Shattered & Scarred: The Sacred Hearts MC Read Free Page A

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Chapter 2
     
    Ashton…
    I woke in an unfamiliar bed fetched up hard against an unfamiliar body. Chadwick had never been soft, no, he was extremely fit but the body pressed to my back was nothing short of sculpted granite. All hard planes and angles, putting off a heat to rival the hottest day.
    I blinked, the room was as dark as the inside of my eyelids. I tried to swallow which was hard with as dry as my mouth and throat were. I moved cautiously, slowly, and meeting no resistance, I pulled myself to the edge of the bed. I sat up slowly, every muscle screaming in protest. Everything hurt, from the roots of my hair to my very nails. I set my feet to the floor and gasped.
    Oh god this was going to be sheer misery but I had done it before and likely, would have to again.
    I forced myself to my feet and bit back a cry, sinking my teeth into the tender flesh of my bottom lip until I tasted blood. I stood stock still, letting myself adjust, trying to find the limits of this new, much more abused body. Again, I had been here before… I would adjust, I would heal and I would do better, be better, for his correction. I had to be.
    I cracked the door and looked about for something to cover myself with by the l imited light from the hallway. The room was neat, orderly except where the clothing from the night before had been discarded on the old shabby brown carpet. I looked back to the bed and couldn’t help the blush that heated my cheeks. The man in the bed, he was magnificent to look at...
    The bar of light from the cracked door fell across his chest which was chiseled and cut to a degree that he rivaled a Greek statue. He could probably snap the likes of me in two with very little effort but he hadn’t. Instead I recalled how he had taken me from the side of the road, seen that I’d had medical attention, obviously, by the bandages I bore… I tried to remember everything that happened but it was foggy. I remember him holding me to the bed, the sharp pinch of a needle and then… I sighed quietly and spied something serviceable to cover me.
    I bent slowly and picked up his discarded tee, slipping it over my head. I took a moment to do a more thorough assessment of my body and I sagged with relief when I realized that I experienced nothing to be alarmed about. I didn’t feel violated in the slightest and when it came to Chadwick… well… that had been something I had experienced as well.
    The man on the be d shifted and I froze in place, I didn’t even breathe for several long moments waiting for him to speak, to sit up… to be caught. Thankfully, none of those things happened and I slowly exhaled in relief. I shuffled to the cracked door and slipped out into the hallway shutting it firmly but silently behind me.
    I let out another breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and took in another slow and deep one. I had no idea where I was. None. I crept down the hall silently in search of a bathroom which my body was urgently crying out for by now. I found one and breathed a sigh of relief shutting myself inside.
    I quickly did my business, relieved that I indeed had nothing to worry about when it came to my virtue at the ha nds of the man whose bed I had woken up in.
    I caught myself thinking, Thank you God… Chadwick would never take me back if… but I stopped cold. In the eight years Chadwick and I had been married… This was the first time I’d ever been without him outside of our home. I lowered myself back down onto the closed lid of the toilet, equal parts elated and terrified.
    All of these questions and more went through my head... Where was I? What was I going to do? Where was I going to live? How was I going to survive? What would he do if he ever found me? That one stopped me cold. He would kill me. Of that I had no doubt. It may not be that moment or that hour or even that day, but eventually he would kill me. There had been so many times in the last year or two I would have welcomed death as an