Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Make some extra cash, too.
He couldn’t say he was bummed about that.
He could only be wary about who he was working for.
Trent stared at him, blinked, then sent him a tight nod. “Okay.”
Logan gave him half a smile and climbed out. He hiked his backpack higher and moved to a narrow gateway where he was instructed to be at six p.m. He peered into the camera that stared back.
With his heart racing, a deep, thudding pulse that he felt all the way to his ears, he was buzzed through and led onto the grounds that made the Los Angeles Botanical Gardens look like a desert wasteland. In the distance was a house, so large it could have been a hotel.
Logan inhaled. He was sure he could actually smell money.
He felt a flash of excitement.
He quelled it, remembered Trent had warned him to keep his head down.
The man he followed led him through a set of doors on the far side of the rambling building. It was an area that appeared to be separated from the main living quarters.
He walked down the long corridor, his footsteps echoing on the marble floors.
There was a room on the right that made him slow as they passed by. The double doors opened to a massive room with grand ceilings and books lining each wall that were stacked to the sky.
Leather furniture filled the middle, and he wasn’t sure if his heart stopped or sped so fast that he could no longer feel it when someone peeked at him from over the back of a couch.
The girl tried to keep herself hidden as she peered at him.
Her hair the darkest chocolate and her eyes the color of the molten sun.
Logan realized the promise he’d made his brother had been made in vain.
Because there would be no keeping to himself.
TEN
ASTER
I pulled the night slip over my head. The soft, white material unfurled over my body and landed mid-thigh. I looked at myself in the mirror, blew back the dark brown bangs that had fallen in my face, and said a silent prayer for strength. That I could find my way through the turmoil.
That I could persevere.
That I could fly.
Tomorrow, I would form a plan.
Figure out how to prove to my father why I could never go back to Jarek Urso.
Dread scattered through me like the whisper of death.
I’d never caused it before. Been the precursor. But I knew what this might mean for Jarek.
Guilt threatened to claw. To rip open and infect.
A disease that turned my blood cold and my stomach sour.
I hated the violence. Hated it to my soul. But I had to remember Jarek was one of the greatest perpetrators of it.
Pulse fluttering, I blew out a heavy sigh, and I flipped the light off to the bathroom and stepped out into the bedroom.
The second I did, I froze, snared by the dark presence that whipped like a blizzard from the doorway.
My eyes narrowed as I stared at the man who might as well be a mirage.
Sanctuary.
Refuge.
Perdition.
The man who’d been little more than a boy when he’d captured me in that first, stolen glance.
I’d been obsessed, willing to break every rule to even catch a glimpse.
Now, I felt myself falling into the abyss of who he was all over again.
For good or bad.
Right or wrong.
None of it had ever mattered except for wanting him to be mine.
Still in his suit, Logan watched me as if he were bored, though I could feel the pinpricks of intensity that bristled beneath his skin. The white-hot energy that radiated from his being.
I fidgeted, wearing the slip, feeling so much more exposed than I had in the tee.
It was thin straps and thin material and a neckline that dipped low between my breasts.
Heat blossomed as I imagined him picking it out for me.
Tension stretched across the room. A dense, veiled pull that felt like a vacant ache, the heat of his eyes a beacon that shouted to me from the bowels of an obliterating storm.
“What are you doing in here?” I finally managed to press the words from my mouth while I took a fortifying step back.
As if I could protect myself from the lure.
The muted hum of a television droned through the walls from Gretchen’s room, and the sound of the night howled through the mountain slopes and softly battered at the panes.
Everything else seemed magnified.
The shallow gasps of my breaths and the erratic hammer of my heart and the questions that raged through my mind.
Logan angled his head. A wicked smirk lit at the edge of his mouth as he leaned against the doorway with his hands stuffed in his pants pockets.
As if he held a secret that I wasn’t privy to.
Attraction throbbed in my belly.
“Now, don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten who you belong to?”
“This is a bad idea, Logan.” It was my only defense.