Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Otto tossed me a wide-eyed who do we have to kill as he pushed to his feet, and I just sent him a look that promised we’d talk later as I pulled the girl from the ground and stood with her in my arms.
Charleigh felt too fucking light where she was pressed to my chest, her flesh burning into mine, though there was still something about her that made me feel like I bore the weight of the world as I swiveled on my heel and carried her through the lobby and down the hall that led to my office in the back.
She was quivering. Quivering so hard that each tremor rocked through me, and she gulped over these little sobs that she couldn’t quite fully emit.
Each bottled and suppressed.
“I’ve got you, Charleigh. Shh, I’ve got you.” I tried to soothe her as I moved, my boots thudding hard against the floor. “I’ve got you.”
She needed to understand that as long as she was with me, she wasn’t in danger.
I’d raze anything or anyone who dared to get close to her.
At my words, she only choked and cried harder, like my voice had been the hammer that had finally made all her fractured pieces crack.
Or maybe she was just letting go.
“I’ve got you,” I promised again, muttering the truth against the crown of her head where she was tucked tight against me.
I angled to the side so I could get to the handle of the office door. I pushed it open and kicked it shut behind us to give her privacy.
I carried her over to my desk. The top was littered with papers, different sketches that I’d been working on, random ideas and notes and thoughts, and I swept them aside with my forearm before I carefully set her on the edge of it.
I didn’t step back. I stayed close, an arm around her waist and the other up high on her back.
Refusing to let her go.
Couldn’t have if I tried.
Not when I felt this overpowering need to hold her forever.
Keep her close.
From here to eternity.
And I had no fuckin’ clue how she could make this mark on me, like she was the one who’d forever etched her soul somewhere on mine rather than the other way around.
I ran my hand from the back of her head and down her back.
At the contact, electricity crackled.
“Breathe, Charleigh. Just breathe. That’s all you’ve got to do. Nothing else matters. Just breathe.” I forced it out through the chaos that raged in the middle of me.
She hiccupped and wheezed, and I kept caressing down her back.
Softly.
Slowly.
Praying the placid strokes of my hand and the tranquil tone I was trying to coerce my voice into would cut through the anxiety attack that had gripped her.
“That’s right, just breathe. You’ve got this. You’ve got this.”
She finally inhaled deeply, fully inflating her lungs, and that was enough to have me shifting a little farther back so I could take her by the chin.
I gently prodded her to look up at me.
Though rather than letting me see, she threw her hands over her face.
Obstructing the beauty.
“You don’t have to hide from me, Charleigh. I already see you.”
She stayed that way for the longest moment, soft cries still getting loose, before she finally allowed me to pry her hands away.
The sight of her this way punched me in the gut. Gorgeous face stained with tears, cheeks red and chapped, cinnamon-flecked eyes swollen with desperation.
Another wave of protectiveness slammed me, limbs shaking with the violence I wanted to enact.
But I tucked it down, saving it for the motherfucker who I was going to hunt. The one I was going to end. And when I found him? I was going to do it slow. “Look at me, Charleigh. Look at me and know.”
She tipped her face fully toward me, those eyes doing wild, wild things, crashing between old fears and the trust she’d given me.
“Tell me what you saw.”
Her jaw trembled, and I brushed away the tear that streamed down her cheek with the pad of my thumb. “I…I thought someone was following me after I left work.”
Aggression churned, but I forced myself to keep it cool. To show her I could be her rock. That she’d come to the right place.
“Who?”
Her head barely shook. “I never got a good look at him. I just…felt it. This…” Her eyes squeezed closed for a beat, and I knew exactly what she’d felt.
The same evil I’d scented in the air out on the sidewalk.
“I thought I was only being paranoid because that’s something I do. I get paranoid and I run, even though I don’t have any proof that anyone is even after me. But I just get this sense…”
Charleigh pressed the tips of all the fingers of her right hand to the center of her chest. “I get this sense right here that someone is watching me. And today when I did, I swore I saw someone duck behind one of the medical plaza buildings. I kept going, and when I looked behind me again, the same person was following me in the distance.”