Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 114936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
I know this is something worse than that or Eli wouldn’t have gone through great lengths to keep me away from them. Patience was bad, but we buried them months ago.
This is something entirely different, and to crack it open, I need them. I need them to know everything. The guilty secrets you carry are always held in the dark clouds that hover over you while you keep them. This is me popping that cloud.
I push the PH and swipe my card. The space in the elevator is already small without Keaton, Ky, and Killian’s big ass bodies filling it, and that’s not including the energy that surrounds them all. I lean over to take a look at Lilith, but she’s curled under Kyrin.
The corner of my mouth curves in a small smile, not enough to be obvious, but enough to release my heart from the happiness it’s holding. I never thought I’d see my brother happy, much less happy with two people. I need to get Eli back.
The doors ping and open right into the room I’m staying in. I don’t care enough to really look at everything right now, so I take the three steps down into the entrance room and quickly find the kitchen that’s curved around the corner and adjacent to the sitting room with large blue, red, and yellow stained-glass windows. The furniture looks basic, and it isn’t long before Jordan and Christopher are rounding the corner of one of the bedrooms.
I nod at them reassuringly, as if to say that I’m okay, though I’m not sure I am.
“Um… meet me over there—” I point to the lounge and watch as everyone shuffles through, Killian on his phone and Lilith remaining silent beneath Kyrin.
Keaton stays behind in the kitchen, watching as I open the fridge and pull out a bottle of wine. I don’t like wine, but this will do.
I take down two goblet glasses that look far too big for white wine, and pour them to the rim before scooping them up and carrying them to the lounge, setting one on top of the coffee table in front of Lilith, and placing the other on my lap once I’ve lowered to the two-seater.
Keaton stays in the kitchen, but I can feel his gaze all over me like an inferno of fire ripping rapidly through a forest.
I slowly raise the glass to my mouth and take one large gulp. And then another. And another until I feel the warmth from the wine mix with the one Keaton is leaving behind with his obvious staring.
“Eli is alive, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all that I knew.” I squeeze the stem of the wineglass, sheepishly following the trail up until I’m met with Lilith’s purple gaze. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
Lilith leans forward to grab her wine, following my steps and taking a few gulps before placing it onto the coffee table again. “I’m not upset with you about that, Cartier, so long as you tell me why you kept it from us.” Us? My eyes swing to Kyrin, then back to Keaton, and to Kill who is launching up from the sofa and making his way to the entrance again, no doubt to meet King. Christopher follows Kill, slowly rounding my sofa as if to stand directly behind me as Jordan moves to the kitchen bar.
“Hold up!” Keaton breaks the tense silence. He points to Jordan and Christopher. “You two motherfuckers think we’re going to hurt her?”
Christopher is the first to speak. “Every person is a threat to her. That is simply how it is.”
Keaton pushes off the fridge he was leaning on, taking big strides toward Christopher, but I launch up from the sofa, stopping him with my hand on his chest.
“No!” His chest is hard and warm, and even though I’m staring straight at his pecs, I know that all it would take would be me to tilt my head upward to see the storm in his eyes. “That is what they are trained for, Keaton. Leave my men alone.”
Keaton snarls, and I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who hears the growl in his voice. “You’ll pay for that.” His words are for me, and the same game of cat and mouse prickles over my skin. The fear, the pleasure, and everything else in-between. He backs up slowly, retreating the same way he came.
“Tell me more, Cartier. Ignore Keaton and his dick riding competition,” Lilith interrupts. As she should.
After lowering myself back onto the sofa, I swallow yet another swig of the wine, sighing once it’s lowered my heart rate.
“All I know is that when he was babysitting me all those years ago, Dominic Stranger broke into my apartment in the city. At the time, I thought they came for Eli since we were followed earlier that day while we were out riding in his car—”