Free One More Shameless Night by Lili Valente Page A

me.”
    “Yes, I do,” Jackson said in an infuriatingly calm voice. “You can be angry with me if you need to be, but I would do the exact same thing again. If the stress of knowing the truth had caused you to lose the girls, I never would have forgiven myself. And if something had happened to you in the process, I would have had nothing left to live for. You are my world. Nothing else matters.”
    Hannah swallowed, torn between being touched and the anger and frustration still pumping through her blood.
    “I had no other choice, sunshine,” Jackson continued in a softer voice. “I hope you can understand that eventually. Now I have to go. Stay inside with Neville and stay away from the windows.”
    “Oh God, Jackson, what’s going on?” Hannah tangled her fingers in his shirt, holding tight. “Why do we need to stay away from the windows?”
    “Because I love you,” he said, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. “And I would rather be paranoid and secretive and overly careful than risk one hair on your head.” And then his lips moved to hers, claiming her mouth with a deep, tender, heartfelt kiss that assured her every word he’d said was true.
    She was loved—deeply, fiercely. And if it wasn’t always as conventional as she might like, that was okay. She’d known from the start that Jackson would never be entirely domesticated. He was wild and so was their love, and despite moments like this, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
    “Be careful,” she whispered against his lips as he pulled away. “Be so very careful and come back safe.”
    “I’ll call you as soon as I have any news.”
    They moved back into the living room and, after a few more words with Neville, Jackson hurried out of the house. Hannah listened to the SUV driving away down the gravel road and sighed before turning to Neville with a tight smile.
    “Poker or blackjack?” she asked. “What’s your poison? Because there’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep until whatever is going on is over.”
    Neville smiled, a warm grin that lit up his usually stoic face. “You know I’m a poker, man. And don’t worry, everything will be fine. Except your pennies. Those will soon be mine.”
    Hannah nodded. “Of course they will. I expect nothing less.”
    As she and Neville got out the cards and set up at the kitchen table, she tried to think of nothing but the children sleeping safely in their beds and how nice it was to share an evening with a friend.
    But in her mind, she kept drifting to another place, a dark, damp, musty-smelling place where she feared something terrible was happening to the woman who would always be one of the biggest parts of her heart.

Chapter Eleven
Harley
    H arley’s body had always been every bit as voracious as her mind.
    Her metabolism ran high and when she was younger and less concerned with nutrition, she would get so swept up in whatever drama was in the works that she would forget to eat and end up walking skin and bones. Without adequate calorie intake, her body quickly turned to consuming itself, its hunger so insatiable it had no care for the fact that it had already devoured all the fat on her frame and was now busily digesting muscle tissue she needed in order to survive.
    It was the same with drugs and alcohol.
    From her first glass of wine or puff of marijuana, her body had immediately adjusted, needing more and more to achieve the same effect. It was why she rarely drank. The amount of wine she needed to consume to feel even a slight buzz was unwisely large.
    But her swift metabolism and propensity to adjust to foreign substances quickly were also why she began to wake sooner than her captor expected.
    Before they had learned to trust each other again, Clay had injected her with a sedative twice, and clearly, her body remembered what to do with those particular chemicals. It burned away the last of the haze in time for Harley to see the man who’d taken her making up a rusted twin