Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 122074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
“I’d like a coffee.”
She kept talking. I could do a burrito, pancakes, a croissant, or an omelet. There were other options, but I didn’t want any of them. I pressed the button again, but she kept speaking.
I should really—my staff! The robber. The rest of last night (was it last night?) was coming back to me, and now a little panic was setting in.
I finished up in the bathroom, then looked around for my clothes. They were folded and set in a pile on a couch in the corner of the room. I lifted one and took a good whiff. I loved the smell of fresh laundry, but who had done all of this?
After changing clothes, I left my pajamas on the bed, half considering trying to take them with me because they were the softest material I’d ever had on my body. I left the room and saw I was in a back hallway, and as I moved down, lights lit up ahead of me on both sides.
Soft music played ahead, so I followed, coming across a giant dining room with floor-to-ceiling glass walls. At least I knew where I was now: in a high-rise in Manhattan, and we were seriously high up. The Hudson River below was right next to us.
There was a giant waterfall island. All the cupboards looked sleek, like something that I would’ve imagined being on a spaceship. There was a room on the other side of the kitchen and a second sitting area, so I went over, coming to an opened doorway, and through what looked like a library was another door.
I followed, finally seeing whose place I was in. I was floored.
Absolutely.
Truly.
Gutted.
Sitting behind a large mahogany desk was Ashton Walden.
The fuzzies started.
That’s what I felt when I was around him. My body always did a whole swoop, feeling like I stepped into my own vortex, because he had the ability to make me want to lose myself, to flip my switch, and make me want to throw him down on the nearest bed. Plus, he always looked at me like he half wanted to fuck me or half wanted to strangle me. It’d been like that since as long as I’d known him, and it had only intensified over the last six months once he’d come back into my life.
He was the new head of the Walden Mafia family. The head. Not a head. The head honcho over it all. I was rambling in my head because I was freaking out that I was in Ashton’s home. Power, control, danger. Those three words clung to him, walked with him wherever he went, and I’d seen him walk.
I’d seen him do a lot over the years. I was aware of him growing up, every time I saw him with Trace or their other rich friends. How everyone knew not to mess with them, and if they did, it was never Trace who handled their enemies.
It was Ashton. Always.
He got a reputation because of it. No one messed with Ashton. I think the only person who wasn’t aware of how truly deadly he could be was his actual best friend, Trace West. Though, none of that mattered now since both were the heads of their families, and I was breaking out in a cold sweat because how the hell had I gotten myself here?
Sensing me, he lifted heated eyes my way, but they switched to the cold and dead eyes I always associated with him.
Dead. Cruel. Ruthless.
I suppressed a shiver and tried not to take in his cold beauty, but dammit. I couldn’t stop.
“What am I doing here?” My voice was hoarse, coming out raspy.
Ashton didn’t respond, instead taking his time as he studied me. Another cold flicker of emotion passed in his gaze before he stamped that out and stood, coming around his desk toward me. A predator stalking his prey.
I always had that feeling when he was around me, but this time it was the worst it’d ever been. I was in his home. Not the giant house his family ran their business out of, but his personal home.
Ashton and me. He didn’t think I remembered him, but I did.
I remembered the day we’d met when we were kids, though I didn’t remember a whole lot about that day. It was fuzzy, another reason I got the fuzzies around him. There was a whole theme going on. I had some gaps in my memory about that, but him, I remembered. Even back then, he was cute and striking and I’d liked him, immediately.
Liked him—that wasn’t the right word for what I felt that day, but I’d been a kid.
He was angry and cold now, and I guess not much had changed.
He’d come into Easter Lanes one night, looking for Jess, and I’d never forget that night. How he looked like he wanted to murder her, and how I had been reaching for my bat under the counter before Jess went with him. She reassured me everything was okay, but I knew it wasn’t.