Page 23 of Ashes

“You’ll see when we get there.”

That’s informative.

I opened my mouth to ask more questions, but he turned his gaze on me, this time pinning me with a cold stare. “Listen, Sienna. I have no desire to argue with you right now. Either you remain quiet or I’ll find something to occupy that mouth of yours until we get there.”

An unfamiliar warmth spread through my body and pooled at my core in response to the low tone in his warning. Flashes of discarded clothes and frenzied touches rapidly blazed through my mind. Despite my lack of experience, my imagination always loved to run wild with scenarios.

I cleared my throat and managed a low scoff as I nodded.

I fixed my eyes back on the road ahead and watched the city blur before my eyes. The drive to his place seemed todrag on, but when the car slowed to a stop in front of heavily guarded black steel gates, it didn’t feel like long enough.

How does it always seem that I get dealt the worst cards?

Jamal reached into the left side of his seat. My gut tightened as I watched the doors swing open, waiting for what they would reveal.

Once opened, he drove up a strip of concrete with tall topiary trees on either side covering what was beyond. The road eventually thinned to a driveway and my breath caught in my lungs at the sight that came into view.

Holy shit.

The two-story house, or should I say mansion by the size of it, was a mix of dark stone and black beams. The large floor-to-ceiling windows had black frames encasing them and modern lights were scattered over the house, accentuating the dark structure.

The carport under the left side of the house had two identical cars to Jamal’s already parked under it, one gray and the other a deep red. He swung into the empty parking space next to them and climbed out of the car, then rounded it to open the door for me.

“I could’ve done it,” I grumbled under my breath.

My instincts were always geared toward being agreeable, but something about this man made me want to fight him at every turn. I knew it wasn’t rational, but nothing about our situation or how he made me feel was.

He ignored my comment and closed the door behind me once I’d slipped out. He started heading for the door, but for some reason, I couldn’t seem to move. I stayed rooted in place, watching myhusbandwalk toward what would now be my new home.

The thick, wet air washed over my skin and I inhaled sharply, the salty air filling my lungs. Suddenly, reality seemed to finally crash into me.

I snorted, letting out a startled laugh.

This was far from being funny, but I seemed to always laugh at the most inconvenient times. I looked over at Jamal, only to find him watching me with a puzzled look on his face from the front door.

That only seemed to spurt more laughter out of me until wetness blurred my vision.

“Are you done?” he asked, his brows furrowed.

I cleared my throat and wiped the corners of my eyes with my ringless ring finger. “Yeah, sorry,” I said, recovering from my fit of laughter. I took another deep breath and walked over to him.

I expected him to reach into his pockets for a set of keys, but when I peered over his side, I watched him place his thumb on a screen above the handle.

“Little much, don’t you think?”

He glanced at me over his shoulder and rolled his eyes. “That way the only way for someone to get in is with my dead body.”

Well, that’s… intense.

A click resonated in the air and he swung the door open, leading us inside. I followed right behind, then stopped in my tracks. If I thought the outside was impressive, the inside was even more so.

An enormous entryway, dark wooden floors, and charcoal blue walls with molding accents. The ground floor was an open-floor layout with a dining room on the right and a lounge room at the center. The open-floor plan gave a straight shot all the way to the back of the house where floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors opened to an infinity pool overlooking a hill of greenery.

My eyes flitted to the left, under the U-shaped staircase, where an open entryway led to a shadowy hall that had what looked like a glass door at the end. The right was similar, but this time, you could barely make out the end of the simple straight hallway.

Everything here was large. I’d seen luxurious houses before, but this was beyond what my imagination could’ve conjured. I was too lost in admiring the fine furnishing and artwork that I’d barely noticed the addition in the room.

“Hello,” someone said, the voice drawing my attention to the man now standing in front of me.