Heart Song Anthology by Carolyn Faulkner (summer reads txt) 📗

against warm body, and her skin heated as it only did when covered by one specific man.

“Asher?” she realized, recognizing the body that covered her instantly.

He wore a ski mask over his face, making his blue eyes even more piercing. “Like I said, took you long enough.”

“What are you... How did you...” she trailed off, realization hitting her. “You’re the cigarette salesman?”

“Correction, I am the candy man.”

“Candy man?”

He pulled himself back and released her wrists, allowing her to flop back against the mattress. “Stay,” he ordered, the ski mask making it all the more menacing. He crossed back to the coffee table and grabbed a package of candy from the basket. He waved it in his palm. “King’s Candy.”

“Candy cigarettes,” she said, looking at the pack so closely resembling cigarettes, if not for the big CANDY written along the front of the box. He had been careful to conceal that from her in the footage because she had looked to see if she could make out the brand. Clever man.

Disobeying his command, she sat up. “What exactly possessed you to do this?”

Shrugging, he said, “I missed our little games, too, Cora.”

She smiled, the first full smile he had seen from her in months and his heart skipped. Her whole face brightened, looking just as bubbly and happy as she had when he had first met her and fallen in love with her. Her skin had paled a lot since moving away from the Miami sun, but it flushed with color when she smiled at him. She looked alive.

“You missed playing hide and seek,” she observed.

“I missed our cat and mouse games.”

“Was I the cat in this scenario or the mouse?”

“I’ll let you decide.”

She felt like the cat, but she was probably the mouse. Or the sheep being herded by the experienced sheep dog. Either way, the chase had been fun. “So, let me guess. You tricked Gloria into alerting the whole salon that there was some creep selling cigarettes to minors and knew I couldn’t resist?”

“Close. I paid her to do it.”

“She knew it was a hoax? No wonder then.”

“What?”

“She came and asked me questions about what I knew, I thought she was just a nosy, bored housewife. I guess she was just looking for praise on her acting. A little over the top if you ask me.”

“Worked though.”

Cora glared at him.

“Then I watched you decide to come after me. Watched you install the cameras. Made sure you caught me on camera, and made sure to leave just enough clues to lead you here.” He looked up at the balloon covered ceiling; she did too, amazed by the spectacular beauty of it. “Your Valentine’s Day Utopia. I even got the front desk attendant in on it so she would play along with whatever scheme you came up with to find me.”

“She did not play along.”

“Because you were a day early,” he pointed out.

“Where did you get the ball cap?” she asked. “The one with the hotel name on it? This doesn’t seem like the type of place to advertise that way.”

“Cost me a little to have a logo printed on a hat. Took some doing, but I managed it. I didn’t think you would put the pieces together so fast, I guess that was too much of a hint.”

“Or I’m just better than you thought.”

One half of his mouth upturned in the slightest shadow of a smile. “Not the first time I have underestimated you.”

“Nor the last,” she teased. He reached up to remove his mask from around his face, but Cora shook her head. “Leave it on.”

Quirking one eyebrow beneath the fabric, he pulled it back into place. “Didn’t I tell you not to move?”

“When do I ever listen?”

His face stiffened, all humor evaporating to leave a stern, stoic expression. The same dead expression he had once worn when he had pulled the trigger and eliminated targets under orders. The same expression he used when he was after someone and he was about to catch them.

He launched at her, and though she struggled, he had her back against the mattress again, hands above her head in his classic pin. She kicked her leg, digging her shoe into his thigh but he shoved her off and pressed his knee to her sensitive inner thigh.

“I told you to lie still,” he growled into her ear, causing shivers to rush up her back like pleasant goosebumps. She remembered that rush, the feeling of danger crackling beneath every stroke of his fingers. She had missed that feeling.

He looked down at her intensely, watching and waiting for her to obey or resist him. She chose to resist, struggling against his tight binding of her wrists in vain. She knew it was in vain, he was much stronger than her, especially now that she wasn’t as in the shape she had been when they had first met.

She also wasn’t trying all that hard to fight him off.

Transferring one of her wrists into his opposite hand so his fingers were clamped around both of her wrists tightly, his now free hand explored her. With the gentlest of touches, he glided his fingertips down the crook of her arm, across the sensitive lobe of her ear, then traced the throbbing cord of her neck to her heaving chest.

Her breasts were confined behind layers of clothing, and she smirked at him, reveling in the challenge she had given him. She struggled, making it extra hard on him until he planted his free hand around her throat and leaned down, using his teeth to unzip her uniform part of the way, just enough that he could fit his hand beneath the fabric and stroke naked skin.

She gasped, buckling against him as his fingers traced from her neck down beneath her jacket and found her nipple, rotating his thumb over the sensitive flesh.

His ocean blue eyes flickered up to meet her hazel irises, holding her gaze intensely and making another shudder vibrate down her already liquefied spine. “Please,” she whimpered.

“Begging