Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 84635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
His head hung at an awkward angle, one arm dangling loose over the armrest, fingers slack.
I pressed my hand to his jaw. Still warm. That meant nothing and everything at the same time. My fingers slid to his neck, searching beneath his ear for a pulse, but my own heartbeat drowned out everything else.
“Pierce.” His name came out splintered. I gripped the front of his shirt and pulled myself closer, my forehead dropping against his chest. I held still there, listening for the faintest beat of life.
This was the man who framed me for murder. Who locked me in a cage and called it protection. I should have walked out of this room and never looked back. With his death, I’d be free.
But my hands wouldn’t let go of his shirt.
“Please,” I whispered into the fabric. “Please don’t leave me here alone.”
What gripped me had nothing to do with prison or survival or what happened next. It was the raw, gutting truth I hadn’t been ready to face: he’d gotten so deep under my skin that losing him would make me bleed.
My fingers cramped from how hard I was holding on.
“Why would you miss me?” he asked, sitting up and cracking his neck from side to side.
“What?” I scrambled back, swiping the tears off my face with the heel of my hand. “Why were you lying like that? You weren’t moving or breathing…and that horrible woman said…I thought—”
“You thought what, babygirl?” He stood and reached out his hand for me to take.
I ignored it and tried to rise on my own.
He was having none of it. Bending low, he wrapped his hands beneath my arms and lifted me to my feet, keeping me within the circle of his arms.
Tompkins stepped into the room. He looked at Pierce, then at me, then back at Pierce. He stood there a half second too long before he cleared his throat and said, “Forgive the interruption, sir. I thought something was amiss.”
“There is nothing wrong, Elijah.”
My brow furrowed. “But Pierce, you just—”
His grip around me tightened in warning as he kept his gaze on his butler. “Please leave us and shut the door behind you.”
Tompkins backed out of the room without saying another word.
“Why wouldn’t you tell him? He needs to get a doctor…and the police.”
“I’m fine. And trust me, he’ll do his part.”
Despite my curiosity over the snooty butler, I had a far more pressing question to ask. “That woman who was in here—who was she?”
“Her name is Skylar,” he said as he led me across the room to a soft leather chair. After sitting, he pulled me down onto his lap.
I was in too much shock to object. I pivoted on his lap to point to the door and the hallway beyond as if the woman would reappear and attest to what I’d witnessed. “She said you asked her to marry you, that she turned you down, that she thought you were going to do something…drastic.”
“Is that what that snake told you?” He brushed a lock of hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear. “And how did that make you feel, babygirl?”
I continued to stare at the empty doorway, then my gaze swept across the room to the chair where I’d found him slumped over, as if walking through the events of the last few moments would help my mind catch up. “What?”
“Did you feel jealous that she told you I asked her to marry me, or were you worried about my safety?”
“I—” My nails bit into my palms. I wanted to claw that woman’s eyes out, but Pierce didn’t need another weapon to use against me.
I tried to rise off his lap, but he stopped me, putting his hand over my thigh and squeezing. A not-so-subtle warning. Pinching my lips, I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “If you must know…I was worried that if you died, I’d go to prison for killing two Worthington men.”
“You are a terrible liar, babygirl.”
I’d give anything to not have let that laugh settle somewhere behind my ribs, in a place I couldn’t reach to pull it out. Why? Why him? Granted there had been precious few men in my life but why him? Who had I pissed off in a former life that the universe would make me fall in love with the man who had tormented both my nights and my waking moments?
“Who was she?” I shifted on his lap, putting as much distance as he would allow between us.
“She was my fiancée until a few years ago, when she slept with one of my best friends. She did me a favor.” His hand drifted toward my cheek, but I pulled back. “Especially now.”
“Why were you slumped over in the chair like that? I thought you were dead.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“That is what I wanted you to think.”