Total pages in book: 767
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
I don’t excuse it, but I understand it, and pity battles with terror in my chest.
If Peter believes my husband was responsible for those deaths, he had no choice but to come after him. That much is obvious to me. Even before he went rogue, the Russian’s profession would’ve exposed him to the darkest parts of humanity, taught him to embrace violence as a solution—and that’s not even taking into account whatever it was that turned him into a killer before age twelve. A man like that wouldn’t turn the other cheek; an eye for an eye would be more his speed. He wouldn’t care how many innocents he hurt in his quest for vengeance, and he certainly wouldn’t blink at torturing an enemy’s wife to get to him.
If George had any involvement in what happened, I’m lucky to be alive.
Stopping in front of the glass shower stall, my captor releases my wrist, steps inside, and turns on the water. As he plays with the faucet, trying to find the right temperature setting, I glance at the bathroom door. He’s wet and distracted, so I’m almost certain I can make it down the stairs and to my car before he catches me. But then what? Do I drive naked to a random hotel and hope he doesn’t find me tonight? Run straight to the FBI and beg them to hide me?
Before I can start that internal debate again, Peter steps out of the shower, water droplets glistening on his powerful chest. “Come in,” he says, reaching for my arm, and I almost stumble as he pulls me into the stall.
“Careful,” he murmurs, steadying me, and I look up to find him watching me with a mix of hunger and dark amusement. “It’s slippery in here.”
At his innuendo, the flush that hasn’t quite left my face blazes back to life. I hate it that he knows about my body’s reaction to him—that just moments earlier, he caught me eyeing his erection like a teenage girl seeing her first porn. Granted, he could star in porn with a cock like that, but that’s not the point. It shouldn’t matter to me that he’s a gorgeous male animal; his powerful body is something for me to fear, not desire.
He’s a dangerous, possibly mad murderer, and I should regard him as such.
And I do—rationally, at least. However, as he angles the shower toward me, letting the warm water spray hit my back, I realize I’m not nearly as terrified as I was last night—though I should be, after seeing those pictures. If Peter believes what he’s told me, then he has every reason to hate me, and whatever attraction he feels toward me is likely of the toxic variety. I don’t know why he didn’t rape me last night, but I’m almost certain he’ll do it tonight. The thought should fill me with dread—and it does—yet the visceral panic I felt in that hotel room is absent. It’s as if sleeping in his arms desensitized me to the sheer wrongness of what he’s doing to me, to the violation that is his presence in my house and my shower.
For the second time in as many days, we’re naked together, and I don’t find it nearly as disturbing as I should.
“Close your eyes,” Peter says, picking up my shampoo bottle, and I obey, letting him pour the soapy liquid into my hair. Despite his earlier volatile mood, his strong fingers are gentle on my skull as he massages in the shampoo, and I realize he’s pampering me again, further disarming me with his bizarrely caring ministrations. I have an incongruous desire to arch my head back, butting against his hands like a cat demanding a petting, but I remain still, not wanting him to know that I enjoy any part of what he’s doing to me.
Whatever my tormentor’s game is, I refuse to play along.
My determination lasts until he begins massaging my neck, skillfully working out the knots at the base of my skull. I didn’t even realize how much tension I carried there until it melted away, the heat of the water combining with his touch to make me feel warm and relaxed in a way I haven’t experienced in a very long time.
I try to recall if George has ever washed my hair like this and draw a blank. I can’t even remember him showering with me outside of a couple of times early in our relationship, when we were still relatively adventurous in bed. By the time we’d been dating for a year, our sex life had become routine, and George rarely touched me in ways that couldn’t directly get me off—and toward the end, he rarely touched me, period.
Over the past couple of days, I’ve had more physical intimacy with my husband’s killer than with my husband during most of our marriage.