Never Let Go - S. J. Evans (best books to read fiction TXT) 📗

SKYE MONTGOMERY COULD FEEL HER ALREADY WORN-THIN RESOLVE crumbling, succumbing to the pressures of the drug that still lingered in her veins and the heavy weight of exhaustion that muddled her thoughts. As she scrambled to hide herself in the crevice of a dirty old laundry chute nestled among the corridors of the farmhouse, fear of the unknown crippled her body, and heartache coursed throughout her veins like liquid fire. She could hardly breathe; so torn apart, so shattered that it took every last ounce of courage and strength she had left in her just to fill her aching lungs with air.

Being careful not to make too much noise, knowing very well that he could easily find her if she did, she pushed the wooden chute’s door shut. Immediately she was swallowed by suffocating heat and darkness. Her erratic pulse rang in her ears, climbing with her unease. Footsteps creaked across the floorboards just outside the chute, hesitant and in pursuit. It was enough to steal her breath away. 

“Come out, come out wherever you are.” The roughness in his tone scraped against her eardrums like nails on a chalkboard, puncturing her with an overwhelming jolt of fear. “You can’t hide from me forever, Skye. I will find you.”

The footsteps retreated, drifting down the other side of the hall, and Skye filled her lungs with stuffy, much needed air. Her shaking hands grappled for the door handle, rubbing against splintered wood, as her chest constricted from the intense feeling of claustrophobia that dug its claws into every pore of her skin.
No light, no air, I can’t breathe . . . was all she could think of while she fumbled for a way out. Part of her knew that she should be more careful; if he so much as spotted her she’d be trapped in an instant, doomed to suffer a fate worse than death. Doomed to live through something worse than the horror she’d already witnessed that night. But because of her drugged state, all her thoughts were scattered and unclear, and the only thing she knew for certain was that she wanted clean air—and plenty of it. She craved it.

With one more desperate claw at the door, she came across the latch and slid it open, blinking against the dim light that poured through. Her entire body was shaking erratically by the time she peered down the foreboding hallway, searching for the figure of a man cloaked in the shadows. After finding nothing—not even the creak of footsteps—she swung her legs out of the chute and stood on her tiptoes, cautiously testing the give of the floorboards. No sounds emanated from them.

She padded her way down the hall, headed towards the staircase, with her head spinning and her ears ringing. Something flashed in her peripheral vision, something dark and quick, and she bolted for the front door, for escape. Her breath hitched in her throat; her lungs burned. Blackness speckled her vision, while beads of sweat trickled down the sides of her face. Loud and heavy footsteps—whether they belonged to her or her hunter, she couldn’t tell—caused the old, rotten floorboards to groan, protesting to the new weight they withheld.

    On the second to last stair, she stumbled and lost her footing, reaching her arms out in a desperate attempt to preserve herself, grasping for something solid to hold onto so that she didn’t lose her advantage.
But the damage had already been done.

    Her hands smacked against the floor first, followed by her knees, and a jolt of teeth jarring pain shot up all the way from her toes to the tips of her fingers. She groaned as she scrambled to get her feet back underneath her so that she didn’t become easy prey, but it was easier said than done and her efforts proved to be futile. Her body was too worn down, her mind too muddled to put an action into motion; the agony of it all was crippling.
   

A body wracking sob shuddered through her core. She curled in on herself, ignoring the heated pain that fired across her chest, and let all of her troubling burdens and fears overpower her. She let herself cry, let herself fall apart. Let herself accept the reality of her own impending death.
It wasn’t that hard. To let go, to give up. A piece of her was already missing—one that would never come back—and no matter how hard she tried to mend that brokenness, she couldn’t. Not with her hunter closing in on her. Not with her death so near. Not without him, the boy she’d never let go. 

She felt the daunting presence of her hunter before she saw his shadow crossing over her still, battered body.

 “I told you I’d find you.” The coolness of his voice chilled her to the very bone. “Why did you try to run? You must’ve known you wouldn’t escape me.” He leaned over her body, his warm breath tickling the hairs on the back of her neck. “Unlike last time, you’re never going to see your loved ones again.” He knotted a fist into her jacket, yanked her closer to him. His other hand wrapped around her neck, pinching the skin and bone. “The only thing you’re going to see is your life flashing before your eyes. I can promise you that.” 

October, seven weeks earlier

DERIK   PEMBROKE   WAS   NOT   THE   KIND   OF   MAN   SKYE   imagined him to be. That much she knew from the three months she had begun getting to know him—her biological father, the same man who had left before she was even born. Even from her very first encounter with him, back in the dreamland of summertime, she had sensed something different, something better than all of the things she had ever thought him to be. And now that he had finally come back for her, she knew things were as they always should have been. More or less.

       “So . . . what do you think?”

       Skye, with her legs tucked underneath her on the plush cushions of her mother’s living room sofa and her fingers fumbling with the tassels of one of the throw pillows, turned towards the familiar sound of Jules’s low, mesmerizing voice. He stood before her in a crisp, freshly dry-cleaned tux, hands at his sides, eyebrows raised with inquiry, his lips squirming around a sloppy smile.

       Her heart missed a beat; her insides fluttered with uncontrollable desire and excitement. Any previous thoughts of her father vanished. Gooseflesh covered her arms, satisfying chills rolling throughout her body in electric waves. She couldn’t stop her lips from spreading into a wide smile at the sight of her breathtakingly handsome boyfriend; couldn’t avoid the happiness that swelled in her heart at the love so blatantly etched across his features. She opened her mouth to say something—anything—but no words came out. All she could do was gaze into his eyes, mesmerized by them, by him.

       “Well. I’m afraid I’m not an expert on these sorts of things, but I do believe that you could use a little help in the area of tying a tie,” Derik, who was lounging on the recliner across from Skye, said, measuring the young man up. His words were laced with sarcasm, while his lips were curled in a devilish half-smile. Giggles slipped from Skye’s lips when she, too, noticed the midnight-blue tie that was draped carelessly around Jules’s neck, sloppy in contrast to the starkness of the rest of his suit. “Didn’t your father ever teach you the basics, son?”

        Skye couldn’t help herself; she burst out into a parade of giddy laughter, cupping her hand over her mouth to cover up the sound. Jules, who was now scrambling to fix the tie, frowned at her, seemingly unimpressed with the way she was reacting.

        “Aw, don’t frown, baby,” she cooed around another fit of giggles, slowly catching her breath. She dragged herself off the sofa and approached him, all the while trying in vain to calm her restless, over the moon spirit. “I think you look rather dashing, Julian Rane. Sort of like my very own dark prince.” She pulled the distressed tie out of his hands, tentatively entwining their fingers together instead. Without hesitation he drew closer to her like a moth to a flame, his hands untangling from hers and fanning across her back, pulling her closer, while his lips crept over hers.

           “I love it,” she whispered, grasping his white buttoned-down shirt in her delicate hands and pulling him even tighter against her. “Kiss me, my dark prince.” Her voice was so quite she wondered if Jules had even heard it.

        But he responded before she could second guess it. His lips met hers with a feverish passion and electricity that made everything else fall into the background. The task at hand—finding Jules the perfect tux for her mother’s wedding—the watchful presence of her father. Nothing else mattered but his lips on her lips, his fingers spread across her back, just the feather of a touch, and the warmth that blossomed deep inside of her from all of the foreign sensations.

       The moment could have lasted forever. Skye wanted desperately for the moment to last forever. Every touch was like static electricity running along the tenderness of her skin, every kiss was like a delicate secret drawing the two infinitely closer to each other, and every gentle confession mumbled between a kiss was like a whisper on a warm, breezy day. Each one haunted every fiber of her being.

        “You taste sweet,” Jules said, running his tongue along her upper lip as he broke away from a kiss, “like sugar and . . . strawberries.” His glazed over eyes found hers, and he cupped his hands around her face. “I love it.”

        Running her fingers along the buttons of his shirt, in sole purpose to torture him, she bit down gently on his tongue and went in for another earth-shuddering kiss.

        “Ouch,” he whined after a moment, despite the smile on his face and the unmistakable pleasure in his eyes. “Did you just bite me?”

        “Shh,” she shushed him, placing a finger against his lips and giggling a little, “Derik’s here.”

        “Okay . . .” The seductiveness of his low voice shattered any last strand of self-control she possibly could have had, and a warm blush spread across her face, sinking into her every pore. “My turn.”

         He crushed her against him, smothering her with hot kisses. After the initial surprise of his aggression, she felt her body surrender to his, her insides quivering from the licks of heat that spread throughout her womb, blossoming into delicious sensations so overwhelming they almost hurt. His teeth nipped on her lips softly at first, his tongue expertly sliding into her mouth, and then he was devouring her, and she knew she wanted to follow his lead with the same kind of fervor.

          But the moment—their moment—was over almost as quickly as