Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“More complex than you know, baby girl,” I growl.
“I—” she frowns and looks down. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispers.
“Then don’t think. Don’t rationalize, don’t analyze, doctor,” I grunt. “Just feel.”
“I want to, I just…” she swallows, and I grit my teeth as she slowly backs away from me. “Jack, I don’t know what I’m doing with you,” she chokes out. “But this is insane.”
“Life is insane, Aria.”
“I—”
She moves to go around me for the door, but I catch her wrist with my hand.
“Come with me,” I snarl. “Let’s leave all this shit behind and just start new lives.”
Her teeth rake over her lip, and her gorgeous brown eyes lock with mine. “As a fantasy, it sounds perfect,” she says softly. “But real life isn’t a fantasy, Jack.”
“Let me show you, then,” I grunt.
“I—” she shakes her head, and when she looks away, my heart hardens, because I know I’ve already lost her.
“I have to go,” she whispers.
Our eyes lock, and she opens her mouth like she wants to say something. But instead, she reaches up to wipe at the corner of one eye, and with a soft choking sound, she whirls, yanks the door open, and runs off, leaving me in the dark room.
…But if she thinks she’s getting away from me that easily, she’s more wrong than she knows.
Chapter Seven
Aria
What the fucking fuck is wrong with you?
My heart races as I run through the halls of the hospital, and I’m not even sure what I’m looking for, but I know what I’m running from.
Jack.
Well, not him, but the confusion and the uncertainty and the feelings I’ve never once felt before that come with him. I blink away a tear, and my hand comes up to shove it away as I finally find my small office and dash into it. I suck in breaths of air, my pulse racing not just from running, but from the mind-blowing, earth-shattering, life-defining sex I just had with the first man to truly make me scream.
The first man to make me come like that.
The first man to make my heart and my body and every single part of me ache for more.
I sink into my office chair, blinking in disbelief and trying to slow my racing pulse. I mean what was that? Besides my own temporary insanity, besides me having my first official “hookup” ever, as in sleeping with a guy who I’ve literally just met. Besides the fact that he’s, well, who he is?
I mean what was I even thinking? Or was I at all? Was it just that after thinking all the time, and maybe too much, for my entire life, that I finally didn’t? Or is that he does that to me—is it that Jack makes my over-active, insane brain just chill out enough to let my heart take over?
Or, maybe it’s just that I’ve been working too hard and this is me losing my fucking mind.
I swallow, still trembling from the adrenaline and the orgasms I’ve just had. I wake up my computer and type in the password, and before I know it, I’ve got a browser open and I’m navigating to the website for the Just Cause organization. I chew on my lip as I re-read their mission statement, my eyes darting over the pictures of field hospitals and refugee centers.
I mean, was he serious? Is the mob hitman, because that’s certainly what he is, really looking to run across the world to go help orphans and refugees? Or was that just bullshit to get into my pants, or worse, bullshit to get into my pants in order to get me to help him get away?
I frown, feeling sick at the thought. But no. I know what just happened was insane, and I know I don’t even know him, but I do know that the idea of him just using me doesn’t check out. Not with what happened between us. Not with the way he looked right into me like no one else ever has.
I look at more of the Just Cause website before I sink back in my chair in my tiny little office and look around. This really is it for me here. Yes, I love my job, and I love the work I do, but this hospital really is an old boys club. There’s no promotion for me here, and I know in my heart I’ll spend my career here working ER trauma for drunk driving crashes, stupid college kids getting hurt, or the odd gang-violence.
And don’t get me wrong, again, helping people is why I became a doctor. But, there’s more in the world I could help with, and I know it. My eyes look over at the computer screen again and the images I’ve been looking at, and I sigh before I glance at the clock.