Free Unhinged by Timberlyn Scott Page A

single word
barely coming out.
    “That’s exactly what I
said,” Mark added. “Doesn’t he look fucking hot?”
    “I’ll say.”
    Aaron offered me a
sideways smirk before wrapping his hands around Mark’s wrists and pulling him
closer. I looked away when the two men kissed, not wanting to invade their
privacy.
    “Come on, you two. You
can play kissy face later,” Chloe told Mark and Aaron. “You kids are gonna be
late,” Chloe declared, urging me farther into the room. “I suggest you get
going.”
    I glanced at the clock
on the wall. It was already seven and we still had a forty-five minute drive
ahead of us. That would put us at the party at the perfect time to be
fashionably late. That is if I didn’t stall any longer.
    “Don’t keep him out too
late,” Mark whispered to me as he offered a brief hug. “I’m going to take him
home with me tonight and ravish him until dawn.”
    I blushed. I couldn’t
help it. It wasn’t that I was a prude, but I could totally picture the two of
them in my head and… well… I knew I shouldn’t have been thinking about that.
    Chloe handed me a silky
black wrap and I slid it over my shoulders. It wouldn’t do much against the
chill in the November night air, but she had insisted it would look good.
    Vain. That was
obviously what I was going for tonight, I had told her, laughing.
    “My car or yours?” I
asked Aaron as I passed him on my way to the front door.
    “Mine,” he answered easily,
reaching around me and opening the door.
     
    Aaron was the best date
ever. Probably because there weren’t any expectations. We were friends and we
could talk about anything and everything, which we did. From the moment we got
into the car, until we pulled up to the guard station at Mr. Trovato’s estate,
there was never a lull in the conversation.
    That changed when we
pulled into the circular drive in front of Mr. Trovato’s house.
    “Holy shit,” Aaron
whispered as he peered through the windshield of his fancy little Honda with
Bluetooth and satellite radio.
    “Yep, that’s what I
thought the first time I saw it,” I told him.
    Granted, the place
looked even more extravagant at night. Lights were hidden in the landscape,
strategically placed to show off all of the details of the mansion. There was a
line of expensive cars along one side of the driveway and several men
scattering in all directions, probably moving the cars to a safer place.
    A valet came over and
opened my door for me, helping me out with a firm hand. I could have sworn he
eyed me up and down a couple of times, but I pretended not to notice, although
the sideways glance did wonders for my ego.
    Aaron was instantly by
my side offering me his arm and walking me toward the steps that led to the
front door. A man in a suit — wielding
a gun on his hip and an earpiece in his ear — greeted us before opening the
front door and stepping back so we could enter.
    I tried my best not to
gape at what I saw next, but that was rather difficult to do.
    Mr. Trovato’s house was
impressive on the outside, but on the inside it was… I wasn’t even sure how to
explain it. It looked like something straight out of the Roman Empire. Or so it
did to me. Not that I’d seen any Roman empires, but if I had, this was what I
imagined they would look like.
    There were thick white
columns that went at least twenty feet in the air on both sides, framing the
circular entryway, three on each side. The floor looked like marble. It was a beautiful,
gleaming white swirled with darker tones. An enormous sculpture of a semi-nude
woman stood in the center of the entry, flanked by two grand staircases that
circled up to the second floor. Somehow I managed not to whistle the way Chloe
always did, but I had to say I was impressed.
    “May I take your coat,
madam?”
    I turned to see another
man in a suit, this one significantly older than anyone else I’d met so far. He
looked like the same man I’d seen on the front steps the other day.