Spirited 1 Read Free Page B

boring, but it had been fun. After what she’d been through in the last two years with her divorce, she needed a little excitement. At least the party had nothing to do with ghosts or psychic abilities.
    Tomorrow, she’d go back to being plain, ordinary Juliana.
    For some reason, the neighbor-cop’s face flashed through her mind at that moment. The man topped the charts on the sexy scale. He met her three H rule: hot, huge—the man had to be at least six foot two, not to mention where her hands had been earlier—and oh, so handsome. Yep, he could send a nun’s hormones raging. And she wasn’t a nun . . . she just felt like one.
    Jules stared at the ceiling. She counted all the tiles three times before her eyes drooped closed. Just before succumbing to the exhaustion, Seth the Cop’s face appeared again. This time his lips curled up in a roguish smile, making him more handsome than ever. She’d slipped into the state between dreaming and waking and drifted along with the fantasy.
    His rich brown eyes grew black as he leaned in close, captured her mouth with his, and drank her in. He tasted like hazelnut coffee. Jules sighed with delight. He chuckled and buried his hands in her hair, pulling her closer. She breathed in the scent of sandalwood as he licked a path from her lips down to her collarbone before returning to her mouth. He swept his tongue inside and her senses exploded with the heady taste of him.
    She opened her eyes but Seth had disappeared. Thick, gray fog blinded her.
    Her world tilted and twirled, like a carnival ride, spinning faster and faster until it jarred to a halt. Lighting, sounds, colors—everything . . . changed. She was no longer herself but someone else. Jules had taken this particular type of trip too many times not to know when she’d fallen into someone else’s gruesome reality.
    “Pleeaaasssse,” she cried in the darkness and shoved at the walls crowding in around her. She scraped her fingernails down the metal walls, searching for a release latch that wasn’t there. The stench of copper permeated the tight space. Blood oozed from her raw fingers. “Let me out!”
    The car’s trunk flew open. White light blinded her, then snuffed out. She lay still, unable to focus. She didn’t need to see who had rescued her. Only he would have come. He’d promised he’d protect her. How could she have doubted him? Relief washed through her.
    Hands wrapped around her wrists and tugged her from the Buick. Free from the vehicle, he released her wrists and caressed her shoulders. She slumped against him, then jumped at the sensation of the foreign planes of his chest.
    This wasn’t her lover. She tried to pull away but he manacled one of her wrists, refusing to allow her to escape.
    She searched his face. Even masked by shadows, he exuded a lethal air. He might have cared for her once but not now. This man was a cold-blooded killer who meant to punish her for betraying him. His gloved fingers traced around her neck, while his thumbs stroked the hollow of her throat. She swallowed convulsively.
    “Where are they?” The whispered words made her flinch.
    “I don’t know. Please, don’t do this.” She flinched and tears sprang to her eyes. “I did it for all of us.”
    “Where are they?” His grip tightened. “Give them back.”
    “I c-can’t.” She couldn’t return them, even if she’d wanted to—he knew that.
    His fingers dug deeper into her neck. She clawed at his leather-encased hands. Yellow spots blinked before her bulging eyes. Her ears buzzed. No! She’d only wanted to do the right thing. She couldn’t die. Not yet. It wasn’t fair! She had a future. Two lives depended on her.
    She jerked her knee into his groin. He grunted but squeezed her throat harder. The buzzing in her head became a tidal wave of noise.
    Her vision narrowed to a sliver of light then winked out to black.

CHAPTER 2

    “B REAKFAST.”
    “Nooo!” Jules cried out. “Somebody help me.”
    Sunlight