David’s brows furrowed and he turned his back on her, disregarding any other information she would give him.  Brilliant, but it barely calmed my thirst to strangle his throat with my hands and feel his trachea crush under my fingertips.  My fury blinded me with such an extreme corrosive feeling that my sight turned red, and all I could see was how much I wanted him dead too.

As I stood up to kill him, Jen yanked me by the arm back down into my seat.  My insides raged with vengeance until she elbowed me in the gut, “Let’s go make the arrangements for her body to be transported back to the city for her father.”

“Really?  Do I look like his bloody personal assistant?  I rather make arrangements for those two sick fucks to get buried.”

“Kade,” she sobbed into my shirt.  “I can’t do this, please she was my best friend.”

So we made the arrangements.

We also attended her lavish funeral in Manhattan.  Wall to wall socialites and the faculty of an entire hospital showed up.  The most emotional part was the patients who had come to honor her memory.  People she saved.  I stayed for exactly eighteen minutes and left.  It was too hard.

It was too hard not to completely lose my shit.

It was too hard not to kill David Stanton and that other bastard that she called a father.

I waited in the car for Jen and Dylan with Samantha’s little ribbon clenched in my hand.  I just sat there and people watched, wondering what sort of life Samantha Matthews had, living in the raw intensity of New York City.  Yet, all I could focus on was wondering if I did the right thing.  I wanted to fast forward to a time when I would have no doubts about my actions.  This bloody mourning was making me doubt everything.

My eyes blinked and it was March, two months since the accident.  Two months since I had heard her voice; brushed my fingers along her smooth flesh or feasted my eyes on hers.

Two whole months.

Two whole months of therapy.  I promised her therapy.  Every fucking single day.  It was torture, but how could I say no and go back on my word. Samantha Matthews had given her life to me, so the least I could do was give her some psychoanalysis.

Deep psychoanalysis and nonstop writing for two months.  Disgustingly enough, my first shower in a week was just taken and I think I lost at least twenty pounds.

My latest books both received awards; the two books about that waitress Lainey Neveah.  The ceremony was a black tie affair tied in with a charity event for our sheriff’s department and local hospital.  I donated all the sales of the second book about Lainey to the charity. It was somewhere in the millions.

I still counted the exits and people, my coping mechanism for being outside in the world, as I sat in my tuxedo on the head dais.  I had reached number 211 when I noticed her. Number 212.

Petite and curvy, dressed exquisitely in a simple black dress that fell gently off her shoulders to show the swell of her flawless ivory skin.  Ginger colored hair pinned up in an elegant French twist, with one curled wisp that fell along the side of her face and down her slender neck.

The deputy sauntered over to where I was standing, the beauty gliding like an apparition next to him, and I could look nowhere else.  My obsession began to hum and hiss inside my heart, cracking and snapping off the thick sheets of ice.

“Kade Grayson, I’d like you to meet Samantha Tucseedo. She’s a great fan of your work.  She’s the new doc at the family clinic.”

She took my breath away.  Big, beautiful sage eyes and lips that I instantly wanted to sink into.

“Hello, Mr. Grayson.  It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said. A slow sexy smile and a strong smooth handshake were offered to me.  I took both greedily, holding onto her hand a bit too long.  In fact, I didn’t let it go.

The band had struck up a soft ballad a few moments before and I leaned in holding my mouth to her ear, “Dance with me.”

Her smile was earth shattering.

I pulled her to the dance floor and wrapped my arms around her more tightly than I should have.  “You look so fucking beautiful, Sam.”

“Take me somewhere, Kade.”

“You certainly are pushy for someone who has just met me.  How do you know you can trust me?” I teased.

“I have scars on my heart from you, Kade Grayson.”

My gaze lingered on her skin and on how the soft lights cast themselves over the fullness of her breasts in the dress she wore.  I trailed my fingertips along the ridge of her collarbone and spread them out across the swells of flesh, gently rubbing the hollow of her neck with the tip of one finger.

She was breathless when I wrapped my hands around her waist, pulled her across the dance floor and into one of the smaller back rooms.  I lifted her up and sat her on the edge of a table, staring down at her.  My hands slid up the skin of her thighs.

“Didn’t your parents ever teach you not to go anywhere with strangers?”

“Mmmm,” she moaned softly when my hands reached the heat of her inner thighs.  “No, why, Mr. Grayson?  What’s wrong with strangers?”

The blush that crept slowly over her cheeks had my cock instantly twitching and throbbing to be inside her.  “Strangers are bad.  Bad things could happen,” I whispered in her ear.  “They could take advantage of you, tie you up, use you for…”

Her dress was pulled up and she wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling me closer with her legs, “That sounds promising…”

“Fuck, Sam.  You don’t have anything on under this dress?”

Her lips smiled wickedly against mine.

“Mmmm.  You’re such a dirty girl,” I whispered.

“Oh, Kade, you have absolutely no idea how dirty I can get.”

I brushed my lips against the soft skin of her neck. My God, the smell of cinnamon and apples made my dick harder than it ever was.  I wanted to sink my teeth into her.

“What’s with the strange last name?” I asked, unzipping my pants and throwing my jacket onto the table behind her.

Warm hands, hands I had only dreamt about touching me for the last two months, wrapped around my neck and pulled me in.  “It’s my safe word,” she breathed against my mouth, gliding the heat of her body under mine.

Fuuuucck.

I slid inside her with a deliberately slow thrust, wanting to feel every inch of her that had been hidden from me for two long months.  “God, Sam.  You feel like heaven around my cock,” I whispered.

“God, I’ve missed you.  Thank you for killing me, Kade,” she whispered, moving her hips in circles.

“Thank you for letting me, Sam,” I whispered back, feeling the first tremors of her muscles flutter around me.

I knew she would feel like she would never be free of him.  She would tell me again and again how she felt safe with the temporary witness protection the sheriff’s office offered, but I knew deep inside, she still feared he would show up behind her one day, and try to finish the job he started.  She would always be looking over her shoulder.

If the case went federal, and the U.S. Marshalls got involved, she would be uprooted and hidden away from me forever, and I couldn’t chance it. That was why I had gone straight to George and Bobby with what I knew.  We needed to build a case while she was here, a case that was tight, so he could go to prison for a long time.  I hated it.  I hated that he was still breathing, and that he had somehow hurt her.  I hoped that one day she would trust and love me enough to tell me everything.

 There were still two brands of his name on her body. I planned on taking her to get tattoos over them, and I knew she would agree… I hated thinking his name was permanently etched onto her.  It made me want to end his life every time I saw her naked.

But, could I actually take another’s life?

How?

What would I become after?

Did it matter?  I needed to protect what was mine.

And if he found her again…

I would end his life, because I knew there was so much more to the story than she was telling me, so much more he had done to her.  And I would kill him for it.  It was only a matter of time; only a matter of time until my Hyde came out and the part of me that was Thomas would come out and play.  Doctor David Stanton has until then to breathe, and until then, she was mine, every brutally beautiful inch of her.

Epilogue-The Love Notes

Letters written between Kade and Samantha in their two months apart.












Brutally Beautiful Playlist