Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 108709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Kicking my feet up just outside the open window, I recline my seat and allow my eyelids to grow heavy. Sleep has been hard to come by, and the little that I have managed to get hasn’t been great. Though from what I understand from Stone, this isn’t his first rodeo. Mine either. Apparently, being wanted by law enforcement is somewhat of a cherished pastime and leaves me wondering what kind of mess I’d gotten myself into during my old life. This whole driving across the state at all hours of the day without a break thing is a comfort to him now. It’s just as familiar as the four walls of the cell he spent the last seven years in.
I relax with my eyes closed, feeling the subtle bumps of the uneven road beneath the car as my mind takes me anywhere but here.
These past few days have been pure insanity, and despite my fight-or-flight instincts kicking in, causing me to attempt to escape from that laundry room door, there’s a part of me that’s oddly enjoying this.
Being on the run with Stone has been the wildest fun I’ve ever had. At least in this lifetime, and I’m finding that I don’t want it to end. The idea of the cops closing in on us is starting to terrify me. Sure, he probably belongs behind bars. I’ve seen the way he slaughters men like cattle without even the hint of regret, but at the same time, there’s something so profoundly . . . good about him. Nobody has ever wanted to protect me the way he does so naturally. He doesn’t even need to think about it. It’s in his bones, woven into his DNA, and for whatever reason I can’t understand, I don’t want to let that go.
I haven’t changed my assessment of him. He’s still the most terrifying man I’ve ever come across on this big, green earth, yet I can’t help but want to know him. He’s a closed book, and learning anything about him has been like trying to search for a needle in a haystack. But I want to know it all. I need to know it.
There’s intense tension between us. I’ve never felt anything like it, but for whatever reason, I can’t help but need him. It’s as though my body has been starved for his touch for all these years, and the moment he’s close to me, that yearning and desire intensifies.
I need to touch him. Need to know how it feels to have his hands dancing across my skin, grabbing hold of my ass, and hauling me into his arms. I need to feel his lips on mine, on my neck, my chest, between my thighs. I need to be consumed by him.
My head lolls against the hard leather, and as a strange burning sets in around my wrists, I peel my eyes open into darkness. My heart immediately races, fear trickling in as a chill seeps into my bones.
What is this?
I peer through the darkness, trying to figure out where the hell I am, when I take in cold concrete walls and a boarded-up window high on the wall. There’s a set of rickety wooden stairs leading up to a closed door and a worn washer and dryer shoved against the concrete.
Am I in a basement? Where has Stone brought me? Is this it? Has he drugged me? Brought me here to end my life just as he promised?
I try to sit up, but something pulls at my burning wrists, and my gaze snaps down, realizing I’m on a thin, dirty mattress on the ground, my hands bound by rope behind my back. There are blood stains on the mattress as though I’m not the first girl who’s been bound here.
What the hell is going on?
Panic pulses through me, my chest heaving with deep breaths, and tears fill my eyes. “Stone?” I call out, but nothing comes. Where is he? Why am I here? “STONE?”
My head throbs as though I’ve been hit and knocked out, and just as I try to pull myself up to my knees, the door at the top of the stairs opens.
The slow creak is heavy in the silence, sending a wave of unease pulsing through me. A beam of light shines down into the basement, illuminating a man’s silhouette. There’s no denying how big he is. Not Stone big, but still big. He must be at least six-four, tall enough to have to bend through the doorway.
He reaches up and pulls a string, flooding the basement with a dull, yellow light. The single bulb in the ceiling flickers as the shadows covering the man disappear, and a familiar set of eyes stares back at me. For just a moment, I foolishly believe I’ve been saved. But this man staring at me, he no longer holds the eyes of the boy I’ve grown up with and loved all my life . . . These eyes, they’re different now.