’re running from. That’s all I offer, nothing more complicated.”
It’s so tempting.
Sinfully, absurdly tempting.
This man reeks of money and power, and he’s so stupidly beautiful, like a massive Greek statue carved from pure muscle and hunger.