Author: Annika Martin and Skye Warren
Genres: New Adult, Romance
Publication Date: October 23rd 2014
Plot: He seethes with raw power the first time I see him—pure tattooed menace and rippling muscles in shackles. He’s dangerous. He’s wild. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
So I hide behind my prim glasses and my book like I always do, because I have secrets, too. Then he shows up in the prison writing class I volunteered to teach and he blows me away with his honesty. He tells me secrets in his stories, and it’s getting harder to hide mine. I shiver when he gets too close, with only the cuffs and the bars and the guards holding him back. At night, I can’t stop thinking about him in his cell.
But that’s the thing about an animal in a cage—you never know when he’ll bite. He might use you to escape. He might even pull you into a forest and hold a hand over your mouth, so you can’t call for the cops. He might make you come so hard, you can’t think.
And you might crave him more than your next breath.
☆✮ Excerpt ✮☆
I’m coughing, wheezing. I had asthma as a kid, and that’s what
it feels like now as the pepper spray stings me all the way down. “Get off!” I
gasp. “You’re too heavy—I can’t—get air.”
“It’s the spray you hit me with,” he says. “Breathe
normal.”
I gasp for air, panicking. “I can’t!” Is this how I die?
Suffocation?
“Pretend,” he says, letting up his knee. He shifts so that
he’s straddling my back. He grips my wrists now, pressing them above my head,
and I feel his boots locked over my thighs. His weight is off my back. “It’s
something every thug like me knows, how to not breathe in the fucking Mace.”
I choke and cough. I still can’t breathe. He’s going
to let me die. He’s going to sit on me and watch me die.
“Relax,” he says softly. “You’re making it worse by
panicking.”
Hoarsely, I try to get air. The sounds scare me. I really
can’t breathe. I suck faster as the panic rises.
“Hey,” he whispers. “Shhh.” He brings his head near mine,
breath tickling the back of my neck. “Pepper spray is an inflammatory agent,
okay? It swells your throat and sinuses, but it doesn’t shut them.”
I gasp.
He continues to speak in his calm, strangely soothing
voice. Why is he soothing me? I can feel him rattling against my defenses with
every word. “You’re still getting air, okay? Focus on that, Ms. Winslow. That
little passage of air you can still breathe through. Slow it down now, got it?”
I can’t slow it down. It’s like I don’t know how to breathe
anymore, and I’m shaking.
And suddenly he’s stretching his big body over me, on top
of me. His weight isn’t entirely on me, or else I’d be squished; it’s more of a
dull weight, as though he’s holding himself against me, warming me, pressing me
to the forest floor. Into my ear he whispers, “Breathe with me.”
I suck in a faint breath. “Get off me, you caveman!” Why is
he even trying to help me?
“You’re okay, baby,” he says. “Match my breath.”
I feel his chest expand against my shoulder blades. He’s
like a big, warm animal on me. I twist, but there’s no moving. He presses down
harder, and something about his weight soothes me. I hate that he’s actually
calming me, helping me. I don’t want him to make me feel good—he’s my enemy.
I wheeze lightly.
He breathes on, hot and slow against me. A bird calls in
the distance. I can hear the hum of the highway, the drone of a helicopter. My
eyes tear, and my limbs feel floppy and warm, and suddenly I’m doing it—I’m
breathing. I take an almost regular breath.
“There you go,” he whispers.
“Fuck you. I don’t want your help.” I gasp in another
breath.
His whisper caresses my cheek. “Nice and slow, Ms. Winslow.”
There’s something sensual in the way he says it. “Nice and slow.”
He breathes again, as if to demonstrate. On the next breath
I match him. Soon we’re breathing together. It’s strangely intimate, like we’re
two wounded creatures under the forest canopy. It’s almost like dancing.
Almost like having sex.
I crane my head around just enough to see that he still has
his eyes shut tight, dark eyelashes wet with tears from the irritation of the
spray. Did I hurt him? Did I burn his eyes?
“Stop moving around,” he growls. “Lie still.”
Like I have any choice with him pinning me. My heart pounds
under his weight.
Breathe in, breathe out.
It’s as if we’re in some kind of time-out, a no-man’s-land
with the two of us fucked up and lying on the forest floor on a bed of pine
needles that actually feels sort of soft and nice. The moments stretch on and
on. I wonder how long it will take him to recover.
Maybe I really injured his eyes. Could I have hurt his eyes
permanently?
He shifts, and I think maybe he’s getting up. But he
doesn’t.
In a weird way I’m glad. If he got off me, that would end
this strange, relaxing time out. It would bring back the harsh reality of who
we are to each other.
For now, there’s nothing I can do with him lying on my
back, and I let my limbs go soft, let my breathing calm, giving myself
permission to relax. I feel like jelly suddenly, spread underneath him, spine
flattened out. Us breathing together.
My eyes drift closed. The warm patch on my neck feels lit
up every time he breathes out, and I imagine his lips hovering just over my
skin.
I imagine him kissing me there, and a wave of forbidden
feeling swells through my core.
My eyes fly open. There is no way I’m turned on.
Except I am.
My heart races. My breath gets fitful again.
“Hey,” he says. And then more softly. “You’re okay.”
I become aware of a hardness against my thigh. An erection.
A melty sensation pulses through my pelvis. I’m trembling deep down, and it’s
not just fear; it’s excitement.
Horrified, I try to shake him off, and he tightens his legs
and arms around me. I feel his weight and warmth keenly now. “You don’t want to
give me any more trouble, do you?”
“No,” I whisper huskily.
The energy of sex runs wild between us, and I don’t know
how to stop it. Does he know? I flash back on him in the prison waiting room,
the way he looked at me, and all that power and beauty barely contained in
shackles. How stupid I was to think he was beautiful.
“No, you don’t want to give me trouble,” he affirms. “So
we’re going to stay just like this until my eyes can recover.”
“So you can kill me?”
“If I was going to kill you,” he says, warm and tickly
beneath my earlobe, “don’t you think you’d be dead?” There’s something about
the way he says this that makes my belly quiver, and I can’t stop focusing on
his erection. His big, strong heart beats against my back, beating my heart
like we’re conjoined in some primitive way.
His breath feels soft on the side of my neck, and heaven
help me, I want to feel more of him. I imagine his skin on my skin. Dimly I’m
aware that my breath is changing, speeding, shallowing.
I stiffen as he presses his lips to the warm spot; it’s a
kind of kiss. Or is it? And then he whispers, “Penny for your thoughts, Ms.
Winslow.”
Oh God, he knows. This man who’s going to kill me, this man
I’ve been breathing with, he knows.
☆✮ About the Authors ✮☆
Annika
I’m a NYT bestselling author living a stone’s throw away from the Mississippi with my awesome husband and two cats in a home full of plants, sunshine and books. I'm heavy into writing love stories about criminals--some of them are dirty and fun (my Kinky bank robbers!) others are dark and intense (Prisoner!)
I also write gritty romantic suspense as the RITA-award winning author Carolyn Crane.
Author's Links:
Skye
Skye Warren is the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of dark romantic fiction. Her books are raw, sexual and perversely tender. For those new to her work, consider the bestseller Wanderlust or Don't Let Go.
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