Page 18

“Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!” Freaking out is an understatement.

I scratch at the man’s skin and he hisses but refuses to let go.

In the next breath he’s got me on my feet, my backpressed to his chest. His arms band over my torso and breasts to keep me from attacking him. With my arms glued to my sides, I’m effectively paralyzed.

“Easy, now.” He tugs me toward him roughly. Hard enough to force the breath from my lungs. “If you don’t fucking stop, you’ll hurt yourself.”

He smells like pine and sunshine. The thought bounces around my brain without landing, but there’s something familiar about his voice that stops me dead in my tracks.

My pulse thunders in my ears and when I try to swallow, my mouth is bitter and coppery.

“Are you done fighting?” he asks.

I twist around enough to catch a glimpse of blond hair hanging down to broad shoulders. I know that blond hair. I’ve seen it before.

“Soren?”

He gives a dry chuckle in answer. “You were expecting someone else, I take it?”

The place was empty when I arrived. He’s not supposed to be here any more than I am, and on my look through the cabin, I didn’t see any luggage other than the bag I packed.

He’s not letting me go. His muscles are an imposing wall of hardness and heat against my back.

I try to free myself but he doesn’t budge. He tightens his grip until my bones protest and my voice is a wheeze. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Never mind that, Gillian. Why areyouhere? And what the fuck were you doing in my bed?”

Chapter 5

Soren

It’s a dream come true to get home and find a sexy woman sleeping in your bed.

Unless the woman happens to be the stepsister you haven’t seen since your dad’s fake as fuck wedding. Then, she’d been an awkward twelve-year-old.

And at eighteen, I’d barely thought about anything other than myself, except I was old enough to know what was going on between my father and his whore on the side.

Now the woman is no longer on the side but front and center andSoren,be nice to your mother. That piece of trashisn’tmy mother.

And goddamn Gillian.

She hasn’t come around since the wedding.

I let go and spin her around to face me, clamping down on my lip to keep from taking my barely restrained fury out on her. But I keep my fingers on her shoulders so she doesn’t run away.

“Do you have any idea how fucking stupid it is to come without calling first? Christ. You have to do better,” I admonish.

Her expression is guarded as she glares up at me, herchin pointed out like an arrow. Her glasses are askew, smudged. “I have a right to be here,” she says.

“Do you?” I press, arching a brow high. “Because it seems to me you’ve wanted nothing to do with any of us, but now you’re happy enough to fall asleep in my bed.”

My fingers press down on her skin.

“Well, I had no idea it wasyourbed. If I did, I’d have chosen a different room.”

A different room—she can’t possibly plan on staying?

My eyes bug out.