Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 58747 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 235(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58747 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 235(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Finally I push through the door at the bottom of the stairwell and—
It’s pitch black.
I gasp and stumble back, making sure the door doesn’t close behind me. The last thing I need is for the door to shut and lock behind me and leave me down here lost in the dark.
But I catch the door and when I fumble along the wall, I easily find a light switch. Oh thank goodness.
My thumping heart slows down but then I step forward, curious.
It’s a…gym.
Okay, not what I was expecting. But it helps explain the hulking muscles of my captor. Captor? Really? Can you still call him that after last night? You were the one begging.
Heat flares in my cheeks. Nope. Not thinking about that right now. Maybe not ever.
I walk closer to the weight bench and run my hand along the smooth, worn leather and then the stand of neatly stacked weights. There’s also a treadmill, a stationary bike, and a rowing machine. Well, good to know I can still keep up my cardio if the Beast will let me borrow his toys.
I cross the stone floor to the door at the other end of the room. The lights from the gym spill into a dark hallway. I flip another switch and a light flickers lazily on overhead, just one for the entire hallway. It’s the basement, so there aren’t any windows here to help relieve the unrelenting darkness.
I should turn back. I’m not seeing any kitchen. And it’s damp and cold down here. I can’t feel my toes anymore. I should’ve just waited in my room. It’s not like the Beast is going to starve me. He was probably about to bring me breakfast.
Then I scoff at my thoughts. Since when do I wait around for people to take care of me? I’m Dr. Daphne Laurel. I see problems and I fix them. My litany of failed experiments flash through my mind. Well, I try to fix them anyway. I will fix them, in the end. Starting with finding myself some freaking breakfast.
I straighten my shoulders and start down the hall. I stop at the first door I come to, doubting it’s the kitchen but determined to check every one anyway. Learning more about my surroundings can only be a good thing.
I flip on the light and laugh. Seriously?
A bowling alley?
Okay, it’s just one lane, but still, it looks regulation length, and there are pins set up in formation at the end and everything. I look around. Like, surely, this has gotta be some sort of joke.
But nope. The Beast loves…bowling? Or maybe it came with the place? Unlike the stairwell, though, there’s no layer of dust here, and I walk over the smooth, polished wood floor to the stand of bowling balls. There are various weights on the balls, but all of them have huge finger holes. I slip my slim fingers inside them and they’re engulfed. I yank my hands back. These are definitely the Beast’s balls. Of course they’re twice the average size. Snicker.
I step back and turn off the light, closing the door as quietly as I can behind me. I don’t know why it feels like peeking in these two rooms; it seems like I’m seeing into an intimate part of the Beast’s life. Parts he doesn’t share with anyone else. Things maybe no one else in the world knows about him.
I back away from the door. But I don’t turn and go back upstairs to my room. I head further down the hallway. I’m hungry for more. All I have are such incomplete pieces to the puzzle that is the man that’s suddenly taken over my life. It’s just a survival instinct. That’s all.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
I bite my lip and glance into the next few rooms. Nothing but storage. Okay, so maybe there’s nothing else to find anyway. It’s just a basement after all. I’m surprised by a flash of disappointment.
When I come to the end of the hallway, I flip another light and gasp. It opens to an arched stone vestibule that’s frankly fucking stunning. I step in, my eyes on the intricate corbels and vaulted ceiling so that it takes me a moment to take in what the room is being used for.
But finally my eyes drop back down to the huge open room…and all the very familiar equipment carefully set out on a neat array of lab tables.
Computers hum at several stations. There’s a lab-grade DNA sequencer off to the left, set up incongruously beside a gothic stone column. My feet take me towards one of several electron microscopes and my inner lab geek takes over. I pull on lab gloves from a box underneath the table and then sit down at the little stool in front of one of the machines. I grab a slide from a set labeled ‘specimens’ and put it underneath the microscope.