Page 79 of Twisted Hearts

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We fell into my apartment,a mess of tangled arms and kisses. As soon as we had breached the private stairway, we’d jumped at each other, unable to keep our hands or mouths to ourselves.

My hands were at his coat, shoving it off his shoulders when my phone rang in my purse.

I groaned against his mouth. “I need to take that, could be important.”

“I’m important,” he muttered against my mouth, his hands still holding me tight to him. “But I know.”

I reluctantly pulled away, reveling in the way Shawn’s mouth chased me, as unwilling to give up the kiss as I was.

“I’ll go shower and get ready. After, let me take you to dinner, okay?” My phone rang again as he pressed his palm to my cheek. Kissing my nose, he stepped back. “Answer it.”

I did as he said, slowly, watching Shawn walk toward the bathroom. I grinned as he reached down and adjusted himself, which meant when I accepted the FaceTime call, I was grinning at her.

“Hey stranger.”

“Jillian.”

“You look happy, all cheeks flushed and lips swollen. Looks like being in hiding is going well for you.”

I cleared my throat. “It has its moments.” Her smile fell, and while I loved my friend, I knew that expression. “What is it?” I asked as I moved around my couch and fell onto it.

“Nothing. I was just worried about you. Thinking about you, that’s all.”

“Has he called?”

Jillian’s face scrunched, and she brought a bottled water to her mouth. “No. That’s why I was worried. I haven’t heard from him…and I hadn’t heard from you.”

“Oh. Well, I’m okay. Sort of. It’s been a week. A really weird week.”

“What’s going on?”

“Something you wouldn’t believe.”

I glanced up at movement in my peripheral vision. Shawn had ditched his clothes and wrapped a towel around his waist, and he had a hand braced on the doorway leading to the bathroom. It was so distracting it took Jillian clearing her throat to get my focus back on her. Shawn dipped into the bathroom, chuckling, and it echoed through the phone.

I waited until the shower turned on and turned back to Jillian.

“You won’t believe this,” I said, and then I laid out what I’d learned, what was going on.

As I spoke, her eyes grew as large as saucers, and at some point, she switched from water to a glass of wine.

“That’s freaking wild,” Jillian said once I was done telling her everything. “Daniel’s always been sick, but this?”

“If he was raised in that environment…”

It wasn’t that I wanted to give Daniel any benefit of the doubt, but if his distant family and maybe even his parents kidnapped women and used them for sex trafficking, it explained so much about him.

“Listen…” I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just so tired of thinking about this today and talking about it. Can you tell me something fun? Tell me something exciting going on?”

Jillian flipped a hand in the air and drawled, “Excitement is my life, babe—you know, sleeping in hotels, traveling all over, Klaus home when I’m on the road and vice versa. I swear, I might be dating him and in love with him, but some days it still feels like I’m single.”

“Rough.” The door to the bathroom opened, and I looked up in time to get a glimpse of Shawn walking out, water droplets still dripping down the delineation between his abs, straight to the towel wrapped around his hips and another towel scrubbing his hair.

Good Lord he was just a beautiful, perfect specimen.

“You’re staring at him, aren’t you?” I glanced back down at the phone screen to see Jillian’s brows waggling. “Youlikehim.”

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