Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 103712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
She needed to escape his lingering scent, escape the way she could still feel him on her skin.
Sadness shrouded her every step as she wandered through the halls. The house was quiet and isolated. Sometimes it felt like she was all alone. But she was never alone. Someone was always watching.
Time didn’t exist here. The clocks were merely a decorative reminder that life moved on outside of these walls that both protected and imprisoned her. Her sleep schedule was so messed up, she was often taken off guard by the setting sun, sometimes pausing to decide if it was dusk or dawn.
Perhaps it was the vodka that put her in such a haze. But more likely it was the compounding trauma she’d suffered finally taking it’s toll.
“I’m not crazy,” she whispered, wandering down a narrow hall that opened to a wide corridor.
She found Ash in the lodge’s library an hour before dawn, reading by lamplight as another storm exhausted itself outside. Relief flooded her. Of all the men, none should put her at ease, but for some reason, Ash did, so she knocked softly at the door.
Without glancing up from his novel, he turned a page and said, “Printessa, come in.”
Floor-to-ceiling windows revealed the first hints of grey light bleeding across the horizon, and for the first time since her arrival, the world beyond the glass looked almost peaceful.
She stood in the doorway, a moment longer than necessary, simply taking him in. He’d changed into dark jeans and a thermal shirt that clung to the lean muscle of his torso, but there was something softer about him in the quiet morning light. Less predatory.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked, still not looking up from his book.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Your scent.” He glanced up with a slight smile. “You smell like fear and flowers. It’s... distinctive.”
She moved into the room, trailing her fingers along leather-bound spines of ancient first editions that were probably worth more than most people’s cars. “What are you reading?”
He held up the book—thick, Russian text she couldn’t decipher. “Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment. Seemed appropriate given recent developments.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“Dark humor is how we cope in my family.” He set the book aside and patted the space beside him on the leather sofa. “Come here. You look like you’re about to shatter.”
She was. The events of the past few hours had left her feeling like glass stretched too thin. One more shock and she’d fragment completely. But something about Ash’s quiet presence drew her forward until she was curled against his side, breathing in his masculine scent.
“Tell me about the facility,” he said quietly.
The words hit her like a physical blow. “What?”
“You said they committed you for eighteen months. For trying to protect other girls from your brother.” His arm tightened around her shoulders. “Tell me what that was like.”
“Why?” She pulled back to look at him, searching his ice-blue eyes for some hint of his motivation. “So you can decide if I’m damaged enough to be trustworthy?”
“So I can understand what it cost you to be here. What it cost you to choose us over them.”
The gentleness in his voice almost undid her. When was the last time someone had asked about her pain without wanting to use it against her?
“It wasn’t a hospital,” she said finally. “Not really. Whitmore was private. Exclusive. They protect the secrets of their benefactors at all cost.”
“I assume your family is one of those benefactors.”
She nodded. “Wealthy families need places to send inconvenient relatives. I just never expected to be one.”
“Inconvenient how?”
“I ask too many questions. I see things I shouldn’t see and refuse to smile and stay quiet while others are getting hurt.”
“Yet you honored our convictions, even at the inconvenience of others.”
“Yes.” She cuddled closer to his chest, focusing on the steady beat of his heart beneath her palm. “Family image is everything to my father. He never loved me the way he loves Jordan.”
Ash waited patiently as she gathered her words.
“I tried to tell them I hadn’t done anything wrong and that Jordan was the dangerous one, but Jordan is a master manipulator and an even better liar. They said it was only for a while, but then the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months.” Pain engulfed her heart. “When my mother died, and they wouldn’t let me leave, I lost it.”
“How?”
“Screaming, fighting, basically threatening to burn the place down if they didn’t let me go to the funeral. I know Jordan talked our dad into keeping me away on purpose. He wanted to hurt me.”
“And he succeeded.”
“Yes.” She lowered her head, always questioning if she would have controlled her emotions if they might have let her attend the viewing. Closing her eyes, she let the endless regret seep through her.
“What happened after that?”