Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 96129 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96129 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
I tried to stay quiet, heart pounding hard at the sound of the next movement. Fear gripped my belly, but I wasn’t going down without a fight this time. At least, that was what I thought before he set his arms on the bed, making the mattress dip, and leaned in. The moment the scent of cologne hit me, I took the safety off, squeezed my eyes shut, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
I tried again.
Click.
“You didn’t think I’d actually let you keep bullets in your gun, did you?” He chuckled a deep, dark sound that vibrated onto the mattress and through me. “My God. What has sweet, innocent, little Rosie gotten herself into that she sleeps with a gun underneath her pillow?”
That voice. Fuck. I couldn’t place it, but something about it felt familiar. I lunged at him with the gun, ready to bash it against his face. I wasn’t prepared for the force I was hit with. Strong arms pushed me back onto the mattress. A hard body pressed against me, chest to chest. He was huge and this felt way too intimate. Too scary. Too similar to the nightmares I had. I thrashed and screamed. One of his hands came down hard over my mouth. I bit his fingers.
He hissed. “I suggest you stop doing that while I’m on top of you like this. I may get other ideas.”
“Get off me.” My scream was muffled by his hand.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he gritted. “Stop screaming and I’ll get off.”
I screamed again. He brought his face down and I took in a sharp breath, inhaling his scent. It was eerily familiar. It wasn’t a cologne, I realized. It wasn’t an aftershave. It was him. I racked my brain. Someone from the club? From the ballet company? Someone Anthony sent? None of it made sense. Unless this was about Gabe. That made my breath catch.
“You were always smart, so you may want to think about this.” He set his mouth near my ear. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
Another muffled scream from me. More thrashing. I kicked upwards. Finally, I stopped moving altogether. I cleared my head and shut my eyes, trying to think of what I’d been taught during the many self-defense courses I’d taken over the years. I flipped my leg beneath him and turned him so that he was on his back, and I was on top of him. I punched him as hard as I could, not caring where my fist landed as I got off him. I ran, not out of the room like I should have, but to the light switch. He didn’t move from the bed, I noticed belatedly. If he wanted to hurt me, he probably wouldn’t have let me get this far.
Maybe he wasn’t lying about hurting me, but accosting me while I slept was creepy as fuck, no matter how you spun it. Finally, I flipped the light switch, and he came into view. I blinked and blinked again, not quite understanding what I was seeing. Or rather who, because even though he looked like Gabe, I knew it wasn’t. I purposely hadn’t asked Gabe anything about his brother, so I didn’t know what had become of him. The only thing I knew was what I’d always known. This was the De Luca I should stay far away from.
His grin was slow, wide, and wolfish. “Hey, Tiny Dancer.”
Three little words were all he’d said, and the rage was back.
6
DOMINIC
“What the fuck are you doing here, Dominic?” she emphasized each word as she asked the question, brown eyes flaring with barely controlled anger.
“I need to speak to you.”
“So you show up in my apartment in the middle of the night and . . . Oh my God.” Her dainty hands flew to her mouth. “It was you at the club the other night.”
“Disappointed?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You cunning, lying, scheming, sneaky son of a bitch.”
“Did you memorize the entire thesaurus?”
“Just that section, in case I ever saw you again.”
At that, I laughed. God, I’d been such an asshole to her back then. I really couldn’t blame her for having this reaction, and yet, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Even when she was angry, she was fucking beautiful. Always had been. I gave myself the opportunity to really look at her. She hadn’t changed much. She still had the same banging dancer body, dark brown eyes, and caramel skin. Her brown hair used to be so curly you could pull a strand down and it would spring right back up. I’d done it enough times to get a rise out of her. Now her hair was longer than I’d ever seen it, down to her elbows, and pin straight. She looked beautiful no matter how she wore it and even more beautiful than I remembered, which seemed impossible. My eyes fell to her neck, which was clearly bruised, and my amusement faded. I stepped forward. She shrunk back slightly as if expecting the worst, and suddenly I regretted the way I came at her – pushing her into the bed like a fucking animal. It was a shit move on my part, especially with everything she’d – we’d – been through.