Page 3 of After Hours
Like the girl she’d almost been before Joseph had gotten his hooks in her.
Thinking about Joseph was galvanizing, because he would hate this. All of this. That she was in this part of Oakland. That she lived on a boat of questionable seaworthiness. That she was havingwhole thoughtsand a lifewithout his permission and direction.
Not to mention that she noticed other men at all, much less one who looked like a Viking god.
He would make her pay for all of that. She knew that all too well. She’d lived it for longer than she liked to think about?—
But Joseph wasn’t here.
So Romily walked faster and with more determination into the dark, until the shadows swallowed her up.
And when she got farther still, she saw that there were stairs that led up to a higher floor above the gym. But beneath it was another door, with an actual name on it:LONDON’S. With a list of hours and a phone number etched beneath.
Like it was a real gym after all, not just a home away from home for Vikings lost in time.
But Romily didn’t care about any of that, not at the moment, because she could see through the glass.
He was there. Right there, in what looked like some kind of front desk area, though she could barely concentrate on the details.
Because he wasn’t doing paperwork.
He had a blonde woman bent over that desk and he was fucking her.
Hard.
Chapter Two
That was what he was doing.
Fucking.
There was no other word for it, clearly dirty and rough and hot, even from out here in the alley.
He had the blonde spread out over that desk before him, face down. He gripped her hip with one of his big, big hands. The other was a fist in her hair so she was arched back even as she was splayed before him. He was standing between her legs, slamming himself into her again and again and again?—
Romily jerked back, feelingscalded.
Her heart exploded in her chest. Her ribs ached. She could feel the drag of breath in her lungs like some kind of rough and dirty caress all its own.
It had been nearly six months since she’d disappeared from her old life. A year since she’d known she had to find a way to do it, that her marriage really was that dire—and that there was no hope she could change it. Four years since she’d met and married Joseph in a wild, exciting whirlwind of barely six weeks, certain they weresoulmates—only to find herself sittingin a hotel room on her wedding night with a nasty, frightening stranger, wondering how she’d gotten it all so wrong.
She’d spent the first month of freedom in hiding, second-guessing herself, and reading up on men like Joseph. Of which, to her dismay, there were far too many. The good news was that she’d stopped questioning herself. She saw a therapist twice a week online. She thought a lot about what reclaiming her life would look like, assuming she was ever ready for that. Assuming this wasn’t already it.
There were huge parts of her that would be perfectly happy to stay safe and dry and alone in her boat forever.
But this was the first time in a long, long while that she really and truly feltalive.
As if looking through that window was the same as plugging herself into an electrical socket.
It took her a long, dizzy sort of moment to remember where she was.
When she did, it was in a deep horror, because she waslurking.
In an alley.
Like a creep.
She could hear the music from inside the bar next door, just a heavy baseline that seemed unconnected to any song she’d ever heard. Romily knew she was lucky that she hadn’t been seen. That she could walk away right now and think about what she’d done when she got home. Maybe question why she’d been skulking around in a dark alley and spying on a man she’d never met.
