Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
He grinned and tossed the painting carelessly onto the bed. Then he advanced on me, the lust flaring in his eyes. “You know what I’d like to take right now?”
I swallowed, my face heating. “I can’t—That’s not—”
He walked right up to me, his hands went to the front of my coat, and before I could protest, the top button was undone. He stopped and watched to see what I would do.
I looked up at him, my breath trembling. But I didn’t say stop.
He deftly slipped another button open. Then another and another. My head went swimmy. We were in someone’s mansion: I didn’t do things like this. But I couldn’t control the heat that throbbed up through my body, faster and faster with each button that opened.
He popped the last button. Then, with just two fingers, he hooked the coat up over my shoulders and it slithered down my arms and fell to the floor behind me.
I stared up at him. He stared down at me.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” he told me.
“A new what?”
He grabbed the neck of my white blouse with both hands and ripped it open, threads tearing and buttons flying. I drew in a shuddering breath and looked down at myself, then up at him. He was gazing down at my heaving breasts in their simple white bra, his eyes narrowed in lust. Then his eyes met mine and the heat pulsing through my body doubled, trebled, turning to slick moisture as it reached my groin.
He leaned forward and hung the stolen necklace around my neck, the gold cool against my heated skin. “It matches your eyes,” he told me.
I had no words. I needed to tell him that I shouldn’t, I mustn’t, I couldn’t, that I was the sort of person who would still stop at a stop sign even when I could see for ten miles in all directions.
But I didn’t.
Because part of me didn’t want to be that person anymore.
Then his lips came down on mine, claiming me, spreading me and damn well ravishing me. His hands slid through my hair, pulling the clips free and sending it spilling down into a swishing curtain. My knees weakened and I grabbed his shoulders for support.
He broke the kiss for a second and I felt his whispered words on my aching lips. “I’m going to make you come so hard you see stars.”
He grabbed me around the waist and tossed me like a doll onto the bed. I bounced to a stop next to the painting. He was on me immediately, kissing my throat, my collarbone—
A shout from downstairs. With a strangled gasp, I sat upright, pushing him away. The owners were back! My eyes went to the painting, the necklace around my neck—
“It’s okay,” Gabriel told me, his lips twisting into a grin. “We’ll talk our way out of this. We just need to find you a maid’s uniform.” His eyes went molten at the thought and he leaned in and stole a kiss.
Another shout, closer. Then the daylight outside the window flared, becoming painfully bright. The walls, then the bed, disintegrated as the light hit them.
No! No, no, I want to stay! I grabbed for Gabriel but he was already disappearing, his grin fading last of all.
I groaned, feeling the breeze on my face and the hard-packed dirt under my body. I opened my eyes to see Dr. Guzman sitting against the bars of the cage, his eyes full of sympathy.
The brief escape of sleep was over and I was back in reality, thousands of miles from everything and everyone I’d ever known, held by men who’d shoot me without a second thought if I became a problem.
It had been five days since we were kidnapped. We’d spent that entire time in a bamboo cage, eight foot by eight foot, living on the scraps of food they brought us. The days were sweltering, and we spent them huddled in the one corner of the cage that was in the shade. I was lucky that I’d had a bottle of sunscreen with me, when we’d been captured, or I’d have been fried by now. The nights were barely any cooler and the jungle pressed in tightly on all sides of the camp, blocking any breeze. I couldn’t even see the sky, and for someone like me who’d spent her whole life under the big skies of Arizona, that was unsettling and claustrophobic.
At my lowest points, I closed my eyes and remembered the feeling of being pressed against Gabriel’s chest, shielded from everything the world could throw at me. I knew it was crazy. Who dreams of being protected by a criminal? But that memory kept me going.
Each day, it got harder. I felt the fear and despair welling up inside me, threatening to spill over. Did anyone know where I was? Did anyone back home even know we were missing?