Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 27597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 138(@200wpm)___ 110(@250wpm)___ 92(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 138(@200wpm)___ 110(@250wpm)___ 92(@300wpm)
She starts to respond, but checks herself, pressing her lush lips in a line as a woman trundles past with a baby tucked into the front of her shopping cart. “This isn’t really grocery store conversation.”
“No, it’s not.” I’m careful to keep an appropriate distance from her when I say the next part, because it could easily be interpreted as a come on. I tell myself it isn’t one, though my body’s reaction to her calls me a liar. “We could have it in my office, instead.”
Before I can stop myself, remind myself that I’m a strict professional for a reason, the moving image is there. Me fucking this fiercely beautiful woman face down over my desk, her hair loose and wrapped around my fist, her ass cheeks plumping, plumping, plumping against my stomach, her fingernails digging lines into wood, both of us moaning.
“Oh, could we?” she laughs, sarcastically, reaching for the jar once again.
“I’m a therapist.”
That gives her brief pause. Brief being the operative word. “Your profession doesn’t preclude you from being a creep.” Almost reluctantly, she drags her gaze along the breadth of my shoulders. “You don’t look like a therapist.”
It’s an even steeper struggle not to step closer to her after that. She’s noticed my body. Analyzed and considered it. “What does a therapist look like?”
“Pale. Bored. Like they sit in an office all day.”
I wrestle back a surge of amusement. “And what do I look like…?”
“Ashley,” she murmurs, seeming surprised at herself for revealing her name. A name I already know I will never forget. “I don’t know, um…” She seems to hate…and enjoy looking at me. In equal measure. Interesting. “A secret service agent, maybe.”
Clever girl. “In my past life, I was something similar.”
Ashley looks so deeply inside of me, I feel an alarming shift. A rock formation loosening, preparing to cause a landslide. “How many lives have you led?”
“Too many,” I mutter, breaking my rule. Allowing information about myself to enter the conversation. Technically, we’re not in the middle of a session, but she’s disarmed me enough to forget where my barriers lie. Ten feet high. Impenetrable. The patient is the focus, not me. Never me. There is too much to dissect there.
I left my job as a homicide detective and became a therapist out of an urgent need to understand what makes a person hurt others. Emotionally and physically. How someone capable of violence hides in plain sight, the way my partner on the force did. My affable, goofy partner who didn’t come to work on day, because he’d been arrested for killing his wife. The human brain became a fascinating and scary place to me that dark day, perhaps because behavioral science is easier to understand than grief. Rage.
A man appears to the right of Ashley…
…and grabs her wrist. Hard. Yanking her sideways, in his direction.
The way he pulls her sleeve renders the collar of her shirt askew…and I see it.
A bruise.
My vision is suddenly coated in such a thick, syrupy red, the man is almost obscured by the rageful color, but I see him out of necessity, because I’m about to choke him out with my bare hands. Trucker hat, unkempt beard. A starchy, short sleeved button-down shirt. A violent man like my partner, but far more obvious about the monster inside of him. I’m reaching for his throat when he says, “Thanks for finding my wife for me.” He gives Ashley a look of veiled anger. “Sooner or later, you’re going to learn to stay where I put you.”
CHAPTER 2
Ashley
Acid rises in my throat, helpless ire rattling my bones.
More than anything, I’m humiliated.
To be identified as this man’s wife in front of…him.
Who is the other man? I’ve never seen him in town before. I would have remembered. Standing at least six feet three inches tall, his body robust in a way that whispers lethal, he’s a presence. Dark hair fashioned in a slick back, his eyes a piercing navy blue, face clean shaven, he stands eerily still, but his gaze ripples as he looks at the man I’m unfortunate enough to call my husband.
“I go where I want,” I say through my teeth.
Waylon, my husband of two weeks, laughs. But the sound contains a promise of punishment. I feel nothing. This whole marriage is a punishment, so what’s a little more?
“Apparently where you want to go is off flirting with another man,” Waylon says, making me cringe. It wasn’t flirting. This conversation with the stranger…it seemed like more than that, though I must be mistaken. Having a meaningful conversation with a man is about as likely as hooking a whale while fishing for trout. “Maybe you could try flirting with the man who put a ring on your finger. Even if you refuse to wear the goddamn thing.”
“I’d rather blind myself with a screwdriver,” I say, numb. So numb of anything but useless anger. I’m a prisoner. I’ve been stripped of my will. Might as well be in shackles.