Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
I stole another peek.
My spirit twisted.
I supposed it had. The proof was in the wealth and the arrogance.
Greed and power his only friends.
It’s what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? To prove something? Have it all? No caution to what it would destroy when he did.
The game he’d played last night confirmed he’d become the man I’d worried he would all along. Those sorts of tables were as crooked as they came. Illegal. Dangerous. The highest stakes cast because the men who sat at them got off on the risk.
If I were the one making bets, Jarek had at least one thing right—Logan had most likely stacked that game. He’d never exactly played fair, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.
His mind was too sharp. Quick to add and calculate. He’d arrived at a sum before anyone else had the time to process the cards they’d been dealt.
Flashes of memories flooded my brain, the way he’d yank me into a deserted room.
“What are you doing?” My breaths were short, and my pulse sped.
His hands were in my hair. “I need to kiss you.”
“Someone will see us.”
“Don’t worry, they’re distracted.”
I clutched his shirt. “What did you do?”
Green eyes gazed down at me. “I fell in love with you.”
His mouth crushed against mine.
Sheer obliteration.
I clung tight to him like I might not ever have to let him go.
“None of it matters. None of it but you,” he murmured against my lips.
“Then take me away from here.”
His hold tightened on my face. “One day, Aster. One day.”
I was shocked out of the memory when the calloused word broke through the daze.
“Don’t.”
His big hands flexed on the wheel, both wrapped around the leather as if it were the only way to keep them tamed.
“Don’t what?” I fumbled and blinked.
He shot me a glare. “Don’t look at me like you have the right to know. Like you have the right to look inside me.”
Tears burned my eyes.
“Are you happy?” God, I had to be a masochist. Why would I ask him that? Give him the pain that was woven in the question?
He laughed out the darkest sound. “I have everything I need, Aster.”
Sorrow pinched my face, the sword he’d swung meant to kill. Still, I gave him more of my truth. “That makes me glad.”
He scoffed. “Don’t sit there and pretend like you care.”
I did. I did.
Way too much.
We whizzed by the sign that said the airport was a mile away, and I looked at my fingers that were clenched on my lap, dread coming up as quickly as our destination. “What are you going to do now?”
Speculation tightened his expression. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Please, let it go, Logan. Jarek isn’t the same person he was then.”
I hated that it came out an appeal, the words a thin plea, but this might be my only chance.
“He was an arrogant prick who underneath was nothing but a pussy. Doesn’t seem to me like much has changed.”
Except for his title.
His power.
The fact that Jarek had never let go of what Logan had done that night.
If there was one person Jarek wanted to destroy, it was Logan Lawson.
I was terrified it might already be too late now that Jarek had discovered where Logan was.
My head spun with worry as Logan came up quick on the small airport. My breaths shallowed out, alarm filling me like the swilling of a coming storm.
He skidded to a stop at the curb. I sat there in the silence for a moment, trying to formulate what to say. How to make this right. I had so little. I squeezed the door handle. “Please…just…be careful.”
“Not my style.”
I looked at him. “Please.”
Disturbed confusion knitted his brow. As if part of him wanted to trust me and the other wanted to kick me from his car. “Maybe it’s time someone stopped giving him a pass.”
With a lump in my throat, I pushed open the door and started to stand, but I paused halfway out. I peered at the man as if I might be able to claw my way through the debris and make it back to him. “I knew you once.”
Sadness flashed through his expression. “Yeah. I thought I knew you, too.”
Then it was gone, and he was grinding his teeth as he faced forward in clear dismissal.
I climbed the rest of the way to the sidewalk, hesitating for a second before I let the door shut between us. It’d barely clicked before he was peeling out from the curb and roaring away, the tail of his black Maserati fishtailing before he disappeared in the distance.
I watched him go.
It was like the cutting of a fresh wound.
This agony a blister that would never heal.
The bet had only exacerbated it. Left it raw and throbbing.
When the sound of the engine finally faded, I forced myself to turn and walk through the automatic doors that led into the airport. Fighting the dread, I headed toward the wing that housed the private hangars at the far-left side of the building.