Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
My hands goes to my throat. My God. Where’s Aaron? And who brought me here? I swallow hard, fighting the well of fear in my mind that Aaron is dead. That’s when I hear the sound coming from a door to my right and behind me. Water running? A shower? I want to believe that it’s Aaron, but I have no memory of anything beyond the cabin and this, I think, is a suite in a hotel. I throw away the blankets and stand up, rushing around the room in hopes of finding my real clothes, but there’s nothing but what I’m wearing. At least not in the bedroom.
I glance toward the bathroom. I desperately just want to walk into that room and confirm he’s alive to the point it almost hurts, but if I go in there and it’s not him, I need my gun, which is in my coat pocket. Or it was. By the off chance that it’s still there, I have to find it. I can’t find my way back to Aaron, if we’re apart, without it.
I rush down a short hallway to bring a living area into view and confirm, yes, there’s a hotel room door. Somehow, I got from a cabin to a hotel, a fancy one at that, and I don’t even remember how. I don’t want to know what that means, but I’m pretty sure the kind of drugs I’d be freaked out to take by choice are to thank for my confusion. I also don’t want to think about what a red silk gown and a stranger means. I refuse to go there. That will not help me mentally survive this.
I spy several shopping bags by the front door and rush over to them. To my surprise, not only are there women’s clothes in the bags, but they’re my size. That says Aaron, or really Noah to me, but I just can’t be sure. What I don’t find is my gun. For now, I need clothes on my body to allow me to run if necessary. I quickly pull out jeans and drag them on, before I pull off my gown and slip on a black bra and a T-shirt. A pair of sneakers is next.
I debate running right now, going downstairs and calling backup to see if it’s Aaron in the room, but I have no money and no gun. I rush to a desk and open the drawer, and bingo, there’s my gun, lying next to another one. I grab mine, and since the shower is still running, I decide I have to risk it all and go back into the bedroom. I need money. Whoever is in the shower has a wallet, most likely in the bathroom. With the cold comfort of my weapon, I hurry down the hallway, and as my father used to say “now or never.” I don’t let myself linger. That shower will end any minute.
I walk into the bathroom and find a pair of jeans on the floor. With no wallet on the counter to be seen, I decide to take the jeans and run. I rush and grab them, and take off for the door. I’m about to exit when a deep, male voice says, “I liked you better in the red gown.”
I whirl around to find a man who is tall, sinewy-muscled, dripping wet, and naked standing in the open shower. And this man, this man is not Aaron.
Part Two
Chapter fifteen
Ashley
Istare at the naked man in the shower, rippling muscles licked by droplets of water, and for a moment, I can’t breathe. He’s perfect. He’s deadly. He’s Noah, not Aaron, and this man will never be Aaron to me, no matter how many times I use that name.
He’s alive.
We’re alive.
We’re together.
I launch myself toward him, and the minute I’m at the edge of the tub, he grabs me, lifts me, and pulls me into it. “I thought you were dead,” I whisper. “I thought—”
His mouth slants over mine, and oh God, he tastes like him, like Noah, like the man I love in every possible way: earthy, raw, and yes, lethal. I realize now that he was always lethal, that I always knew this, that it turned me on, that it called to me. “Noah,” I whisper against his lips.
He doesn’t even try to correct me. “Yeah, baby,” he whispers, “I’m right here.” He turns me and presses me against the wall. “Which I thought you knew two days ago. Obviously, your concussion was worse than I knew.”
“Two days?”
“Two days,” he says, the thick line of his cock pressed to my hip. “And if you don’t remember that, I haven’t fucked you as perfectly as I should have.” And just that fast, he’s kissing me again, has me refusing to ask another question. He’s going to fuck me perfectly. Yes. Please.