“Bree has nothing to do with any of this, Kade.  She could stay here with him.  Hell, I want her too.”

“You can’t leave me.”

“Kade, please.”

“I’m not letting you leave me.  You don’t want to either.”

“Can you stop doing that crap?  Just get out of my head and stay out. There’s so much chaos in there, you might get hurt.”

I swept the hair away from her neck, tucking it behind her ear and the pulse in her throat came into view, pounding fast under her skin.  “It’s because you’re screaming your thoughts at me.  And just so you fucking know, you WILL tell me who Samantha Matthews is and why my brother almost lost his life for her,” I exploded.

That shut her up.  Backing up, I walked out of the bathroom.

I shut the door quietly behind me, giving her the privacy that she deserved, even though all I wanted was to sink inside of her and forget about what happened in the last twenty-four hours.  I left her there for my bitter curiosity too, I won’t lie, because now I had a name to search, Samantha Matthews from New York City.

I sat at my desk and powered up my laptop, just as small pellets of icy rain began their assault at my window.

Chapter 11

Kade Grayson was the most unbearable, arrogant and demanding man, I’d ever met.  What was worse is that he was the only man ever to be able to get me really worked up, and I was like a damn piece of putty in his hands.

From right outside the bathroom windows, a loud roar of rain began crashing against the glass.  Within seconds, the even louder roar of my own blood rushing through my ears drowned it out, as I thought about my options.  I needed to get away from here.  I needed to keep them safe.  I had clamped my mouth shut when he told me I couldn’t leave his sight, and tried my best to throw him a hard glare, but I was absolutely positive with the state of my bloody attire and my matted hair, I didn’t look too fierce.

As the tub filled with steamy water and bubbles, the faint smell of cinnamon and apples drifted through the room.

That man bought the soap I used?  Opening the large linen closet, I found a bottle of the body spray too.  If it weren’t the most heartwarming thing I’d ever felt, I’d think it was a little creepy.  But, no I didn’t find it creepy at all.  Nope.  I found it gave me a warm tingling feeling all over my body.  I.  Needed.  An.  Intervention.

Stepping back from the closet, I looked around the bathroom and found myself wondering if anybody ever actually used it.  It was too clean, immaculate, and sterile; I loved it.  Everything in the closet was in a perfect little neat row, labels facing forward, each item in size order and even the towels were all folded to the same thickness.  A perfect textbook example of compulsive behaviors of a control freak who was trying to create order in their chaotic life.  It was as if I’d found my OCD-soul mate.

Stripping off my bloodied clothes and stepping into the warm water, I scrubbed my skin of blood, then immediately emptied the tub, refilled it with clean water and laid back into its warmth. Groaning out loud, I covered my face with my hands.  I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t think past the fact that Dylan got shot because of me and that everyone saw me save him.  Kade knows I’m not a waitress now and as soon as I step foot out of this bathroom, the questions are going to come flying at me like mortar fire.

The door suddenly swung open, making me gasp, and Kade’s menacing presence filled up the doorway, half freaking naked.  Oh, it gets better.  Wait for it.

Wait for it…

Then he dove right into the tub.

He splashed through the bubbles and water in nothing but a pair of black slacks.  My stomach fluttered, and my hands curled into tight fists as the splashes of the water hit me.  Water and suds spilled over the lip of the tub, splatting and sloshing all over the tiles in loud wet thwacks.  “Grayson, you are seriously crossing the line of my bathroom boundaries here.  I’m…I’m not dressed!”

Grey eyes registering my state, scanned across the bubbles that I was trying desperately to hide under.  But with the savage way he dove in, there wasn’t much left to conceal myself with, and I saw his eyes widen and hunger took over reason.  Slowly, a flush of heat crept across my naked chest, up my bare throat and onto my cheeks.  My God, if I could bottle the way that man looked at me, I’d never feel unattractive again.  It was an indulgent feeling, one I wanted to keep, sip at it, swirl it around my tongue for a while, and then swallow.  Any sense of guilt or shame, fear or insecurity was absent, and all I felt was beautiful, as if I could stand up before him and be viewed as a priceless, one of a kind sculpture, perfect and unbreakable.

The way he looked at me made me forget the things I was upset over.  Whatever they were that I was just thinking about.

The sight of him was gloriously perfect, how…how to describe what this man looked like?  The muscles of his entire torso were clearly defined and they rippled as he moved towards me.  His shoulders, thick and solid, his arms tight and sinewy, he was the perfect specimen of a male and I simply couldn’t take my eyes from him.

“It was my turn to use Google,” he whispered hoarsely, his wet hands reached my chin, lifting it to him.

“Did you know that there’s a missing person’s report on two women from New York City?  One’s name is Jennifer Coswell, and the other is Samantha Matthews.  Jennifer is a nurse at New York-Presbyterian University Hospital and Samantha, well Samantha Matthews is the fucking head trauma surgeon there,” his nostrils flared.  “And they’re both wanted for questioning in some sort of suspicious circumstances.”

I tried to pull away, but he savagely grabbed the back of my neck and held me there; his cold grey eyes frozen, waiting for answers.  I couldn’t find the right ones.  I couldn’t find the words that would tell him…anything.  I just wanted to run, run so he wouldn’t know me, the real me.  “Well, I hope those two woman are okay.  Because, sometimes I hear stories like that and wonder, maybe, if certain women are better off missing than being found.  But I wouldn’t know anything about them, because I’m Lainey Nevaeh, and I’ve never been anything but a waitress.”

“If you keep piling more bullshit on your story, you’re going to get buried in it.  You have some sort of dark fucking secret that you think you can’t tell me, and I want to know. I want to know you.”  Leaning in, his rough, unshaven chin scraped harshly against mine, “I want to know you.”  Wet lips slid over mine, and the hands that held me down tangled themselves tightly through the wet strands of my hair, tugging my face closer to his.

My eyes fluttered closed with the pull, and there was nothing in the room, nothing in the world, but his mouth on mine, and the sounds of the lapping water against the porcelain tub.  Pressing the warm tip of his tongue across my lips, he parted them, dipping in, persuading me to give in, to lay me bare, know my secrets.  “Let me in, Lainey.”

Wet fingers slid down my neck as I leaned back to look at him. “Something dark haunts us all.  What darkness haunts you at night, Kade?  What do you squeeze your eyes closed to when the darkness bites against your back when you’re alone at night?  Because I was married to mine. I was daughter to mine, and I refused to look into the mirror and see it make me as dark as them, so I walked away from it all.”

Reaching my hands up, I pulled a white towel that hung from a small brushed-nickel hook on the wall.  As Kade thudded his head back against the corner of the tub, his eyes fluttered closed and I stood, wrapping the towel tightly around me.