Free Bound by Lies: Bound #1 (Adult Romantic Suspence) by Hanna Peach

take exactly
one hour and seventeen minutes to drive there. But the way I drive, I’ll make
it in under an hour. I stand in front of my closet like a solider about to
choose armor. Sometimes I feel like I need armor with Caden. But even if I
could wear it, it wouldn’t help. That man can strip me bare with his eyes.
    I only focus on one section of my closet. “Caden’s section”.
Since that first date, Caden hasn’t stopped buying me dresses. Since I realized
he wasn’t going to demand I wear any of it or insist that I owe him, I have
stopped resisting.
    His gifts are all designer labels and silk and lace, elegant
and lush. All clothes I would have never chosen for myself. Or had the money to
buy.
    Where Caden gets all his income from, I don’t know. From
whatever work he does, I guess. But he still won’t tell me what he does.
    After six months of our own version of togetherness, what do
I know about Caden Thaine?
    I know that he loves architecture – Baroque and modern but
not art deco. I know he can’t sing to save his life. I know he drinks
single-malt scotch neat and shakes his head with sadness at anyone who taints
the scotch with coke.
    I know that he doesn’t believe in God. But he believes in
the existence of evil. And I know, just like me, he has seen pain in his past
that would make the pages of a horror novel bleed. And I know, just like me, he
is always looking over his shoulder, and sometimes he flinches at shadows.
    I know when he touches me his palms are large and rough and
calloused, so I wonder if he does woodworking or carpentry. He definitely works
with his hands. I know that his body seated behind me on his motorbike is hard
and strong. Maybe this is just from the gym. Maybe it’s not.
    He is an enigma. On one hand he has the charm and
conversation of a well-bred gentleman. He has more money than I could ever
fathom, evident by the fact that part of my wardrobe is worth more money than
my yearly salary working at the bar. But his hands and his body are rough and
thick and well used. He is my enigma. I wouldn’t have him any other way.
    I don’t actually care about the dresses or the money or the
nice places he takes me. Some of my favorite dates have been where he has spent
nothing on me and it is just him and me, hidden from the world.
    As I brush my fingertips across the silky edges of these
dresses, I stop at a full-length royal blue gown, dirty and ruined, but I
haven’t had the heart to get rid of it. I pull out the dress. At once I can
smell the scent of vanilla and I am taken back to that night...

Chapter 8
     
    Three months ago
     
    The Hotel Astoir is set off the glittering main strip. I
take a cab there from my place. In my mind I can see his cursive scrawl across
the latest note.
     
    Hotel Astoir lobby, 7pm Saturday.
     
    This is the first time Cade has asked me to meet him at a
hotel. A hotel. I know what this means. It’s time. Tonight is the night.
    I only realize I am grinning like an idiot when the cab
driver laughs at me and asks me why I am so happy. I merely grin wider. “I
see,” the cab driver says. And for a few moments I am just a girl falling in
love with a boy.
    We pull up to the hotel, which has a driveway that stretches
along a row of manicured bushes and fountains. It curves into a wide front
entry where Caden is already standing waiting, dressed in a black suit. He is
pressed and suave, but on his face he wears my favorite things: that deadly
looking scar above his eyebrow and his rough smile. At once I am flooded from
the ends of my hair to the depths of my soul with a fierce aching. My hands are
already stripping him of that dinner jacket and unbuttoning that shirt and
unbuckling those…
    I pass the cabbie some money. A twenty maybe. “Keep the
change.” Or maybe it’s a fifty. I don’t know. I don’t care. I can’t take my
eyes off Caden – my Caden. My soon-to-be-naked Caden. He has beaten the
concierge to the door of my cab, opening it for me.