From Winter's Ashes: Girl Next Door Crime Romance Series - Book Two (31 page)

There were two men—big men—wrapped in black clothes. Finn couldn’t glimpse their faces, but their matching skin heads and their thunderous approach did little to negate the nefarious threat.

Pulling ahead and reaching the eleventh floor, Finn slowed momentarily, easing open the door to provide a soundless escape. The sound of the thugs on their six seemed far away, but Finn knew, from the foreboding shiver of dread prickling the back of his neck, they were still coming. 

Chapter 40

Joselyn Whyte

“Where is she? He’s going to kill us if we lose her!”

“She couldn’t have gotten far.” The other man wheezed. “Check that way.”

Why did their voices sound familiar?

Joselyn’s breathing stalled, the bludgeoning force of her pulse beating her lungs to a bloody pulp.

Silence and the labyrinth halls of the Chase Park Plaza Hotel were their only allies, so she clamped down on her lip, drawing insufficient breaths through her nose, and curled tighter into Finn’s chest.

He set her down, dug into his pocket, and unearthed a room key. His fingers slipped before fitting the key card into the door she realized they were now standing in front of.

Once inside the soft click of the lock granted a gasp of renewed oxygen like a fairy godmother’s wish. But even then anxiety crashed like a riptide against her curdling stomach, yanking the bottom out from under her. Numb and motionless, Joselyn stood by the door, her knees threatening to release her body to the floor—or maybe just the contents of her stomach.

Finn, on the other hand, was moving enough for the both of them—pacing the length of the room, checking his cell, and double-checking the hotel phone in the process. The pendulum effect of his rapid movements did nothing to assuage her vertigo.

Then, out of nowhere, he calmed. Stripped off his tux jacket, then bent down and pulled a gun—a gun!—from his pant leg and set it on the nightstand. “You should sit; you look a little faint.” He leaned back onto the bed and crossed his ankles.

Oh yeah, sure, let’s just take a load off.
Pretend there aren’t people right outside the door hunting for her. Pretend Finn didn’t just whip out a gun!

As if reading her mind, he said, “Relax, okay. This is part of Archer’s emergency plan. This room is reinforced, reserved for politicians and dignitaries. No one is getting through that door. We’re safe.” His voice lowered. “
For now
.”

It felt like she was nodding in agreement, but everything in the room seemed to be spinning. Or maybe the room was still and Joselyn’s mind was on the tilt-a-whirl. It was hard to tell.

Before she came to, she went weightless again. Finn had risen and scooped her up like a limp noodle, moving to set her on the bed. But for some reason she couldn’t signal her arms to let go.

“Here you go, man. She’s all yours.”
His voice from the past echoed in her mind, tearing her back to the first time she’d been someone else’s prey.

“No!” Joselyn’s arms tightened around his neck when he made to move away, a convoluted mixture of past and present toying with her mind. “Please don’t leave me.” The words ached from her throat, cold seeping in from all around her.

The mattress shifted, and she had to reach through the closing darkness to remind herself that this was not prom night. She was twenty-seven, not seventeen. The man now cradling her in his arms was not, and would never be, Cody.

“Shh.” Easing down beside her, the tension from that horrible night was steadily stroked away with each tender brush of Finn’s hand through her hair.

And then his hand stilled.

She saw his Adam’s apple bob in his throat, a glossy gleam reflecting from his smooth, clean-shaven jaw. Uncertainty hovering in his gemstone eyes.

Joselyn wasn’t sure who made the first move, but suddenly they were close enough to share air. Her heart skipped as his coarse fingers traced over her jawbone and locked behind her neck.

Their eyes held with an intimacy that should have scared her, even as, with slow and steady deliberation, he crossed the boundary between them and brought her lips to paradise.

The kiss started slow and savory. Thick with meaning and a riveting transparency, it rent a cry from the deepest part of her that longed to be known and loved. But a handful of heartbeats later her body quickened, responding as if every tickling nerve ignited at once.

Kind of like the fire that started it all.

A tentative touch turned into something fueled by desperation. The floodgates broke loose, and it was hotter than the fiery inferno of her house. Desire and panic surged back and forth from his charged body and lips to hers in a delicious duel.

He tucked her beneath him, the weight of this strong, beautiful man awakening her in ways beyond her wildest dreams.

What are you doing?

Something niggled in the back of her mind but was quickly overrun by the intensity of the moment. The urgency of each gentle caress exchanged like a flawless symphony of wanting.

Oh, she wanted this man. In a way she never wanted anything in her life.

But almost as much as that, she felt wanted in return. Needed. It was rapidly filling a loveless, lonely void.

When her fingers skimmed up the muscular crevice of his spine she was only distantly aware that she’d felt his skin, not his shirt.

An alarm went off in her head. Fear began wrestling for dominance.

Don’t overthink it. Don’t go to that place.

His grip tightened on bare skin previously covered. She flushed hot and cold. She couldn’t think. Could barely breathe. Blotches of black danced in her eyes before she squeezed them shut.

His lips broke away, trailing down her neck …

Don’t freak out. Don’t be a freak. He’s not going to hurt you.

His hands coasted up the backs of her thighs, the press of his body pinning her like a butterfly. Trapped. It felt amazing, and yet the passion ripped from her grasp.

“No!”

She’d meant to speak, but the word hadn’t come from her lips. The chill of his sudden absence was a slap of sanity. Part of her was relieved, the other part almost desperate to pull him back down and finish what they started, if only to prove the past didn’t have a hold on her. That she wasn’t some frigid basket case who freaked when a man so much as touched her. But he was scrambling off the bed, his eyes darkening with a startling burst of anger. “I’m not like you.”

The knife of his words wedged deep. Somewhere between a clavicle and a rib, an imaginary blade struck to the hilt. Pain, unlike anything she’d ever felt, sliced through her chest.

I’m not like you.

Her first impulse was to dissolve into tears. Give in to the heartbreaking conclusion of his words.

He would never accept her. She was stained. Used.

Unworthy.

But before the tears could break free, the words came back for a second go-around.

I’m not like you?

This time, she felt another emotion.

Joselyn called it pissed.

“No, you’re not. You’re worse!” Shooting up from the bed, she caught and righted the delicate straps of her dress that had fallen, groped for the zipper open at her back.

Finn’s shirt hung open, untucked and wrinkled, his muscles rippling with each breathless pant.

Joselyn struggled with her own breath but managed to unleash her fury with ease. “Not like me, huh? And what am I, exactly?”

With a tortured wince, the jerk now managed to look contrite.

“That came out wrong. I didn’t mean it like that. I got carried away, and I was trying to do the right thing.” His eyes wandered, as if the act of looking at her made him feel dirty.

Is this the same Finn who’d dated every bimbo this side of the Mississippi?

Tunneling his hands through the hair she had personally mussed, he heaved out a sigh. The words that came next seemed to cause him pain. “Look, I know you slept with Cody.”

Slept?
He didn’t know the half of it.

Self-righteous coward.

Tears brimmed to the edge and poured over without consideration of her humiliation. Joselyn shook her head. “I can’t believe I could’ve been so stupid. They say love is blind, but my eyes are wide open, and all I can see clearly is that—I’m a fool. A fool to open my heart to someone as selfish as you. A fool to think I could trust you again after what you did to me.” A sob broke the words, but she was beyond caring.

“A fool to believe you might actually love me back.”

He took a step forward. She jerked back out of reach. “And finally, a fool to let my guard down in that bed tonight. Thank God nothing happened. Lord knows you’d probably turn it into another thing you could torture yourself about. Pile it onto your mountain of egomaniacal martyrdom. But rest assured, you did the
right
thing.”

“Joss.” He looked so broken. Confused. “I didn’t mean it like—”

“Cody raped me, Finn.” she blurted before she could stop it, not even certain he would believe her. Her own father hadn’t. Simply threw a high-priced shrink her way and told her to get over it. “And not just once. All night, after you refused to take me home and delivered me to his room.” Joselyn choked back the vile images flashing in her eyes. Immeasurable pain. And loss.

It seemed, it was her destiny.

Finn froze. His skin drained so sickly white she thought he might faint.

She couldn’t look at him any longer. But somehow the rest tumbled out, the memories rushing back with excruciating clarity. “He’d obviously taken something. High on some sort of sadistic rage. And the more I fought him, the more violent things got.”

Forcing down the acid now coating her throat, her voice wobbled, but she forged on. “What may or may not have been the last time … I—I can vaguely remember him bashing my head into the bedpost. When I woke up it was morning. And I’d been discarded on the front porch steps.” Her skin scrubbed raw and reeking of disinfectant.

Breathing deeply, she said, “So, you see, you’re right about me. I’m damaged goods. Inside and out. I have nothing left to give.” Without stopping for her shoes, or her clutch, she threw the lock and got to be the one to walk away. Out of Finn’s life.

This time, for good.

Joselyn jabbed the button for the lobby and collapsed to the elevator floor. Blinded by tears anyway, she drew up her knees and folded her face under the shadow of her arms.

Her sobs echoed all around her as if four other women were unleashing their sorrows in cannon. The metal box closed in on her, seeming to solder all the hurt together, crushing her chest and the remnants of her heart into a million little icicles. 

A ding sound preceded the opening of the door, exposing the pitiful wreckage of Billionaire Heiress Joselyn Whyte’s life. Managing to rise from the floor of the elevator, she peered around the open door. Vultures were still camping out in the lobby, ravenous for their next exposé.

She couldn’t very well get her SUV from the valet looking the way she did—the press would be ruthless and her father would never forgive her—but she had to leave.

Then she remembered the FBI surveillance truck out back. Sal would take her home.

But how would she get outside undetected?

At that moment, as if by divine intervention, a bellhop cart bounced by, affording Joselyn cover to a nearby hallway. Creeping down the hall, her vagabond feet under the custom-made Roberto Cavalli gown stung against the chilled travertine tile. With each step, a frigid nip snaked up her legs until the real and imagined cold encased her in a protective layer of ice. Snow Whyte had returned.

Shoving open the back exit she tumbled out into the street, a rumpled and barefoot Cinderella fleeing the ball.

But there was no guard at the door. Wasn’t there supposed to be security at every exit? The slice of winter air sobered her instantly, exposing the rashness of her actions right when a dark shadow stalked through the billows of hot air venting from the buildings. Oh crap. She was about to become a statistic. Her chest convulsed in spasm before she could even eke out a scream.

“Joselyn?” The form picked up speed and emerged from the mist writhing through the dark alley.

“Sal.” His name released on an exhale, and Joselyn, unable to think through the dense scramble of emotion and relief, vaulted into the strong, capable arms of Agent Dorian Salivas. The slick icy pavement dropped out beneath her feet. She pressed her lips hard against his cheek. “Please, can you get me out of here?”

Easing her back down, he cupped her face, “Joss, what happened? Where’s Finn?” Sal’s fingers swiped at the relentless downpour of tears before his sharp, assessing eyes took inventory.

And then, as if showing solidarity, the sky opened up and shed tears of frozen rain. The ping of sleet swelled in seconds, masked only by the faint purr of a nearing engine. “
Oh, Sal,
” Joselyn fell into his deep, hazelnut eyes, “Why couldn’t it have been you?”

Sniffling back the mess that was leaking from her face, she wondered if he had any clue what she meant or what had just happened.

Finn was the only one that could leave her this broken. She should have never let him back into her life. Sal would have been the safer, more sensible choice. Why hadn’t she listened to reason?

“Hey, now, shhh.” He tipped up her chin with a curled knuckle. “Don’t go filling my head with that kinda fancy, you hear? An aimless bachelor like me would jump at the chance to settle down with someone like you.” The teasing in his eyes faded, his brows knotted together and he gripped her arms. “Did Finn try something?
Oh, I’ll kill him myself, the little twerp. Did he hurt you, Joselyn?” He searched her eyes with an intensity she’d never seen from the wise-cracking Sal.