Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 67966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Lucas looked as if he liked the sound of that.
Thorn was excited and scared as goosebumps prickled along his skin like jagged nails down his forearms.
“I came straight here from the police station.”
“I appreciate the heads-up,” Lucas answered. “But if your ex was killed, I certainly had nothing to do with it.”
“I know. But you’ll have to prove that.”
Lucas shrugged. “I’m not worried, Thorn. I never saw that guy again after he left the restaurant. And if the police don’t want to accept what I have to say, then I have a team of lawyers I pay a lot of money to handle shit I don’t have time to deal with.”
“I know you didn’t go after Evan… It was most likely a drug deal gone bad.” Thorn sighed.
“Again…I’m not concerned.”
Lucas was so confident and sure, two qualities Thorn had always admired and found extremely attractive in a man.
For the first time in nine years, he wanted to invite someone to Belladonna for himself.
Lucas Brewer was supposed to be for Lincoln, but Thorn couldn’t do it, and he was still trying to figure out why.
Why was Lucas’s heart calling out only to him?
Thorn was a master at placing the right damaged soul with the perfect gentleman. He was a believer that souls sought out their true soul mate and could recognize it immediately. Lucas needed Belladonna, but Thorn didn’t want to entrust him to anyone else.
“Now…back to your business,” Lucas demanded.
Thorn set aside his intense attraction and focused on Lucas’s many questions. “You asked if I had vices. I do. My gentlemen are my weakness, and what I often use as a distraction.”
“Your what?”
Thorn walked across the Persian rug and stood inches from Lucas. He smelled of fine liquor and designer cologne, a sexy combination that had Thorn off his ordinarily flawless game.
“My gentlemen. I have a house on a private strip of beach on the oceanfront at the end of the boardwalk.”
“I know the area.” Lucas’s eyes bored into him. “You mean you have an estate.”
Thorn tilted his head side to side. “A mansion. And it’s full of kind, loyal, compassionate men who know what it’s like when the heart is broken beyond repair… when all seems hopeless.”
“I’m not interested in hope,” Lucas whispered, his deep voice sending an inexplicable shiver down Thorn’s back.
“Yes, you are. My men know how to restore that too.” Thorn took a chance and placed his hand in the center of Lucas’s chest.
He shuddered at the quickening thud of Lucas’s heart slamming into his palm, each beat a firm warning that he was trespassing where no one was allowed again.
But Thorn didn’t pull away.
“And how exactly did you heal my friend Oliver after his divorce, Thorn?” Lucas narrowed his hazel eyes.
A flare of jealousy flashed in Lucas’s gaze that made him pause, but he didn’t remove his hands from Lucas’s chest.
“Not me,” he answered. “I haven’t been with any of the—”
Without warning, Lucas’s mouth closed over his, hot and possessive, burning his lips as he took what he wanted.
Thorn swore the room tilted as Lucas licked his way inside his mouth.
Desire gathered and solidified below his belt, but what he was feeling went far deeper.
Thorn didn’t realize he was moving until the backs of his legs met a piece of furniture. It was as if Thorn was under Lucas’s spell when he ended the kiss abruptly, leaving him panting.
Lucas was staring into his eyes, their glares dueling as he cupped the base of Thorn’s neck, his touch firm but full of passion, and coaxed him to lie back on the oversized ottoman.
Lucas stood over him, every inch the powerful giant Thorn had built him up to be in his nightly fantasies: broad, commanding, sure with overwhelming confidence.
Thorn had always liked poised, intelligent men, the kind who could undo him with a one look.
But Lucas…Lucas was so much more. He was self-assurance and sorrow in a tailored, single-breasted Prada suit.
Slowly, deliberately, Lucas began to undo the rest of the buttons on his white dress shirt, each flick of his fingers a silent challenge.
He was giving Thorn every chance to stop him if it wasn’t what he wanted. But Thorn didn’t move. He didn’t want to move. He needed this connection more than he needed his next breath.
He didn’t know what expression he gave Lucas, only that the business mogul’s eyes ignited with fire, as if he’d read Thorn’s desire like a well-written proposal.
Lucas popped the last button open on his slacks, followed closely by the metallic clink of his belt sliding free.
The sound was daunting in the silence, and Thorn shivered in anticipation, every nerve in him coming alive after a long slumber.
Lucas’s chest wasn’t carved into granite-hard, and he didn’t have sculpted abs, as if he’d just finished a photo shoot for Men’s Fitness. No, Lucas had the body of a man who’d built an empire behind a desk—without hours to spend pumping iron in a gym—showing he didn’t need to be a perfect six-two with ten percent body fat to be desirable and downright fuckin’ hot as hell.