Total pages in book: 193
Estimated words: 184001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 920(@200wpm)___ 736(@250wpm)___ 613(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 184001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 920(@200wpm)___ 736(@250wpm)___ 613(@300wpm)
Aurelia George was prepared to let the world believe she was dead. Tangled in the arms of her mountain men and bound only by the rules they make, the twice disgraced pop star had found her happily ever after.
Or so she thought.
The only thing surprising about learning her uncle wants her dead is realizing how eager she is to return the favor. Convincing her mountain men to leave their world behind and step into hers won’t be easy. Thorin is desperate to disappear again, Khalil is quietly drowning, and Zeke wants her gone.
For better or worse, this quartet of villains will have to leave their Eden.
And now that the tables have turned, Aurelia's the one they'll need to survive. But as she and the rest of the world are about to learn, you can take these men out of the wilds, but you can't take the wilds out of them
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
EZEKIEL
Two years before Seth.
Fourteen years before Aurelia George…
All right. Here it is,” Thorin announces. He pans the laptop’s camera around the sparsely furnished room. The line is silent as Khalil and I try to think of something to say that won’t make Thorin regret signing away his life to the fucking Marines.
The dorm room is depressing as fuck and pretty much what you’d expect, but if you pictured the poverty line as the ocean’s surface, Thorin and I are somewhere around where the Titanic sank. It’s impossible to reach it without imploding. Needless to say, military barracks are a giant leap up.
At least now, he’s guaranteed three meals a day and a roof over his head that he doesn’t have to share with Annalise’s smoker friends. It would get so bad at times that he’d come home from school and find that he’d have nowhere to sleep because the house, along with his room and his bed, had been loaned out for a fix. The three of us would usually run them off, but that would only solve his troubles on the surface and none of the ones that ran deep.
We have that in common—except Thorin can remember all the reasons why.
Khalil is the only one of us who came from a stable, loving home, and even though he’s doing a better job masking his thoughts, his background inside the five-star hotel suite stands out in stark contrast to Thorin’s. The cinder block walls of Thor’s room remind me of the cells I spent a lot of time in as a kid along with the simple wooden twin bed, nightstand, desk, and four-drawer chest. He has a better view than I did though—a single window with a view of the neighboring barracks brick wall.
“It’s um…bigger than I expected,” Khalil lamely remarks.
“That’s what she said.” Khalil and Thorin groan at my even lamer attempt at humor while I peer into Thorin’s background. “I don’t see another bed. It’s just you?”
“Yeah,” he answers with a sigh as he takes a seat at his desk. “Most of the rooms are doubles, but I lucked out and got a single.”
“That’s pretty cool. You can jerk off whenever you want. I know how much you like your alone time.”
Thorin flips me off.
Khalil laughs with his fist poised over his grinning mouth. He says something, but I only catch half of it.
On the path to become a boxing champ, his background is currently filled with the voices of his ever-growing entourage and groupies hoping to be chosen. When Thorin and I give him a questioning look, Khalil suddenly looks over his shoulder and snaps, “Can y’all shut the fuck up?”
The small but loud group that was standing nearest him moves away with mumbled apologies, but the rap music blasting from speakers still makes it hard to hear him, so he shakes his head in frustration before getting up and leaving the room.
The noise fades until he shuts himself inside another room.
“Sorry about that,” he grumbles once he’s alone. “I asked if the girl is cute, and if you hit it yet.”
Thorin cocks his head with a deceptively innocent look. “What girl?”
“The one in charge of room assignments of course.” Lucked out my ass. No way they were handing out single rooms to a grunt.
Khalil is showing all of his teeth when he sticks his face so close to the camera, I can count his nose hairs. “She clearly has a crush on you, my boy.” He pulls back and waggles his brows. “So are you gonna fuck or what? What’s her rank? Is she higher than you? Y’all gon’ role play?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Thorin dismisses Khalil’s prying with a wave of his hand. “How’s the shoulder?”
Khalil took a pretty nasty hit during his match tonight and still managed to knock out his opponent. I caught the whole thing on a friend’s TV since I don’t have cable.