28 Seconds: A House of Valentine Novella (2 page)

“Then we’ll go. Are you ready to go?”

“Yes.” I tried to stand, even thought I was standing, but then realized I hadn’t moved. “No. You’re going to kill me.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” he promised. “But we really, really do have to go.”

“Okay. I’ll trust you.”

“That,” he grunted as he lifted me up and tucked me into his arms, “is something we’ll discuss once you’re sober.”

CHAPTER TWO

The first time I awoke, everything was a confusing mix of sounds and smells. Male voices arguing mixed with the honk and screech of traffic; an antiseptic scent like a hospital layering over rusty seawater and bitter coffee. My eyes scanned the room, taking in the bad art that denoted a hotel room before settling on an over-sized window. Tiny slivers of light slipped through, forming shadows, and it took several minutes before my eyes adjusted to see the two men talking in hushed tones.

Cole. He was okay because my mom had said so. He was watching me, knew I was awake, but made no move to come forward. And then the sandy haired man from the house. A feeling or memory started to bubble up at the sight of him and my body began to shake. Cole’s eyes shot from me to him just seconds before I started screaming. Another pinprick and then blackness.

The second time I was more coherent. My eyes flashed to where I expected the men to be but only Cole remained. He was sitting at a small table, a cheap lamp made to look expensive casting a yellow glow over a stack of papers. I rolled in the bed, checking the opposite side of the room.

“He’s not here.” Cole’s calming voice was beside me.

“Who?”

“Marco. Considering how you screamed at the sight of him, I thought it best to send him next door.” He touched my elbow and I extended my arm in a familiar dance as he checked my pulse. “No more screaming, okay? It’s getting hard to explain to the hotel staff.”

I nodded.

“Obedience is a good trait to have in the Valentine family. It will serve you well.” He let my arm go and then tucked the covers back around me. “Why does he scare you?”

I felt the fear rise up again but shook my head. “I don’t know. Where are we?”

“Boardwalk, Atlantic City.” I struggled to sitting but his soft push held me down. “Give yourself a few more minutes. I’ll have someone come in and help you get a shower.”

“What are you giving me?”

“A cocktail of designer drugs. Nothing long term or addictive, I assure you. A Valentine exclusive some would say.”

“Rohypnol,” I murmured, “and ecstasy? Mixed with something else. I’m not sure.”

His arms dropped around me, caging me and forcing me to look at him. “How would you know that?”

My fingers traced the chiseled line of his jaw, hearing the rough scratch of his stubble against my palm. His intensity was breathtaking. “Modafinil?”

I could hear his teeth clench, feel the twitch in his jaw. “Yes.”

“Cole, my mother-”

“She’s dead, Ariana.”

“I know that,” I managed. “I was coated in her blood for chrissakes.”

“How,” he hissed, “can you remember that?”

The grimace on his face wasn’t attractive and I tried to brush it away with the pads of my fingers. My tears welled but didn’t fall and I locked my eyes with his. “How could I possibly not?”

My response was clearly not the right one and his body tensed, the stress etching across each muscle. I lowered my voice to a whisper, a soft plea meant only for his ears. “Cole, can you make me not remember? Please?”

“I’m trying, Ariana,” he grumbled. “I’m fucking trying.”

Failure. He was failing at his task and it made him angry. I didn’t want him angry. “Can I get a shower now? You can try and figure out why your cocktail isn’t any better than tequila.”

“On you.”

“What?”

“It’s not working on you,” he explained. “Half a dose will take down any person on the planet. Except you.”

I struggled to get up again and this time he allowed me to move. “Shower. And maybe a bottle of tequila. Let’s start there.”

He nodded and moved to the door, opening it a sliver to bark some orders. In seconds, a woman decades older than my mother stepped in. He talked to her in a hushed voice, exchanging news I assumed, and then she came for me.

“Help her get cleaned up,” he ordered, “and then up her dosage.”

“She’s already getting-”

“I don’t care. Do it.”

The last time I awoke, I could almost believe nothing was real. There was no bad in my life much less the world. I knew I was in a strange hotel room somewhere near an ocean but not where I had been living. The smell was different, the temperature colder. I had only skinny dipped once in my life...with my mother, no less. It had been somewhere like this. Cold, with water more gray than blue.

I had turned fourteen and had just finished having my first period. My mother, and her wild gypsy ways, had decided we needed to celebrate and wanted to make me realize that it wouldn’t always be about the pain. We stripped down and she was in the water fast but I was still too young to be embarrassed about my body. I stood on the beach, reveling in the way the sea spray assaulted every inch of my skin, even parts I couldn’t touch myself. The smell of the water blocking out all memories, the wind caressing my flesh as if it were a lover I would one day meet.

My hand went to my skin, remembering the feel of it, remembering the taste of the salt on my lips. Somewhere in my brain, I knew I was naked in bed and it was starched sheets brushing against me, but my mind fought harder telling me I was back on that beach. The confusion in my head caused a whimper to escape as I tried to make the euphoria of that beach mesh with the terror of where I now lay.

“Well, we know the ecstasy kicked in at least.” Cole’s voice echoed in my head from paces away. His low, throaty laugh was like a lifeline. I let the sound wash over me, remembering the razor-like feel of his body pressing into mine. The cold steel of his gun pressing into my back alternating with heat of him when his arms had held me prisoner to keep me safe.

My brain told me to stop, that there were more important things to think about, but my body refused to listen. My hand slipped over my breasts, down my stomach and between my thighs. Wet, so desperately wet. Flashes of his body against mine, his breath hot on my throat, his touch silky on my wrist...I promised myself I would stop, would only allow myself a single stroke against my clit. But then it wasn’t just imaginary and his body was next to mine, his lips hot against my throat.

“Need any help with that?”

I bit my lip, confusion pouring from my being. I’d never done anything like this...allowing someone to witness this most private act. I barely knew him and my mother...my mother. Conflicting emotions raged and I willed myself to behave but my body had some mind of its own and, even as my internal protests fought, my fingers continued their fiery strokes. Desperation seized me and I let out a broken gasp wanting it - the lust, the tears, the heartbreak, the memories - to all just end.

He wouldn’t ask twice. I knew that a single word would get me what I needed. I just had to summon the courage to ask. “Cole, please.”

His hand shoved mine aside, his palm rough against the slickness of my folds. My hips arched me into his palm, and he slid one finger inside me, then another. I spread wider, desperate for more as his fingers plunged deeper. I loved the sound of it...his hand slapping against my sex, the suction as he plunged in and out. My juices coated everything, my thighs, his hand, the clean sheets. I never knew I could want, need, something so much. Why had I ever denied myself something that could feel like this?

“Christ, Ariana.” His voice held the same incredulity I felt: how could anyone possibly be so wet?

A half dozen times I got so close but each time, dark thoughts shadowed everything and I’d back inches away from the edge. My hands thrust to his hair, tightening into little fists and pulling his head closer to mine. His eyes were on me, dark and intense, as my tears of frustration and grief started to fall.

As if he knew my thoughts, his lips moved to my ear, his voice calm but tinged with a ragged desire of his own. “Baby girl,” he ordered, “for chrissakes, drop the guilt and just let it come.”

And I did. His fingers slipped in again, slow and deep, as his thumb circled hard against my clit. Two tiny circles and I buried my teeth into his shoulder to keep from screaming. My body shuddered with release but he held firm, never wavering. I had never felt something so complete, so utterly engulfing, that it made my every thought, my every memory, disappear. My breathing took minutes to calm, my body even longer to settle and yet he never moved. When I took a final shuddering breath, I let my eyes drift to his, fighting down the embarrassment I felt building as the last echoes of the drug burned off.

“You,” he whispered, “are dangerously intoxicating.”

I had no idea the proper response for that so I traced the half moons on his shoulder instead. “I made you bleed.”

“I didn’t even notice,” he assured me. “Never again, let the darkness of this world keep you from living, understood?”

His voice was still rough and jagged and I let myself look at him, actually look at him, for the first time. The darkest of brown eyes, olive skin peppered with a stubble along his rugged jaw line, a chest twice as wide as my body, all rigid muscle. Strength. Power. Safety. And a desire still smoldering just beneath it all. My hand snaked from his shoulders and traced a slow path down to his pants, a stone hard bulge threatening to come unleashed. I grazed his cock, just barely, and his hand grabbed mine, locking it against the bed.

“No.”

“But-”

“Consider this a one time gift.” His eyes did a slow, sensuous exploration down my body and I could feel a warm tug growing again in my lower abdomen. He must have seen or felt my need rising again because he moved a pace away, standing up and adjusting himself to be less obvious. “Welcome back to the house of Valentine, Ariana. I’ll go get you that tequila.”

CHAPTER THREE

“No sleeping yet.” Cole shook my hip and waved a cup of coffee under my nose.

“That is
not
tequila,” I grunted, rolling away from him.

Cold hard glass touched my back and he waved the bottle in his other hand back and forth. “Coffee first, tequila after.”

“After what?”

“I have questions. You have questions. Let’s see if we can get some of them answered.” He moved to the little table and sank into a chair, sipping his own cup. “Bridgett put some clothes for you in the bathroom. I think you may have missed them earlier.”

Tugging the sheet around me, I yanked it out of the mattress and headed to get dressed.

“Now you’re shy?” he chuckled and I could feel the blush rising over my entire body. I was back, moments later, in respectable jeans and a teeshirt, both in brands too expensive for me to have even heard of much less own. I dropped into the chair opposite him, curled my knees into my chest, and then cupped the steaming mug in my hands. I took a tiny sip and closed my eyes. “Bitter. Excellent.”

“Before we get to business, do need to talk about-” his hand waved toward the bed.

I shook my head, the blush still close to the surface. “No. Absolutely not.”

He smiled, a sexy self assured grin that made my eyes drop away. He tapped a few of the papers on the table. “Okay then. You and your mother have been going by Ariana and Teresa Serrano for how long?”

“That’s our name.”

“Humor me.”

“Since I was five and first registered for school. That’s as far back as I remember.”

“You remember nothing-”

“My turn,” I said, cutting him off. “What’s
your
name?”

“You are an afterthought kind of girl, aren’t you? Be scared later, be shy later, ask names later,” he laughed. “Cole Serrano.”

A vision of his fingers deep inside me caused my eyes to flash to the bed and then back to him.

He grinned, knowing my thoughts. “No relation, I assure you. It seems your mother stole my surname when she fled with you. Genius, really. You would think she would chose something like Smith or Williams but while everyone was searching for the common, she defied logic. No one ever thought to look for a Valentine or a Serrano. Risky, but damn genius.”

I swelled with pride. Whatever we were running from, she had obviously earned his respect in doing it.

“You remember nothing before then? Really?”

I paused, thinking. “I get snippets sometimes. Things I don’t really remember but I can see them like a movie reel. When I was little, my mom told me they were from an action movie I’d just forgotten I’d seen.”

“So they’re violent?”

“Yes.”

He waited for further explanation but I gave him nothing. “But you didn’t believe her completely, I take it? That’s why you were willing to keep running. Is Marco one of those?”