Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
I smile shakily.
“What is it?” he says, stroking the hair from my face, tingles dancing behind my ear and down my neck.
“I’m going to meet your sister and your niece,” I say. “It’s kind of a big step.”
As soon as I say this, I wish I could pull it back. I could tell him I was only joking. It isn’t a big step because this isn’t a relationship.
But his lips widen, and his eyes glint. My older man looks down at me with something like pride.
“It is,” he says. “But I’m ready.”
My smile doesn’t feel so shaky now.
“Go and get some rest, Felix. You can’t do this to yourself.”
“And you promise you’ll wake me up?” he asks.
“Of course.”
He steps away from me, his mouth tight as though it’s difficult for him. I know the feeling. Even with mom and Julie just down the hall, it’s hard not to pick up where we left off last night.
Maybe I would’ve even been able to go all the way, so caught up in the heat of it, the flurry of lust.
Gesturing at the screens, he says, “As you can see, there’s nobody out there. The second you see somebody – anybody, Freya, I don’t care if they look like they’re just hiking or walking their dog – you wake me up, okay?”
He looks at me sternly, the weight of his instructions clear.
It makes me think of the day I’ll be lying in a hospital bed, our first child in my arms, and Felix looking at me just like this.
With the weight of our future, of our life together.
I haven’t even asked him if he ever wants kids. Let alone a family with me, the woman he’s starting something with…not leaping both feet into a brand-new life.
“I will,” I tell him. “I promise.”
“I’ll be in the bedroom in the next room,” he says. “Come and get me the second anything changes.”
I nod, and he walks over to me, wrapping his arms around me again. It’s so easy to sink against his firm body and feel the security and protection.
“I’ll be just next door,” he says, kissing me on the cheek briefly.
At the door, he pauses, smirking over at me. “I can’t kiss you again, not properly. I’ll lose control. You have no idea how beautiful you are, Freya.”
An hour later, Julie sits beside me in the security room, her hands clawing onto her knees. Nothing has happened on the screens, leaving me to think about Julie's phone call last night.
My gaze moves to the corner screen, showing Mom sitting in the living room, staring at the TV without really watching it.
Julie and mom are finding this far more difficult than I am to adjust to.
Which makes sense, considering they haven’t got Felix bashing around their mind.
“Julie,” I say. “I think it’s time we talked about the phone call.”
She stares at me blankly, her blonde hair in disarray, her clothes from last night looking as dirty as the rest of ours. I need to ask Felix about fresh clothes at some point.
Julie nods slowly. “It might be easier if I just…explain.”
Her voice catches, but then she sets her lips in a determined way, reminding me of the Julie I knew before she lost her dad in a gas explosion.
“Dad’s death wasn’t an accident,” she says.
A gasp escapes me, so loud I wonder if I’ve woken Felix in the next room.
“I don’t understand,” I murmur.
“Mike, my ex, he wasn’t a computer programmer, Freya. He was…He is a criminal. I’m not sure what you’d call him exactly. He’s the leader of a gang.”
A profound sense of surrealism washes over me for what feels like the hundredth time.
Julie’s staring at me with complete seriousness…and something else too, almost like relief. She’s been waiting to tell me this, wanting to, I sense.
“What sort of gang?” I ask.
She swallows. “An effective one, I guess–an evil one. At first, I thought he was just some rich guy. But the more time we spent together, the more I learned about him. By the time I knew who he was, it was too late. He was threatening me…if I left, if I told anybody, he wasn’t a programmer….”
I reach over and touch her shoulder, squeezing it gently.
She places her hand atop mine, pushing down as if eager for the contact.
“One day, we got into a fight. I locked myself in his bedroom, where his safe was. I was so angry, Freya. He’d lied to me. He’d threatened me. He…he did other things too, things I’d rather not speak about.”
She doesn’t have to explain, not as her hand tightens on mine. I can imagine the horror she endured…and hid from me.
She had to hide it, or there would be more horror.
“During the argument, I opened the safe. I knew the code from watching him. I took out all his jewels and threw them out the window. Then I stormed out. Mike let me go, probably because he didn’t know what I’d done. But when he found out, he started calling me, demanding that I return them.”