Hide – Drew Jordan

She was thin, her clothes loose on her taut skin, pulled over sharp angular bones. She moved like a woman always anticipating a blow and later I figured out it was because she was. My grandfather was liberal with the back of his hand and whereas my mother fought back, my grandmother never did. She just took the abuse. So I couldn’t understand why she cried when he died. Was it relief? Was it genuine grief? It was my first real understanding that love was complicated and messy and illogical.

I didn’t want my love for the stranger to be complicated. I didn’t want to muddy it with my own personal baggage. I wanted to just be with him. Here. Alone. Being everything he needed. “Tell me about Sadie,” I said, going to the stranger and wrapping my arms around his waist from behind, kissing his back. It was the way I always approached him for an embrace, because from that angle he couldn’t reject me. He usually didn’t and this time he even pulled me around to the front to wrap me in his arms.

I leaned into his chest, breathing in his scent, sweat and outdoor air. “Laney, you’re the talker, not me.” He buried his lips in my hair. “Lay down with me and just talk to me and I’ll listen.” He sounded exhausted, weary. My chest tightened. I didn’t know I could love someone this much, with such a squeezing intensity.

It made me breathless. I would do whatever he wanted if it would make him feel better. “Of course.” I led him to the bed, which was out of character. I never tugged him or took him where I wanted him to be. I felt the balance shifting between us. He was showing me his vulnerability and I was more his equal as a result. It was intimate, emotional, having him trust me with his true self. The bedsprings creaked as we sank down onto the mattress, him pulling me down to tuck in against his chest.

He sighed and turned. There were tears glistening in his eyes. Real, honest tears. It was endearing and adorable and I felt in awe of his trust in me. “Talk, Laney.” “I never had a dog,” I murmured, playing with the button on his flannel shirt. “My mother couldn’t be bothered. But I had a pet sock.”

He gave a startled laugh. “What? How is a fucking sock a pet?” My cheeks flushed. I had been ashamed of that sock, then and now.

All you need is love. And a strong alibi. A plane crash brought me to the cabin in the woods with the stranger, but love keeps me here. Nothing can take me from his arms, not even a man from my past. But after a body is found nearby, the police have questions for me. For us. All I’ve ever wanted is to stay with the stranger, the man I crave and need but my secrets are starting to unravel.

Escape is what the stranger demands and I’ll do anything for him, including leaving the cabin and creating a new identity. I’ll do whatever he tells me to do-with my body, my heart, my soul. The last time I loved, I lost. I won’t let that happen again. HIDE is the follow up to the bestselling erotic thriller, CRASH, with the series conclusion, EXPOSE (the stranger’s story), releasing in late 2016.

For mature readers only. The greatest love stories start with blood… OceanofPDF.com “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” In Memoriam Alfred Lord Tennyson OceanofPDF.com The last time I loved, I lost. That won’t happen again. So as I stared down at Michael’s body and watched the blood leave his head and spread like syrup rushing off a pancake, I knew I’d done the right thing. He wanted to take me away from the stranger, take me back to Seattle. He wanted to expose my secrets and lock me in a white room with nothing but my thoughts and my guilt and my loneliness.

A room like the closet I hid in when I was a little girl and my mother left the apartment for her nightly fuck fests with random men. I couldn’t be locked up again and he was not nice for trying it. I had done the right thing. I turned to the stranger, breathing hard, my frantic and urgent breaths creating a steady stream of vaporous tendrils in the freezing cold air of Alaska.

Steam rose from the warm blood spilling across the front porch of the stranger’s cabin. “I’m sorry,” I told him, because I realized he might be angry with me for killing a man on his porch. For bringing this to him. The last thing I wanted was the stranger angry with me.

That would be completely counterproductive.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 52253ab8e66b3151
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 699,111 bytes (0.667 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 153
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 227.23 minutes
• Total Words: 45,446
• Total Characters: 238,968
• Average Words per Page: 297.03
• Average Characters per Page: 1561.88

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