Page 2 of Reclaiming Adelaide
Adelaide’s breaths shuddered as she stirred, stretching her arms above her head. She squinted in the bright light.
My heart stopped.
This was it. The moment it all came crashing down. The girl I’d fallen for was a snake in disguise. She’d sunk her fangs deep into my skin and poisoned me with her lies.
I sat back against the couch and watched her, not trusting myself to touch her, not when the urge to slip my hands around her slender neck and squeeze the life from her perfect body plagued me.
“Why are you up? Come lay back down with me.”
Her drowsy voice pulled me in like a nighttime melody. Instead of laying beside her and burying my face between her breasts, I stood and put distance between us.
I wouldn’t get sucked into her beauty and supposed innocence. Not again.
“Is everything okay?” she asked with pinched brows until she glanced down at her phone in my hand. “Is that my phone?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
“Why?” She wiped her hair from her face and adjusted herself to a seated position. “Were you on my phone?”
I stared at the picture of Alek and Liz and turned the screen towards her.
“Do you know who they are?”
She frowned and shook her head. “No. Should I?”
Adelaide took the picture with Alek’s back to her, but she should have still been able to recognize him. She was up close with him at the party.
Taking two long strides, I shoved the picture of my best friend and his wife into her face. “Don’t fucking lie to me.”
“Jake…” Her voice wobbled as her shallow breaths produced micro whimpers that thickened my cock, but turned my fist hard as stone.
Don’t touch her.
Don’t touch her.
“I don’t—”
“Once a liar, always a liar, they say.” I stepped away from her and squeezed her phone, willing it to disintegrate into dust in my hands. If it wasn’t visible anymore…
Maybe if the evidence didn’t exist, I wouldn’t feel like she ripped my insides out and splayed them out on this coffee table.
“Jake, let me—”
“What’s the real reason we met Adelaide?” I asked, pausing my wrathful march across the room. “Why were you really at the club that night?Hmm? Was it really your birthday?”
Of course it was her birthday. Her background check proved as much, but she couldn’t possibly bet on me being there and letting her in. Did she orchestrate the event in the back of the club so I’d come to her rescue?
That would be some elaborate plan that relied on a lot of luck instead of strategy.
Adelaide tried getting Merlin and me to meet her for her birthday, and I agreed, but I’d gotten sidetracked with paperwork at the office. Then an incident at the club needed my attention, and I needed to take care of it since Alek passed it on to me while he took care of Liz. I didn’t expect to get so busy I’d forget to ask for a meetup location.
She jumped from the couch, then held her head and wobbled. “Of course it was. You know that.”
I took one step forward to catch her if she fell.
Bravo.
She played her innocence like a fiddle and had me dancing to her tune.